Jesus Christ: Vampire Hunter

How can you see a title like “Jesus Christ: Vampire Hunter” and NOT have a slight urge to watch it out of simple morbid curiosity? Especially when it’s available for instant viewing on Netflix and it won’t cost you a dime, which is good because I wouldn’t have paid that dime. This is an incredibly stupid movie. The writing, acting, production work and everything else is all done very badly. I also had a passing urge to watch something else about half a dozen times over the 85 minute duration of the film. However, it is NOT “The Underground Comedy Movie”. It isn’t trying to be offensive or push the envelope, though I guess if you are VERY conservative and religious you might find it blasphemous.

This is one of those movies that knows how bad it is and revels in it. It looks likes something that a group of friends with a couple of cameras and little to no film-making skills threw together in a weekend. It can basically be summed up as Jesus serving as the protagonist of a really bad action movie, fighting vampires (who apparently aren’t bothered by sunlight) that prey on lesbians. Yes, that’s right. Jesus saves the lesbians. Don’t pay money for this, but if you’ve got about and hour and a half to kill and occasionally like movies that are proud of how bad they are, this one has got you covered. The best scene was Jesus fighting the atheists.

Rating: 2 Stars

The Case For Christ

I’ll lead with the best I have to say about this film. I believe this is one of the best and strongest representations of the modern Christian argument for legitimacy. If you find the proof or justification in this that you were hoping for, I congratulate you. You can also take solace in the fact that many others have and will feel the same as you do about this production. That said…

The film-making: A classic cliched amateur documentary that anyone can pull off these days with a couple cameras, a green screen, iMovie, willing participants and a love of “Unsolved Mysteries” reruns. Topped off by the classic feel-good ending as the symbolic cherry on top. Move over, Scorsese.

The content: Everything presented in this film is contingent on the idea, which they try to establish first thing out of the box, that the biblical authors, and particularly the authors of the biblical gospels, were unbiased and diligent historians. You have to buy in to this claim for the rest of the conclusions drawn in this film to have any credibility. For me, a My Cousin Vinny scene about bricks and playing cards comes to mind. The word “evidence” is thrown around pretty loosely here once they get rolling. Your belief is also further solicited by the idea that your being led through this by not only a former skeptic but a former atheist. At its core, this is the classic idea that the bible proves everything in the bible and work backward from that. Tie God inseparably to the Bible. If you can prove Jesus existed and that people believed he was the messiah, son of God, etc then he WAS the messiah, son of God, etc. And above all… trust us… really.

Conclusion: Please. I genuinely invite you to draw your own and I send you on your way with my sincere blessing.

If you want mine, it is this. That religion, in my opinion, often has more do do with love and trust for the people from which you acquire it or the fact that it may have filled the role of the philosophy used to guide you back from the brink of a potentially more destructive life than it does with belief or God. Either that or the assumption that in a genuine search for God, or a higher power of some sort, that religion truly speaks for him or it. I don’t believe it does and this film did not convince me otherwise, whish I believe was the goal. But this is my opinion and, again, please draw your own.

Rating: 2 Stars