Bless The Child
Directed by: Chuck Russell
Written by: Cathy Cash Spellman (novel), Thomas Rickman, Clifford Green, Ellen Green
Starring: Kim Basinger, Christina Ricci, Rufus Sewell

I really don’t know why I went to see this movie. I saw the previews for it and I thought it looked ridiculous. But there was nothing else that I wanted to see, and we were going to a movie, so this was the choice.

As it turns out, Bless The Child is a bad conglomeration of every other popular movie from the past year or two. For the most part, I had a hard time paying attention to what was going on because I was too busy pondering all the different movies that it reminded me of. Some movies that come to mind are The Green Mile, End of Days, Stigmata, The Matrix, The Sixth Sense, Seven, The Ninth Gate, and even Eyes Wide Shut and Dogma to an extent. I can’t really go into the details of all the similarities without giving too much of the movie away, but there were certain scenes that were reminiscent of these other films, and certain plot elements that seemed to have been pilfered from them.

Bless The Child is another one of those religious thriller type movies where the world’s saviour comes from somewhere you least expect it to. This time the saviour is a young child, the daughter of a heroin addict, who is abandoned and brought up by her aunt (Kim Basinger). The movie is also mixed with the serial killer thing, with the typical detective and police backdrop. This is where Jimmy Smits’ character comes into play. His character as the police detective was the most realistic, but also the most pointless.

The movie was really poorly written. There is a whole chunk of the movie in the middle that serves no purpose other than to stretch the film’s total running time. There are a number of scenes where suspense is built up, only to have the scene end and the suspense dissolve suddenly with the plot and characters completely unchanged. Any little spurts of momentum that they build up simply fizzle out a few minutes later.

Towards the end of the movie, I just didn’t care about what was going on anymore. I actually started thinking it would be nice to just get up and walk out of the movie, which is something I never do. There is nothing to push the story along; they never tell you what the stakes are. All you know is that there is a “satanic” cult, and they want turn this child to the dark side because she has been “blessed”. There is never any further explanation about what would happen if she is turned to the dark side. Normally I would expect in a movie like this, the world’s fate would hang in the balance. Not this time though. Basically, the only thing that hangs in the balance is the fate of the girl herself.

I find that often religious movies can be the scariest, because religion permeates our culture so much, and the existence of God and Satan always seems to be a grey area for many of us.The concept of satanic cults can be chilling if done properly, because we know that such things do exist in the real world. Bless The Child simply does not do it properly. They throw out a few cheesy explanations of ancient symbols and markings and expect that to be frightening in and of itself. There is nothing scary about it. The movie does manage to cause you to jump a few times, I will give them that. However, they try to force scenes to be dramatic or powerful by using slow motion or by hitting you over the head with choir music. Towards the end, all I could think is that religious people must have been almost embarassed by the movie, because of the almost silly and corny way in which the heroes of the story pray to God in order to defeat the bad guys.

Who is the genius that decided Kim Basinger should play the lead role in a thriller/action movie? She seemed very out of place in Bless The Child. She showed little to no emotion in this movie, and whenever she had to participate in some sort of physical stunt, it seemed like it was always in slow motion to disguise the fact that she just looks awkward and goofy.

Rufus Sewell (from Dark City) also plays a key role in Bless The Child. He is the leader of a cult who has a warm and inviting exterior which hides his inner evil. It is a role that was perfectly suited for him, but unfortunately his character is so poorly written that he looks like a jackass. I found myself often laughing at things he said that were supposed to sound angry and menacing.

The kid in the movie, Holliston Coleman, didn’t do too bad a job, but on the other hand, all she really had to do was sit there and say nothing through the whole movie. I think there are a lot of kids out there who could do that.

Perhaps the only reason to see this movie is because Christina Ricci is in it. Unfortunately, she is in the movie for all of 10 minutes.

As I look back over what I’ve just written, I realize that it sounds like I really hated this movie. In actual fact, this movie isn’t any worse than a lot of the other crap that has been shown in theatres this year, it’s just that I seem to be getting more and more cynical. I’m sick of seeing good ideas recycled a million times. If you can somehow ignore the many flaws in this movie, then it may serve to keep you entertained for its entire duration. I would tell you that your money would be better spent on a different movie, but there really isn’t anything out there right now that is worth your money anyways. — Sean

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