Blessed [Reviewed by Jori]

98 min., 2004
Directed by Simon Fellows
My rating:
IMDB • Netflix

A pointless waste of space.

* * *

Hey, what if we ripped off Rosemary’s Baby and set it in more modern times?  Like at a fertility clinic.  Also, let’s take everything that made it good and water it down so it’s even more boring than the original.  They may not have said those exact words but the people responsible for Blessed pretty much did just that.  So thanks jerks.

Samantha and Craig Howard have been trying to have a baby for a while.  Now they have their chance and of course it works, what with the ridiculously obvious conspiracy happening.  They remain clueless for most of the movie until they make a pointless discovery that somehow explains everything to them.  Also, this time the devil baby turns out to be twins.

I can’t think of anything positive to say.  I’ve tried, but I just can’t.  The chemistry between Heather Graham and James Purefoy are more like father and daughter rather than husband and wife which is mildly disturbing.  She is just so damn cute that it never really works with his brooding adult demeanor.  (I can’t decide if a lot of that has to do with her voice.)  Andy Serkis (Gollum from the Lord of the Rings series!) is a disappointment as our resident priest.  (You can’t have a devil movie without a priest, right?)  Serkis tries hard to make himself unrecognizable because if his fans saw him in this they might revolt.  Really.  It felt like even the cast knew they were in a dud.  And poor David Hemmings!  The indignity of having his eyebrows fashioned into horn-like things on his face.  Yes, he has some rich brows, but who the hell thought it was a good idea to comb them like that?  Maybe if more time was spent on plot instead of facial hair we’d be discussing a different movie.

The limited effects are laughable.  Attempts at adding tension include devil face ultrasounds.  Right.  And of course the obligatory weird fingers and scales through the belly routine.  And CG fire.  At this point we all know how I feel about CG in general so I won’t bore you with the same complaint this time around.

With crappy acting and sad effects we are left with sitting through the story.  A story which was done better many times before now.  The attempt to update it by including cloning/science only leaves more idiotic questions.  It really felt like they needed to tweak the script a little so they wouldn’t be accused of outright remaking a classic.  Obligatory priest, obligatory hysterical pregnant woman and of course the great conspiracy that reaches throughout the publishing community, the medical community and an entire town.  Random scenes that try to piece together a plot do nothing to make it remotely interesting.  The end is the saddest attempt at a “surprise” and actually makes no damn bit of sense other than “ooh, look - evil“.

This is isn’t funny, it isn’t scary and it isn’t even a coherent story.  The plot holes are interesting to pick apart, sure – but why bother with this movie when there are so many more out there?  None of the characters do anything that makes sense.  The deaths are random potty breaks within the story because someone remembered that this is a horror movie.  This is nothing more than a forgettable attempt at updating a classic film (that was already fairly flawed to begin with).