God's Not Dead: A Light in Darkness

Poorly directed. The actors seem fine, maybe a little stiff, but the director seemed very confused.

Odd subplots that don't need to be in there. Scenes and characters that don't add anything. Boring and pointless conversations that don't lead anywhere.

If the goal was to be as religiously vague as possible then...well done.

They were trying to be as inclusive as possible to not scare off potential non-Christian viewers and I guess the way that happens is they decide to take all genuine conflict out of the story and you end up with a boring lump that's equivalent to opening a random page in the Bible and trying to find some masterful meaning out of an incomplete thought.

Whatever. And the ending is atrocious

Despite all the odds, this film actually came out decent. Of course it is still heavy-handed with its ideas that the country disproportionately hates Christians and Christianity, there is still an underlying message of "We as a nation are not talking to each other as we should. We are screaming and not listening to other peoples' views". The movie does undercut its own message by featuring news pundits who espouse the typical "Liberals don't listen to Christians" but this is supplemented by several scenes where actual conversations, however brief, are had between these so-called liberals (read: atheists) and Christians. What the film does best is open itself up to be called out for hypocrisy with its typical "Christians are being persecuted" and, instead of chanting the mantra to itself throughout the film, actually turns to face the accusations and defend its stance. The Lawyer (played by David Corbett) and Reverend Dave (played by David A.R. White) are the main example of this phenomenon, and David A.R. White's earnest convictions are matched by Corbett's charming, needling lawyer character. This is the first time that the film series ever actually takes the time to establish a dialogue between these two forces that the film itself claims are tearing this country apart, and that sort of self-awareness in a film genre that seems eager to play the victim card can not be understated.

I would not recommend this film as anything but for the curious, and I would dissuade everyone from watching this until they've seen the first two in order to truly appreciate the level of growth that this series experienced in its writing and storytelling.

Well worth going to see - but a little slow and more predictable than the previous movies for me. I imagine the hope is that the end was unpredictable for non-Christians who may have attended because of the previous 2. My daughter was moved so a 6/10 just because of that.

Michael Manson did a great job as a 1st time director.

The first few movies in the "God's Not Dead" franchise were so corny. The antagonists in the first few movies were stereotype atheists and borderline cartoon characters. GND3 actually seemingly had real characters that had real relatable issues and doubts about their faith. It actually tackles the problems with Christian victimology without being too heavy handed. v

The problem with this movie is the that it has too many unnecessary scenes. There are boring stretches of time that could have been cut out.

Even though it has some serious slow parts I give it points for attempting to tackle a different point of view than the originals.

Compared with the first two movies this one is way better in terms of story, acting and overall tone. Instead of having overtly atheist two-dimensional straw men as in the first two films, all of the characters both religious and non are drawn with some depth. And instead of the religious characters being unambiguously good and everyone being evil, both character types are given to actions both good and bad.

I can't say that this is a "good movie" in comparison to big budget titles, but within it's trilogy and within the genre it's a cut above the rest.

Full transparency; I am an atheist, but not a fallen Christian. I watch these movies to get a sense of what this segment of the Christian community is saying about people like me. And where in the first two movies I was laughing at the naive portrayals, this one was much more balanced.

In summary, It's pretty much a Hallmark movie, but with more overt religiousity. If you're into that, give it a go.