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.