The wrath of the Lord is, indeed, mighty. If, brethren, you doubt, then look upon the misery He has visited upon his benighted daughter Hilary Swank.
Twice she has stepped forth from the citadel, laden with the gilded idol of Oscar, a naked, sword- wielding demigod. Twice He has sent forth terrible cinematic plagues to engulf her fleshy career in foul pestilence.
Dare we list the awful agents of catastrophe? The Core. The Black Dahlia. The Affair of the Necklace. Terribleare their names, but these will seem mere tide-pools of despair when set beside the crashing tumult of sorrow that is The Reaping.
There's quite a lot of that sort of talk in this teeth-jarringly useless, dubiously biblical horror film from the director of Lost in Space. Swank plays a professional sceptic - an academic, who started life as a pastor - called in to investigate strange goings-on in a remote village in the American south. The river has turned blood red and the towns- people are ready to lynch some unfortunate child who, they believe, has angered the Almighty.
When frogs begin hurtling from the clouds, the panicking masses deduce that they are experiencing a reprise of the plagues of Egypt. Dr Swank is not so sure.
Pious readers will recall that the Bible lists no fewer than 10 plagues. Given that the second disaster doesn't hit Crackpot Gulch until half way through, this means the film- makers have to deliver another unhappy visitation - boils, locusts, gnats, bad CGI and so on - once every eight minutes or so.
As it becomes ever more dizzyingly apocalyptic, a horrible realisation strikes: this wretchedness really is supposed to be the work of the Lord. The film ends up looking like a bad advertisement for the same class of loveless religion that Mel Gibson espoused in The Passion of the Christ. This is not what we want from a horror film.
Get thee from my sight, foul visitation.
