In the US, Christian movies enjoy the same kind of intense following as Christian rock groups or Christian children’s books, or any other area of pop culture into which Jesus has unceremoniously stuck his oar. Without the support of studio marketing teams or mainstream critics, spiritual films regularly go head-to-head with blockbusters 10 times their size and come away victorious. Case in point: the low-budget bible-thumper God’s Not Dead, which arrives on DVD this week billed as a “$70million box office hit”. That figure, of course, represents the film’s US tally; in the UK, despite a suitably zealous marketing campaign, God’s Not Dead opened 20th at the box office and swiftly disappeared from view.
In the film, devout Christian college student Josh sets out to prove the existence of a higher power to his godless teenage classmates. It’s no easy task. God’s Not Dead is littered with aggressively vitriolic atheists, including but not limited to: a maniacal lefty blogger who rallies against religion and meat-eating with equal fervour, a Chinese student with an ingrained distrust of Christianity, and Josh’s inexplicably hostile philosophy professor, whose outright refusal to respect the religious beliefs of others conveniently paints the film’s Christian characters as models of tolerance by comparison.
Josh’s philosophical arguments are actually pretty reasonable (a number of leading experts in Christian thinking consulted on the film) but God’s Not Dead seems reluctant to rest its case on his words. Instead, the film takes a leaf out of the Old Testament and strikes down its non-believing characters. The liberal blogger gets cancer, the Chinese student is disowned by his family, and Josh’s philosophy professor is brutally mown down in a hit-and-run incident. As he slowly bleeds out, a bystander crouches down at his side to deliver the good news: “God is willing to forgive you of your sins.” The Death Wish movies were more merciful.
DVD, Signature Entertainment
Also out this week
Mrs Brown’s Boys D’Movie Critically mauled sitcom transfer.
Godzilla Po-faced monster romp.
Soul Boys Of The Western World Spandau Ballet doc.
The Vampire Diaries Supernatural teen drama.
