The Movie:

Odd, sometimes, the choices that Academy Award winning actors will make when following up a critically acclaimed role. You've got wonder just what Hillary Swank, who has taken home two Oscars so far in her reasonably young career, was thinking when she signed on for Dark Castle's The Reaping. The woman has proven herself to be quite a good actress and while plenty of great actors have done very well in horror films throughout the history of cinema, this around Swank simply chose a stinker.

Katharine Winter (Hillary Swank) is a scientist working in Chile where she's working adamantly to disprove when the locals think is a manifestation of God. You see, Winter was a one time missionary who did the Lord's work over in Africa and was quite strong in her faith until a native killed her daughter. Since then she's renounced God and Christianity, stating that it's nothing more than superstition, and has dedicated her life to disproving supposed miracles all over the planet. It's this experience that makes her the perfect candidate to visit the small town of Haven, Louisiana. One of the local residents, a teacher named Doug (David Morrissey), requests that she come and take a look at the river outside of town - it's turned red since a boy was murdered on its banks and many of the people in the small rural community think that the water has turned to blood.

Katharine and her good natured assistant, Ben (Idris Elba), make the drive from their university base of operations to the small town and take a sample to send via courier back to the university for testing. While they're waiting for the results, other strange things start to happen in the area. The livestock starts to go nuts, a bull attacks their truck. Frogs rain down from the sky. The children at the school all get lice at the same time - it's starting to look like the plagues described in the Biblical book of Exodus are coming to life. As the mystery starts to unravel thanks to some hints from a strange man of the cloth with ties to Katharine's past (Stephen Rea) all signs point to the sister of the boy who was murdered - is she evil incarnate and responsible for bringing these plagues to the town or is there more to this than the townsfolk are letting on?

The Reaping is pretty bad, and it's not Swank's fault. Sure, her performance is a little uninspired but when you listen to her dialogue, you can't really blame her. Rea and Elba are quite good in their supporting roles but they can't save it. The film suffers from a bad script and, to make matters worse, it completely talks down to its audience. Given that this is an R-rated film and therefore geared towards an adult audience you'd think that the filmmaker's would have enough confidence in those they're marketing this religious thriller to that they wouldn't feel the need to spoon-feed every damn bit of mystery to us but that's exactly what they do. When a plot point or twist is uncovered, almost every single time we flash back to a bit from earlier in the film where that point was first brought up, just in case we were too stupid to notice the first time. This would be fine for a slasher film or something that doesn't pretend to be anything more than a gory good time but The Reaping has lofty aspirations and it tries to be intelligent, making this rudimentary and incredibly blunt story telling technique all the more painful. If that weren't bad enough, the film is also remarkably predictable, right down to the so-called shock ending that flashes before our eyes in the last sixty-seconds of the film.

That said, there is one thing that the film gets right and that's the visuals. While the hyper-stylized look of the picture might seem like too much at times, the film really does look good. The colors and tones of the Louisiana locations are brought to the forefront and much of the film feels damp and humid like the area it's playing out in. Unfortunately because the film is completely void of subtlety, subtext or intelligence the looks just don't matter.

Video:

The Reaping hits DVD in a nice 2.35.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer that presents the film in its original theatrical aspect ratio. Color reproduction is excellent with the reds and greens used for a few key scenes looking exceptionally good. Black levels don't fare quite as well and at times they're a little bit on the murky side. No issues with print damage to report though a fine coat of grain is noticeable in a few scenes. Flesh tones look good and detail levels in the foreground are strong even if sometimes the backgrounds are a little bit on the soft side. A 1.33.1 fullframe version of the film is included on the opposite side of this 'flipper' disc.