Released: April 5, 2007
Director: Stephen Hopkins
*****
Sometimes, an Oscar winner headlining a B-movie is a good thing. The personae lends credibility to the production, allowing the audience a certain amount of leeway in enjoying a middling concept. Such is the case with The Reaping, a vehicle for Hilary Swank as a professor who debunks supposed Biblical miracles using science. It is because of Swank (and, to a lesser extent, and co-stars David Morrissey and Idris Elba) that the films manages to be anything but laughable. It's not without it's perks, though. The first 30 to 45 minutes stand up rather well as an unconventional who-dun-it, giving us a sense of small town, Southern folk.
Even the locations and sets turn out to be well designed and thought out. Shot in location in Louisiana, everything feels authentic to the setting, allowing us to become almost comfortable here. I'd even go on to say the first half-The Reaping only runs 99 minutes-is fairly competent storytelling. Then the entire bottom drops out, plunging us into a flashback prone, special effects disaster with a hopeless resolution and ending leaving us scratching our heads. Why is that? To be perfectly honest, the film forgets it's own internal logic. Katherine (that's Swank) spends all her time telling people why what they think are Biblical events are explained by science. This is her work, her passion...all of which is summarily thrown out the window thanks to some haunting warnings from a priest-friend who is never developed past the point of plot contrivance.
The Reaping goes wrong as it tries to delve deeper into it's own internal reality, stringing together too many subplots which come crashing together with no panache...no subtlety in the final 20 minutes or so. What does it add to Katherine's character to give her a religious background or a dead family? Not a whole lot, except to explain her skepticism a little girl from the swamp is evil incarnate. And about those flashbacks? They come in such a slipshod, herky jerky manner it's nearly impossible to figure out what's going on in them unless a character actually explains. When it comes to the information we need to get to the conclusion with Katherine, it all seems to be a blur.
The sudden left turn the story takes in the final act jars any sense of reality out of it. In a film comprised of science and explainable phenomenon, to introduce a satanic, other worldly element which really doesn't belong destroys what the narrative is trying to do. Fireballs falling out of the sky, landing on very specific targets may be Biblical, but it's not feasible. Especially when, previously, Katherine tells us exactly why certain things can't happen. It's a tale of two movies, slapped together in the middle without regard for thematic continuity. Do the fireballs falling out of the sky make Katherine believe again, after turning her back from religion? Or does she simply believe in the supernatural power of evil in the end?