I’ve talked a little bit about bad Christian media on this blog and why it’s so bad. Now, I can give you guys yet another example of why Christian movie companies need to go on hiatus until they can figure out how to write a good story, with our latest movie to go on the chopping block being For Prophet, a “faith-based” family movie about a man who teams up with the archangel Raphael to (supposedly) save his crumbling town. Believe me when I say that it is so bad that if it had been released before apologist Alissa Childer’s new book, The Deconstruction of Christianity, was released, it should’ve been included as a reason for deconstructing your faith because of how poorly they portray Christianity and the faith. Nowhere was it funny, nowhere was it entertaining, and nowhere was the gospel presented in any meaningful way (unless you include the mishmash of random, out-of-context Bible verses that Rafael spouts constantly). Let’s get into it.
#1: The Plot
The plot is pretty much a game of “Where’s Waldo” with how jumbled and confusing it is.
For the sake of trying to keep everything organized here, I’m going to start with what I call “the skeleton plot”, which is what the story is pretty much built on. The skeleton plot of this movie is the incredibly generic, stereotypical, Christian movie plot that we’ve all come to hate which is “Guy who was (maybe) once a Christian is now a deist/agnostic/atheist or just struggling with his faith and needs some sort of spiritual guide (a Christian love interest, God himself, an angel, etc.) to come back to Christianity. Once he does, everything is sunshine and rainbows and he goes from angry and bad to good, happy, and wholesome.” While this type of movie would’ve been okay at one point in time, after you repeat it 70×7 times, it gets annoying and makes you wish Armageddon would come sooner. If the movie had just been this plot alone without anything else, it would’ve been bad on principle because it would have been a movie I’ve already seen.
This points back to a problem that a lot of Christian (or Christian adjacent) movie writers seem to have. They don’t seem to have any new ideas and I think part of this is just from them not wanting to offend the Christian audience. It’s like they saw that one thing worked and said to themselves, “Hmm, yes. Let’s just switch around some characters, maybe give it some slightly different side plots, and basically make the exact same movie.” The problem with this is that it’s not only uninspired, but it is the worst crime against creativity that you can commit: pandering. These movies are meant to pander to the mainly Christian audience because most Christians nowadays will watch anything that has a “Christian” label on it, allowing these movie companies to get away with making movies that honestly feel more like propaganda films.
This isn’t art; it’s the Christian version of Into the Panderverse.
Moving on from that to the main plot, the main plot is about how the archangel, Rafael (more on her in a sec), has been sent by God to Damon (the main character) so that he can become a part-time prophet. Just from that description, you might start expecting some Bruce Almighty type hijinks, but no. Instead, the only time Damon prophesies is during his first radio appearance, which sets up a subplot that pops up throughout the movie but is so random that you just don’t care. Then, we get the plot twist that the real prophecy was that Damon needs to tell everyone in the town that angels are real.
Just…what?
While a story can have numerous subplots that help make up the main plot, they still need to be consistent with each other. If you have one subplot that is fighting with another subplot, your main plot will become a game of “Where’s Waldo” and that’s exactly what happened with this movie. When writing a good story, if you set up that something is going to happen (such as with this movie making us think that the prophecy was going to have something to do about government collusion), you better make it happen. Yes, you can have plot twists, but when the plot twists make no sense and completely change the plot (such as the real prophecy being about how angels are real for some reason), then you have a problem.
Additionally, the working definition of “prophecy” (according to Google) is a prediction. The idea that telling the people that angels are real being the true prophecy is absurd by this definition. Are you predicting that angels will be real? What are you doing?
While the prophets of the OT often did tell their people things that were true about God for God, those weren’t prophecies. Those were teachings. The definition of prophecy was still applicable to their prophecies about – for example – Jesus’ death.
Moreover, even if what they were saying wasn’t about future events, they still pointed back to God, not to the prophet or the angels or anyone else.
#2: Rafael
How do I describe this person? Hmm…
Oh, that’s right!
She is the most annoying person I think I have ever seen on television, being up there with (if not surpassing) Jar-Jar Binks and Elmo. Just with that much information about her, it’s not hard to see why God sent her to earth. It was so that he and the other angels could have some peace and quiet for a week and recover from the massive migraines she undoubtedly gave them. If you put me in a room with Hitler, Stalin, and Rafael and gave me a gun with two bullets, I would want to shoot Rafael…twice. She’s that annoying and insufferable.
Perhaps that’s a harsh thing to say about this character, but I really don’t care. This is my honest review, and I haven’t been this pissed off at a fictional character since Amazon’s bastardized version of Galadriel from Rings of Power.
If I wasn’t cringing at this woman’s poor attempt at being comedic relief, I was constantly wondering, “Why the heck is Rafael a female?” Rafael is a masculine name. If you look at every instance where Rafael is depicted in art, he’s a dude. But no. Instead of being accurate to Catholic lore, he is now a she and if that wasn’t bad enough, Rafael is now “non-binary.”
That’s right. Not only does this movie have the Christian brownie points, but it also has the progressive brownie points as well. How fun! At this point, I think getting a cavity filled at the dentist would be better than this. At least I’d be too numbed out of my skull to care.
Besides the “non-binary” angel being there just to pander to the progressive Christian crowd, it’s just unbiblical. In every instance where an angel appears to someone in the Bible, the angel is always a guy. While they might not be specified to have the exact sex characteristics as humans (since they’re spirits), they still have a specific gender. Even more than that, the person seeing the angel is always peeing their pants upon seeing the angel because they are freaking terrifying (though, to be fair, Rafael is her own kind of terrifying in this movie as she acts like the creepy villain in a slasher film who has no idea what personal space is).
#3: Damon’s Demon
If I was given the choice between hanging out with Rafael and the demon, I would have to think about it for several hours because they’re both insufferable.
While Rafael was an annoying character because of how obnoxiously happy she was, the demon is annoying with how obnoxiously angry he is. He acts like that one pothead neighbor we all have/had who is happy to get in a fight with anyone with the slightest provocation. While The Screwtape Letters definitely isn’t a canonical part of the Bible, it shows us how characters who are demons should act. The Bible describes Satan as the father of lies and he is often shown to be very sneaky and subtle, which is why Christians must be vigilant to avoid falling for the lies. In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis shows how one of the head-demons of Hell (Screwtape) follows Satan’s example to a T and constantly criticizes Wormwood for not being more subtle in his temptations. If the demon in For Prophet was in The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape would be ripping out his horns in frustration.
Damon’s demon isn’t subtle at all in his temptations. He is very obvious in his mission to make Damon’s life hell and it makes you wonder how he ever became a head demon. He’s basically a stereotype of what a demon is supposed to be like and he’s just not a good character.
#4: Bad Cinematography
I can’t remember a single scene where there was a seamless transition into the next scene. Every scene was jump cut after jump cut, making the viewing experience feel very jarring and not very pleasant at all. One second, you would be watching Damon doing something and then you would switch to the next random thing that’s totally unrelated to his previous actions.
The aerial shots also weren’t very good, either. They looked like someone had taken some Getty stock images or some footage of one of those 4-k screensavers you can find on YouTube and put them into the movie.
Ultimately, the only good thing I can say about the cinematography is that I liked how the camera filter changed whenever Damon was switching between Rafael and the demon. Whenever the demon was around, things looked very cold and overcast due to the blue camera filter, but whenever Rafael was around, the world looked sunny and bright thanks to the yellow filter. It was a subtle touch that helped show the inner dichotomy that Damon was facing.
#5: Bad Jokes
Despite this movie being sold as a drama/comedy, there was no comedy. It was just a poorly written drama. The scenes that are supposed to be funny just seem to be there because the writers thought it would be a good scene but fell flat every time.
One of the running jokes throughout the show is Rafael’s confusion in regard to speaking the English language. While, yes, the English language is confusing and often makes no sense, the joke runs on for way too long as she constantly makes grammar mistakes in every other sentence. This isn’t funny, it’s just annoying and, as a friend in the apologetics group I’m in pointed out, angels are very intelligent creatures. They most likely wouldn’t have problems understanding English, making the “joke” even more stupid.
There were also a few other “jokes” that were meant to be jabs at the government, but as I watched those scenes, I wasn’t laughing. They were barely even chuckle-worthy. Instead, all I could think was, “Yes. And the sky is blue. What’s your point?” Once again, you could tell that they were trying, but it just fell flat.
Writers, if you want to actually be funny, stop being so afraid to accidently sound offensive. That doesn’t mean you have to be actually offensive. It just means you have to be willing to make fun of the things that are well-known problems. If people are offended, that’s not your problem when everyone else is laughing. One of the things that this movie could’ve benefited from is if there had been some jokes about Christianity or secularism, that while funny, were true. That would’ve made it much better, but unfortunately, most Christian writers won’t even come close to touching those things with a six-foot pole because they don’t want to scare people away, so they resort to things that aren’t actually funny.
#6: Pandering to Everyone
If you’re part of the Charismatic, Prosperity, NAR, Catholic, (maybe) Mormon, or Progressive Christian groups, then this movie is for you because it panders to as many people as it can, which is probably how it got so many awards. Jesus is only mentioned once, though it keeps its “Christian” label by constantly using out-of-context Bible verses and everything else seems completely subjective to everyone. The Gospel isn’t flushed out, so it could really just be anything you want it to be.
#7: The Ending
The ending of this movie was terrible. From the diverging sub-plots that lead to a horrible main plot, there were so many loose threads that needed to be tied up into a coherent conclusion that it felt like someone had read the synopsis and had said, “Dang it! I forgot about that one. What do we do? We only have twenty minutes,” and proceeded to quickly try to finish the story to the best of their ability. This led to the most rushed ending to a movie that I have ever seen as they tried to tie off everything, which leads to my second-to-last point….
#8: Plot Holes, Plot Holes, Plot Holes
There are so many of these that I lost track of them, but here are the two biggest ones:
1). Why can only Damon see Rafael? In the beginning of the movie where we get the massive exposition dump about what the movie will be about, Rafael is told that she will get to go to Earth as a human, which implies that she should be a flesh and blood person. However, when she gets there, she’s pretty much Damon’s really annoying imaginary friend. No one else can see her and when he talks to her, bystanders probably think he has some mental disorder such as schizophrenia.
The writers nerfed a potential plot line by not making her flesh and blood, as well. There could’ve been so much more of a plot and conflict if everyone could see Rafael, especially Damon’s wife. They’re already going through marriage problems, so if she had been able to see Damon hanging out with Rafael all of a sudden, she could’ve become jealous and that could’ve sped up Damon’s eventual submission to God as he sees that he has lost everything.
2). At the end of the movie, Damon’s wife comes racing into the courtroom where the city council is being held to discuss allegations of corruption and she magically has the proof that shows that the council is corrupt (which is how one of the plots is hastily tied off in the conclusion). However, she says she got it from a hacker, which raises the questions “Why is this being taken seriously?” and “Why isn’t she or her hacker buddy in jail?” After all, hacking into government files is a federal crime, punishable by several months to several years in prison depending on what you did, and the actual proof that you would need to back the claims made by the hacker would be astronomical since they could be making up anything. It would’ve been better if they had had a mole in the council than just hacking into the files.
#9: Surrender to What?
Throughout the movie, Rafael is constantly telling Damon to just surrender. Because it’s a “Christian” movie, it’s implied that she means that he needs to surrender to God but because that’s never really stated clearly, I see this whole thing as a big issue with the movie. If someone is telling you to surrender, the logical next question should be, “To whom/to what?” and the question after that should be, “But why should I surrender to that?” Answering that question with “You need to have faith,” isn’t a viable answer. It then leads to the question, “Faith in what?” and if you can’t answer that, I’m not going to listen to you. However, Damon seems to be an idiot and never asks any of those questions and when he does ask the very good question that many people struggle with of “Why does God allow bad things?” the angel doesn’t really give much of an answer. She just continues telling him to surrender because God loves him. Eventually, he seems to think that that’s enough and does surrender to God, but we still don’t really know why. The only reason I can figure that he did it was because the plot needed him to and after he does that, his life automatically gets better.
I see this as a problem not just from a story-writer’s perspective, but also from the perspective of a young person who is still on the road to faith in Christ after years of hearing people in the church tell others to “Just have faith; things will get better if you just have faith.” I see this as a dangerous precedent to set since if you don’t actually know what you have faith in, then how can you defend it? How do you know that what you have faith in isn’t just a scam? I can have faith that the guy with the Indian accent on the other line of the phone is actually from Microsoft, but the moment I realize that I’ve just lost $10,000, that faith is gone.
The type of faith exemplified in this movie is blind faith, which is the type of faith that leads many to deconstruct their Christianity. While this idea that if you just have faith everything will get better is nice, it isn’t reality. You can have faith and still struggle a lot with all sorts of things. If you sell people this idea, don’t be surprised when they decide to leave Christianity the moment they feel that it isn’t working. A better message to send is that while faith in God can help you, you need to meet God halfway. Learn what it is you believe in and work towards bettering yourself along the way. It might not be as flowery a message, but it’s one that is more in tune with reality.
#10: Ripping Off Other Stories
This movie is basically a rip-off of It’s a Wonderful Life, but without any of the soul or charm of the original movie. After all, it takes the depressed, mentally unstable character and fixes him with an angel sent from God who needs to get his or – in this case – her wings. Once again, Christian or faith-based writers need to create their own stories instead of trying to rip off stories that already worked. In school, we’re taught to avoid plagiarism at all costs, not only because we need to be original, but also because it can come with legal ramifications. Christian writers have yet to learn that lesson, and it’s a sad mistake.
Conclusion
The main question that’s constantly lost and never answered in this movie is: “How can a good God allow bad things to happen, especially to good people?” This is a question that’s asked by many people, Christian, deist, agnostic, and atheist alike and now I’m asking it in the form of, “How can a good God allow this movie to exist?” It’s truly an unforgettable movie because it makes you want to vomit out of pure cringe into your popcorn-bowl.
Take your money elsewhere. This movie is crap.
Until next time,
M.J.
The Tanuki Corner 
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