Not a single saving grace

Even the search for a new messiah can't redeem Bless the Child's tired portrayal of twisted theology and cheap shocks.

By STEVE PERSALL

© St. Petersburg Times, published August 11, 2000

[Photo: Paramount Pictures] Holliston Coleman plays Cody, who may be the new messiah hunted by Satanists in Bless the Child.

Doesn't Satan have anything better to do than torment slumming movie stars? Bless the Child is the latest, and least, entry in a series of movies based on twisted theology and cheap shocks.

In the past year, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Johnny Depp and one of the Arquette sisters (it doesn't matter which one) played beat the devil. Winona Ryder's turn in Lost Souls has been on New Line Cinema's shelf for a year. Bless the Child should be so unlucky.

Kim Basinger is the savior du jour, playing Maggie O'Connor, a nurse whose niece, Cody, may be the sequel to Jesus Christ. That's a lot of pressure for a 6-year-old, and a role newcomer Holliston Coleman performs with a perpetual aura of stage fright, sort of like Basinger, who should be over that by now.

She recently dreamed of Africa, but Basinger is just sleepwalking here, adding a soap-operatic lilt to nearly every line of dialogue. Her constant pained expression mirrors our own. Maggie is a role calling for nothing but worry, yet Basinger doesn't even draw upon her own career for inspiration.

Nobody pays to see good performances in a movie like Bless the Child, anyway. They come for the creepy parts, another quality Chuck Russell's movie lacks. There is no suspense, just an inevitable procession of decapitations, knitting needles jabbed into eyes, swarming rats and winged demons setting back the art of special effects a megabyte or two.

Not even those customary jolts of loud music and sudden movement raised much reaction from a sneak preview audience. Either moviegoers are getting smarter, or Bless the Child is even worse than it appears at first wince.

Russell and three screenwriters working from Cathy Cash Spellman's garage-sale paperback try different shocks, some quite sordid.

Child endangerment is a constant theme, with Satanists kidnapping and murdering several children while searching for the new messiah. One scene of a man luring a boy into a van with a puppy is the wrong kind of painful to watch.

Basinger isn't trapped alone in hell. Jimmy Smits has a thankless role as an FBI agent (and former seminary student) investigating occult crimes. Without the crisp writing of NYPD Blue, Smits is just another stiff wearing a holster.

Christina Ricci gets what she deserved in Sleepy Hollow, playing a cult informer with an impressive set of heroin tracks. Ian Holm slips in and out quickly as an expelled Jesuit explaining the plot.

Rufus Sewell lays on the snaky charm as Eric Stark, leader of a self-help enterprise resembling Scientology. The organization is a front for Satan's plan to rule the world, which should offend somebody.

Bless the Child isn't the end of the world; it's a coda, a cue to replay heretics past. Thou shalt not make The Exorcist or The Omen again. Quit trying.

Bless the Child

Grade: D-

Director: Chuck Russell

Cast: Kim Basinger, Jimmy Smits, Rufus Sewell, Holliston Coleman, Christina Ricci

Screenplay: Tom Rickman, Ellen Green, Clifford Green, based on the novel by Cathy Cash Spellman

Rating: R; violence, profanity, drug abuse

Running time: 105 min.

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