the audience applauded

That was an excellent one.

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

There were lots of complaints about this film when I checked reviews before I watched it. But I watched it anyway, since the overall plot is one I would normally like. It was better, on all fronts, than most of the complaints I read. I've seen worse acting, worse writing, and worse effects in movies that got better reviews. This is actually a relatively entertaining movie to watch on a weekend morning when you are looking for something to put on while working on projects. The pacing is good enough to keep you mentally engaged. While nothing is very original or at a level that would win any awards, the acting and writing is good enough to keep you entertained while your hands are busy with other tasks. I nearly wanted to give it a seven just to try to counter some of the lower scores that I think it didn't deserve. But I resisted and gave it a 6. It really isn't a 7 but I feel it is much better than a 5.

After much consideration I can understand why "The Reaping" stalled in its initial release. Prior to its release the trailers came out about a year ago before Warner Brothers decided to reluctantly give this film the green light just to see how viewers will respond to it. Even though this film went through some major editing makeovers, the smarter investment would have been better if it would've been left on the cutting room floor. The first hour seemed to be intriguing with some interesting ideas and unique characters. The next hour on, the story becomes sloppy. And once the film ends, the characters, the viewers and the film crew don't know what the hell just happened here. The film is virtually undecipherable and if you try to get an understanding of what transpired here, you're just wasting your time.Hilary Swank stars as Prof. Katherine Winter an iconoclastic LSU instructor specializing revealing truths about secrets and myths and dismiss them easily as pure hyperbole. The reason for her dismissal stems from a continual episodic array of haunting flashbacks. A representative of the town of Haven, Louisiana named Doug (David Morrisey) who shows Katherine that the river in the area has morphed into blood in which the residents have epiphanies that Old Testament plagues will bestow upon them. So Dr. Winter and her colleague Ben (Idris Elba) travel to Haven where they notice bizarre events are happening in this town. Frogs are falling from the heavens, locusts are flying all over the place and cattle are looking in bad shape. Then we see a little girl in red dress (AnnaSophia Robb) playing hide-and-seek with Katherine which we're led to believe to the Devil's child. And then we have poor Stephen Rea wearing a call tries to garner some screen time for himself as he tries to phone Katherine to alert her of the dangers lurking around before suffering his own fate. But other than that his role really lacks anything proved significant."The Reaping" lacks in anything exceptional in referring to it as a motion picture. There's absolutely anything logical or provocative about it and just loosely follows its own agenda to make it look and feel smart which is anything but. The final twist is what covers everything that I mentioned so far. The ending was just padded on just to generate the viewers something to widen their mouths in horror. All it made me do was walk out of the theatre in utter disgust.I did arbitrarily jot down the plagues feeling that it might be something of importance. In reality it was proved unnecessary as winds down to be more about a Satanic cult rather than middle high stories from the Old Testament involving plagues. While this is happening, Katherine educates us all the plagues from the Exodus chapters as apocalyptic idiocy manifests in Haven. I will say that the scenes involving the locusts were awesome.Hilary Swank tries hard to show you like she really cares about the script and the story. However, her two Oscar wins have no meaning to what film she's in. David Morrisey is trying to get us to forget about the awful performance he had in the yucky movie "Basic Instinct 2". Nice try David, but your forgiveness is still unaccepted. AnnaSophia Robb adds mystery to her character, but she's too cute than scary. She also appears younger than her role in "Bridge to Terebithia" to further point the delay this film was when released. And Stephen Rea's role could've been cut and no one would have noticed.Director Stephen Hopkins strives to make b-movies with the occasional break out of his bubble. This movie will never put him at the front of the class though. It's complicated as to what's the red herring to this movie. I suppose the direction, the script and the editing are all to blame. I was never an aficionado of "The Omen", but through every religious stories focusing on apocalyptic wars, "The Omen" stands out above them all. This movie will likely collect dust.

The Reaping (2007): Dir: Stephen Hopkins / Cast: Hilary Swank, David Morrissey, Stephen Rea, AnnaSophia Robb, Idris Elba: Great opportunity to bring conviction to the Biblical plagues but reaps only embarrassment. Hilary Swank plays a woman who defuses miracles with logic until she is summoned to explain a river turned to blood. Apparently this village wants a particular young girl dead claiming her as responsible. Flimsy setup becomes one big laugh. There is nothing scary in this sideshow and it is about as thrilling as a commercial for insect repellent. Directed by Stephen Hopkins who dealt with similar themes in The Ghost and the Darkness although Lost in Space matches it in complete idiocy. Swank carries the film because she asks the right questions but unfortunately she cannot make much sense of it. David Morrissey's presence consists of sleeping with Swank. Stephen Rea plays a Priest because every single film of this nature must have at least one and they must end up dead because that is the rule of these films, I guess. AnnaSophia Robb is embarrassing as demented girl who isn't very popular with the locals. Special effects are on par with its gruesome plagues but the screenplay doesn't quite have as much confidences. View The Exorcist for a superior film with similar themes, otherwise the Biblical plagues are bypassed in favour of typical horror crap that reaps stupidity. Score: 2 ½ / 10

Not a bad film. I like the way it forces you to think about morality as well as religious faith. Like the characters, we are not really certain about what is happening, what has happened and what will happen. They lay it on with a trowel a bit with the close-ups of the knife and the gun, but that forces us to think ahead. (All spoilers from here!!!) I did wonder how they were going to cope with the morality of a woman stabbing a child to death, so that forced me to chose one way or the other. Not unpredictable in the end, and the twist is let down by the fact that we do have a very good way of getting rid of unwanted pregnancies these days.