 March
2007
This month's reviews/features:
The Last Sin Eater
What’s a Sin Eater?
I must admit that the title of this movie didn’t sound very
enticing, and the theater previews didn’t make me any more
enthusiastic. In fact, I had no sense that The Last Sin Eater
was any kind of Christian movie at all until I heard a radio
announcement and then read a review on
Plugged In Online.
That changed everything. Sin Eater is well worth seeing, and
we need to support it and movies like it.
Based on a novel by Christian author Francine Rivers, The
Last Sin Eater is set in Appalachia in the 1800s. A colony
of Welsh immigrants has taken up residence in an Appalachian valley,
bringing their pagan-influenced beliefs with them. The settlers
create a tradition of selecting by lottery a person to bear the
villagers’ sins. When someone dies, this “sin eater” takes the sins
of the deceased upon himself in a kind of purification rite. That
means, though, that the sin eater cannot lead a normal life; he
cannot be directly seen by anyone and must live by himself in the
forest. As the story begins, we meet the young Cadi, a girl of 10 or
11, who is obsessed with guilt about the accidental death of her
younger sister several years previously. Cadi has a particularly
difficult relationship with her mother, who appears to blame her for
the sister’s death. When her grandmother dies, the plucky Cadi
pursues the sin eater to seek relief from her own supposed sins. In
so doing, she meets the Man of God, a stranger who is visiting the
valley. He changes Cadi’s life by starting her on a new path that
will ultimately lead to her own salvation – and that of many of the
townspeople. In one of the most inspirational lines of the film, the
Man of God tells Cadi that “only Jesus, the original sin eater, can
take away one’s sins.” It’s a goose-bump-inducing moment, to say the
least.
The Last Sin Eater was helmed by Christian director
Michael Landon Jr. and produced by Fox Faith. It has lots of
atmosphere and shuddery moments, along with some intriguing
mysteries to be solved. It has several excellent performances: Henry
Thomas plays the Man of God (he played the boy Elliot in E.T., The
Extraterrestrial); Louise Fletcher (Big Nurse in One Flew over the
Cuckoo’s Nest) is Miz Elda, Cadi’s elderly lady friend and mentor;
and Liana Liberato shines as Cadi. Best of all, the film is
wonderfully straightforward in its message: Christ is the answer.
While the picture has no sex scenes or swearing, it does have some
violence and is probably too intense for children. Go and see it and
tell your friends. We need more movies like this. Film Rating: PG-13
Rating: 3
stars
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Index of movie
reviews...
(2003 reviews through present)
Jay Maurer, a member of West Side Presbyterian Church, is
a long-term movie buff and former college teacher of The Film as
Literature. He has written movie reviews for The Good News
(West Side newsletter) since 2002.
If you have comments or questions
about the movie (or play) reviews, please contact Jay at
dramachap@msn.com.
Ratings are expressed in
increments of ¼ star.
A rating of 2 ½ stars or higher is meant to be a recommendation.
1 star: poor
2 stars: minimally satisfactory
3 stars: quite good
4 stars: superb
Criteria for determining the ratings:
- Reflection, either explicit or implicit, of Christian values,
including suitability of language and lack of gratuitous violence
- Quality of the acting
- Originality
- Unity of the entire picture
- Substance, or in the words of C.S. Lewis, weight
Other Christian movie review Web sites:
Plugged In Online
ChristianityTodayMovies.com
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