Contains spoilers.
This movie is about a boy who is part of a covenant community that is beginning to have doubts about the religion he was raised to believe in, and his experiences at a summer camp for other youths from that same community. The devil makes a cameo, though this time in the form of hallucinations brought on by mass hysteria, which was a result of the indoctrination of all of the people involved. I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian church that had a lot in common with a covenant community and I am now agnostic...mostly because of the way that religious groups in general, and the one I belonged to in particular, indoctrinate their younger members.
A lot from this movie made my skin crawl and brought back a lot of memories, but it wasn't really scary, at least not in a way that is usually associated with horror movies. For me it was a reminder of the evils of religion, of the way religious groups tend to brainwash themselves and anyone they can get their hands on. While I never saw anything as extreme as what was portrayed in this movie, I did hear a lot of the same kind of nonsense about sin and the devil and all of that. Guilt seems to be the predominant feeling elicited in many as a result of partaking of religion (especially Catholicism), and it took me a long time to get over the guilt I felt not only for wanting to disassociate myself from the religious group I was affiliated with, but also for not wanting to be considered a Christian.
This movie accurately portrays the ways in which young people are treated while being indoctrinated. The summer camp, the school they attend, the picnics and gatherings they enjoyed as children, all are part of a system designed to tie a person to a group of people and to ensure that they all adhere to a rigid code of "morality". While this movie seems to be denouncing this type of community it doesn't really do so as strongly as it probably should have.
You might notice that in this review I didn't really go into the plot of the movie all that much; the reason is that the plot is rather bland and uninteresting. It has its moments, but in the end it just wasn't that engaging. The only part of the movie I enjoyed was seeing a particularly obnoxious camp counselor getting his clock cleaned. The obnoxious priest did not really get what he deserved, which was to be publicly discredited, though he did end up in a coma. Also, the main character is portrayed as being disturbed; this movie would have been much better if he had realized that his beliefs were destroying him and renounced them. His speech when refusing to take the Eucharist at the end was more...lame (for lack of a better word) than moving or thought provoking.
While I am all for something different, this movie made me nostalgic for more conventional horror fare. I'd much rather see a bunch of people killed by a ubiquitous knife-wielding psycho, and women randomly taking off their clothes for no apparent reason, than watch a movie that does a rather poor job of tackling a serious issue.
This movie is about a boy who is part of a covenant community that is beginning to have doubts about the religion he was raised to believe in, and his experiences at a summer camp for other youths from that same community. The devil makes a cameo, though this time in the form of hallucinations brought on by mass hysteria, which was a result of the indoctrination of all of the people involved. I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian church that had a lot in common with a covenant community and I am now agnostic...mostly because of the way that religious groups in general, and the one I belonged to in particular, indoctrinate their younger members.
A lot from this movie made my skin crawl and brought back a lot of memories, but it wasn't really scary, at least not in a way that is usually associated with horror movies. For me it was a reminder of the evils of religion, of the way religious groups tend to brainwash themselves and anyone they can get their hands on. While I never saw anything as extreme as what was portrayed in this movie, I did hear a lot of the same kind of nonsense about sin and the devil and all of that. Guilt seems to be the predominant feeling elicited in many as a result of partaking of religion (especially Catholicism), and it took me a long time to get over the guilt I felt not only for wanting to disassociate myself from the religious group I was affiliated with, but also for not wanting to be considered a Christian.
This movie accurately portrays the ways in which young people are treated while being indoctrinated. The summer camp, the school they attend, the picnics and gatherings they enjoyed as children, all are part of a system designed to tie a person to a group of people and to ensure that they all adhere to a rigid code of "morality". While this movie seems to be denouncing this type of community it doesn't really do so as strongly as it probably should have.
You might notice that in this review I didn't really go into the plot of the movie all that much; the reason is that the plot is rather bland and uninteresting. It has its moments, but in the end it just wasn't that engaging. The only part of the movie I enjoyed was seeing a particularly obnoxious camp counselor getting his clock cleaned. The obnoxious priest did not really get what he deserved, which was to be publicly discredited, though he did end up in a coma. Also, the main character is portrayed as being disturbed; this movie would have been much better if he had realized that his beliefs were destroying him and renounced them. His speech when refusing to take the Eucharist at the end was more...lame (for lack of a better word) than moving or thought provoking.
While I am all for something different, this movie made me nostalgic for more conventional horror fare. I'd much rather see a bunch of people killed by a ubiquitous knife-wielding psycho, and women randomly taking off their clothes for no apparent reason, than watch a movie that does a rather poor job of tackling a serious issue.