# Bless the Child (2000)

### reviewed by
Ian Waldron-Mantgani

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 2.35:120

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 The child is quiet and withdrawn -- autistic, everyone assumes, until she's kidnapped by a gang of Satan-worshipping child killers who have discovered she's the Second Coming, and want to use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 cliched, 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 cafe 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. Nowadays 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

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