The reeking

Noel Vera

Stephen Hopkins' brand new horror flick has a simple enough premise:
the ten plagues visited upon Egypt are being inflicted on the small
town of Haven, Louisiana, possibly because of the influence of a
devilish young girl named Loren (AnnaSophia Robb); former missionary
turned miracle debunker Katherine Winter (Hilary Swank, doing some
serious slumming) arrives skeptical in the little town, ready to
find a scientific explanation for all this.

There are plenty of reasons to dislike this movie, but perhaps the
strongest is the cheap way the picture tries to cash in on the
recent trend in faith-based filmmaking--"Oh, look at how much
boxoffice apocalyptic pictures and most of all "The Passion of the
Christ" are making! And look how much more we can make if we have an
Oscar-winning actress in the lead, and a pretty young girl as the
source of evil ("Rosemary's Baby," "The Omen," "Village of the
Damned," "The Bad Seed," etc.). Throw in the ten plagues digitally
re-enacted (See frogs drop out of the sky! See rivers turned into
blood!), and we're talking big money!"

Right. Along the way we learn that Katherine lost her faith (we're
treading into William Peter Blatty territory, here) because of the
death of her husband and child in Sudan--a drought had started
around the time they had arrived, their very presence there had been
blamed, and her husband and child were sacrificed to appease the
gods.

Right--not only are we asked to believe that God has taken a more
overt role in changing weather (hail, darkness, flames) and
ecosystems (plagues of frogs, lice, and locusts), we're also asked
to blame those damned ignorant Sudanese for the loss of this poor
woman's faith (And where on earth did those barbarians get the idea
of killing her child? Sudan is predominantly Muslim and that
religion isn't exactly known for its child sacrifices (despite what
Christian nutcases might tell you)). No mention of the recent
violence in Sudan, all of which is directed at fellow countrymen--
movie audiences don't care about the thousands of black children
killed, only the one white one offered to pagan gods.

Swank wades hip-deep into the muck laughingly called a story; she's
as game as always, whether in a masochistic transgendered role
("Boys Don't Cry," 1999) or a masochistic boxing martyr role
("Million Dollar Baby," 2004), but try as she might, she can't sell
this cheesefest very well--probably no one can (she was fun in "The
Black Dahlia" (2006)l--a film I liked very much--but you couldn't
quite buy her as a femme fatale, either). Actor-filmmaker David
Morrissey as Doug, Katherine's local contact, fares better: with his
quiet line delivery and the slight knot of concern fixed on his brow
you can imagine either he's worried but very good at hiding it, or
very good at faking worry. There's a charm to him, a becoming
reserve or modesty that's appealing, the same there's a quality
behind that reserve that's irreducibly creepy (either that or I'm
really scraping bottom to find something--anything--free of
hysterics in this picture). Idris Elba pretty much functions as the
film's Magic Negro--caring, reliable, absolutely disposable black
friend with unshakeable faith and absolutely no sex life (Swank
makes free with Morrissey in what turns out to be a dream sequence
(or is it?), but her relationship with Elba is purely platonic);
AnnaSophia Robb is suitably impassive as Loren (not much of a
performance, but she's really just a movie prop with legs); Stephen
Rea chews scenery entertainingly as Father Costigan, the movie's
increasingly hysterical Catholic priest who does all the worrying
from a distance, racking up cell phone minutes like there was no
tomorrow (he basically channels Rod Steiger from "The Amityville
Horror," giving Steiger's schtick a classier sheen).

Director Stephen Hopkins (he was the man responsible for "The Ghost
and the Darkness" (1996), and the film adaptation of "Lost in Space"
(1998)--yes, you may wonder: why wasn't he lynched then?)) seems to
believe that the louder the music and sound effects the more
terrifying the picture, and that people are truly frightened by
shaky handheld camera footage (are we supposed to worry that the
actors might get knocked over?) chopped up into incomprehensible
fragments, MTV-style. He steals shamelessly from all kinds of movies-
-"Psycho," of course; "Rosemary's Baby," of course; "The Evil Dead"
movies; the original "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (a standard
resource for fright flicks set in the South); even Michael
Bay's "Armageddon" ("Gee, momma--looka all the fake-lookin
meteorites!") isn't immune to ravaging. The only real scare in the
picture for me, though, was the plague of maggots--all that
beautiful grilled seafood ruined, just like that.

O, for a Professor Quatermass to take over matters midway, and a
Nigel Kneale to guide him! Kneale had his fictional scientist
battling monsters and devil figures, but setting all the poltergeist
noises and flying dishes aside, his explanations were rational and
ultimately more persuasive--government conspiracies, say, or man's
genetic disposition towards violence. Sure he threw alien races into
the mix, substituting science fiction for religious fantasy, but
there's an inventiveness to his speculations that I liked, a way of
putting things together that actually seemed coherent, possessed of
an inner logic, fitting neatly into the plot without lazily
resorting to God or The Devil suspending the laws of nature
(In "Quatermass and the Pit" Kneale explains the Devil, Original
Sin, and racial cleansing (a phrase that has sadly become more, not
less, relevant in recent years) in a single brilliant premise).
Kneale would often start with gothic horror trappings--he knew how
to get more thrills out of a miniscule budget than Hopkins with his
battery of tired digital effects could imagine possible--but his
horrors are ultimately explicable through intelligence, not
hysteria, and are fought with quick thinking, not blind, unreasoning
faith.

This movie is harder to explain--call it the unholy union of
insatiable greed with invincible contempt, guided by a consummate
lack of talent and imagination. God visited the Egyptians with ten
terrible plagues; the filmmakers sent us this movie--overall, I'd
say the Egyptians got the better deal.

(First appeared in Businessworld, 4/13/07)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)