How 'I Still Believe' Overcomes One of Christian Films' Biggest Problems
KJ Apa and Britt Robertson star as Christian singer Jeremy Camp and his college sweetheart and wife Melissa. Photo by Michael Kubei/ Lionsgate.
(REVIEW) One of the biggest critiques of Christian films is that they preach a “false Gospel.” Now, if you follow Christian films, you know they’re criticized for a lot of things, like lack of quality. I address many of these in my breakdown of Christian films for An Unexpected Journal. However, it’s the moral argument that has often been the most compelling.
Many people argue that because most Christian films show God fixing the protagonists’ problems when they pray, the films often come across as claiming that following God means he will solve all your problems. As others have noted, it’s probably overstating things to say that Christian films preach a false version of Christian faith. But it’s fair to say that Christian films often focus on one side of Christian experience at the expense of the equally valid one of the suffering believer who doesn’t get an answer to his or her prayer. Even Christian films that acknowledge this, like last year’s Breakthrough, don’t focus on it.
I Still Believe takes that critique head-on. Starring KJ Apa, Britt Robertson, Gary Sinise and Shania Twain, the movie tells the true story of Christian singer Jeremy Camp’s first wife and her ultimately fatal battle with cancer. Jeremy and Melissa meet and fall in love in college. When they discover she has terminal cancer, they decide to marry anyway and brave the storm together. Jeremy believes that God will bring a miracle, but when he doesn’t, Jeremy has to decide if he can still believe in a God who didn’t heal his wife.
The film topped the box office its opening weekend Mar. 11, raking in $9.5 million despite rising concerns of the novel coronavirus spread that surely kept many movie-goers home. It’s also the first faith-based film to show in IMAX theaters.
A lot of the strength of the film is simply in the story itself. You cannot tell a story like this without addressing deeply complex, nuanced and emotionally intense experiences and questions that make for a powerful movie experience. This grants catharsis and dignity to believers who have struggled to believe in God despite never getting an answer to their prayers and finally gives a Christian film that truly represents them. This additionally shows that God is even more worth glorifying since he is praiseworthy even in our suffering. Co-director Jon Erwin is very frank about how it’s this very fact that attracted him to the project:
“I think we forget so many times that there is a beauty, and a purpose, and a meaning in the difficult things we go through. And that sometimes God uses those things more than He uses the good things that happen to shape us, to mold us and to give us our voice.”
The film is clearly self-aware of the fact that it’s subverting Christian film tropes, and the moments where it leans into that are some of its strongest. When Melissa gets a miraculous healing, the films plays it like it’s the end of a typical Christian film (like Miracles From Heaven or last year’s Breakthrough) before we discover she’s sick again. Melissa explicitly talks about the fact that we need both kinds of stories: the kind where God heals, and the kind where he doesn’t. The film also subverts the usual emotional arc of Christian films that begin with conflict and end with joy, instead choosing to start out with joy and then slowly and relentlessly dialing up the grief until the climax.
The film is strong in other ways that many other Christian films are often weak in as well. The script is not overly preachy (except, perhaps, briefly at the very end), and the cinematography is gorgeous even by mainstream movie standards. The chemistry between Jeremy and Melissa is especially strong and they are easy to root for during their growing romance and slow, tragic end. The emotions of the story are intense, earnest and cathartic in all the ways you want from tearjerker young adult romance films, with the addition of the depth that faith brings.
A still image from the movie I Still Believe. Photo by Lionsgate.
Likewise, most of the flaws of I Still Believe are the same flaws you find in any young adult romance film. The dialogue is cheesy and the story predictable in the same way a Nicholas Sparks film adaptation is cheesy and predictable. The film always cuts to a montage or skips ahead a few years whenever Jeremy and Melissa aren’t in crisis, which means we don’t get to know them very deeply as a couple. Likewise, Jeremy’s grieving period is too short for us to feel the full impact of that important dark period where his faith is tested most. Still, the fact that it is only as flawed as comparable secular films will come as a relief to those who feel faith-based films are typically far worse than similar secular fare.
Ultimately, this is a happy step forward in Christian filmmaking to represent more fully the depth and variety of faithful religious experience. Hopefully it will be successful enough (in theaters and online streaming) that it will convince more faith-based filmmakers to follow that example.
The film will release Mar. 27 on VOD or video on demand.
Joseph Holmes is an award-nominated independent filmmaker and film critic living out of New York City. He runs a blog Overthinking Films where he discusses how films connect to philosophy, society, and culture.