On Tuesday I saw the third installment in the God’s Not Dead franchise entitled God’s Not Dead: A Light In Darkness. While the first two movies are happy, triumphant, and yes, shallow, this movie tries for a more darker and serious tone. How did Pure Flix do with this one? Unfortunately it was a complete disaster. I’m not a fan of the first two movies but they at least do what they set out to do, which is throw red meat to an Evangelical audience. This movie tried to do too much and because of that it ended up being incoherent.
It starts off with where the last movie ended, which is where the Pastor got arrested. However, they immediately chuck this storyline. It looked like it would be the focus of this movie but obviously it got thrown out quickly. This movie does have a different writer than the first two and he obviously wanted to do his own thing.
Like the previous movies, there is a main storyline and a couple secondary storylines. In my opinion, all of the storylines were very poorly written.
The main storyline is the Pastor who now is in an eminent domain legal battle to keep his Church. President Trump would be proud of this. The Pastor hires his brother as a lawyer and this is probably the weakest part of the movie. They have absolutely no chemistry together.
Shane Harper is back as Josh Wheaton but his character has really taken a turn for the worse. He plays little to no role in the story and has dropped out of law school to be a co-leader in a youth group. Seriously? Where is the eager and keen apologist who debated Professor Radisson? He’s essentially only in the movie to provide comments as the ringer.
Another storyline is with a young lady named Keaton who is struggling with her faith, but the movie doesn’t really investigate these struggles. It seems that she’s frustrated that the Church makes statements about what is right and wrong. Very poor storyline.
There are others but I think this suffices for a summary. Although I wasn’t a fan of the first two movies, they should have just done another one of those. A feel good triumphant movie would have been better in my opinion. At least they’ve had success from that formula in the past.
In conclusion, this movie is a complete disaster. I’m happy that I didn’t spend any money on it since my friend paid for me but it’s two hours that I’ll never get back. God isn’t dead but this franchise is, and I do sincerely hope that there are no more God’s Not Dead movies.
Christian film needs a renaissance. Mel Gibson can’t do it all. It’s painful since there are so many good ideas from our rich history. Perhaps a biopic of St. Francis of Assisi? The story of the Battle of Lepanto? The defense of Malta by the Knights Hospitaller against the Ottoman Navy? The sky is the limit.
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