What hath Hillary Swank wrought?

My freelance review:

"The Reaping," the new movie starring Hillary Swank, supports my theory that movie makers are too concerned with style over substance.

But I'm still awfully puzzled to understand what Hillary Swank was thinking. This is not a movie that a two-time Academy Award winner stars in.

"The Reaping" is a bunch of satanic mumbo-jumbo about a small Louisiana town suffering from what appears to be a bunch of biblical plagues. Enter Swank as a renowned expert in disproving religious ties to such phenomena. But, as you can only expect, this will be the case where Swank's eyes will be opened...

Blah, blah, blah. To describe the story is to relive the movie, and that is far more terrifying to endure than the attempted (and failed) scares offered up by this horror film wannabe.

The incoherent story could have been a cue to Swank to stay away! Another one might have been the director: Stephen Hopkins, whose resume includes such weak fare as 1998's "Lost in Space" and 1994's "Blown Away" with Jeff Bridges.

Throughout the movie, there are a plenty of special effects. Like an entire lake being blood red. Like grotesque maggots emerging from meat on a grill. And so on and so on. The makers of this film must have applied their focus on the "cool" special effects -- at the risk of a half-baked story spoiling it all. I have a name for such special effects: EMPTY special effects.

This is one of those movies where the audience laughs out loud at how ridiculous some of the situations are. It's THAT bad, folks. Save your money. Spend your time in some other way.

My message to Swank is to learn from this mistake and to use some of her two-time Academy Award muscle to demand quality movies!