Bless the Child

So what made this movie so bad?

1. Every character was one-dimensional, with the exception of the actual child, who actually had some acting range.
2. The lines were hokey. After some crucial evidence is discovered: "We'll get those Satan-loving freaks now!". I shit you not.
3. Police procedure seems to have been cribbed from old episodes of Hawaii Five-O
4. The CGI special effects were of about the same caliber as what you would see on an episode of Xena. When I told my friend this, she said "Duh, this movie was produced by the same people that produced Xena."
5. In particular, their demons looked a lot like what the Winged Monkeys should look like in a remake of The Wizard of Oz.
6. Finally, the entire film is presented as kind of Catholic propaganda. Everything is too predictable and heavy-handed to see it as anything else.

A film memorable chiefly for its implication that somewhere out there is a perfect model of Christina Ricci's severed head.

Released in 2000, Bless The Child marks perhaps the nadir of the end-of-millennium cycle of Apocalypse-themed movies (cf. Stigmata, End Of Days, The Omega Code, &c.). It tells the tale of a Mom (Kim Basinger) and a Cop (Jimmy Smits) doing their darnedest to keep a Weird Cult Guy (Rufus Sewell) off of a Li'l Autistic Girl (Holliston Coleman) who might just be Jesus Christ. Wrecking-ball-subtle symbolism and bad CGI abound.

Saving graces (no pun intended) are small but memorable performances by Angela Bettis and the aforementioned Miss Ricci, as well as a promising turn by the seven year old Coleman.

• Based on the book The Devil in the Sixth Circle by Cathy Cash Spellman
• Screenplay by Tom Rickman (Coal Miner's Daughter), Clifford Green and Ellen Green
• Directed by Chuck Russell (The Mask, The Scorpion King)
• Photographed by Peter Menzies Jr (Die Hard With A Vengeance, Tomb Raider)
• Primary cast:
  • Holliston Coleman as Cody O'Connor
  • Kim Basinger as Maggie O'Connor
  • Rufus Sewell as Eric Stark
  • Jimmy Smits as John Travis
  • Angela Bettis as Jenna
  • Christina Ricci as Cherry
  • Ian Holm as Reverend Grissom
  • Michael Gaston as Bugatti
• Bad CGI by Manex Visual Effects, Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA.