Starring: Hilary Swank, David Morrissey and Idris Elba
Director: Stephen Hopkins
Rated: M
AUDIENCES will sit up and listen at the scene in The Reaping where a sceptical scientist (Hilary Swank) is asked about the miraculous nature of the 10 plagues of Egypt.
She begins with chemicals in the river Nile and gives an extraordinarily fluent, comprehensive and logical explanation of all the plagues following on from each other.
Actually, this probably makes far more sense than explanations given for strange goings-on in the contemporary bayous of Louisiana.
The Reaping is one of the many films that rely on modern audiences’ interest/faith/lack of faith.
In fact, these days audiences, as The Da Vinci Code proved, are tempted to believe in all kinds of pseudo truths and invented hypotheses, while all the time expressing themselves as not believing in God, religion or Church.
It was G.K. Chesterton, of course, who noted that when people lose their faith, it is not that they believe in nothing but that they will believe in anything.
The British Hammer Studios, in the 1960s and 1970s, used to make a lot of these religious horror films starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and many popular character actors.
The Reaping is a bit like a 21st century American successor to these films.
It is highly crafted and has some eye-popping special effects, especially for a plague of locusts.
Speaking of plagues, it should be said that the main biblical reference for The Reaping is the book of Exodus, the early chapters which describe the 10 plagues wrought by God on the Egyptians through Moses so that the Pharaoh would let the people of Israel go.
This time, the plagues are reproduced in this remote corner of Louisiana.
A bayou is turned into blood. Frogs burst out of the contaminated water. Locusts swarm.
Darkness shadows the land and lightning flashes and sets off explosive fires.
The first born are destroyed.
Katharine (Hilary Swank) has already been seen as disproving a miracle site in Chile, finding industrial chemicals to be the cause of body preservation and of giving pilgrims a drugged high rather than a cure or spiritual ecstasy.
She has now been called in with her assistant (Idris Elba) to investigate the blood water.
She (and we) are certainly wondering why the plagues have come.
When she hears that it is Satan who is causing them and that a young menstruating girl (AnnaSophia Robb who was so nice in Bridge to Terabithia) is to be killed as a sacrifice, she wants to save her.
The strange occurrences are enough to lead anyone to some kind of faith – or fear.
You will need to see the film (well, need is a bit strong) to find out what the twists are, whether it is God or Satan who is venting wrath, and who is really telling the truth – especially when Katharine’s old friend Fr Costigan (Stephen Rea) warns her that her face in his photo collection is being destroyed by a symbol of a fiery sickle and he looks up books that no priest in real life possesses, but which most priests in films like this have in every clerical library.
The movie priests can also read ancient languages and interpret pre-biblical myths (though most would be hard put these days to deal with Latin).
Entertaining religious hokum if you enjoy this kind of thing – especially with a Rosemary’s Baby ending.
