Movie Review by Nigel A. Messenger
Starring: Kim Basinger, Jimmy Smits, Rufus Sewell, Christina Ricci
Director: Chuck Russell
Do you believe in good and evil? I mean pure good and evil in the biblical sense. Maggie O’Connor (Kim Basinger) doesn’t, but it’s not long before she changes her mind.
After assuming responsibility to look after her heroine-addicted sister’s baby daughter, Cody (Holliston Coleman), over the first few years of the child’s life, she becomes aware that Cody is a little different. Autism is suspected and Cody starts her education at a special school run by Catholic nuns. Meanwhile the police department is investigating a number of homicides of young children, all coincidently Cody’s age.
With no leads to speak of an FBI specialist (Jimmy Smits) is called in. An expert in the field of ritualistic killing, he recognises signs of satanic worship found on and around the bodies. At the same time Maggie (Kim Basinger) who works as a nurse receives a warning from a heroine addict (Christina Ricci), ‘they are after her child Cody’, while treating the addict one night at the hospital.
BLESS THE CHILD is a tense supernatural thriller that’s well acted and will make anyone jump. Most movies of this genre will feature a cliche or two and the obvious one here has to be the demonic looking nanny who must have been taken from an academy of severe looking nannies that exist somewhere in the ether waiting for appearances in films with horrible nanny roles, although this one does particularly nasty things with a couple of syringes. This isn’t a criticism though, the nanny’s appearance just raises a smile in an otherwise tense movie that won’t leave you disappointed.
