The Reaping is an American horror film released on April 5, 2007, and starring Hilary Swank, David Morrissey, Idris Elba, AnnaSophia Robb and Stephen Rea. The film was directed by Stephen Hopkins for Warner Bros. and Dark Castle Entertainment. The music for the film was scored by John Frizzel.
Plot
The film opens with Father Costigan (Rea) finding his photo collection burning very selectively. When he puts them together, he finds they form a pattern of an upside down sickle, with a cross through it. This symbol is the inverted astrological symbol for Ceres (
), thought to represent motherly love. When the symbol is inverted, as it is in this movie, it is believed by some to be a Satanic symbol. Meanwhile in Concepción, Chile (see controversy), Katherine Winter (Swank) and assistant Ben (Elba) are investigating claims of a miracle. Upon exploring the area, Katherine uncovers a cache of hazardous waste illegally stashed in an underground oil well, which has ruptured and is causing the effects of the 'miracle', as well as infecting the local people.
When Katherine returns home to Louisiana, she receives a call from Father Costigan, who warns her that it was her face burning in his photographs and that it is a warning from God. Katherine ignores the warning. Doug (Morrissey), a science teacher from the small town of Haven, begs Katherine's help in finding a reason for the local river turning red, which the locals believe is a plague caused by Loren McConnell (Robb), a 12-year-old girl who witnessed (and they think caused) her older brother's death. Doug says that the girl lives in an area that was abandoned by most of the townsfolk after it was hit by several hurricanes. Katherine and Ben examine the river, and send a sample of the water to a lab to be analyzed. While there Katherine meets Loren McConnell (Robb). They also bear witness to dead frogs falling into the lake, apparently out of the high trees. That evening they encounter flies, which ruin their dinner, and disease, which kills off all of Jim Wakeman's (Jensen) cows. Katherine insists that there is a scientific explanation for all these plagues.
The town doesn't have a motel, so Doug invites them to spend the night at his house. That evening, the power goes out, and Katherine goes to Doug, who is outside at his wife's grave. The two exchange personal information on their histories, with Doug convincing Katherine to drink alcohol made by the locals. Katherine was once an ordained minister, and took her husband and daughter to the Sudan for missionary work. After a year long drought, the locals sacrificed Katherine's family in an effort to get it to rain, leaving Katherine disillusioned. They eventually depart back to the house.
As they do so, Katherine sees images of Loren, and her own tragic history as well, before waking up. However, Katherine sees evidence that at least part of the dream may have been real: sand and cuts on her feet from her walk in the desert.In the morning Katherine goes to the McConnells' house alone, where she finds the cult symbol carved on the walls. She meets Loren again and, upon wiping menstrual blood from her leg, sees an enigmatic series of visions that seem to show Loren killing her brother. When the vision ends, Loren is mysteriously gone. Katherine then wanders though the house before meeting Loren's distraught mother, who asks Katherine to kill her daughter, and is then attacked by a maniacal Loren. Katherine is asked to get out by Loren's mother.
Meanwhile in town, Ben and Doug learn of the cult. Shortly after learning of the cult the test results return and prove that the river was in fact turned to human blood. The citizens are having to shave the heads of all their children due to a mass outbreak of lice and degenerate into a mob, ready to go out and kill Loren themselves. Katherine insists that there is a scientific explanation for everything, and tries to stop the mob from killing Loren. Ben and Doug try to get the mayor to evacuate the town, but he and his staff are struck down with boils, leaving them helpless.
Against her better judgment, Katherine calls Father Costigan, who explains to her that the symbol he saw was that of a satanic cult. He informs her that they sacrifice every second born in an attempt to create "a perfect child", with "the eyes of the Devil" to bring them power. He also states that at some point, an angel, who cannot be harmed by the cult, will appear to destroy them. He insists that Loren is that "perfect child" in Satan's image (a rare look of a girl as the Anti-Christ) and the plagues may just be a trick of Satan to protect that child. He also tries to convince Katherine that she is the angel sent forth by God to destroy this cult, and hence she has to kill Loren. As he tells Katherine all this, a supernatural force begins to burn everything in Costigan's room, trapping him inside and killing him.
Desperate to find logical answers, Katherine goes to the McConnell house alone, where she finds the sacrificial chamber and cult symbols in a basement. She sees Loren's mother, who tells Katherine that "he controls her [Loren] now" and then kills herself. Loren finds Katherine but is distracted by the arrival of the townsfolk.
The sherriff and angry people of town gather around the McConnell house, preparing to attack and kill Loren, but suddenly thousands of locusts come to the area (8th plague). The locusts appear to be under Loren's control, and they swarm Small, his son, and the sheriff, killing them. The signs are getting harder to ignore, and Katherine begins to believe that the plagues do have a supernatural cause, and that she should kill Loren. Ben and Doug run away from the locusts, and Katherine locks herself inside the house to escape them. Ben hides in a crypt, where he discovers dead bodies and skulls of sacrificed children. He calls Katherine to tell her where he is and while talking to her, Loren appears outside. Katherine hurries after him, knowing that she is the only one Loren trusts.
When she arrives and finds Ben dead, she confronts Loren. Darkness falls (9th plague) and fireballs shoot from the sky (7th plague). Katherine overpowers Loren and is about to kill her when they share a bit of a vision, which shows Maddie and Brody McConnell holding someone's arms down. Loren says she's lucky that God sent Katherine to her, repeating the exact words Katherine said to her daughter before her daughter's death. They have a longer vision, of the cult trying to kill Loren, who was a second-born child. Loren escaped and her brother Brody stabbed her, but her wound miraculously instantly healed, and Brody died. Katherine realizes that Loren is innocent, that she didn't murder her brother, that the townsfolk are the evil ones, and that she has to protect Loren from them, rather than help them kill her. She realizes that Loren is the angel that God sent, not herself.
The townsfolk surround the two of them, and Doug tries to get Katherine to kill Loren. God is protecting Loren from the townsfolk, and only an ordained servant of God like Katherine can kill her. The townsfolk turned their back on God years ago after their town was hit by several hurricanes, and they invited Katherine to investigate the miracles because they hoped she would join them, since she had also turned her back on God after her family was killed. But Katherine remains on Loren's side, in part because she associates Loren with her own daughter, who was sacrificed to the Sudanese in a similar way to how these townsfolk are trying to sacrifice Loren. She also realizes that Doug was the one who killed Ben, and that he framed Loren to try to get Katherine to kill her.
Katherine reminds them that because they had sacrificed generations of second-borns, the town was comprised exclusively of first-borns. At this stage, the fire begins raining down on the townsfolk, killing them, as they are all first-borns. (10th plague). Doug holds a knife to Katherine's throat, telling her that if Loren is not killed, she will die too. Katherine tells Loren that she shouldn't be afraid, because this is God's will. This proves that Katherine finally believes again. Doug tries to use Katherine as a shield, but Loren manipulates the fire to destroy Doug, while sparing Katherine.
The movie ends with Katherine and Loren driving away together. Katherine says that they will be together and take care of each other (like a family), and says "It's just the two of us now". Loren, however, finds this confusing and asks "What about the boy?", with Loren clarifying she means the boy inside Katherine; her baby, who Loren can "hear" (through her abilities by placing her hand on Katherine's stomach) and she says they must take care of him too. Katherine is shell-shocked by the knowledge she is pregnant with her second child (a boy), which triggers a flashback in which she remembers the night she was with Doug; Katherine realizes that her son is the prophesied demonic child.
Filming
Filming for the movie took place in and around Baton Rouge, Louisiana with many scenes shot in an abandoned WalMart store. When Hurricane Katrina occurred midshoot (August 26, 2005), the production of the film was suspended for one week. Many scenes were shot at Ellerslie Plantation near St. Francisville, Louisiana. The DVD special features record that the producers considered shooting in another city, but decided that Louisiana needed the economic benefit of the movie being shot there. When Hurricane Rita struck around September 24, 2005, the production stuck it out in Cuba?, shutting down early for only one day. Luckily, the Baton Rouge Metropolitan Area was not hit very hard by either of these storms.
Before and during the making of the movie, skeptic investigator Joe Nickell was consulted. The type of skeptical investigations by the movie's main character in the first part of the movie is roughly based on Nickell's investigations of claims of the paranormal since 1969.[1]
The plagues as they appear in the film are out of order compared to the Plagues of Egypt as they appear in Exodus. The list below shows how they appear in the film, with Exodus number included where the sequence deviates: blood (1), frogs (2), flies (4), disease (5), lice (3), boils (6), locusts (8), darkness (9), fire (7) and finally death of the firstborn (10). Effectively they are reordered in order of spectacle to create dramatic build-up in the film.
The film was originally scheduled to play in theaters on August 11, 2006, then November 8, 2006; it was then switched to March 30, 2007, (the date featured on the above poster), and then to April 6, 2007. It was finally released on April 5, 2007, to coincide with Good Friday.
Score
The score was originally written by Philip Glass, and went as far as the recording; however, the producers were not completely satisfied and decided to give it another try. John Frizzell was then brought in to compose a new score.
Reaction
The film only holds an 9% rating on the popular film review site Rotten Tomatoes,[2] and most critical reaction was negative. The film had made a total of $62,771,059 in the Worldwide box office, and $22.71 million from DVD/Home Video revenue making it a financial success.[3]
Controversy
Jacqueline Van Rysselberghe, the Mayor of Concepción, Chile, formally objected to the producers of the movie over its portrayal of the city in the opening scene. She pointed out that rather than being the dirty underdeveloped tropical city as shown in the movie, Concepción is an industrialized city with many universities and was surprised that such inadequate research of the setting had been carried out for a $100 million movie.
References
External links
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Films starring AnnaSophia Robb |
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| 2010 |
Harry and the Butler · A Summer Of Kings · Bloody Jack · Anything but Ordinary
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| 2011 |
The Space Between
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