Bless the Child Reviews

Satanic silliness undermines this gloomy horror picture about a little girl who may be the new Messiah. It's almost Christmas, but lapsed Catholic Maggie O'Connor (Kim Basinger), a psychiatric nurse, isn't much interested in the news that the same comet that streaked over Bethlehem 2,000 years ago has returned to the night sky. She's more concerned that her junkie sister Jenna (Angela Bettis) just paid a hit-and-run visit and abandoned her newborn baby girl, Cody, on Maggie's floor. The childless Maggie devotes herself to the growing child, who shows signs of what Maggie's colleagues assure her is autism; what no one — at least no one good — suspects is that 6-year-old Cody (Holliston Coleman) has paranormal gifts. She can move things without touching them, and even appears to restore a dead dove to life. And then Jenna returns with her new husband, Eric Stark (Rufus Sewell, whose slightly pop-eyed looks give him a decidedly sinister edge), founder of a secretive self-actualization movement called New Dawn. The couple absconds with Cody, and FBI occult crimes specialist John Travis (Jimmy Smits) thinks that Cody's disappearance is linked to a series of gruesome child murders. Before she knows it, Maggie's up to the roots of her immaculately coiffed hair in devilish goings-on. The movie has the courage of its convictions; it's 100 percent self-referential hijinks-free; and its sober intentions are reflected in the subdued cinematography and muted color scheme. Little Holliston Coleman gives a remarkable performance as Cody; Angela Bettis is frighteningly convincing as the strung-out Jenna, and Christina Ricci drops by for a cameo that comes to a memorably nasty close. But oh, those bat-winged CGI demons and red-eyed rats of hell — they should have been banished to a video game before they could transform this solemn shocker into a silly spook show.