Plot Summary
Blake Truman is a hockey star at his small school, Madison College, but he is an agnostic who doubts parts of the Bible, such as the Creation Account, because his mother lies in the hospital in a cancer coma. However, Kerry Wells, a journalism student whose adviser keeps pestering her about joining the New World order, has been assigned to write a human interest piece on the star hockey player, which forces them to have awkward conversations about their beliefs and stuff they’ve done in life. Kerry’s brother Marc, a spastic Physics major, also has his doubts about the Bible because he has trouble believing the literal Six-Day Creation theory. Nevertheless, when Kerry’s father (the local pastor) tells her to read a random verse at dinner time (beef casserole night), she gets an idea of how Marc can use Quantum Physics theories to prove the essential doctrine of the literal Six-Day Creation. Along the way, a whole bunch of other stuff happens, but you can see where this plot is obviously going.
Production Quality (2 points)
With $5 million spent on this glorified docu-drama, it’s no wonder the production was at least above average. Camera work and video quality are on par with what they need to be, even if there is some poor audio throughout. The soundtrack is fairly pedestrian, but sets, locations, and props are on industry standards. There is some cheesy animation in some parts, and the editing is very choppy and disjointed, but it was likely very difficult to handle this large amount of unrelated content. Overall, this production is fine, but there are plenty of other problems to discuss.
Plot and Storyline Quality (-1 points)
Where to begin? For one thing, it was very ill-advised to attempt to make this confusing conglomerate of scientific theories and message-pushing into a film. The movie begins with lengthy sports montages and awkward conversations that showcase a total lack of proper dialogue. This stilted dialogue causes the characters to be very mindless, and it goes without saying that this ‘story’ is extremely disorganized and schizophrenic in its presentation. Trying to bundle Christmas, sports, stupid college stuff, the cancer plot, and the Christian-needs-to-use-arguments-to-convert-skeptic-characters storyline all into one film is just cutting yourself off at the knees before you even start. Besides this, the “woe-is-us-we-have-first-world-persecution” complex that is evident throughout the film is grating and obnoxious. The characters ride a ridiculous string of coincidences to lead them to “solve” the non-essential doctrine of Young-Earth Creationism by using deceptive theories masked as fact to attempt to reconcile the alleged divide between science and the Bible. In doing so, a large portion of the movie is spent on quantum physics lectures that utilize flimsy comparisons and childish object lessons to drive home a questionable theory that does not need to be presented as scientific fact. If this wasn’t bad enough, the cast of characters is replete with strawman non-Christian characters that possess the most absurd and ridiculous worldview-pushing lines. It goes without saying that the predictable romantic and disease subplots run their expected course as they are padded with forced-humor filler scenes and useless flashbacks to things that just happened in the movie. It all crashes to a predictable yet head-scratching conclusion that does very little to accomplish its goals of converting more people.
Acting Quality (0 points)
Logan Bartholomew and Kelsey Sanders post very weak lead performances, and a majority of the acting is very very dry, empty, mindless, awkward, and forced. Line delivery is disjointed, and emotions are overly practiced. Humor is extremely forced and annoying. Overall, there is very little good to say about this disaster of a film.
Conclusion
The Genesis Code gets the honor of received a -1 X Factor Point just for being especially ridiculous. This is a lesson that it is better to shy away from movie titles involving the word “code” coupled with the name of a book of the Bible (or a Bible-ish concept like The Omega Code). Also, the important lesson that can be learned from this train wreck is that the God’s Not Dead-style of preaching to the choir and pretending to want to convert people with arguments is a dead end road. Movies like Genesis Code expose the deeper problem among most Christian circles: a lack of understanding about real people. People matter more than scientific theories, well-crafted arguments, or polished theology, no matter how true they may be. Thus, it is extremely important to give audiences real and relatable characters that have realistic and accessible lives, choices, and motivations. Until this happens on a consistent basis, Christian film (and Christian culture as a whole) will still be stuck in neutral.
Final Rating: 0 out of 10 points
Box Office Revolution 