Basinger continues to prove her Oscar win for L.A. Confidential was a fluke.
Bless the Child (2000)
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Reviews Counted:95
Fresh:3
Rotten:92
Average Rating:3/10
Consensus: Bless the Child doesn't scare, but may provoke unintended laughter from audiences. It's basically a B-movie.
Runtime: 1 hr 47 mins
Genre: Horror/Suspense
Box Office: $0
Synopsis:
Omens and concepts of good vs. evil have no place in Maggie O’Connor’s (Kim Basinger) well-ordered, practical universe. Her life revolves around her job as a nurse at a busy New York hospital --...
Omens and concepts of good vs. evil have no place in Maggie O’Connor’s (Kim Basinger) well-ordered, practical universe. Her life revolves around her job as a nurse at a busy New York hospital -- that is, until her wayward kid sister, Jenna (Angela Bettis), shows up on her doorstep one rainy Christmas Eve and saddles Maggie with an autistic newborn child named Cody (Holliston Coleman).
Cody quickly touches Maggie’s heart and becomes the daughter she has always longed for. But six years later Jenna suddenly re-enters her life and, with her mysterious new husband, Eric Stark (Rufus Sewell), abducts Cody. Despite the fact that Maggie has no legal rights to Cody, FBI agent John Travis (Jimmy Smits), an expert in ritual homicide and occult-related crime, takes up her cause when he realizes that Cody shares the same birth date as several other recently missing children.
The little girl, it soon becomes clear, is more than simply "special." She 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 that can only be resolved, in the end, by the strength of one small child and the love she inspires in those she touches.
Starring: Kim Basinger, Jimmy Smits, Rufus Sewell, Ian Holm
Starring: Kim Basinger, Jimmy Smits, Rufus Sewell, Ian Holm, Lumi Cavazos, Holliston Coleman, Christina Ricci, Angela Bettis, Dimitra Arliss
Director: Chuck Russell
Director: Chuck Russell
Screenwriter: Tom Rickman
Producer: Mace Neufeld
Composer: Christopher Young
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Reviews for Bless the Child
A feature length production of stale dialogue with a weak protagonist.
Considering how jaded moviegoers are these days, it's going to take a lot more than dreck like this to get rise out of them.
Blotchily photographed, robotically acted, uncommonly tone-deaf and all the more depressing because its plot has a certain internal logic and proceeds with something like deliberation.
It isn't scary. Unintentionally funny, certainly, but rarely frightening.
As if we hadn't suffered enough at the hands of last winter's (forgotten but not forgiven) End of Days, here comes Bless the Child.
Chuck Russell's direction is lackluster and the special-effects are limited to computer-generated rats and demons.
This misguided attempt at redoing The Omen for Touched by an Angel ... was also touched by a hack.
[Chuck Russell's] ineptitude transforms the film from merely bad into howlingly, comically incompetent.
As satanic flicks go, Bless the Child is entertaining, but it doesn't add enough to the genre to make it truly blessed.
Latest News for Bless the Child
June 08, 2005:
Chuck Russell Bites Into "Piranha" Remake
Our daily remake news, courtesy of Variety: Director Chuck Russell, along with Chiller Films, is planning to mount a remake of Joe Dante's "Piranha." Working from John... More...
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