So last Friday I came across the following trailer for a movie called Harmless. Here it is:
In the spring semester of last year I took a writing class called Literary Nonfiction. One of the required reading pieces was Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling, by Andy Crouch. The general gist of the book was that as Christians we have the ability to create our own culture. We live in the world, but we don’t need to be of it. If we can’t find anything out there that we can agree to be part of than we can make our own.
That being said, I’m not sure that I can necessarily support this film. I understand why they did it, though. I’ve seen Paranormal Activity; I understand the way fear is exacerbated by the intimacy of the mockumentary format. I get that if you want to talk to people about your faith movies are a great way to do it, and the horror genre is an extremely popular one. The problem is that it’s ridiculous.
I won’t lie and say that pornography is all well and good. I do believe that it is degrading to women and can be extremely harmful to relationships and families. I will even go so far as to say that there is a dangerous spiritual component involved, but this is not the time or place to discuss that. I can also tell you what porn is not, though. Porn is not poltergeists.
I can’t agree with a film that could potentially be more ridiculous than the 2006 film Facing the Giants. Trailer seen here:
This was a film that just dripped with cheese. It’s difficult for me to put into words how awful it was. The messages were certainly positive, but weren’t delivered in a way that was well-written or even believable. If Christian media wants to be taken seriously by those outside of its target audience it has to at least be a decent example of its art form.
I’m all for Christian media, or at least media with a Christian message of sorts. Ted Dekker’s novels Blink and Thr3e are well-written and actually very good. What I wish is that this would spread to the film industry, that as Christians we could do better at making and affecting culture around us, instead of creating something laughable.
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