The Reaping: Critic Reviews

No belief on earth can rescue Swank from a film that's a chain of disaster chintz masquerading as a sermon.

The only remotely notable thing about this particular jumble of boos, bangs and door creaks is that it tries to wed the horror trend with the heated-up God market.

Satanic horror films are always good for a laugh, and this one is no exception.

Note to respected actors: If the movie involves dodging swarms of sparrow-sized locusts, tromping about in a creepy, blood-red river or facing down a scary little girl believed to be possessed by Satan, run, don't walk, out of the studio meeting.

[Swank's] deft gestures and subtle inflections ring false, thanks to a script that forces her to follow the cliches of the genre, not break free of them.

Stephen Hopkins directs The Reaping according to the Satanic horror manual, right down to the choral chanting on the soundtrack. The lighting is often too dark to see what's happening, and the editing makes a mess of even the most tolerable scenes.

[Director Stephen Hopkins] must have decided that horror needn't be technically horrifying, just flashy and programmatic and full of woo-woo choral bits that loudly command our spines to tingle. Stubborn little thing, mine didn't. And neither will yours.

The cumulative effect is likely to make viewers weary, but not so weary that they can't manage a chuckle or two during the film's cheesed-out final minutes.

Directed by Stephen Hopkins, the film begins gracefully, judiciously. Sadly, in its final 20 minutes, it throws its admirable caution to the wind.

Why were they ... ? Did she ... ? Couldn't he have just ... ? Since I have no intention of watching the movie two more times to sort it all out, I'm left disgruntled. It's almost enough to make you lose faith in horror movies.

The Reaping proves that you reap what you sow, and what these particular screenwriters have sown is just another word for manure.

An insult to intelligence and faith alike.

An effectively unsettling mix of Southern gothic and Old Testament hugger-mugger.

While The Reaping looks handsome -- you've never seen a prettier locust attack, believe me -- it's dumb enough to make your brain implode.

From spooky prelude to investigative twaddle to surprise ending and double-surprise coda, it's as if director Stephen Hopkins is following the handbook of Satanic hooey.

For all its high-minded aspirations, The Reaping really shows its cards in the final reels, with a descent into visual bombast and spiritual chaos that is almost riveting in its silliness.

The film succumbs to the plague of cliches -- things suddenly leaping into the frame, screeching sound effects, and a gag that must have been old by the time Moses hit puberty: Look at this freaky stuff! Oh, it's only a dream.

Notable for its enthusiastic abandonment of any semblance of narrative coherence. Lately, lonely women in Hollywood movies are particularly vulnerable to attacks by multiple montages and random sound effects.

Upon reflection, it's not difficult to understand why The Reaping languished for so long on the shelves of Warner Brothers before being dumped into distribution. The film, despite attempts at edit-room reparation, is virtually unreleasable.

Religious horror with multiple shocks but little substance.

It's a highfalutin hodgepodge of biblical mumbo jumbo, more likely to inspire laughter than fear.

A worthy genre entry and certainly better than most recent horror movies -- thanks mostly to its lead.