Reaping, The

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

For genre fans, the horde-of-locust sequence may alone be worth the price of admission.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Notable for its enthusiastic abandonment of any semblance of narrative coherence.

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.

New York Post Kyle Smith

This stuff is strictly run of DeMille.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Swank and Elba work hard for their paychecks, but Rea quite literally phones in his performance.

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.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Ludicrous and overstuffed, it plows through the Big 10 of Biblical plagues.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman

Pardon the pun, but audiences will reap little from this satanic backwoods juju thriller.

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

The Reaping isn't a total failure. Swank is never less than competent.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

If only The Reaping had the decency to be coherent.

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.

USA Today Claudia Puig

As if this drivel weren't bad enough, the ending blatantly threatens a sequel

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Long-delayed, pitiful excuse for a horror film.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

This high-decibel shocker is an insult to intelligence and faith alike.