Bless the Child
USA 2000. Director: Charles Russell
Cast: Kim Basinger, Rufus Sewell, Christina Ricci, Jimmy Smiths

Many moons ago, Chuck (or Charles) Russell was best known as producer and director of mid-budget horror movies, such as Hell Night and later A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 and The Blob. After having a hit with The Mask some years ago Mr Chucky is now back in horror and he has the big stars with him. However, the manual in how to make a satisfying chiller he left in his Hollywood office. Bless the Child is distressing in every aspect of the word.

Kim Basinger is nurse Maggie who is visited by her younger sister, an heroin addict. The sister leaves her newly born child Cody to Maggie and disappears without a trace. Six years passes, Cody has grown up with Maggie and turned into a lovely but strange child. Then the sister suddenly turns up again, now wanting the child back. With her she has Eric (Sewell), a squint-eyed cult leader for the devilish religion New Dawn, and he has very special plans for his chosen child.

The intention has clearly been to rip-off Omen and other occult movies, but reversed, so to speak. This child is not evil, but the cult wants it to be. It's a bit muddled and helmer Russell is too stuck in a B-movie formula to succeed in making anyting lasting. The suspence scenes relies too heavily upon genre clichés and insufficient shock effects, while other parts plays like a cop-show on TV. It's all very predictable and, worst of all, undramatic, largely thanks to the bleak and insignificant performance by Basinger who wanders through the whole film with a blank face expression. Even when she unexpectedly meets her supposed lost sister after six damn years, she hardly moves a muscle, despite the dialogue saying she is most excited. Basinger's career went straight to the top, with an Oscar for L.A Confidential as the peak, but also over the hill and down on the other side. Watching Bless the Child, only one of several career disappointments of lately, one realizes her main limitation. She can't act. It don't get much better when Jimmy Smiths enters as the FBI detective and turns the movie into an episode of N.Y.P.D Blue and everything that comes with it. About halfway through the film one cop jokes to another, "the only thing you got is a piece of tail like that", refering to Basinger's behind, and it's obvious that the same goes for the makers of this film. It's the only thing they got. And even that hasn't much going for it.

© The Inzomniac's Movie Madness Review.