The Reaping

By: Lovey

Director: Stephen Hopkins
Cast: Hilary Swank, David Morrissey, Idris Elba, Lara Grice
Rating: 2 out of 5

Sometimes it's hard to work out if movies are scary 'cause they just are, or because someone has told you it's scary before you watch it, so you're already on edge! That's the case with The Reaping. I’m still trying to work out if it was scary, weird or just really well done.

I couldn’t write this at 11pm while home alone (sniff), so it must be scary. I think. I need to watch it again to be sure, but will wait for daylight.

The Reaping starts out with Hillary Swank playing a professor who spends her days using scientific "facts" to prove religious miracles aren’t true. Now is it just me, or has Hilary's role as a boy playing a girl in Boys Don't Cry forever made her look a tad to masculine to wear a dress?

I digress. So, despite being pre-warned from a  ‘Father’ from her past, she packs her bags for some little Hicksville to hunt down a scientific explanation for a miraculous event. This is your stereotypical backwater town, complete with swamp, classic scary large white two storey house in the middle of nowhere, a devout, church-going community and the traditional freaky family who live by the swamp.

This movie contains all the checkboxes of scary movies; a love interest, token black guy, religion, good vs. evil, a couple of annoying kids, and characters who insist on going into scary places despite me screaming at them not to go there because it's so blatantly obvious something bad is going to happen.

The movie drops in and out of past and present as if Doc Brown was directing it straight out of the Delorean. It also switches from dreams and visions, to reality so much that your head spins from start to finish.

After watching this movie, I had no idea who was good and who was bad, and whether it was scary or just plain weird. And I always say that any movie that leaves you scratching your head must be good.

My advice would be to check this movie out. It's worth a look. Just don't watch it on your own. Or at night. Or in a house located by a creepy old church. Or a cemetery.

Verbatim:
Kham: “Where the hell is my elephant?”

In a word: Sacrilegious