The Reaping is currently the third most-watched movie on HBO Max. The film’s box office exceeded its budget but fell short of making a profit. It fared far worse with critics, earning a scathing 8% positive score on Rotten Tomatoes. The mayor of Concepción, Chile, filed a formal complaint with the producers for depicting their lovely city negatively. This hilarious mess finally received a wider audience as it attained some prestige on HBO Max.
The Reaping Unleashes a Plague on HBO Max
The Reaping stars Hillary Swank, shortly after her heyday, and Idris Elba, still finding his place in Hollywood, as paranormal investigators. They explore claims of miracles, offering a skeptical eye to unexplained events. Swank and Elba travel to the ominously named Haven, Louisiana, where the local river runs red. The citizens blame a pre-teen girl, spitting murder charges at her while Hillary Swank struggles to intervene. They must solve the mystery as biblical plagues threaten their lives. Without wishing to spoil, this isn’t a Scooby-Doo scenario. Jehova and Satan play their parts. Producers consulted with professional skeptic Joe Nickell but decided to depict work like his experiencing paranormal events. The Reaping reached HBO’s top ten thanks entirely to Latin America. The film is the second most-watched HBO Max offering from Mexico to Argentina. Even Chile pushed it up the list.
The Reaping came to the big screen through my favorite film production company, Dark Castle Entertainment. Hollywood superproducer Joel Silver, once-beloved director Robert Zemeckis, and Gilbert Adler forged Dark Castle in 1998. The company set out to remake the works of the iconic B-movie director William Castle. Though they released the perfect double-act of Thirteen Ghosts and Ghost Ship, they abandoned their original mandate to produce whatever they happened upon. The Reaper was their sixth film project. Dark Castle wouldn’t create a film with a positive Rotten Tomatoes score until Guy Ritchie’s RocknRolla the following year. I’m pleased to report that HBO Max has most of their projects available to stream now. The Reaping is worth watching as a hilarious artifact of mid-2000s edgelord horror. It pairs beautifully with Dark Castle’s other early work.
The Reaping has hovered around HBO’s top ten for several days. These lists tend to shift and change daily, but this humorous horror flick has some staying power. The film made 60% of its initial box office returns from foreign markets. Over a third of its overseas haul came from Latin America, the same region that catapulted it onto HBO’s top ten list. Something about this specific mix of bizarre Christian imagery and splatter horror speaks to Latin America, though US critics see it as a disaster. The Ritual raises some fascinating points about the taste differences across cultures, even if it found nothing to say in its script.
