by rick grant rickgrant01@comcast.net
C Rated R 96 min
For two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank, quality scripts are not necessarily coming her way. Morever, producers of horror films are hiring high profile actresses to legitimize their sleazy schlock, which is about the only sure thing for movie financiers. Of course, Swank wants to keep working, so she signed up for this creepy biblical nonsense–the ten plagues a la the Bible with plenty of hell and damnation to get the bible-belters in a tizzy.
This film has more in common with The Exorcist than the onslaught of blood-gore-fests like the Saw franchise. Swank portrays a former Christian missionary, Katherine Winter, whose husband and daughter were murdered in one of her African missionary camps. Now Katherine teaches a college course in debunking religious miracles and other so-called unexplained supernatural phenomena. Her friend and research scientist Ben (Idris Elba) helps her on field trips to analyze historic events, like a bayou swamp turning red, presumably with blood.
Directed by Stephen Hopkins with shaky hand held camera work and dark scenes to increase the suspense. (It just gave me a headache.) Carey Hayes’ script is right out of some biblical romance novel. Set in a small southern town painted as the epicenter of the bible-belt with pregnant women out numbering the other women two-to-one.
Katherine and Ben go to this sleepy Mayberry-like town on the invitation of Doug (David Morrissey) to debunk the town’s claim that strange things are happening and the bayou has turned red with blood. The townspeople fear the other plagues of the Bible will haunt them. A strange family lives in the woods with an evil little girl who is causing the town’s misery. The town rednecks are armed to the teeth and are ready to kill the evil spirit inside the girl.
When the two scientists find the red bayou, they wade through the dead fish and toads with trepidation taking samples. Katherine sees the girl, but only briefly, and is strangely affected. Doug lets Katherine and Ben stay at his old mansion that he is restoring. Viewers know there is something not right about this creaky old plantation home.
Meanwhile, Katherine’s friend, a priest named Father Costigan (Stephen Rea) has seen sinister signs that Katherine is in danger in this town. All her photographs spontaneously combusted and there were other unexplained phenomena, indicating there was some cosmic showdown about to take place. Father Costigan comes to the conclusion that Katherine is an emmissary from God to bring justice to the town. Katherine doesn’t believe him because she lost her faith when her husband and daughter were murdered.
As Katherine investigates the strange events in the town, she sends the sample of the bayou water to a lab for testing. Viewers must suspend their disbelief.
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