The Reaping (2007)

best movie i've ever seen.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

The acting in this movie is really good.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

What is it with modern Hollywood horrors? All too often I'm seeing the same tired principles: an over-reliance on computer-generated effects work; a threadbare storyline pitted with holes and weak spots; unengaging, clichéd characters, and an overall tired feel to the whole production. Such is the case with THE REAPING, a doubly disappointing outing purely because it shows so much promise. I love the idea of a movie detailing Biblical plagues in the modern era, but this turns out to be horror-lite, a travelogue of CGI plagues and nothing in between.It also manages to be boring, despite the subject matter. Things get off to a strong start, with a river running red and frogs dropping from the skies, but then the script writer seems to forget about the plagues entirely until they get rushed together at the climax. There's a mysterious young blond girl who annoyingly runs away whenever she appears and lots of extraneous characters. The ending is particularly disappointing: not only is there a cheesy twist even a blind man could see coming, but there's a ton of rubbishy effects work, overblown in the extreme, and then a final coda that's physically sickening in its predictability.Hilary Swank is sleepwalking through her role here and seems to have come unstuck since the success of MILLION DOLLAR BABY; she's miscast in horror and was also miscast in chick-flick P.S. I LOVE YOU, so I wonder what she's going to do with herself. Still, she's a positive delight in comparison to the utterly awful David Morrissey, who is almost as bad as he was in BASIC INSTINCT 2. Why does this guy still get acting jobs? The only thing he was halfway decent in was an episode of DR WHO, and his poor American accent plagues the whole production here (ha ha). He would only improve a few years later with an excellent role in THE WALKING DEAD. The only good actor is the underused Idris Elba, but we have the UTTERLY boring Stephen Rea playing another UTTERLY boring character and William Ragsdale (FRIGHT NIGHT) unrecognisable and wasted as the sheriff.This R-rated horror acts like a PG-13 flick and aims for 'family' entertainment throughout. There's nothing horrific, just a mildly amusing attack of locusts that copies THE BIRDS and some dodgy-looking dying cows. I really wonder why they bothered, because there's nothing to recommend in this film whatsoever, it's just an example of missed potential. Director Stephen Hopkins once made decent films like PREDATOR 2 but his over-stylised direction here (Swank's repetitive and incomprehensible flashbacks are particularly awful) shows that he's lost the plot.

Called to a small town, a woman's investigations into the religious phenomena plaguing the area leads her to believe the situation is genuine and tries to stop the demonic prophesy foretold from coming true.This here is actually quite an intriguing and enjoyable effort. The best part of this one is the fact of actually managing to get the plagues in here to have a central bearing on the story itself. The concept of each of the ten plagues being covered here manages to build an incredibly suspenseful tale here as the various ones get check off one-by-one throughout here yet are done to help provoke the storyline, waiting for the next one and how that will pact the rest of the story. From the early start here with the bloody river and swarms of flies attacking the cattle farm serves as the start of the whole curse makes this all quite chilling as the events are set into motion and build into the eventual appearance of the next one. By continually upping to the next plague and using that to add a little spectacle to this gets really enjoyable with the more impressive plagues that start occurring in the later half of this one. That actually manages to turn the plot around to the cult angle which is really fun by finally letting the big plagues come into focus here by using the conduit of her evil powers being used for Satanic means. There's plenty of spectacle in this section as there's the animal swarm attack, the chase through the woods and the apocalyptic devastation that wipes out the town in a rather exploitative fashion causing all sorts of fun, yet also exposes one of the main issues with this one in the rather convoluted finale. That this turns into a supernatural cult film after the entire rest of the film served as a realistic portrayal of the plagues descending on the town which does leave this shifting gears rather suddenly and leaving a pretty sizable tone-shift that's pretty jarring. The turning into a supernatural fantasy at the end does get a little cheesy with the CGI and rather flimsy nature of the actions itself which gets really out of hand and lowers this somewhat when it really could've gone for a better attempt at the ending. Still, this one isn't all that bad.Rated R: Violence, Language and a mild sex scene.

Boy, what can i say? Horror movies of this kind are typical of what Hollywood has been producing for roughly the past 20 years! It's basically the tired old formula of the professional sceptic called to investigate some mysterious events,in this case, a small town that seems to be reliving the 10 Egyptian plagues of the old testament. What follows is the expected rehash of scenes and situations that are standard fare in these kinds of movies.Some of these are: The fleeing little girl that disappears and reappears during the movie and is suspected of being the evil cause of the bad goings on,the worried priest trying to warn the heroine that something like the end of the world is going to happen,the more or less clueless town folk that rapidly identify whom they think is responsible for everything,the hero-heroine that is determined to get to the bottom of this mystery but has a troubled past of her own, etc.. etc... In a nutshell: you've seen one you've seen them all! Don't waste your time on this.

Katherine (Hilary Swank), having suffered a great loss, is now debunking miracles around the world and a professor at Louisiana State. She's called into Haven, a small town in the bayou. A small girl (AnnaSophia Robb) is suspected of unleashing the plagues and causing her brother's death. Only Katherine and her colleague Ben (Idris Elba) find baffling things keep happening.It works well for the first half as they try to debunk the plagues. Somewhere along the way, the odd events plus hallucinations overwhelm the delicate balance. It would be so much better to keep a healthy dose of doubt. It fails to maintain the tension and goes full bore into the supernatural. Only it lacks the cinematic style to make the supernatural compelling or scary.