It’s hard to rag on the Christian drama subgenre without coming across as crass or insensitive to other people’s beliefs, but that would be a lot easier to avoid were the movies in question not largely terrible.
While none of the faith-based favorites have ever come close to matching the mind-boggling success of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, which earned $612 million at the box office, plenty of them have still managed to turn a tidy little profit.
One recent example is The Shack, which brought in close to $100 million against a $20 million, despite reviews that could generously be described as less than stellar. Sam Worthington takes the lead role as a man spiraling into depression, who receives a mysterious letter pointing him in the direction of the titular abode in the middle of the Oregon nothingness.
Once there, he stumbles upon a trio of strangers who end up changing his life forever. Octavia Spencer, Radha Mitchell, Alice Braga and many more talented stars ensure the performances are nothing less than solid, it’s just the cloying and heavy-handed metaphors and allegory that splinters The Shack into a thousand pieces.
Subscribers are evidently ignoring the dire 21% Rotten Tomatoes score, though, seeing as The Shack has managed to sneak its way onto the Netflix most-watched list, as per FlixPatrol.
