MAWKISH sentiment meets intense spirituality in this well-intentioned and solidly acted but strangely condescending and repetitive drama from second-time British director Stuart Hazeldine (Exam).
It’s based on the 2007 best-selling and somewhat controversial book by William P Young and centres on Mack Phillips (Sam Worthington), a happily married father-of-three whose life is shattered and religious faith strongly tested when, during a family camping trip, his youngest daughter Missy (Amelie Eve) is abducted and murdered.
Depressed and unable to truly move on from this tragedy, and becoming ever-distant from his loving wife Nan (Radha Mitchell), Mack receives a letter on his doorstep that appears to be from God himself inviting Mack to “The Shack” where his daughter died.
Although he’s understandable doubtful, he decides to go along, if nothing else to try and come to terms with what happened. But once there he is greeted with the Holy Trinity manifested into recognisable human form: Papa (Octavia Spencer), Jesus (Avraham Aviv Alush) and Sarayu (Sumire Matsubara) – all there to help him find inner peace and get on with his life.
There’s no doubting the noble intentions and good heart that underpins Hazeldine’s drama. But goodwill only gets you so far and, after an intriguing set-up, it becomes a fairly punishing and condescending lecture of an experience that ironically belittles an audience that wouldn’t already be on board with its ideas of faith and love of a higher power above all else. It’s pure, rather bland preaching-to-the-choir cinema.
We see Mack go on his very personal but supposedly universal spiritual journey, a kind of step-by-step guide to individual enlightenment through the motions that include him walking on water with Jesus, tending to an overgrown garden with Sarayu (representative of the spirit in this case) and breaking bread with them and Papa (his murdered daughter’s nickname for God) around the dinner table.
The film’s central question is a big one: if there’s a God then why is there so much suffering in the world?
Furthermore, if he (or she) is so good and loving then how could they possibly have allowed Mack’s innocent child to be killed?
It’s a query too big for any one film to answer and while there’s a certain boldness in how The Shack lays it all out on the table by visualising the thing that many other films about Christianity wouldn’t dare show, its relentless sermonising, forced catharsis and shallow philosophy makes it hard work indeed.
TWO STARS
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