If yesterday was for the kiddies, then today’s new wide release is for the grown-ups, because some of us get a bit of spring break, I suppose, and might want to head out to a new movie on a Thursday night, maybe. (I don’t get it either, but Hollywood must have a plan, mustn’t they?) Well, The Reaping is ostensibly for grown-ups anyway, with its one nightmarish sex scene, plague of boils — ick — and the general air of cerebral creepiness it attempts to create.

Emphasis on the attempts. If you were thinking, say, of popping in for a showing of The Reaping after you dropped the kids off at Firehouse Dog, don’t — you’d actually be better off with the doggie flick. The good deeds of Hilary Swank can’t make up for this relentlessly terrible movie, which tries to cash in on the anti-science, pro-apocalypse mood of American culture at the moment, and can’t even do that well. The Omen this ain’t. Nor is it Rosemary’s Baby, or Carrie, or any of the half-dozen other far more effective horror movies it steals bits and pieces from.

A reader of mine over at FlickFilosoopher.com, dude by the name of Drave, gets the last word on The Reaping:

This kind of biblical, wallowing, exploitative, apocalyptic popcorn flick shall henceforth be referred to as a “biblehumper.”

Amen, brother.

If you want a genuinely grown-up experience at the movies, and you’re lucky enough to be in one of the very, very few places where it debuted yesterday, don’t miss Paul Verhoeven‘s Black Book, a WWII thriller that manages to combine the best of indie filmmaking with the best of Hollywood-style excitement to create a gripping story of the underground Nazi resistance in Holland that never lets you catch your breath for its entire two-and-a-half-hour running time. It’s good stuff.

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MaryAnn Johanson
author of The Totally Geeky Guide to The Princess Bride
minder of FlickFilosopher.com