The Christian movie tropes in The Sobbing Stone are more or less par for the course in this cinematic genre: scientists who know nothing of the scientific method; atheists who don't really disbelieve but are only angry at God because of something that happened to them as children; music with zero subtlety; location scouting with dubious results (does the slope of Golgotha really have lush trees and mown grass?); and so on. Sample words put in the mouth of atheists: "Science has proven that no god exists." (Wrong: atheists maintain that there is no reliable evidence, not that there is proof.) Sample words put in mouth of scientists: "There's no explanation for it; not even a theory." (In science a theory IS an explanation, one with firm evidentiary support). Sample scientific method: When a group of psychic researchers (I'm not sure the writer realized that is what you would label the Ghostbusters) are given the task for figuring out why the title stone is making noises, their first decision is "the professor says the sounds come randomly, so no sense recording times when sounds are observed." Right: deliberately avoid gathering data. Sample line: "Have you ever murdered someone?" Only in a Christian movie would the hearer of that line do anything but back away slowly, then turn and bolt.
The story, though conceptually a little clever, is particularly unsavory. It drives home the thesis that human beings are worthless, and that nobody, however well intentioned they may be, would have supported the saviour in his time of trial.
As a movie, it fails most fundamentally because its mystery's solution is detectable within minutes of the film's opening. Much of the acting is silly at best when it is not just embarrassing. The music seems to have been composed in whole notes entirely on the bottom octave of a synthesizer. The characters are utterly unlikeable (which I supposed matches the basic premise). And the camera work is just plain ugly to behold. There were numerous laugh-out-loud moments (like when one researcher speculates from the sounds of echoes around footsteps that it must have happened at night??) but most of the film is painful to watch due to its gross misrepresentation of, well, the quality of humanity. Not recommended to those who would watch it ironically; it will probably be eaten up by its target audience, if their cinematic expectations take an extreme backseat to their theological views.
