BLESS THE CHILD

Year: 2000
USA: Paramount
UK: Icon Film Distribution
Cast: Kim Basinger, Jimmy Smits, Rufus Sewell, Ian Holm, Angela Bettis, Christina Ricci, Yan Birch, Lumi Cavazos, Holliston Coleman, Matthew Lemche, Eugene Lipinski, Nicole Lyn, Jonathan Malen, David Sparrow
Director: Chuck Russell
Country: USA
USA: 110 mins
UK: 107 mins
USA Rated: R for violence, drug content and brief language
UK Certificate: 15 for moderate violence, horror and drug references
USA Release Date: 11 August 2000
UK Release Date: 5 January 2001

Synopsis

Omens and concepts of good vs. evil have no place in Maggie O?Connor?s (Kim Basinger) well-ordered, practical universe. Her life revolves around her job as a nurse at a busy New York hospital , until her wayward kid sister, Jenna (Angela Bettis), shows up on her doorstep one rainy Christmas Eve and saddles Maggie with an autistic newborn child named Cody (Holliston Coleman).

Cody quickly touches Maggie?s heart and becomes the daughter she has always longed for. But six years later Jenna suddenly re-enters her life and, with her mysterious new husband, Eric Stark (Rufus Sewell), abducts Cody. Despite the fact that Maggie has no legal rights to Cody, FBI agent John Travis (Jimmy Smits), an expert in ritual homicide and occult-related crime, takes up her cause when he realizes that Cody shares the same birth date as several other recently missing children.

The little girl, it soon becomes clear, is more than simply "special." She manifests extraordinary powers that the forces of evil have waited centuries to control, and her abduction sparks a clash between the soldiers of good and evil that can only be resolved, in the end, by the strength of one small child and the love she inspires in those she touches.