‘Elijah Peel’ Review: Faith-Based Films Are Still Shackled By Inspirational Formula
(REVIEW) Faith-based films are in a time of fascinating transition.
Shows like “The Chosen” and “House of David” are giving Christian films and filmmakers a mainstream respect that they’ve never really had before. At the same time, the faith-based audience is shifting to be more male-centric and political. (Bringing with it a desire for more “PG-13” and less “PG” content).
Faith-based studios are pushing themselves to stay within the genre’s inspirational formula while creating increasingly high-quality films. The challenge is figuring out how to embrace this shift without alienating their core audience. “Elijah Peel” showcases a lot of those industry struggles.
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Inspired by a true story, “Elijah Peel” follows a world-famous rock musician whose life of success and addiction comes crashing down after suffering a life-threatening heart attack. Forced to step away from the spotlight, Elijah begins an unexpected journey toward healing when he meets a remarkable young girl named Jessica whose unwavering faith challenges everything he thought he knew.
Her joy, wisdom and simple trust in God slowly begin breaking through years of pain, pride and broken relationships, leading Elijah toward reconciliation, renewed purpose, and faith.
The film, however, follows a very familiar formula of the sinful man who finds redemption, yet it tries to embrace some better filmmaking and a grittier edge. At the same time, it’s so wedded to the formula that it is no longer engaging, and its message is no longer worthwhile.
“Elijah Peel” mostly avoids the boredom that accompanies many of the films that rely so heavily on a formula — particularly faith-based ones. It keeps some of the more predictable moments short, and peppers the dialogue with lots of banter and wit to make the cliches go down easier.
No, there aren’t any twists in the “jaded atheist is reformed by hopeful Christian child cancer patient” relationship. But the chemistry and verbal sparring between the two is genuinely charming. Yes, we’ve seen the burnt-out rock star hitting rock bottom more times than we can count. But there’s a real attempt to shoot many of the scenes–particularly the “crash and burn” ones – with some rare intensity.
Peel has his “come to Jesus moment” early in the story, so we get to focus much more on the recovery than going through the motions of all his resistance before his inevitable conversion. The actors give their all to their performances, bringing real humanity even to cliched lines most of the time.
The film still wears the formula more like a straitjacket than sits on it like a sturdy foundation. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the faith-based film inspirational drama formula — or any genre formula. It all depends on how they’re used. Good faith-based films like “The Last Rodeo” and “I Can Only Imagine 2”, as well as good films in other genres like “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” (for the superhero genre) and “Weapons” (for horror), use formulas like foundations and anchors to organize what comes in between.
“Elijah Peel,” by contrast, rarely uses its base formula to do anything in particular. Rather, it uses it to move on to the next step in the formula. The crash out. The cute relationship. The recovery. The inevitable backslide.
It’s rare that any of these things are explored in depth. Sure, it’s a funny joke that Elijah purposefully works hard to make sure he picks a matronly Christian black woman to be his nurse rather than all the young, attractive nurses lining up for the job. And the nurse films her character’s role well. But she never does anything but check boxes in the “tough but kind black Christian woman” Hollywood clichés.
This formula's rigidity becomes especially obvious in the ways it works against the story it’s telling. Faith-based films have often struggled with telling stories about redemption from sin when they want to keep the movie family-friendly. Elijah Peel tries to push boundaries where it can (the film is PG-13), showing Elijah in a drug stupor with a drugged-out woman in tow, and having Jessica refer to him as having “too many women”. But these elements can only explore things so far, so most things are suggested rather than unpacked thoroughly.
The instigation for his backslide (which barely is a backslide at all) is a contrived misunderstanding, because they can’t commit to an actual backslide into sin despite having a message all about redemption and second chances.
“Elijah Peel” showcases many of the ways the faith-based genre has grown over the past 20 years. It also shows why its own formula expectations are often the biggest obstacles to it achieving its full potential. If the filmmakers could consistently find a way to manage the balance between the formula its fans expect and the stories they want to tell, the genre would go a long way to fulfilling its ambitions
“Elijah Peel” is in theaters now.
Joseph Holmes is an award-nominated filmmaker and culture critic living in New York. He is co-host of the podcast “The Overthinkers” and its companion website theoverthinkersjournal.world, where he discusses art, culture and faith with his fellow overthinkers. His other work and contact info can be found at josephholmesstudios.com.