CNET Networks Entertainment GameSpot | GameFAQs | SportsGamer | Metacritic | MP3.com | TV.com
Home | About Metacritic | About Metascores | What's New | Wireless Versions | Discussion Forums | Advertising Inquiries | Contact Us | RSS
Metacritic.com: We Deal With Criticism
     Help
> Switch to Advanced Search  
Film Video/DVD Music Games TV

Film

Upcoming Release Calendar
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

 

Wide Releases

sort by name sort by score

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

 

Limited Releases

sort by name sort by score

83 Alexandra
80 Band's Visit, The
76 Beauty in Trouble
47 Bella
80 Bigger, Stronger, Faster*
59 Blind Mountain
55 Bra Boys
60 Brick Lane
70 Caramel
49 Children of Huang Shi, The
83 Chop Shop
83 Chris & Don. A Love Story
78 Counterfeiters, The
52 Diminished Capacity
64 Dreams with Sharp Teeth
73 Duchess of Langeais, The
84 Edge of Heaven, The
52 Elsa & Fred
79 Encounters at the End of the World
62 Expired
64 Fall, The
51 Finding Amanda
57 Flawless
86 Flight of the Red Balloon, The
63 Foot Fist Way, The
60 Fugitive Pieces
45 Full Grown Men
55 Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts
69 Go-Getter, The
74 Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
63 Gunnin for that #1 Spot
68 Heartbeat Detector
34 Holding Trevor
68 Honeydripper
55 Irina Palm
69 Jellyfish
60 Jihad for Love, A
68 Kabluey
62 Kiss the Bride
63 Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
82 Last Mistress, The
38 Life Before Her Eyes, The
70 Love Songs
64 Married Life
30 Meet Bill
33 Miss Conception
53 Mister Lonely
75 Mongol
52 Mother of Tears, The
52 My Blueberry Nights
71 My Brother Is an Only Child
84 My Winnipeg
61 On the Rumba River
69 Operation Filmmaker
61 OSS 117: Cairo - Nest of Spies
83 Paranoid Park
72 Priceless
51 Promotion, The
55 Quid Pro Quo
29 Red Roses and Petrol
79 Reprise
71 Roman de gare
56 Sangre de mi sangre
51 Savage Grace
76 Shotgun Stories
66 Son of Rambow
70 Standard Operating Procedure
62 Stuck
72 Surfwise
81 Tell No One
56 Then She Found Me
xx Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic
71 To the Limit
54 Tracey Fragments, The
70 Trumbo
72 Tuya's Marriage
83 U2 3D
56 Unknown Woman
86 Up the Yangtze
79 Visitor, The
62 Wackness, The
37 War, Inc.
64 Water Lilies
66 When Did You Last See Your Father?
55 Without the King
72 Woman on the Beach
64 XXY
67 Year My Parents Went on Vacation, The
75 Young@Heart

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

 



Printer-Friendly Version Email This Page Discuss In Our Forums

Reaping, The
Warner Bros. Pictures

Reaping, The reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 36 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
5.7 out of 10
based on 23 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 21 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: R for violence, disturbing images and some sexuality

Starring Hilary Swank, David Morrissey, Idris Elba, Stephen Rea, William Ragsdale, John McConnell, David Jensen, and Samuel Garland

Hilary Swank plays a former Christian missionary who lost her faith after her family was tragically killed, and has since become a world renowned expert in disproving religious phenomena. But when she investigates a small Louisiana town that is suffering from what appears to be the Biblical plagues, she realizes that science cannot explain what is happening and she must regain the faith to combat the dark forces threatening the community. (Warner Bros.)


GENRE(S): Horror  |  Sci-fi  |  Suspense/Thriller  
WRITTEN BY: Carey Hayes
Chad Hayes
Brian Rousso (story)
 
DIRECTED BY: Stephen Hopkins  
RELEASE DATE: DVD: October 16, 2007 
Theatrical: April 5, 2007 
RUNNING TIME: 96 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: USA 

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

75
Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
An effectively unsettling mix of Southern gothic and Old Testament hugger-mugger, with shades of "The Exorcist" and even "Rosemary's Baby" thrown in.
Read Full Review
60
The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
One either likes this sort of thing or not. Even fans might not buy the ending in which more people get wiped out than in Hurricane Katrina.
Read Full Review
60
Variety Justin Chang
Revisiting the book of Exodus in a feverish Southern-gothic context, this lurid, often ludicrously entertaining slab of Biblesploitation builds an earnest case for spirituality in a skeptical age.
Read Full Review
60
Los Angeles Times Michael Ordona
The seeds of most Biblical horror movies are sown in the Book of Revelations; The Reaping at least gets marks for originality for springing from Exodus.
Read Full Review
58
The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin
The Reaping is Bible camp, pure and simple. And for bad-movie lovers, it's manna from heaven.
Read Full Review
58
Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
For genre fans, the horde-of-locust sequence may alone be worth the price of admission.
Read Full Review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
Notable for its enthusiastic abandonment of any semblance of narrative coherence.
Read Full Review
50
New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman
The script, which is rarely smart and barely scary, offers little more than a checklist of panic-inducing plagues, from locusts to boils to bad Southern accents.
Read Full Review
50
New York Post Kyle Smith
This stuff is strictly run of DeMille.
Read Full Review
50
TV Guide Ken Fox
Swank and Elba work hard for their paychecks, but Rea quite literally phones in his performance.
Read Full Review
40
The New York Times Manohla Dargis
The only remotely notable thing about this particular jumble of boos, bangs and door creaks...is that it tries to wed the horror trend with the heated-up God market.
Read Full Review
38
Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
Ludicrous and overstuffed, it plows through the Big 10 of Biblical plagues.
Read Full Review
38
Premiere Laine Ewen
Some of the effects are squirm-worthy, if not actually frightening. Amid all the fake profundity, those moments -- you know, when the film is actually entertaining -- are rare.
Read Full Review
38
ReelViews James Berardinelli
It's hard to say what is more responsible for the film's utter failure: Hopkins direction, the editing, or the screenplay. The result is such a muddle that one assumes each aspect deserves part of the blame.
Read Full Review
33
Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
No belief on earth can rescue Swank from a film that's a chain of disaster chintz masquerading as a sermon.
Read Full Review
30
Village Voice Scott Foundas
Those two age-old foes--science and blind faith--tango yet again in this noxious slice of Biblical horror about a series of Old Testament plagues being visited upon a Louisiana bayou backwater.
Read Full Review
30
Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman
Pardon the pun, but audiences will reap little from this satanic backwoods juju thriller.
Read Full Review
30
Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar
The Reaping isn't a total failure. Swank is never less than competent.
Read Full Review
30
Washington Post Desson Thomson
If only The Reaping had the decency to be coherent.
Read Full Review
25
San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein
Although The Reaping' borrows elements from classics of the genre -- rips them off might be more accurate -- it fails to build the psychological tension that made them so creepily good.
Read Full Review
25
USA Today Claudia Puig
As if this drivel weren't bad enough, the ending blatantly threatens a sequel
Read Full Review
12
Boston Globe Wesley Morris
Long-delayed, pitiful excuse for a horror film.
Read Full Review
10
Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
This high-decibel shocker is an insult to intelligence and faith alike.
Read Full Review

What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 5.7 (out of 10) based on 21 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

John F. gave it a9:
Very good movie and the ending was very good and not what I expected.

Alex R. gave it a5:
Very disappointing. I thought that they could have done way more with the material.

Beca H. gave it an8:
This movie wasn't the worst by far. It had it's parts where they just made you jump. I really enjoyed the movie.

Chad S. gave it a5:
"It's holy blood," insists a baying true believer in Alejandro Jodorowsky's "Santa Sangre", but the indoor pool of red water that belongs to a pagan cult, is in actuality, paint. The church probably smells like a hardware store, but the cultists have been brainwashed from the ability to bestow objectivity towards the empirical fact that their noses, in all likelihood, detect a whiff of iron. In "The Reaping", Katherine(Hilary Swank) and Ben(Idris Elba) must've been holding their breath while they collected water samples from the river. Katherine actually looks surprised when the lab results turn up blood, undiluted(not traces of) human blood. If this was an episode of "The X-Files"(which "The Reaping" bears more than a passing resemblance to), Mulder(Ben is his evangelical equivalent) would argue with barely-restrained exasperation, "But Scully(Katherine, the skeptic and atheist), can't you smell it?" The scientist would argue, "So where are the flies?" Good question. "The Reaping" forgot the flies, but it surely didn't forget the locusts.

Sam F. gave it an8:
I actually Liked this movie, but can see why it got a low rating. It takes you on an apocalyptic joyride counting down the 10 plagues hitting a town called Haven. As the movie centers on a young girl who the townspeople are bent on blaming. The movie has its scary moments, and does not really give you time to get bored. The last half hour is really where it picks up and without any spoilers//I'll say its a very surprise ending. Not the greatest movie ever but certainly not the worst.

Allmighty Voice gave it a5:
Swank does her best with material that would've barely made it as an episode of "The X Files". She's a scientist bent on debunking claims of religious miracles, who finds herself and her partner summoned to a Louisiana backwoods backwater to investigate incidents that suggest the Old Testatment Biblical plaques have returned. More supernatural than straight-up horror, there's nothing new here for fans of either genre. For die-hard Swank fans only.

Discuss this movie in our forums

Return to top of page
Home | FILM | DVD/VIDEO | MUSIC | GAMES | TV | Forums | About Metacritic metacritic.com

Popular on CBS sites: World News | Fantasy Football | Amy Winehouse | Baseball | E3 | Batman | Firefox 3 | iPhone 3G

About CNET Networks | Jobs | Advertise

© 2008 CNET Networks, Inc., a CBS Company. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use