Hillary Swank stars as Katherine in the supernatural thriller "The Reaping."

Haven help us, but Hilary Swank — the long-limbed and honey-complexioned A-list star who owns not one but two best-actress Oscars — is waist-deep in blood doing the biblical-plagues thing in "The Reaping."

Think of it as "The Omen" meets Oil of Olay. Or perhaps an alternate title: "I Won Two of These Dumb Awards But Can't Find a Good Movie to Star In."

In this supernatural thriller, a film for which Swank will most definitely not be up for a third statuette, her character hangs out in a swampy little Louisiana burg named Haven. There, it seems, a vengeful Satan — or perhaps a Universal Studios theme-park-ride design team — has declared war on the local population of bayou bumblers, unleashing upon them rivers of blood, locusts, boils, etc.

If all this sounds vaguely Exodus-related, sparking memories of ticked-off pharaohs and a run on gnat repellent, you'd be right. Which seems a little unfair to the Prince of Darkness, if indeed he's the one behind these calamitous events. What a lack of imagination! Instead of coming up with his own plagues, he merely copies the Bible. "The Reaping" has a sort of confused air, as if it's dipped a few too many times into the local moonshine. It isn't exactly going to win many theological points for remaining true to its source material.

But that doesn't matter to Swank's character, a thick-skinned academic named Katherine Winter, who has made a career out of "busting" miracles. She's disproven them before by scientific analysis. When she hears about the river of blood, she packs a full complement of designer safari/swamp clothing, grabs her long-suffering assistant (Idris Elba) and heads to the field. She assumes there's a logical explanation, most likely the microbe phesteria.

The townspeople have a different idea: It's caused by a 12-year-old devil child (AnnaSophia Robb) hanging out in the woods. They're convinced that if they can kill her, all their plague problems will be solved. Though there are voices of reason in town — namely the local schoolteacher, Doug Blackwell (David Morrissey, a British actor whose Louisiana accent floats at times into Sean Connery territory) — Katherine finds herself trying to protect a wild-eyed little girl who may just be the reason all those dead frogs are falling from the sky.Director Stephen Hopkins captures a certain velvety-green spookiness in the bayou (even though that's a pretty well-worn subject) and layers the plot so it's a bit more complex than most supernatural thrillers. The standard components are here: the scary house, the power outage, the dire warnings from the priest, the blown-open windows, the descent down the dark staircase, the teasing musical score leading up to the gotcha moments.But though he's able to craft some spooky individual scenes, Hopkins can't find much of a larger thread of menace. The countdown aspect of the plot doesn't help — whoops, here's another plague — and the Southern stereotypes start seeming a little silly.And Swank doesn't play fear very well. She's too regal — too glowing — when she's duking it out with the dark side. Competent but not particularly charismatic in the role, she doesn't reap much more from "The Reaping" than a paycheck — and maybe a few good tips for getting blood out of 100 percent cotton.