Film Review of Bless the Child
Year: 2000 Reviewer: Chris Docker
Predictable and slightly obnoxious "good versus evil" supernatural thriller that still has a few bits to make you jump out of your seat. Unfortunately over laden with religion, this type of thing is most scary to someone who believes in Jesus and the Devil etc etc. And here we see the appeal to bigotry as well. In the old days, the black characters in movies were often the bad guys, women never had top jobs and any Germans or Japanese in wartime epics were all innately evil to the core we've moved beyond such objectionable prejudice in these areas but still religion gets the full quota of American Righteousness. In other words, Christians (especially Roman Catholics and Jesuits) are always "good guys" whereas the personification of evil will tend to be linked with new age philosophy and the devil will speak with a sort of Moroccan or middle-eastern accent that is displays a prejudice towards Islam. On the prejudice scale, we see Buddhists (as long as they are not new age) get a fairly easy ride, whereas Hindus (probably because of the visual similarity between some of their gods and the depiction of gargoyles) are linked with evil. Hopefully in another twenty years or so this sort of prejudice will be a thing of the past - that is, if America outgrows its fundamentalist roots (that are a bit laughable, even to Europeans).
Rating: 4/10
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