Who doesn't love a self-satisfied, low budget movie that moves along at glacial speed?

10-year-old Appalachian girl Cadi (Liana Liberato) is consumed with guilt over the death of her sister. The locals are all pagans who believe that a local man "The Sin Eater" has the ability to consume the sins of the dead so they may rest in peace. Cadi decides she'd like to have her sins eaten while she's alive. When a "Man of God", yes that's the character's name, comes proclaiming that Jesus Christ has already died for her sins and she has the redemption she's been searching for, things hit the theological fan. Well, actually they don't, they should but they don't. In a clever twist on traditional storytelling, this film avoids any interesting conflicts or drama and replaces them with monotonous flashbacks, stilted dialog and distracting subplots.

The end of the film is completely consumed by a remarkably horrid tangent which concentrates on the slaughter of Native Americans at the hands of seething whites. The Native Americans are laughing, enjoying their lovely existence, everyone is happy and the birds are chirping. A bunch of squinty-eyed whites show up on the scene and launch into a brutal holocaust against the peace loving Indians the moment one of them looks at them funny - you know, just it happened in the real life. The slaughter portion of the film is shoehorned in such a clumsy way, it seems like another movie was edited to the end by accident.

The film's writer/director has created a film that wobbles through its two hour running time and is troubled by bad writing, acting, direction, scoring and special effects. There is no part of the production that works. Nothing good made it to the screen. Do yourself the favor, skip this one.


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Labels: Christian film, film, Michael Landon Jr, movie review