Review of Heaven Is for Real (2014) by 180429 H — 30 May 2015

The movie "Heaven is for Real" is a Christian Drama about a pastor and his son who after a near death experience sees heaven. The movie tackles some interesting topics and questions, such as if heaven were real, would we be scared? It gave many different Christian perspectives on this question. We got to see how great lose shapes a person's faith in God and faith in Heaven. Furthermore, the movie gave a great insight in the power of faith. The story was set in an American small town where the majority of the population was Christian. When the pastor's son was in the hospital, we got to see many many people coming together in prayer for the little boy. It was fascinating and interesting to see the pastor's family struggle through because of their strong faith and emerge victorious because of the same faith. Overall, it was very interesting to see how much faith people had in their religion and it's effect on their thought and actions.

While this movie hit many interesting topics, it was sometimes boring and felt like it had no direction. As a film, it lacked a solid conflict and climax. Instead, it relied on warm family moments and everyone reacting awestruck to the son's revelations on Heaven. There were also many scenes that were completely unnecessary to the story and felt like their only reason was to prove something of the Christian faith. One of these scenes is when the pastor goes to a phycologist, who happened to be atheist, to talk about his son's visit to heaven. Not only was the phycologist painted in a slightly antagonistic light, their conversation had very little to do with the story. Most of the scene was them arguing about their faiths and the pastor questioning why she was afraid of heaven. He then goes to leave, but stops in front of the door to say one last profound argument that, to me, made very little sense.

Overall, the movie was a hit on tackling some interesting questions on heaven and then was a miss on some other things. While there were heartwarming moments and moments that made me stop and think, there were many other moments that felt almost like the movie was trying to convert me to Christianity. If the movie was targeted towards a Christian audience, it was a great movie showing strong faith and questions that were deep and thought provoking. If this movie was targeted towards a general audience, it still managed to be thought provoking but felt like it was trying to prove something about Christianity. The movie gave a deep insight on faith but fails to really be called a good film because of it's lack of direction and unnecessary scenes.