The Reaping is junk. Actually, “shit” is more appropriate, because “junk” implies that the movie still makes one feel giddy and entertained, and it really doesn’t matter that the story is contrived, or that the characters don’t make a lick of sense (Empire Records, anything on TBS): you just like the energy. I was excited to see The Reaping. The premise, about a backwoods Louisiana bayou town haunted by the ten biblical plagues, could have been great, tacky/ scary southern gothic. But the film is so serious, and so completely without any personality, that it’s ponderous and boring, and somewhat offensive. Still, I have to give props to a movie that revels in a God that completely destroys an evil town with bolts of lightning.

Hillary Swank (has any other two-time Oscar winner had such an unremarkable career?) is a Louisiana University professor and professional kill-joy who wanders the world debunking religious miracles. It’s understandable when a Chilean woman calls her for the devil, since Swank’s eyebrows are plucked even lower than Nicole Kidman’s. Anyway, Swank is called in to investigate a small town, “Haven,” that blames Lauren, a young, blond girl (as they always are in these movies) for the murder of her brother and the town’s various plagues. The river turns to blood and cows drop dead around the creepy girl, but Swank still thinks it’s all due to high pH levels or fungi. She soon, of course, realizes God’s almighty power.

I could talk about how over-edited the film is, with its color bleached flashbacks that desperately try to explain the “twists” in the narrative, or how the obligatory “character scenes” are killed by apathetic shot-framing and staging, but I went into this movie to see good “junk.” Indeed, there are some buoyantly kitschy fun moments fans in The Reaping. When Swank notices dried blood along the creepy blond girl’s leg, she gives her the period talk. I have no idea what the movie is saying about “becoming a woman” when it’s revealed the blood is actually that of the girl’s murdered brother. Yet its implications are more giggly perverse than anything else in the movie.

Yet as much as I harvest my life’s enjoyment from both camp and kitsch, the ironic appreciation of everything can sometimes enable unchecked racist and misogynistic ideology to flourish. Both The Reaping and Grindhouse were released last weekend, and ironically, the latter is probably the more authentic B-movie in its vulgarity. Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriquez’s movies pay “homage” to a type of film that doesn’t exist anymore, and for better or worse, acquit themselves from any political responsibility. The Reaping, on the other hand, takes a strangely conservative approach to the 2000’s revived African-chic. Swank’s character was an ordained minister who brought her daughter and husband on a mission trip to the Sudan. There was a year long draught, and the Sudanese blamed it on the visitors. A man murdered Swank’s family as a sacrifice to appease God. Portraying the African as a horror show freak out isn’t as dangerously pervasive as the “noble savage” stereotype (Djimon Hounseau in every role). Yet in the climax, as lighting bolts fall and kill ‘dem rednecks, Swank explains that the African who killed her family was a weak man, afraid of God’s plan. In imposing an American Christian philosophy of predestination on a foreign situation that simply doesn’t apply, The Reaping made a hard turn from innocuous camp to something that couldn’t be accepted or reconciled.4

Communication sophomore Jason Klorfein is a PLAY film columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].