The Reaping

A disaster of biblical proportions, featuring all ten Plagues of Egypt and more cod-religious tosh than you could shake Moses’ staff at. Oscar-winner Hilary Swank will rue the day she signed on to play minister-turned-miracle-debunker Katherine Winter, who is drawn to the small town of Haven, Louisiana, when its river turns red. Despite subsequent infestations of frogs, lice and flies, plus an outbreak of mad cow disease, Katherine doggedly pits scientific fact against Christian superstition. But when the God-fearing locals turn on a young feral girl, Loren McConnell (AnnaSophia Robb), Katherine’s atheistic resolve is put to the test. Director Stephen Hopkins’ quasi-documentary approach sits uncomfortably alongside extravagantly rendered CGI visualisations of pestilence and destruction, while Swank’s credible, low-key performance is drowned out by swarms of locusts and meteor-like firestorms. David Morrissey is wasted as a seductive local teacher; Stephen Rea hams it up as Swank’s deranged mentor, Father Costigan; and British actor Idris Elba, as Katherine’s faithful assistant, might as well have ‘sacrificial lamb’ tattooed on his forehead. I prophesy an early exodus from cinemas.