On Religion: Angel Studios Sparks Debate With Scary Faith Film
(ANALYSIS) During the rituals of prayers and stories one night, Angel Studios co-founder Jeffrey Harmon's young son asked: "Dad, what does the other side of your eyeballs look like? ... Can I pull them out and look at them?”
The answer was “No.” But this exchange was a reminder that kids tend to have “wild ideas” in their heads, said Harmon in a video chat with Angel Guild members who crowdfund the studio's efforts to produce and distribute movies and cable shows.
The eyeball question surfaced during a discussion of “SKETCH,” a new movie from the values-driven studio focusing on a widower and his children who are wrestling with grief.
The artsy daughter, Amber, starts drawing vivid monsters, which — after her notebook falls into a mysterious pond — come to life and terrorize the community.
The “Evil Amber” character, a violent zombie shrouded in black, is "legit scary,” admitted Harmon.
One Angel Guild member said: “This movie is demonic. I pulled my family out within 10 minutes.”
Others shared concerns about demons, and Harmon said “dozens and dozens and dozens” said the movie needed a PG-13 rating because of language and horror issues.
One supporter bluntly asked if Angel is still a “Christian-based platform.” Harmon stressed that its motto is that it seeks to “amplify light,” but that also means "demons are real" and believers must defeat them.
“If you think Angel is not going to show demons, or show scary images or scary monsters, we just may not be the home for your movie viewing,” he explained.
Harmon also offered this quotation often attributed to Christian apologist G.K. Chesterton: “Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”
While “SKETCH” team members have called it “Jurassic Park” meets “Inside Out,” the dark-humor flick also contains nods to Richard Donner's “The Goonies,” Alfred Hitchcock's “Psycho” and the faith-versus-aliens flick “Signs” by M. Night Shyamalan. Some scenes resemble “Godzilla” movies, only created by a child with crayons and Sharpie pens.
Writer-director Seth Worley — the son of a Southern Baptist minister — has spent years working in Nashville on media projects linked to faith and entertainment. In a promotional video, he explained that his first feature film grew out of an incident in his childhood, when his sister drew a picture that was "comically violent," and some people became concerned. However, a school counselor commended her for putting her feelings into drawings rather than trying to hide them.
Then his own daughter produced some drawings that he found “inventively violent.”
At that moment, Worley said he decided: “You can believe two things. You can believe that art is a safe place for violence AND that your daughter's a serial killer and it's somehow your fault. That tension felt really writeable to me.”
“SKETCH” drew positive reviews at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. The Hollywood Reporter called it “audaciously gonzo” and “dazzlingly inventive” — high praise for a low-budget offering from a small studio backed by flocks of religious believers.
The key is that Worley never “meant for this to be a faith-based film or something like that,” said co-producer Steve Taylor, a veteran rock singer who teaches cinematic arts at Lipscomb University in Nashville. “This was going to be a family film, a film about a family dealing with serious issues linked to death and grief. That was the big idea.”
Meanwhile, mainstream Hollywood is being rocked by new forms of technology — streaming channels, AI and much more. Movies, he noted, “cost way too much, and there is no reason for that.”
If small, alternative studios can find talented storytellers, it will be possible to offer quality alternatives in the marketplace.
“This movie asks if children can be trusted to handle death and grief or should we try to shelter them from that,” said Taylor, reached by telephone. “Some people — the new term is 'snowplow parents’ — try to clear everything out of the way for their children. That's an issue for Christian families and lots of other people. “But scary things happen in life. We have to be honest with children about that.”
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Terry Mattingly is Senior Fellow on Communications and Culture at Saint Constantine College in Houston. He lives in Elizabethton, Tennessee, and writes Rational Sheep, a Substack newsletter on faith and mass media.