hemeke-83571

You'd think a movie about a totalitarian government repressing religion would feature references to reviled places like China, Soviet Russia or the DDR. You'd be wrong. Instead, the protagonists are "oppressed" by the most benign, milquetoast, unthreatening government I've ever seen in media or real life. English is the world language, most likely because this movie was made for American Christians and learning a "scary" language like Russian or Chinese would be too much work. Christianity is apparently illegal, yet information is freely available on Wikipedia. All the Christians in this movie live their life in the open, in relative wealth, peace and comfort, and never even bother to hide their face, turn off phones and other possible tracking devices or use any kind of secrecy and/or common sense.

Being a Christian (no word about other religions, but I digress) is apparently classified as high treason and punishable by death, but there's no censorship, no visible repression, no dedicated teams to seek out and neutralize this so-called threat. The worst thing the protagonist' sister mentions about the new world order is that she now feels mildly uncomfortable seeing the police. If that's genuinely the worst thing the directors can come up with, while a fear of police brutality is a daily reality for millions of real-life Germans, their countrymen, then they must be the most sheltered, privileged people on this planet.

But that's the point: this movie is persecution porn by people who never had to face a smidge of actual persecution in their life. The directors have no experience organizing, or resisting police repression, or dealing with a spying and sabotaging government. It's a bunch of rich Christian influencers role-playing being oppressed, and failing spectacularly. That, aside from the bad acting, lacklustre worldbuilding, horrible pacing, etc, is what makes this movie a pain to watch.