Just got back from seeing The Reaping and I must say it was better than I expected. After reading the critics reviews and reading a majority of the user comments I thought this movie was going to be a real dog. One of the complaints was about the poor special effects. I've never been too impressed with CGI in the first place, but this was as good as any I've seen lately. It has never looked real to me in any movie. As far as the storyline not being original, what film has been original in the last few years. There has been so many movies made in the last 80 years or so that it's gotta be difficult to come up with a never used theme at this point. I also believe when you have an actor the caliber of Hilary Swank in a movie they are held to a higher standard and are thusly criticized more harshly than others if their movies aren't stellar. Give this one a try and judge for yourself.

Are you in the mood for an entertaining, intense supernatural thriller with religious themes featuring an Oscar winner who faces a crisis of faith? Well, good news - Signs is currently on DVD. However, if you're looking for that in The Reaping then you might want to go ahead and lower those expectations and prepare to not be blown away.

Responding in a post-screening interview to the movie's tagline ("What hath God wrought?"), God emphatically declared, "Oh, I wrought the 10 plagues in the Old Testament, all right, but you ain't laying this on me!"

I've decided that "it somewhat kept my interest" is no longer excuse enough for me to give a thriller of this nature a passing grade. Slow-paced, non-scary, and convolutedly confusing to a fault (due to Swank's inexplicable "visions"), The Reaping takes the potential of applying a Biblical story in modern times and wastes it with a pedestrian effort that offers nothing new or original to the genre.

Admittedly, some of the special effects showcasing the plagues are visually interesting, and the atmosphere is appropriately dark, but unfortunately, there is no effort to combine emotional impact with the CGI. Rather than disturb audiences with a little eye-covering, skin-crawling aftermath of the plagues, the movie is content to just check 'em off the list. "Drop some frogs into the bloody river!" "Done." "Good, what's next?" "Flies?" "Bring it! We've got eight to go and only 60 minutes left to do it in!"

Consequently, this inability to dig beneath the surface of its visuals is what detached my interest. In other words, the film just didn't grab me. Some strange dude in the seat behind me did, but that's a whole other level of disturbing. I was never scared, I only felt brief moments of tension, and I felt not a single iota of interest in any of the characters. Come on, guys, give me an incentive to care!

You can't even bother to provide a handful of pandering-yet-effective jump scenes? Where's the excitement? Where's the intrigue? Where's the foreboding fear? I just sat there waiting for something ... ANYTHING ... to happen, and a climax filled with a transparent plot twist and Shyamalan-esquire "hey, here's what was really happening!" flashbacks doesn't count.

Close out the festivities with a groan-inducing "oh great, there's gonna be a sequel" final scene, and I'm totally left without a single compelling reason to recommend this even to the most hardcore fans of the genre. Thanks for flippin' us the bird, filmmakers, we really appreciate it.

The Reaping is very lucky to make it to theaters. It's a Mary Stuart Masterson-for-Hilary Swank substitution away from premiering on Lifetime. If I were you then that's where I'd wait to see it.

THE GIST

The Reaping is a simple story about a woman with lost faith who is forced to confront an age-old cult and all the plot conveniences and contrivances that come along with that. It fails to capitalize on its potential, thus failing to make this anything more worthy than a rainy day rental.