Movie Review The Dark Tower

The Dark Tower (2017) 

Directed by Nikolaj Arcel

Written by Akiva Goldsman, Jeff Pinkner, Anders Thomas Jensen, Nikolaj Arcel

Starring Idris Elba, Matthew McConaughey, Jackie Earl Haley

Release Date August 4th, 2017 

To whomever said that Stephen King’s epic novel The Dark Tower was un-adaptable to the big screen, we owe you a Coke. The supremely silly movie sequel to King’s dense Dark Tower book series is an embarrassment to all involved from King to director Nicolaj Arcel to Academy Award winning star Matthew McConaughey and Academy Award nominated producer Ron Howard, who for some reason passed on directing The Dark Tower himself; golly, I can’t imagine why?

The work of the prolific Mr. King seems to resist adaptation in the same way a country might resist an invading army. Don’t misunderstand, some have managed to pull off the trick; Stanley Kubrick made The Shining, though Stephen King hated his adaptation; Frank Darabont did okay with The Green Mile but again, King hated that one as well and even The Shawshank Redemption wasn’t beloved by the creator even as audiences loved it. Of the 50 or so King properties made into television or feature films, only a handful have turned out watchable and The Dark Tower is not one of those movies.

Idris Elba is the star of The Dark Tower as Roland the Eld, a Gunslinger living on a Middle Earth where everything has been lost to some sort of apocalypse started by the evil Walter (Matthew McConaughey), a sorcerer(?) bent on destroying the Dark Tower which stands in the middle of a dozen or so galaxies and protects from the ultimate evil beyond the stars. Standing alongside Roland is teenager Jake Chambers (Tom Taylor) whose visionary nightmares brought him to this middle earth, not the Lord of the Rings one, a Stephen King one, where he hopes to prevent the apocalypse on his version of Earth(?). (The movie is such a mess it's impossible to say whether Walter is a sorcerer or what Jake's motivations truly are, hence all the question marks.)

The Dark Tower was director by Nicolaj Arcel who seems entirely over-matched by this material. Arcel’s previous effort was the studious period piece A Royal Affair and it showed he could wrangle a sweet period piece romance but I am not sure what producer Ron Howard saw in that film that led them to believe Arcel could marshal the silliness of The Dark Tower into anything other than another abominable Stephen King adaptation.

Poor Matthew McConaughey takes it on the chin for the cast of The Dark Tower. While Taylor has youth as an excuse and while Elba can fall back on the cool Gunslinger persona, McConaughey is adrift as the ultimate evil, Walter. Sure, he’s also referred to as The Man in Black but even then, his costume includes a long coat with shoulder pads that make him look more 80s Dynasty diva than ultimate evil. Why they decided that the ultimate evil, worse than the Devil, Roland claims, should be called Walter is one of several bizarre decisions made by the creators of The Dark Tower. Sure, that could be something from King's book but even then, they could have written that part out of the movie considering how this is a follow-up to the books and not a straight adaptation.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review: The Unborn

The Unborn (2009) 

Directed by David S. Goyer 

Written by David S. Goyer 

Starring Odette Yustman, Gary Oldman, Meagan Goode, Cam Gigandet, Idris Elba

Release Date January 9th, 2009 

Published January 10th, 2009

The Unborn is one of the more challenging moviegoing experiences I have had in my less than a decade as a film critic. It's not the films content that was challenging, the content is far too goofball to be challenging. No, the challenge was trying to keep a straight face as the desperate, sad cast made their paces through this slog of utterly ludicrous horror cliches.

Odette Yustman, one of the last people killed in J.J Abrams 2008 hit Cloverfield, stars in The Unborn as Casey, a pretty but bland teenager haunted by visions of a ghostly child. One night, as she is babysitting for a neighbor, the little boy she is watching bashes her over the head with a small mirror and tells her that Jumby (Yes, that isn't a typo, JUMBY) wants to be born now.

Jumby was the nickname that mom and dad gave to the twin who died in the womb next to Casey when she was born. Casey was unaware that she was supposed to be a twin and while that could be intriguing or dramatic, I was left wondering what Casey's embarrassing nickname was? Bumby? Tumby? That question is more interesting than any question posed in The Unborn. 

Casey comes to find that her grandmother also had a twin brother who died at Auschwitz, oh yes they drag the holocaust into this goofy plot. According to family lore, that twin died and was replaced by an evil spirit, a Dybbuk, a Jewish legend about an evil spirit. Granny killed her brother after his possession and the spirit has haunted her ever since.

Now the evil spirit wants Casey and she pins her hopes on an exorcism to save her. Gary Oldman plays a skeptical Rabbi who takes up the exorcism after he is visited by Spuds McKenzie, the former beer spokesman, only his head is upside down and he's lost that ridiculous Hawaiian shirt. You have to see it for yourself perhaps, but I assure it's as funny as my description of it. 

The Rabbi calls on a priest friend played by Idris Elba for help and several cannon fodder volunteers who will helpfully die on command once the spirit is unleashed. We know these characters are DOA at the exorcism because they don't even get names, they may as well have victim 1, victim 2 and so on, written on name tags.

Cam Gigandet, an actor who betrays fratboy douchebaggery with his every douchebag mannerism in both Never Back Down and Twilight brings that malevolent maleness to the good guy role of Casey's boyfriend who may as well also just line up as potential victim number 4. I'm being harsh about Gigandet, I can assume he is a nice person. His performances however, lead me to my insulting conclusions about his characters, if not the man playing them. 

The Unborn was written and directed by David S. Goyer who wrote the script for the first 2 awesome Blade movies and then directed the abysmal 3rd one. He co-wroter script of The Dark Knight. Can you see the pattern? Maybe Mr. Goyer should stick with the pen and leave the directing to someone else? Then again, even the writing stinks in The Unborn. 

The evil spirit inhabits a neighbor child, a friend, an upside down headed dog, the priest, and several others in the film but for some reason beyond explanation, the evil spirit cannot get his hands on Casey. This is purely due to Goyer's inability to come up with a logical reasoning behind any of the decisions he makes in this movie. Leaving the audience asking too many questions is a surprisingly typical writing failure from a usually more talented writer. 

Unwelcome logical question number 1: If the evil spirit can inhabit anyone it wants, why does he need Casey? Number 2: If he gets her, what does he do then? I realize these questions are entirely unwelcome, especially in a movie where the director is more interested in his choice of creepy looking bug -potato bug instead of the traditional cockroach, for those of you scoring your horror cliches at home- than in actually crafting an engaging horror thriller.

Watching The Unborn, it was a chore to keep from bursting out into gales of laughter at the ill logic of the terrifically awful staging and most unfortunately at the performance of Ms. Yustman who amounts to little more than a pout and a hair style. Yustman is not a bad actress, she's just unfortunately stuck in this silly, poorly thought out plot that undermines anything good she might bring to this movie. 

The Unborn is a movie that the folks at the sadly defunct Mystery Science Theater would have loved. It has that perfunctory B-list star, the slumming Gary Oldman, and the overall air of attempted atmosphere and self seriousness that Crow T. Robot and company so successfully took the air out of. The Unborn will make you long for The Crawling Eye or This Island Earth with its awfulness. By the way, I'm told that members of MST3K have new incarnations of the MST brand online. Maybe someone can sneak them a copy of The Unborn. One can only wish.

Movie Review Takers

Takers (2010) 

Directed by John Luessenhop 

Written by Gabriel Casseus, John Luessenhop, Avery Duff

Starring Idris Elba, Paul Walker, Hayden Christensen, Michael Ealy, Zoe Saldana

Release Date August 27th, 2010 

Published August 27th, 2010

Expectations for the action/heist flick “Takers” were so low they had to be scraped off of a sticky theater floor. There really was not much to be expected from a movie featuring the wooden talents of Idris Elba, Paul Walker and Hayden Christensen or the first time performance of troubled R & B star Chris Brown. Add to that a first time director and a screenplay credited to four different writers and really all the film has to be is in frame to surpass expectations.

So what a great surprise that “Takers” is more than merely in frame. Indeed this fast paced, quick witted caper flick is wildly entertaining in its mindless quick cut manner.

Gordon (Idris Elba), John (Paul Walker), A.J (Hayden Christensen), Jake (Michael Ealy) and Jesse (Chris Brown) are first glimpsed entering a high end Los Angeles bank. They will soon rob this bank with an efficient, violent flourish.

The celebration of this very successful, multi-million dollar heist is short lived as a former member of their crew, Ghost (T.I), arrives with a new opportunity. Ghost has a plan for robbing an armored car that could quadruple the amount of money they took from the bank. The plan involves complex timing and well placed violence, all right up this crew’s alley.

The biggest question is Ghost. Freshly released from prison after five years, no one can be certain whether he is motivated by greed or revenge. His plan is solid but after he finds his ex Rachel (Zoe Saldana) engaged to Jake it becomes relatively clear that he cannot be entirely trusted.

As the crew is making plans, the cops are closing in. Lead investigator Jack Welles (Matt Dillon) and his partner Eddie (Jay Hernandez) have stumbled onto a lead involving Russian gangsters linked to Ghost. The lead goes from Ghost to Gordon and from Gordon to the rest of the crew. Will the cops catch on to the plan before they can execute it? Will Ghost betray his former friends?

These questions don't really matter all that much but they lend enough context to “Takers” to give the action enough juice to be compelling. First time director John Luessenhoepp shrewdly limits the time spent with these actors talking and gets right into these actors doing the things that most other movies would spend time explaining.

”Takers” is keenly aware of the derivative nature of the heist picture and spends little time on the explanation in favor of action that rarely pauses. These actors are at their best when they are physically involved and “Takers” plays to that strength with scene after scene of action. When the movie needs any minor explanations they turn to the one actor in the cast with the chops to deliver, Matt Dillon. The veteran Dillon cleverly plays chief explainer and is only rarely bogged down with heavy exposition.

That's not to say that Dillon doesn't get physical himself. In fact, in easily the best scene in “Takers,” Dillon and Jay Hernandez give chase to a fleeing Chris Brown in an extra long chase that involves Parkour leaps and bounds, heavy hitting traffic and one well placed, unexpected bullet.

”Takers” is terrific genre entertainment, an action movie almost without pause. Clever, well employed violence combines with a super fast pace and juices “Takers” beyond its acting and story limitations. It also helps to have a guy like Matt Dillon around to do the minor heavy lifting.

Movie Review Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance

Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance (2012) 

Directed by Neveldine and Taylor 

Written by Scott M. Gimple, Seth Hoffman, David S. Goyer 

Starring Nicolas Cage, Ciaran Hinds, Johnny Whitworth, Idris Elba, Christopher Lambert

Release Date February 17th, 2012

Published February 17th, 2012 

Johnny Blaze (Nicholas Cage) is back in "Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance 3D." Almost abandoning any relation to the 2009 blockbuster "Ghost Rider," "Ghost Rider Spirit Vengeance" re-launches the comic book hero by rehashing his deal gone wrong with devil, the nature of his curse and his quest regain his soul. All of this info is delivered in an entertaining opening cartoon sequence that launches us right into Johnny's latest adventure.

Sadly, "Spirit of Vengeance" is far too goofy and campy to sustain the momentum from the opening credits. Once Johnny is informed of his latest mission, by the oh-so helpful Moreau (Idris Elba, slumming in this sub-B-movie), Johnny is set on a quest to get his soul back by saving the life of a child who happens to be the target for Satan's (Ciaran Hinds) next form on earth.

Standing in Ghost Rider/Johnny's way is a thug named Carrigan (Johnny Whitworth) who is oddly un-phased while facing down a flame-headed, un-killable demon. Karrigan's complete lack of surprise continues even after he gets his own disturbing super-natural powers from the lord of evil. I like Johnny Whitworth, I have since his charming turn in "Empire Records" but he's really terrible as the Devil's top henchman in "Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance."

Nicholas Cage is unquestionably the most bizarre actor on the planet. Sure, Johnny Depp has his ticks and quirks but even Depp at his most unusual cannot match the crazy vibe emanating from Cage. In "Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance" Cage truly lets his freak flag fly by chewing and spitting dialogue that would make Christopher Walken blush. There are actors in Roger Corman movies who may find scenes in "Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance" beneath their talent.

The biggest problem that "Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance" has however is a lack of a sense of humor. The film is deathly serious about the goofball nuttiness it delivers and seems to expect audiences to eat what it's dishing out without question. This leads to uproarious confusion as bizarre, laugh out loud scenes arrive that the filmmakers did not intend to be laugh out loud funny.

Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor suffered from a similar lack of self-awareness in their "Crank" movies starring Jason Statham. Both of the "Crank" movies were wildly funny without ever intending to be. It's not that the directors want to deliver Oscar caliber drama but rather that they intend on their movies being gripping, thrilling, action movies and not the bizarre unintentional comedies that they are.

There is entertainment value in the strange disconnection from reality that all involved in "Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance" suffer from but you have to have a slightly mean sense of humor to find it. Laughing at the undoubtedly hard-working folks behind "Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance" is like laughing at someone who trips over their own feet; it's not intended to be funny and you shouldn't laugh but you can't help it.

As Nicholas Cage started 2011 with one of the worst movies of that year, "Season of the Witch," Cage begins 2012 with a movie just as likely to be not so fondly remembered at the end of 2012.

Movie Review Obsessed

Obsessed (2009) 

Directed by Steve Shill

Written by David Loughery 

Starring Beyonce, Idris Elba, Ali Larter, Bruce McGill, Jerry O'Connell 

Release Date April 23rd, 2009 

Published April 22nd, 2009 

The thriller Obsessed wants to be, needs to be a trashtastic spectacle. Instead what we get is a timid, messy, goofball effort that fails to deliver on the promise of its guilty pleasure premise. The commercials sold Beyonce vs that chick from Heroes that isn't Hayden Pannetiere. We want the catfight, we get a minor kitten tangle.

Idris Elba, who may be best known for his work on HBO's little seen but much loved drama The Wire, stars in Obsessed as Derek, a happily married executive trying to put his womanizing ways in the past. You see, his wife Sharon (Beyonce Knowles) was his assistant when they met. Now, as a married man he has a rule: No female assistants.

That rule however, has to be waived when Derek is stuck with a comely temp named Lisa. They met and  briefly, modestly flirted before Derek knew she was going to temp for him. Derek didn't think much of the flirtation but Lisa is consumed with it. It's not long before she is making excuses to get him alone and eventually making a serious play on him at the office Christmas party.

Derek turns her down at every turn but unfortunately, he kept the whole thing from his wife. When Lisa makes a dramatic move that gets the cops involved Sharon finds out and Derek's picturesque life is in shambles. Meanwhile, looming from the movie's marketing campaign is that Sharon-Lisa confrontation that is the film's selling point.

Directed by television veteran Stephen Shill, Obsessed is a surprisingly dull slog for what should be a trashy little B-movie filled with cheap thrills. It's as if Shill and company were reluctant to accept their place in the movie world. It's not that they really aspire beyond cheap thrillers but rather that they lack the commitment to be as cheap and nasty as a movie like this needs to be to be successful.

Obsessed wants desperately to match the zeitgeist capturing heights of the similarly themed 80's classic Fatal Attraction. However, it lacks the raw, visceral sexuality of that film, not to mention the utterly fearless performance of Glenn Close. Ali Larter is certainly no Glenn Close. Though quite a beauty, Larter can't Close's commitment and strange, frightening charisma.

As for pop star Beyonce, her limitations as an actress continue to show. Her face, though lovely, is a blank slate in even the most stressful of scenes. Her soundtrack contributions are filled with passion but her acting leaves a great deal to be desired. In the head to head fight with Larter we get some hair pulling and an obvious, predictable end so badly shaded in the opening scenes that you might laugh if you haven't checked out already. Dull, dimwitted and inept, Obsessed fails at the minimal goal of being a cheap thrill.

Movie Review: 28 Weeks Later

28 Weeks Later (2007) 

Directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo

Written by Rowan Joffe

Starring Robert Carlyle, Rose Byrne, Jeremy Renner, Imogen Poots, Idris Elba 

Release Date May 11th, 2007

Published May 10th, 2007 

There is something horribly insidious about the creeping terror of modern horror. A creeping lack of hope and humanity. Directors like Eli Roth revel in it. Movies like Roth\'s Hostel and soon Hostel 2, Rob Zombie\'s Devil\ 's Rejects, Greg McLean\'s Wolf Creek or Alexandre Aja\'s High Tension, exist to profit from the exhibition of this newfound lack of hope and humanity.

Some have theorized a political motivation. A reaction maybe to the Bush administration\'s leadership that has bred a hopelessness for the future. He has made us less secure with his policies and this has led to hopelessness expressed as artful horror violence. I think this kind of intellectual leap of faith gives these filmmakers far too much credit.

The real fact is that these filmmakers thrive financially from out grossing, literally and figuratively, their predecessors and the lack of humanity is merely an extension of the directors, producers and studios, avarice.

The latest exhibition of this avarice comes in the sequel to the cult hit 28 Days Later. 28 Weeks Later is an ugly, hopeless exhibition of humanity at it's lowest point. While some critics perform the intellectual gymnastics necessary to find politics in this horror, all I see is the kind of lack of humanity that simply does not belong in mainstream cinema.

Directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, 28 Weeks Later is a grotesque exercise in grisly violence. Robert Carlisle is the ostensible star of this mess as a father who is reunited with his children following what the American military believes is the end of the viral outbreak that devastated much of England. 28 weeks earlier the so called rage virus turned citizens into blood thirty zombies. Now the infected citizens are assumed to have all died and life is being restored to the continent.

Don (Carlisle) was one of the lucky ones. While he hid out in a farmhouse with his wife and a few other survivors, his children were safe on a trip to America. Now that he is reunited with his daughter Tammy (Imogen Poots) and his son Andy (Mackintosh Muggleton), he has some explaining to do as to what happened to their mother.

Turns out, mom didn't die at the hands of the infected. She, in fact, is of a rare breed of human who is resistant to the rage virus. When she is discovered and brought to the Americans for testing, a scientist, Scarlet (Rose Byrne), uncovers the possibility that her children may also be resistent and thus able to provide a cure for the virus.

That sounds like a hopeful plot but as played out by director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, 28 Weeks Later is just a grim exercise in Hollywood cannibalism and the lowest aspects of humanity. Where Danny Boyle\'s original 28 Days Later had a visceral artistic quality, 28 Weeks Later attempts to leech some of the viscerality of the original but fails miserably, falling back on the mere exhibitiion of the ugliest forms of violence.

This ugliness would be excusable if there were a point to it. Give us something to hang on to, a good performance, a charismatic character, or even a shred of artfulness. Unfortunately the whole effort is so slapdash that the only thing the film has to fall back on is the violence. The filmmakers simply throw a bunch of blood and guts at the screen and hope that no one notices how empty the whole thing is. Needless to say, they fail miserably.

The oppressive air of hopelessness hangs over 28 Weeks Later from the beginning and never lifts. The film lurches from piece of disturbing, bloody violence to the next. Some may argue that blood and guts violence is a hallmark of the horror genre and of course they are right. However, great horror movies have ideas behind them. The first Nightmare On Elm Street played on the fears expressed in our sub-conscious.

The Saw films deliver a complex examination of the meaning and importance of life. Jigsaw is unquestionably a villain and a psychopath but there is a deep method behind his madness. Teaching those that do not take care with the gift of life, how tenuous that gift can be is a rather deep message for your average mainstream horror film.

28 Weeks Later has some alleged political pretensions but god help me I couldn't locate them. The kind of intellectual gymnastics necessary to bring politics to bare on 28 Weeks Later are simply beyond my capacity. Instead, all I witnessed in 28 Weeks Later was the continual explication of the most vile and disturbing violence.

What was the purpose of this film? Is it meant to be entertaining? Titillating? Horrifying? If someone is entertained by this that worries me. It takes a pretty twisted mind to find this level of viscera entertaining. The same goes for those who may be titillated by this. Horrifying? Not really. The film is supposed to be tense and breathtaking but as directed the story is so hopeless and the characters so thin, what tension there is can only be wrung from the cheap plot device of children in danger.

And even the cheap trick child in danger plot fails to hold us because you never for a moment feel that director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo would have a hard time killing children in this movie.

I don\'t understand the purpose of a film like 28 Weeks Later. Hopeless, ugly, mean spirited, 28 Weeks Later appeals only to the darkest parts of the human mind. What entertainment is to be gleaned from watching human beings tear one another limb from limb? What are we supposed to take away from the oppressive hopelessness of this plot?

Movies like this and Hostel and Devil\ 's Rejects, et al, revel in the worst of humanity, the ugliness of the world recycled onto the film screen without any purpose. Can someone please explain why?

Movie Review: The Losers

The Losers (2010) 

Directed by Sylvain White 

Written by Peter Berg, James Vanderbilt 

Starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Idris Elba, Zoe Saldana, Chris Evans, Columbus Short 

Release Date April 23rd, 2010 

Published April 22nd, 2010 

A ragtag band of America's best soldiers are burned by unknown superiors and forced to go outside the law to get their lives back. “The A-Team?” No, “The Losers” starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Idris Elba and Zoe Saldana. Oh but don't worry, this isn't some derivative waste of celluloid, it's merely a boring rehash of tired cliches dressed up in music video edits and big explosions. OK, yeah that is rather derivative.

Clay (Morgan) is the leader of “The Losers,” a group of Special Forces soldiers whose latest mission  involves taking down a hostage taking drug dealer somewhere in South America. The mission is a lie. Instead, the man is a puppet that some CIA spook wants out of the way. The bad guy hides behind a large group of orphans to hold off people like The Losers. When Clay and his team, tech expert Jensen (Chris Evans), Second in Command Roque (Idris Elba), pilot Pooch (Columbus Short) and sharp shooter Cougar (Oscar Janaeda), find the kids they decide to rescue them. The rescue goes bad when the CIA decides to eliminate “The Losers” and instead eliminate the little kids.

Trapped in South America with no passports, identification or cash, “The Losers” seem resigned to their fate until an encounter with a mysterious woman. Her name is Aisha (Zoe Saldana) and she knows who burned “The Losers” and how they can find him and though her motives and origin are suspicious it doesn't stop Clay from falling into bed with her. ”The Losers” has a certain charm to it, especially in the loose, fun performance of future “Captain America” Chris Evans, but for the most part it lags because there is just nothing new here. “The Losers” is filled to overflow with been there, done that action set pieces and dull, lifeless effects and quick edits.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan is solid actor with a strong, manly appeal. His weathered mug and half smile seem built for gritty, grunge action movies. Too bad for him that “The Losers” is a slick, lifeless effects movie and not the kind of grungy, punk rock war movie that might suit Morgan and his performance here far better. That said, Morgan has a great sexual chemistry with “Avatar” angel Zoe Saldana and their sex scene is arguably the only reason to see “The Losers.”

Sadly, this movie is not about watching good looking people get down. Rather, The Losers is a lame caper flick in which the caper isn't very clever or original and the film-making is derivative and dull. “The Losers,” I am told, is based on a popular series of comic books. I am further told that many of the frames in the film are modeled on actual panels from the comic. This is notable for comics fans and entirely inconsequential for me. Maybe we should check out the comic and skip “The Losers” movie.

Movie Review: The Reaping

The Reaping (2007)

Directed by Stephen Hopkins

Written by Carey Hayes, Chad Hayes 

Starring Hilary Swank, David Morrissey, Idris Elba, AnnaSophia Robb, Stephen Rea 

Release Date April 5th, 2007

Published April 4th, 2007

Is Hilary Swank finally feeling her Oscar curse? After winning two Oscars, a feat only two other actresses in history can claim, Swank continued her strong run with the terrific drama Freedom Writers. That film however, despite solid reviews was not a box office winner. Now comes the low-point of Ms. Swank's post Oscar career. The Reaping is a dull witted, thrill-less thriller. A horror film with little or no horror. A religious based scare-fest that fails to be either really religious or scary.

In The Reaping Hilary Swank plays Katherine Winter a former missionary turned college professor whose hobby is debunking religious miracles. She touts having visited 47 miracles and found 47 scientific explanations for the so called miracle. Her loss of faith is related to her time in Africa with father Castigan (Stephen Rea) where her husband and pre-teen daughter were slaughtered by fearful tribesmen who believed the sacrifices would save the lives of others.

Catherine's latest debunking assignment takes her to a small town in Louisiana called Haven. There a science teacher, Doug (David Morrissey), is trying to convince the townsfolk that they are not under attack from the ten biblical plagues. The plagues that the people believe are being visited upon them are believed by many to be coming from a teenage girl (Anna Sophia Robb) whose brother died under mysterious circumstances.

Since the death of the girl's brother, the river surrounding the town has seemingly turned to blood, frogs are falling from the trees, and soon each of the biblical plagues will have made an appearance, killing dozens of people. Is it god, the devil, or does this teenage girl represent one or the other? These are the questions that Catherine must answer before the next plague becomes the last.

I'll say this for Hillary Swank in The Reaping, she has never looked this good before. Swank has always been unconventionally attractive but in The Reaping she is tanned and toned and her sometimes severe features have been toned down through some sort of cosmetics work and all of this really works for her. If I was recommending movies solely on the attractiveness of the star, I would totally recommend The Reaping.

That however, is not something I would ever actually do. As great looking as Hillary Swank is in The Reaping, the movie is a dopey series of clichés leading to an ending more predictable than your average romantic comedy. Director Stephen Hopkins (The Life and Death of Peter Sellers) is not untalented. The problem is the story he's telling isn't all that compelling.

The Reaping plays like an above average production of one of those lame ass Left Behind movies where highly religious characters spout this and that about God's love until the wicked are smited and the righteous live on. Bad actors, overly earnest dialogue, and low budget aesthetics give those films a camp appeal that might have made The Reaping a ripe parody. Unfortunately, this high budget flick is deathly serious about its dopey, superstitious plot.

Is this the Oscar curse finally catching up with Hillary Swank? Maybe? Maybe not? The failure of The Reaping seems to be more a function of genre than of superstition. Aside from last years The Omen remake, religious themed horror flicks haven't delivered big scares since the 70's. Movie's like Bless The Child, Lost Souls and Skeleton Key have all starred beautiful starlets battling satanic forces and each has stunk out loud.

Is that because we are simply tired of rote plots and tired situations? Probably. It may also be that the old fire and brimstone doesn't really do much to put fear into people anymore. In a post 9/11 world, can the perceived horrors of potential damnation compete with the real life horrors in front of our eyes? The Reaping is also rather outdated in its reliance on the supernatural in an era where a more realistic, visceral and bloody style of horror dominates the market.

Whatever the reason, supernatural or otherwise, The Reaping is a failure. Not scary enough for horror. Not bad enough for camp, the film flickers on to the screen and simply lays there. Hilary Swank looks gorgeous and is impeccably talented but even two Oscars can't roust these characters and this situation into anything lively enough to be called entertaining.