Bless the Child (2000)

I was very skeptical going into this movie. I had heard many bad things about it and Kim Basinger so I never gave it a chance. Since it was on TV last night I decided to give it a shot and it surprised me!The plot is very similar. A string out mother leaves her infant daughter with her sister after giving birth to an unwanted child. 6 years later it turns out that the child has mystical powers similar to Christ himself and a satanic cult wants her. Me, personally, I enjoy movies like this. I'm a big fan of the prophecy and end of days and this movie is quite similar. So IMO, if you enjoyed those two and are an all around horror fan, you'll enjoy this.

Omens have no place in Maggie O'Connor's well-ordered, practical universe. Her life revolves around her job as a nurse at a busy New York hospital, until one rainy night, her sister Jenna abandons her newborn, autistic daughter at her home.Maggie takes the baby in, and she becomes the daughter she never had.Six years later Jenna suddenly re-appears with a mysterious new husband, Eric, and abducts Cody.Despite the fact that Maggie has no legal rights to Cody, FBI agent John Travis, an expert in ritual homicide and occult-related crime, takes up her cause when he realises that Cody shares the same birth date as several other recently missing children.The little girl, it soon becomes clear, manifests extraordinary powers that the forces of evil have waited centuries to control, and her abduction sparks a clash between the soldiers of good and evil.....released around the same time as End of days and Stigmata, this film relies on nothing more than shock tactics, not that bad CGI and Christina Riccis head coming off.Basinger isn't that good in her role, she can't really do anguish, and is upstaged by a wonderfully over the top Sewell. halfway through the movie, we realise that angels are helping her, and this is when it all becomes too silly for it's own good.There are some scenes that defy belief, like when she wakes up in a moving car, and the final act where the 'communion' is taking place, which is packed to the rafters from Lost boy rejects from Spielbergs 'Hook'.Nut it's cheesy in a good way,and there is some good support from Smits, but this is nothing new, and Schwarzeneggar had a much better time defeating the devil.

Bless The Child is an excruciating experience, to go through. There is no suspense to be found, and the actors are often slumming it, and to be honest I didn't blame them. Bless The Child often feels like a straight to video production, featuring an A-list cast. Kim Bassinger can be a credible actress, but here she is overwhelmed with crappy material. Are we really supposed to believe That Basinger's fatal gunshot wound in the end, can be healed by an angel, just like that?. I believe in god, but that was too far fetched for my liking. It's also very slow for the most part, I often found myself having trouble, paying attention to the silly plot. Bless The Child was a movie, I avoided for years, due to all the bad reviews, but I needed something to rent, so I thought why not?. I also found the kid abuse to be extremely unpleasant. Dangling a kid off a high roof, is supposed to be invigorating?. Bless The Child is one of the worst Horror/Thriller's i've seen in recent memory.Performances. Kim Bassinger is OK, but often looked bad, due to the terrible script. Her character doesn't give us enough information, nor does it have enough development, to make us care. For her age, she certainly looks good, though. Christina Ricci gets 1st rate billing, but is barely in the film. Jimmy Smits is OK as the cop, but has done this part, before. Holliston Coleman is the best actor in the film, and that's pretty bad. For her age, she gives a remarkably steady performance, I was quite impressed. Rufus Sewell gives an amusingly hammy Satan worshiping, performance. Angela Bettis is OK as Jenna, but overdid it in some scenes. She did good in looking strung out, though. Bottom line. This movie certainly needed some blessing, because I was bored senseless with this movie. It's as bad as you've heard, believe me. Not recommended, there are much better films of it's type out there.1/10

Unbearable schlock. Kim Basinger adopts her sister's child, a little girl who turns out to be the Second Coming or something. Jimmy Smits is the FBI investigator called in on the case when the girl is kidnapped by Rufus Sewell and his gang of thugs. They run an outfit called The New Dawn. It poses as a self-help program but is really a Satanist church.It's all mechanically slapped together with multiple borrowings from "The Exorcist" and "Omen" and their devolved descendants.Everything is predictable except that which is completely arbitrary. Hordes of skinless rats come and go without explanation. Angels appear as fuzzy balls of white light. Gargoyles sometimes fill the sky. Sometimes not.The performances by some of the talent are okay. Basinger doesn't do badly, for instance. But nothing could save this piece of unspeakable crap. Rufus Sewell, as the Satanist-in-Chief, has these goggle eyes. He's so exopthalmic that the whites completely surround the irises. And if he blinks even once during the entire film, I must have missed it because I was blinking at the same time.It's not worth going on about. How do the kids put it? Oh, yes. "It sux."