If you’ve seen The Omen, Rosemary’s Baby or The Exorcist then you might want to avoid The Reaping like the plague. What hath Stephen Hopkins, director of Predator 2, wrought with The Reaping? A recycled plot that makes the biblical happenings in Exorcist: The Beginning look heavenly.

When I caught the Warner Brothers’ panel at last year’s San Diego Comic-Con, the footage for The Reaping looked surprisingly good. However, the same could be said about the footage shown from The Wicker Man, and look how that one turned out. The strangest thing about The Reaping panel was how quiet Hilary Swank was. She had very little to discuss and looked like she just wanted to get the panel done and over with. Perhaps she knew what a disaster The Reaping was, and we are talking disaster on a biblical scale. The Reaping may not be the worst film of the year, but it is certainly one of the most laughably unoriginal.

The Reaping sows a ruefully silly, predictable and under-developed story. Katherine Winter, a former Christian, is a notorious scientist known for scouring the globe to find ways to prove biblical occurrences false. Katherine finds herself working on a new case, this time in a small town in Louisiana. The town folk believe that a young girl murdered her brother by a nearby river, which in turn caused the body of water to turn into blood. Katherine and her tag-along detective, Ben (Idris Elba) begin taking samples of the river, using the scientific method to rationalize the strange bayou happenings.

Even after Katherine sees an entire river turned red, with frogs flying from the sky, she still believes it has nothing to do with God. Obviously her scientific deduction was that someone must be dumping massive amounts of red food coloring into the water, while simultaneously launching frogs into the air with a catapult. That is after all the only rational conclusion…

In the film’s opening sequence a Catholic priest, played by Stephen Rea, warns Katherine that a symbol was being burned into every picture he had of her. I am not entirely sure why he had so many pictures of her to begin with; perhaps she was an alter girl, but none the less, it sets up an asinine plot point. You think one would be enough, but Katherine does not heed the warning until she discovers ten or so of these symbols all over town. She then believes there might be something a little odd going on in the bayou besides the plagues. The mystery is so hackneyed that it made the film appear stillborn.

Story aside, there are several problems I had with the technical execution of The Reaping. One major issue is the cinematography. Director of Photography, Peter Levy, is attempting to make the movie feel like a documentary with lots of handheld and out-of-focus footage. While this is the only unique element of the movie whatsoever, in this type of genre, it does not fit the story. The only time this documentary approach works in favor of the film is when the locusts attack and get all over the camera lens. Other than that particular moment and a beautifully executed lightning flash, the cinematography is superfluous and bland.

The continuity is all over the place as well. One of my favorite examples of this is when Katherine is wading through the bloody water in a wet suit. In the next shot, when she walks out of the water and onto land, she is not wearing the suit! It’s a miracle!

To top it all off, the ending sets up a possible sequel, and subsequently lets you down with a moment ripped straight from Roman Polanski’s classic film, Rosemary’s Baby. The Reaping is at its best when Katherine is going through a change and rediscovering spirituality, however, this element is not developed enough to be the picture’s true premise.

I still do have a soft spot for Hilary Swank, as I think she is a terrific actress but she really should have avoided this film and its ten plagues. The Reaping is a piece of celluloid that should return to the fiery pits of Hell from whence it came.

-G. Brandon Hill, MoviePulse