Bless the Child
'Cause Lord knows she's going to need it.

"I see dead people." "Hush, you."

If The Omen were a made-for-Lifetime TV movie, it would resemble something like Bless the Child, a fusion of all the supernatural/pseudo-spiritual films of the last year set in the context of a rather unconventional child custody case. Mixing elements of Stigmata, The Sixth Sense, and -- Lord help us indeed -- The Omega Code, Bless the Child isn't as bad as it is derivative, but it's still nothing to hold sacred. Alternating between the genuinely scary and the inadvertently hilarious, Bless the Child is what happens when you put a good director and a fine cast in a film without one original moment.

Bless the Child is the story of Cody (yes, you will be thinking of Kathie Lee Gifford the whole time), an autistic six-year-old girl whose destiny is to lead people to God. Her mother is Jenna (Angela Bettis), a young heroin addict who abandons her to what at first appears to be her mother but is soon revealed to be her sister, Maggie, played by the very middle-aged Kim Basinger. Basinger raises the young Cody, but it is only a matter of time before Jenna reappears with her Evil Husband, Eric Stark (Rufus Sewell). Stark is a former child actor who, finding the conventional route of grocery store robbery and drug abuse too tame for his liking, instead operates a Satanic cult fueled by lecherous runaways turned devil worshippers. Okay, maybe there is one original thought in this movie...

Smits, in NYPD Blew.

Naturally, Stark and Jenna take the kid, and Maggie spends the bulk of the movie trying to get her back before Rufus brings on the apocalypse, or something of the sort. She enlists the help of a handsome New York City cop, played by -- wow, stretch -- former NYPD Blue star Jimmy Smits, who recognizes the case as linked to a series of child murders that have recently taken place. In the process, Maggie encounters strange characters, like Christina Ricci, playing -- another stretch -- a disgruntled teenager clad in black. She also must face the nightmare of New York City, which provides some of the finest moments in the film. Director Chuck Russell did well with the Bless the Child's urban setting, using such NYC staples as giant rats, crazy homeless people, unsympathetic cops, psycho highway drivers, and people falling into subway grates to truly frightening effect. It's like watching New York Post: The Movie.

Unfortunately, the supernatural elements of the film do not stand up so well. Basinger doesn't just face rats, she faces giant CGI rats -- essentially, she battles a cartoon. Rufus's posse of Satanic warriors are evil in such a cliché way that they're more laughable than scary: Cody's nanny looks like a witch; their butler is a bald, leering child killer. His army of runaway devilkin bear a great resemblance to the cast of Rent, and are about as intimidating. Freckle-faced Holliston Coleman, who plays Cody, is so cutesy and frail it's difficult to buy her as some sort of holy daughter of the Lord; she looks more like... well, like a Cody. Man, what were the producers thinking with that name?

"Duuude... Satan rocks and shit."

For all its chick flick pretensions -- Basinger plays the sort of righteous-yet-helpless heroine we've seen in a zillion TV movies -- Bless the Child is also exceedingly violent, sometimes shockingly so. It's certainly one of the darkest films to come along in a while, or at least it tries to be, and when it succeeds, it's genuinely scary. However, the overblown performances and hackneyed FX sequences prevent the film from truly taking off, causing some of the violence to be either off-putting or just silly. Somewhere in Bless the Child, as in Stigmata, lies a really good supernatural thriller, but the moments you see it are few and far between.

DROOL FACTOR: Jimmy Smits is such a babe. Smits' character, Agent John Travis, takes on two of my favorite horror movie personas: the hunky priest (or ex-priest, here) and the hunky cop. His dialogue is among the goofiest in the film, but you can cover your ears and be just fine.

GROSS-OUT FACTOR: A brutal decapitation, giant rodents, a man set on fire, numerous stabbings, graphic depiction of drug use. Bring the kids.

STRONG CHICK FACTOR: Basinger is pretty good (except in the beginning of the film, where she is horrible) as Maggie, and Ricci and Bettis are fine in their supporting roles. The decision to make Cody a girl puts the film in a more interesting light; she's kind of the anti-Damien. And, of course, there are lots of nuns. You gotta love nuns.

-- Sarah Kendzior

Bless the Child releases nationwide on August 11th.

We welcome your comments on The 11th Hour and this review. Please send letters to: letters@the11thhour.com