THE REAPING

Katherine Winter is a former missionary who lost her faith after her husband and daughter were slaughtered by a religious fanatic; now Katherine teaches at the university and deals with "exposing" miracles and paranormal events. One day, Katherine is called to investigate some strange events happening in a small town in Louisiana, where it seems that the ten biblical plagues are being unleashed. It will be very complicated for the woman to find a scientific explanation for what is happening in that place! Originality is generally not the winning element for the horror genre, especially in an era of remakes like the one we are going through; yet the Dark Castle of Joel Silver and Robert Zemeckis, with this "Signs of Evil" ("The Reaping" in the original), manages to bring to life a sufficiently original and intrinsically fascinating story. The starting point is the eternal struggle between Good and Evil, this time with capital letters, since it refers to the Supreme Good and the Supreme Evil, riding a bit the line of horror films with a religious theme that in recent years has not managed to take hold adequately. A small source of inspiration could be found in a little-known fantasy-horror film from 1988, "The Seventh Prophecy," in which a young Demi Moore found herself fighting against the forces of Evil and the signs of an imminent Apocalypse; in "Signs of Evil," instead, the apocalyptic flavor is wisely set aside to focus on the more intimate dimension of the provincial village, one of those villages almost out of the world, where time seems to have stopped and religious fundamentalism rules. The atmosphere of bigotry, in this case, has not been particularly accentuated to leave a greater aura of mystery over the story and the characters involved, while it has been sought to accentuate to the maximum the inner conflict of the protagonist, a beautiful and always good Hilary Swank (Million Dollar Baby) forced to fight Evil despite her condition as a convinced atheist making it ideologically impossible to accept. Perhaps it is here that lies the biggest flaw of "Signs of Evil," that is, the desire to portray the character of the protagonist on a stereotype already seen and reviewed in practically all horror films with a religious theme, to the point that at this moment it can be considered (unfairly) this element a "constant of obligation" for this type of films. The main attraction of this film, namely the ten biblical plagues, is rendered in a very effective way and manages to show itself as a guiding thread for the entire story: between unsettling rivers of blood, a lethal invasion of locusts, horrible pustules, and massacres of firstborns, there is really everything that was described in the Old Testament, shown in all its macabre spectacularity (the attack of the swarm of locusts is visually very well rendered). The direction of Stephen Hopkins ("Nightmare 5 - The Myth," "Lost in Space") is sure and attentive to details (admirable the choice of accompanying the protagonists' travels with shots from above, as if it were a "divine look"), as is the screenplay by Carey and Chad Hayes (La Maschera di Cera), capable of treating the subject with credibility and never descending into the ridiculous, a very frequent danger when dealing with religious themes. Good cast, in which, in addition to the already mentioned Swank, appear David Morissey (Basic Instinct 2), in the role of the rationalist man of faith Doug, Idris Elba (28 Weeks Later), in the clothes of Swank's assistant, and the young Anna Sophia Robb (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) in the diabolical clothes of Loren McConnell. In one scene, curiously reflected on a wall, appears the effigy of Pazuzu, the demon that possesses Regan in the classic "The Exorcist". "Signs of Evil" is, therefore, a decidedly original film in the approach it decides to follow and that, although it falls into some obvious and known narrative choices, will not fail to satisfy those who are looking for a good horror film with a religious theme. Recommended.