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Life & Arts

Swank gets biblical in ‘The Reaping'

Actress says she did her research in preparing 
for role as former missionary

COUGAR LIFE & ARTS SERVICES 

Attending church will be in order for some this weekend, but perhaps seeing a movie of biblical proportions could serve as another way of bringing family together. 

Academy Award-winning actress Hilary Swank stars in the new religious thriller The Reaping. And while some thrillers involve one individual on the lose handing out God's wrath, The Reaping has the good Lord doing some hands-on work. 

Swank plays former Christian missionary Katherine Winter, who is a professor and renowned expert at debunking religious phenomena. When Doug, played by David Morrissey, invites her to look into a Louisiana town that appears to be struck with the 10 plagues, Winter comes in contact with something that science might not be able to explain. 

In preparing for the role, Swank delved into literature that offered varied perspective on faith. 

"I read these things and the parts of the Bible that I read were just about the plagues. I was just really interested in reading about them," Swank said. "But yeah, I did actually a lot of reading just because I'd never really heard of anything like these, you know, Skeptical Inquirer, and it was really interesting that these people believe that there's a scientific answer for everything," 

Though some might believe supernatural thrillers don't offer the edge that horror movies possess, Swank said The Reaping shouldn't be judged by its genre, seeing as the movie scared the actress herself. 

"Even though I read the script and you obviously act it in the movie, when I watched the movie I got scared at certain points," Swank said. 
 

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