Bless the Child

A worthless piece of trash that was unleashed upon Multiplexes in August 2000. It stars Kim Basinger as a nurse whose strung-out sister has a baby, dumps it into her care, then disappears for 6 years. In the interim, the child grows into the next Messiah, without Basinger noticing. Fortunately, a cult of Satanists, under the front of a Scientology-style cult, do notice, and they abduct the child to try and turn her to Lucifer's service. Jimmy Smits serves a largely pointless role as an FBI agent who is investigating a series of child abductions associated with the search for Basinger's kid.

So what made this movie so bad?

1. Every character was one-dimensional, with the exception of the actual child, who actually had some acting range.
2. The lines were hokey. After some crucial evidence is discovered: "We'll get those Satan-loving freaks now!". I shit you not.
3. Police procedure seems to have been cribbed from old episodes of Hawaii Five-O
4. The CGI special effects were of about the same caliber as what you would see on an episode of Xena. When I told my friend this, she said "Duh, this movie was produced by the same people that produced Xena."
5. In particular, their demons looked a lot like what the Winged Monkeys should look like in a remake of The Wizard of Oz.
6. Finally, the entire film is presented as kind of Catholic propaganda. Everything is too predictable and heavy-handed to see it as anything else.

I saw this movie because I wanted to get out of the heat into an Air-Conditioned theater, and I missed Space Cowboys. Then I went to see Cecil B Demented, which I liked a lot better. 2 stars, because of the girl's acting.