The Oath

I've never took it upon myself to write a movie review until after seeing this film. I didn't even have an account on imdb and made one just to write this.

The trailer and the little messages by the director (and main character) before and after the film seem to have nothing to do with the movie. In his messages he is talking about how the film is about the book of mormon love, peace, christ, and that it can change peoples lives. So that's what I expected when I sat down in the theatre.

Instead, I was utterly disappointed and confused. The show was not about christ and barely mentioned things from the book of mormon. It was a strange love story with a lot of strange components. Like neither the way they kept switching from whatever ancient language and english made no sense, and I don't know why the girl was speaking broken english at first (which the actress did pretty bad at).

Also so many scenes seemed to just be the director/main character trying to show off his muscles. Why is he curling the golden plated and the camera zoomed in on his biceps? Why was there a random part of him doing pull ups on a tree? Very weird.

Just everything about this movie was horrendous, it felt like watching a roughy draft/failed project.

I have followed the production process of this film for over a decade. I know the true story it is based loosely from. I bought tickets early and brought friends. We drove nearly 2 hours on opening night to see it in an empty theater. And then I was frustrated with so many things it is hard to say what were the good parts, because even the good stuff was so overdone it took away from the story.

First of all, I don't like author opinions at the beginning. Let me make up my own mind if I think it is good and worthy of praise. From there, the story started far to slow. Nothing to grab your attention. Not enough dialogue to know anything about it. Just leave off the captions all together if they are only used every once in a while. It's not even a recognizable language. There's no need. If this film was meant to tie a story to the Bible, it missed the mark.

There was no character development. Who was Moroni? The backstory of two fueding brothers thousands of years before was referred to several times, but that tells us nothing of the main character. There could have been flashbacks to battle scenes, his earlier family, anything. The woman he meets, who is she and why is she running? She got hit 1 time, but wasn't there more reasons for running away? The girl's sister, what was her name? In fact, you learn almost no one's name but king Aaron, who has a terrible accent that changes constantly. Was he a nephite? How did he become king? What's his problem with Moroni? If king Aaron was hunting Moroni before the girl escaped, there was no way of knowing it.

There was no real plot development either. Was this an oath to his forefathers, to a woman, what? The story made no sense. There was no passing of time or place. I couldn't tell the hunting party was gone more than a few weeks until a pregnant character appeared. No night and day, no seasons, no campsights, no change in scenery the whole time. If Moroni was hiding, why didn't he get further away once he met the girl. If she found him, others would.

There were too many similar scenes, someone sleeping, someone thinking, someone walking, etc. Almost no action or acting. Too many tight closeups. I don't even remember seeing King Aaron at full length the whole time, or the whole hunting party, which appeared to grow and shrink. There were too many scenes with sunlight over Moroni's head. That should be used sparingly. Too many times the music swelled with feeling but I didn't see why. It felt forced. The end was anticlimactic for me. I was relieved it was over.

I left very disappointed and a bit embarrassed I had publicly shared my excitement toward this film.

Someone in the process should have been more honest with the creator and reigned in his enthusiasm for the project until it could have been a better end product.

I really want a good film adaptation of the Book of Mormon. I REALLY want to see one. Because this film is... not that.

On a technical level it's not terrible. I mean, the cinematography, blocking, and editing usually make things more confusing. And a lot of the visual effects are things I recognized as nearly-unmodified stock assets from After Effects. But moment to moment it doesn't look bad.

It's clear Darin thought he was making a powerful movie. After all, it wears its influences on its sleeve (especially the ending, ripping off Braveheart and Gladiator back to back). SO many slow shots of Darin staring wistfully into the sunset.

But everything just feels a little too, well, ego driven. The whole story and everything in it only exists to make the main character look like a chad. And, like, freedom stuff.

Ultimately, for all the times the main character mentions God or Jesus Christ, the movie feels strangely devoid of any real spirituality. It's never clear what "the oath" is meant to refer to, or what the plates mean to him, or how he is in any way a prophet. He's just... a guy with big arms and massive main-character syndrome.

The Book of Mormon deserves so much better than this.

The Room. Samurai Cop. The Oath. These three films stand in a class of their own.

No matter which way you look at this, it's very amateur. Right off the bat, it was obvious the editing was very shoddy, and there is hideously overdone color correction throughout the entire thing. Besides some drone footage, the camera work is very bland, and there is a frustrating lack of deep focus shots, leaving any scenery just a blur in the background. The worst thing is it's irredeemably boring. Almost nothing happens, and scene to scene things are repetitive. The camera doesn't do anything interesting, and neither do the characters. The writing is as weak as the editing. It was very forced and cringey, and more than once I groaned audibly from something akin to physical pain. Lastly, and I mean no offense to the guy, but I was getting tired of seeing Darin Scott's face; he just doesn't have the charisma to justify that amount of screen time (or the number of thirst traps he wrote in for himself...).

I'm happy that the guy got to make his movie in the exact same way I'm happy for Tommy Wiseau.

Like many, I backed this film and would love to see a Book of Mormon story brought to the big screen with broad appeal. I appreciate the director's efforts, and I know he was faced with serious obstacles in delivering this film. That being said, the script really needed some work.

I'll start with a few positives. The costume design, soundtrack, and filming location were all beautiful. That's why the three stars. The cinematography was fine, but there were too many tight shots. At times I had no idea what characters were looking at and kept hoping for a wide shot to give me context.

Unfortunately, one can't recommend a film based on music and visuals. Foremost, I first look for a compelling plot. I would've watched this had it been filmed on an iPhone and accompanied with stock music, if only the characters and plot had real substance.

The Book of Mormon explains next to nothing about this chapter in Moroni's life. But it does seem to be a sad and solitary time for Moroni. For a man who thinks he could die at any moment ("I wander whithersoever I can for the safety of mine own life" Moroni 1:3.), a romance was an odd plot to pick. I suppose it could've worked if the characters were fleshed out more. Yes, Moroni was physically alone, but why did he feel alone? What were his flaws, desires, or challenges? These things were either not clear or poorly conveyed, which leaves the character falling flat.

In short, the lackluster characters, shallow plot, some awkward dialogue, and even a couple uncomfortable scenes made me want to walk out of the theater. Maybe it was just me; the room was half full... Though I did count 3 different people checking the time during the movie.