| Turn The Omen upside down and you get Bless the Child (Paramount Pictures; rated R for violence, drug content and brief language), a supernatural thriller about a modern-day girl Messiah born autistic to a drug addict in New York. She's adopted by her aunt (Kim Basinger), who must protect her from her Satanist stepfather (Rufus Sewell). Instead of bashing Christianity, this movie takes up a sensational caricature of Roman Catholicism. Little Cody (Holliston Coleman) clutches a rosary, makes church candles light up, and is regularly rescued by angels. Her nemesis is a Swiss Army knife of evil: a self-help guru, cult leader, drug pusher, money launderer, serial killer, and former child star. The villain leads a Scientology-like cult whose minions murder children in a spree they call "the slaughter of the innocents" (hint, hint). Meanwhile, Jimmy Smits gets a feature role as an ex-seminarian turned FBI agent who can rattle off occult trivia at the drop of a hat. Some have tried to read Christian allegory in this, but Bless the Child is simply a bad movie. To his credit, Chuck Russell's direction keeps the movie paced well enough to make it watchable. It piles up melodrama next to its obligatory stream of dead bodies. Its theistic message is sensational mysticism, not real Christianity. |
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