What hath God wraught?

This weekend's movie of choice? "The Reaping." A movie that, when it first came out, I had little to no intentions of seeing it. The basic plot follows an ordained minister, Hilary Swank, who, after the death of her family, has turned her back on God. Since that point, she's become a professor at a predominant university in Louisiana and spends her "free time" investigating so-called miracles and negating them, offering instead a scientific explanation. After being contacted by a man from a town called Haven about a possible plague and a town that blames a 12 year old girl for it, she goes to Haven to investigate.

I sat in awe of the entire film while it played. I loved it. However, if you're an atheist, you probably won't like this movie.

The script, while to me it was slightly predictable, was acceptable. The events that occurred made sense and were presented in a way that the audience, whether they know the Bible from cover to cover or not, will be able to keep up with the plot line and determine their own opinions. And the actors were pretty convincing. Swank actually delivered an almost stellar performance as I actually believed some of her emotions for the first time in a film. David Morrissey, a less-than-mainstream actor, comes up as her co-star and does a decent job of it. His character is Doug, the man who has asked Swank's character to come to Haven. He's charismatic and slightly charming at the appropriate times.

While the "professional" critics are rating this movie pretty low, I'd say it's far too underestimated. It'd be safe to call this movie a religious thriller, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it horror. It had it's scary points; I found myself jumping a bit in my seat, squeezing my hands a bit tighter, and getting a bit nervous every once in a while. But if you go in to this film expecting to come out unable to sleep, you're going to be disappointed. Instead, go in expecting to see tension personified on screen and the typical religion versus science struggle that may actually surprise you.

If you're looking for a good movie to see, this one is definitely worth it.

The Scariest movie I've seen in a long time

I didn't go to the theater this weekend.

Now, after you pull yourself up off of the floor, begin breathing again, and realize that this is, in fact, reality, let me say this. Instead of going to the theater this weekend, I ended up renting about 7 movies to watch and review. And to start off with, I'm picking this one. An independent film called "Dark Remains."

I'm a scary movie buff. I love being scared, I love ghost stories that make your blood curdle, and I can't get enough of horrifying scenes that make you want to scream. Sad part is, I have yet to see a movie that's done any of that since I was watching "Pet Sematary" when I was 8 years old. Until I picked up this stunning movie. Granted, the first time I rented it and watched it was a few months ago, it still scares me and keeps me lying awake at night, incapable of sleeping.

I sat in my livingroom, with the lights on, watching this movie with my fiance, hoping that I'd finally have a good review from a supposed scary movie (See my review on Hannibal Rising if you don't know what I mean). And I was not disappointed. My fiance and I were fighting over who got to hide behind who while the misdirection and entirely unforeseen plot twists caught us off guard every time. It was impossible to look away, at the same time, I really, really wanted to.

The story is of a young couple who live in a large city in Atlanta, GA. with their daughter. After she is killed while they slept down the hallway from her, they move into a secluded mountain area in order to grieve and escape the towns whispered rumors. But strange things begin to happen. Julie, the wife, who is an amateur photographer, begins seeing disturbing images in her photos and begins to investigate them deeper and deeper, until both her and her husband, as well as her neighbors, seem to be in far deeper than even she could've expected.

For anybody who has ever been even slightly entertained by a horror film or a ghost story, this is the perfect story for you. We haven't seen many descently done horror flicks and it's entirely rare to see one done as well as this, especially independently. The make up job is so very realistically gruesome that you're not sure whether what you've just seen was just a character in a movie, or an actual ghost.

Either way, if you pick up "Dark Remains," get ready to be scared. And be sure to keep the light on. You may find that you really do need it.

***Edit*** For those in the St. Charles, MO area, the only rental store that has this particular film available is Hollywood Video. It is also available on NetFlix***