By: James Southworth
Rating: 1.5/5 Stars
I continue to be confused by how successful the God's Not Dead franchise has been in regards to explicitly Christian films. The first movie is an insulting tirade against atheists, contains Islamophobia and unrealistic portrayals of a college setting, and presents one sided "debates". The second movie is even worse in my opinion, with some of the most dirt poor acting I've seen in any film to date. The movie continues to paint atheists as evil old people in suits, while Christians are young, attractive, and perfect in every way. Even their few flaws ultimately add to their perfection. The second one puts politics and religion together in a very uncomfortable way, and felt wrong with the idea that church and state (in the view of the movie) should actually be intertwined. I have been wanting this series to die off, but there was yet another movie this year. This time it's centered around Reverend Dave (played by David A.R. White, one of the heads of Pureflix Studios), who is fighting for his church to stay up following it being tragically burned down. He loses his best friend Jude in the fire, and suffers a crisis in faith. There's a few other characters focused on as well, including Dave's atheist brother Pearce, Keaton and her boyfriend Adam, and the head of the University in which this movie takes place.
Let's first talk about the few things that work about this movie. Probably the most primary is that there are actually some decent performances in this film. I've found David White to be insufferable in the previous two movies playing Reverend Dave (who's obviously meant to closely resemble him, so he's not really acting much). He tried to have all these comedy bits in the previous films to lighten them up a bit, but nothing with him was funny; in fact it was often cringe worthy. However, he actually does a fairly good job in this film shouldering the lead role. He gives Dave some dramatic weight, and- believe it or not- brings some flaws to the character. This is positively revolutionary for this series, as with the other installments, the Christian characters might as well be flawless. It should be a given that you have a complex main character, but the other films didn't understand this. While Reverend Dave is far from a great protagonist, I still found myself at least somewhat sympathizing with him in moments (moments is the key word here). The best performance goes to John Corbett as Dave's brother Pearce. He was consistently pretty good in the movie, and even gave me a few laughs. His lines weren't well-written at all, but Corbett at least knew how to deliver them. I also felt that Samantha Boscarino, Mike Manning, and Shwayze actually brought some realism to their respective college-aged characters. These characters aren't always spouting off politically or religiously charged nothings, and feel a little more like actual people. This movie also looks like a movie. The past two films did not have any visual moments that stood out, instead feeling very plain and plastic. This film doesn't suffer from that too much, and even has some shots that impress (a wide shot of trees in the fall, a look at Dave's church after it's burned down, a character screaming underwater). This is Michael Mason's first directing credit, and he at least knows how to make a movie look good. If only he could write as well as he can shoot.
This movie tries to do something that neither of its two predecessors did: it attempts to address both sides of a debate. It specifically focuses on how much influence Christianity should have in secular realms, such as a college setting. The film's main thesis is stated by real life judge Jeanine Pirro: "Everyone is shouting, but no one is listening". On the very surface level of this quote, I completely agree. In the age of social media charged "debates", it often feels like everyone has a radical view point they want to hold on to, and there is no room for expanding their perspective. We will argue with each other without actually listening; this is very much so a present reality. But the real question is this: is the film listening, or is it doing its own form of shouting? There are very sparse moments in this movie where it feels like it's addressing both sides of the spectrum. There is one legitimately great scene in this film (easily the best moment in any "God's Not Dead" movie) where Dave is expressing to a Ghanaian pastor how he feels no one could possibly understand how he's being oppressed. The pastor sort of laughs and tells him that, as a black man in the deep South, he's been far more oppressed and beaten down than Dave ever will be. This scene is so quick, though, and there's not really another single scene like it. Dave doesn't ever get truly challenged by an opposing perspective. Let's be clear: this movie is romanticizing Pastor Dave for a white, evangelical audience. He's a martyr, but the movie doesn't seem to make him a martyr for God. Instead, he seems to be a martyr for a conservative agenda with religious tendencies. This movie gives in to the paranoid notion that Christians (specifically white Christians) are one of the most marginalized groups in America right now, which is just not the case. This movie has some diversity in it (Dave attends a church with African American individuals, Teo is a black student who leads a protest saying that the church should be torn down). But this movie, even more significantly than its two predecessors, makes these diverse people out to be tokens rather than actual voices. Once again, this film is just an echo chamber for the most insecure Christian demographic possible. This demographic will only be satisfied with a movie than panders to their views, rather than challenging or legitimately conversing with them. PureFlix entertainment knows this, and so it exploits this fact in service of being a safe, easily digestible movie for the target audience.
There are many, many points in this movie where it feels more like a badly delivered sermon. The mini-sermons this movie has feel even more half hearted and shallow than in the previous films. People talk about God. But, as a Christian, it was somewhat frightening to me to see that there were hardly any moments where people were praying to God, or even keeping one another accountable for their faith journey. This movie tries to show that the Christian walk is tough. And yet, it hardly ever shows a moment where any Christian is legitimately grappling with their faith. When a character is grappling, there's a quick, easy resolution that is reached very quickly. In the beginning of the film, I was actually quite intrigued to see what the film might do with Pearce, Dave's brother. He's an atheist, and rejected God partly because of how the his family treated him when he was questioning his faith. The same goes for Adam, who is disenfranchised by the church because of the way it treated his mother after discovering she was sexually abused by her ex-husband. I was almost leaning forward in my seat when both of these characters were presented. For once, the movie seemed to be wanting to humanize atheists. I had a small hope that maybe, just maybe, this film would be able to show them as anything other than cartoonish villains in business suits. But, what it does with the atheist characters in this film is problematic. By the end of the movie, both Pearce and Adam are happy with where they're at, and both are Christians. Dave is never held accountable for his role in making Pearce feel unwelcome into the family because of his beliefs. save one brief, underwhelming scene. The amount of criticism the church is given in this movie for its treatment of Adam's mom (which is dishearteningly reflective of things going on in certain church communities now) is akin to a slap on the wrist. I feel like real life atheists would be more forgiving of a movie like this if it actually held people within its own religion accountable for the sins that our body has engaged in. But "God's Not Dead 3" just doesn't. Instead, the atheists in this film become more like pawns. They are only here so PureFlix can say, "Hey we developed a non-Christian character- well, sort of!". Other awful moments include almost anything with the return of Josh Wheaton from the first film. He could have been completely absent from this film, and nothing about it would've changed. He says perhaps the worst line in this film: "Jesus would have been a Social Justice Warrior". I audibly groaned at this line, as it goes against literally everything about Jesus: He wasn't a political figure, and he isn't in line with your pseudo-progressive political affiliation. There's yet another cameo from the Newsboys. They thankfully don't end off the film with a concert like in the first two movies. They still serve as a sad reminder for a big reason why these movies exist. I just hate that this band rallies behind these films. But it's not surprising, since they have made songs that unnecessarily marry politics and religion together in a incredibly heretical way.
This movie once again tries to bring everything together at the end by making one main theme: God's Not Dead. That is the main "point" of all three of these films. The very fact that atheists do not believe that God is dead shows all of these movies' thoroughly lacking abilities to engage in conversation with other views. The fact is, these Christian propaganda films barely even try. As the film's ending proves, the creators of the series would much rather everyone just hug it out instead of actually engaging in conversation. I agree that yelling and violence aren't the answers. But neither is deafening silence. Neither is favoring an idealistic world in which everyone is happy go lucky, and nobody ever argues or debates about anything at all. I am hoping that this franchise is done now. It doesn't align with God's message. It's poorly made, with the acting and filming being average at best. This third installment tries to show some self-awareness. It even wants to try to have a meta-textual conversation with its previous installments. However, this attempt at self-awareness is constantly contradicted by close-mindedness and a refusal to actively engage. Please don't watch this movie. I ask you, fellow Christians, the same question I asked when I reviewed the previous installment: Would God really be for a film like this one? Just think on that.
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