 |
|
The Reaping
|
|
|
|||
 The Reaping Production NotesThe story centers on a university professor (Swank) who debunks miracles. She is summoned to a small Louisiana town by a man (Morrissey) to investigate a series of bizarre occurrences that appear to be the 10 biblical plagues. Swank begins to fall for Morrissey but soon learns that he is not all that he appears.
Katherine Winter (Hilary Swank) doesn’t believe in miracles – she believes in facts. A former minister, Katherine turned her back on the cloth after losing her young daughter and husband while doing missionary work in the Sudan, and now seeks answers through scientific investigation rather than prayer. As a university professor, she has become the foremost debunker of supposed miracles, called to sites all over the world to investigate weeping statues, wall stains resembling saints and palms that bleed. And so far, there is no divine mystery she hasn’t solved.
But when small-town schoolteacher Doug Blackwell (David Morrissey) seeks her help with a series of bizarre occurrences the townspeople believe to be sent by God, Katherine and her partner Ben (Idris Elba) come to learn that sometimes miracles can be treacherous, and the line between faith and superstition is dangerously thin.
Hidden among the woods and swamplands of Louisiana, Haven is a town where the rules of reason seem to have been rewritten. A child has died and the river has turned to blood, which is only the beginning of what appears to be a revisiting of the Biblical ten plagues upon the town.
For the first time in her professional career, Katherine can’t explain these phenomena with science. The townspeople believe an enigmatic child named Loren McConnell (AnnaSophia Robb) has brought God’s wrath to their doorstep, but what they see as a harbinger of evil, Katherine sees as a lost child needing her help. The more she is drawn into the dark heart of the mystery, the more Katherine discovers her own role in a conspiracy that threatens to shroud the world in darkness.
About the Production
Producer Joel Silver, the man behind such blockbusters as “The Matrix,” “Die Hard” and “Lethal Weapon” series, sees “The Reaping” as more complex and layered than your average supernatural thriller. “It’s a little more sophisticated than what we’ve done before at Dark Castle, on top of being a scary movie,” he says. “‘The Reaping’ changes the formula of who the good guys and the bad guys are. I like to switch it up.”
The film, which explores a series of bizarre occurrences in the Deep South, is steeped in atmosphere and anchored by one of contemporary film’s most acclaimed actresses, Hilary Swank. “Hilary plays a professor who is pushed to question everything she has come to believe,” says Silver. “She brings real honesty and strength to the character. Hilary takes you along on Katherine’s journey, letting you into her thought processes and sense of faith, so you are as shocked as she is when you find out what’s really going on.”
Swank read the screenplay for “The Reaping” just prior to winning the Best Actress Oscar for her performance in the film “Million Dollar Baby.” “It was a pageturner,” she recalls. “Things were happening that I didn’t expect, and I wanted to know what was going to happen next. I thought it was a truly scary story while also being smart and dramatic. It really plays to the notion that nothing is as it seems in life. We’re so quick to put our stamp of judgment on it, but I think it’s important to stay open to incidences that are intriguing. It’s a very human thing to do and there are real human moments in this story, in the midst of these extraordinary events.”
The actress adds that Silver’s enthusiasm for the project was infectious. “He has such a great spirit,” says Swank. “Joel really gets people excited. He gets a great crew together and he takes really good care of everyone. I had a great time making this film.”
Director Stephen Hopkins, who recently garnered acclaim for the telefilm “The Life and Death of Peter Sellers,” envisioned the project as the ideal opportunity to bring the bizarre and supernatural into the mundane, everyday world. “It can be very frightening to find the supernatural in the realistic world,” he comments, “and that dichotomy is really at the heart of this story, in which science and faith do battle, in a sense. Our goal was always to frighten people through atmosphere and ideas, rather than just simply outright gore. Although we do include some good old-fashioned horror in this film,” he smiles. “But what’s scariest is what’s behind it.”
“Stephen and I go back a long time,” Silver says. “We did a movie in the early ‘90s called ‘Predator 2’ and I’ve always wanted to work with him again. ‘The Reaping’ was the perfect fit for his style, and he knew immediately how he wanted to shoot it. He also liked the idea of working with Hilary, so it all came together.”
Swank’s early discussions with the director yielded a close professional bond between the two. “Stephen Hopkins is so smart, so articulate and so present that it was really fun to collaborate with him,” she says, “I have an enormous amount of respect for him. He has so much energy – always active, always thinking about the next shot. I don’t think I ever saw him sit down through the entire production.”
Swank plays Katherine Winter, a woman who lost her faith when her husband and child were killed while they were on a religious mission in the Sudan. “Katherine Winter is a woman who has already been through so much in her life in trying to help people, Swank describes. “Like anyone, she’s just trying to figure out what her life is about, and, in that process, she decides to debunk myths and miracles. She travels around the world figuring out what’s really behind them. But at the core of this mission of hers is a feeling that if God and miracles truly existed, how could her family be so cruelly taken from her?”
Producer Herbert W. Gains feels that Katherine’s crisis of faith is something to which anyone can relate. “I think that everybody at some time or other in their life believes in something, and during the course of life certain events could make you question that belief. Things happen that make you think, ‘Why me?’ and ‘Why did this happen?’”
Katherine’s partner in her work is Ben, a former student and fellow professor at the university, played by British actor Idris Elba. “We’re biologists, scientists, that debunk miracles,” Idris relates, “as in religious miracles. If you see Jesus’s face on a tree, you’ll make a phone call and a couple of scientists will come up and tell you you’re crazy…or you have a real live miracle on your hands.”
But where Katherine approaches these mysteries believing she’ll find a scientific explanation, Ben hopes to confirm his own religious faith. “It’s an interesting dilemma between them because Katherine is a complete atheist now and has no interest in finding a real miracle,” explains Elba. “In fact, when she arrives at a place where there’s a socalled miracle, she’s just short of laughing out loud when she sees what’s really going on. In contrast, Ben is doing this for his own religious beliefs--to prove that God exists, scientifically.”
“Our characters in the movie are best friends,” says Swank. “They know each other really well, inside and out. They work together every single day. They could finish each other’s sentences. And it’s funny: when I met Idris I felt an instant connection. We had a great time together.”
“When you work with Hilary you have to bring your ‘A’ game,” says Elba. “You understand why she has had such success because she’s absolutely focused all the time. She’ll sit and share a joke with you, but as soon as it’s time to work she’s like a completely different person. But she’s also a really kind, loving, warm person, as well.”
Hopkins had worked with Elba on a pilot and brought him along to an event to introduce him to Silver. “He’s just tremendously handsome and charismatic, and he and Hilary had a great rapport, which carried over to the screen,” the director asserts. “Idris is this huge, seemingly intimidating guy, but you just want to be his pal. And he can play anything. He’s just an awesome actor.”
Elba was likewise inspired by Hopkins’s style of directing: “I’m a nerd when it comes to detail, so I really admire Stephen’s work. Absolutely everything in each frame matters to him. Every frame is like a picture’s he’s painting.”
Stephen Rea, who previously starred in producer Silver’s “V For Vendetta,” joined the cast as Father Costigan, a priest who was also a missionary in the Sudan when Katherine’s family was killed. Now living in the States, Costigan receives what he interprets to be a warning about his former colleague. “She is not anxious to hear from Father Costigan because she associates him with the tragedy that befell her family,” says Rea. “But he persists because he believes she’s in great danger now. Of course, she no longer believes in spiritual signs, so he finds it quite difficult to get through to her.”
“I’m a massive fan of Hilary Swank and have been since ‘Boys Don’t Cry,’ so it’s been a great pleasure to work with her,” Morrissey says. “She brings real complexity and vulnerability to this role, and all of our scenes together were extremely involving. Doug becomes Katherine’s touchstone in this town. Like her, he has lost loved ones, and as he leads her into this odyssey, he is gradually earning her trust.”
“On the surface, Doug a very nice man, and seems to be a very rational man as well,” Hopkins notes. “But there is something dark lurking beneath that surface, which David manages to balance in a very compelling way.”
Morrissey relates that his character sees himself as the voice of reason in a panicked community, “The local people have witnessed these mysterious events, starting with a murder and then the river turning to blood, and immediately believe that they are seeing the wrath of God. Doug Blackwell takes it upon himself to calm the town council long enough to prove that whatever happened to the river is a natural phenomenon and not a plague sent to curse them. He’s really pinning all his hopes on Katherine to help him.”
Though she’s busy with a full academic schedule, Katherine reconsiders when she hears that a young girl is being blamed for the unusual occurrences in Haven. “Katherine has lost a daughter, so she knows what it is to lose a child that you have brought into the world—something I can’t imagine,” says Swank. “When Doug says to her that the town thinks it has something to with a little girl and they want to kill her because of it, that gets her attention. Though she may not recognize it consciously, the assignment represents a chance to save one child…and maybe redeem her past.”
The final piece of the puzzle is that child, Loren McConnell, played by young actress AnnaSophia Robb, who has already played a diverse range of roles in such films as “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “Bridge to Terabithia.” “She’s just such a talent,” Swank says. “Although her character says very little in the film, acting is not always about dialogue. She says so much with her face and with her expressions, through her eyes. AnnaSophia was such a joy to work with.”
“Loren is very quiet, shy and scared,” says Robb, who turned 12 after production wrapped. “She has a reason to be scared because the townspeople have tried to kill her. She lives way back in the swamps and has no real friends, so she has been hiding in the woods since all of this started. Loren’s not very educated. She just reacts without thinking, instinctively, like an animal.”
|
|||||
Hilary Swank as Katherine Winter and Anna Sophia Robb as Loren McConnell in The Reaping.
Sitemaps, RSS Feeds & Social Networks
|
|||||||
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Movies Central
Movies Central website is created and designed by Atlantis, 2000 - 2010
All film stills, posters, and trademarks are the property of their respective owners and may not be reproduced for any reason whatsoever. If proper notation of owned material is not given please notify us so we can make adjustments. Copyright © 2009 HTML Sitemap
