Bless the Child
*1/2
Rated on a 4-star scale
Screening venue: Odeon (Liverpool City Centre)
Released in the UK by Buena Vista International on January 5, 2001; certificate
18; 107 minutes; country of origin USA; aspect ratio 2.35:1
Directed by Chuck Russell; produced by
Mace Neufeld.
Written by Clifford Green, Ellen Green, Tom Rickman;
based on the novel by Cathy Cash Spellman.
Photographed by Peter Menzies Jr; edited by Alan
Heim.
CAST.....
Kim Basinger..... Maggie O'Connor
Jimmy Smits..... John Travis
Holliston Coleman..... Cody
Rufus Sewell..... Eric Stark
Angela Bettis..... Jenna
Christina Ricci..... Cherry
After winning an Oscar for "L.A. Confidential",
Kim Basinger had a baby and took a rest from movies for three years. This
is not a great way to return. "Bless the Child" is yet another
shoddy and uninteresting movie about dark forces -- throw it onto the pile
with "Stigmata" and "Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2".
Basinger stars as Maggie O'Connor, a psychiatric
nurse left to raise her young niece Cody (Holliston Coleman) when her
heroin-addicted sister Jenna (Angela Bettis) skips town. The child is quiet
and withdrawn -- autistic, everyone assumes, until she's kidnapped by a gang
of Satan-worshipping child killers who have discovered she's the Second Coming,
and want to use her power for evil.
The first half of the movie involves Basinger's
raising of the child; it's dumb in its hammy dialogue and clichéd,
obvious scenes of creepy noises coming from nowhere clear, but so familiar
it's somewhat involving, and contains the potential to turn into good pulp
fiction. Structural elements are stolen from "The Exorcist", and hey, if
you're gonna steal, steal from the best.
Ah, but it turns to vinegar. It's annoying stupid,
not fun stupid. There are a parade of vulgar scenes depicting the kid's
greatness, showing her bring birds back to life and light candles through
telekinesis, during which I thought, shouldn't the child of God be a wise
and kind-hearted revolutionary, rather than a smug little kid pulling Houdini
tricks? Several moments defy common sense, such as one in which a cult defector
sits in a café giving Basinger information, and in run a bunch of
Satanists who give the defector chase and don't think to touch Basinger at
all. The movie wants us to take it seriously, and yet there are sneering
villains, guns waved around, and cars dangling off bridges.
It's funny at times -- how could it not be when
one of the baddies is a ludicrously stone-faced Mrs. Danvers clone, the climax
takes place in a cobweb-filled haunted house, and at one point knitting needles
are used as murder weapons? At other times it's just sick -- you can't laugh
too hard when you're watching Devil-worshippers burning homeless people to
death and committing ritual infanticide.
One other thing -- the special effects are terrible.
They look like pieces of cartoon superimposed over live action. Five years
ago movie visuals were so perfect that mentioning them in reviews seemed
redundant. Now they almost always suck. A sign, perhaps, that the digital
revolution ain't all it's cracked up to be?
COPYRIGHT©
2001 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
2001 Reviews
(alphabetical)
2001 Reviews (by star
rating)
Archive of all cinema reviews
(alphabetical)
Review Archive
Index
UK
Critic main page
|
![[Image]](http://www.ukcritic.com/posbanr2.gif)