Review of I'm Not Ashamed (2016) by Jacob D — 05 Feb 2017

And the quest for a great Christian movie continues! I'm Not Ashamed is a very controversial movie that had its trailer banned from YouTube for 11 months because of how tasteless it was. PureFlix, the company that made the movie, argued that the reason it was removed was because YouTube is anti-religious, which is just bollocks.

The family of the main character was also criticized for profiting off Rachel's private and personal diary. With all that drama behind the movie, I knew what I was getting myself into. I'm Not Ashamed follows the story of a highschool girl, Rachel, who's a Christian and wants to be good to everyone.

It also follows the events that lead to the Columbine school shooting. That's all you need to know about the plot to decide wheter you're going to watch the movie, or not. The most tasteless and exploitative thing about this movie is that it centers on just one victim, one Christian victim.

If you're going to make a movie about the shooting, you don't make it just about one victim and act like the other deaths weren't important. The main story of this movie is basically Rachel, her love triangle problem, her friends and becoming popular.

The Columbine shooting is just in the background and is constantly foreshadowed with some of the most eye-rolling and cringy dialogue. The killers, Eric and Dylan, are portrayed very stereotypically. There's literally a scene where Eric gets bullied and he says the line "I'm going to kill you" about maybe 20 minutes into the movie.

The movie is filled with that kind of a dialogue. The audience knows what's going to happen, you don't have to constantly remind us of that. The movie doesn't explore how they got the weapons, or how they planned everything out either.

It just shows them being angry at the school and playing violent video games. Yes, this is a movie that seems to blame video games for the incident. There's about 3 or 4 scenes where Eric and Dylan are playing FPS games and/or talking about how "it's going to be just like a videogame".

The movie's 104 minutes long and Eric and Dylan are in the movie for about 14 minutes. They're not developed as characters nor are they intimidating enough and they just come off as laughably stereotypical and boring.

The ending, when the shootout occurs, is very brief. There's one great scene, though. Rachel is sitting on the lawn with her friend and talking to him, and behind Rachel you can see Eric and Dylan, blurred, walking closely towards them.

I thought that was really well shot and sinister-looking. Then they shoot Rachel and her friend, and she says she still believes in God after being asked that by Eric and then they shoot her again, causing her death.

That's when they show us, just like in the very beginning, some news interviews and videos of the incident. Then comes Rachel's funeral and people putting flowers on her car and whatnot. The movie is so oriented on Rachel that it just forgets that other people died, too! Why is she more important? Because she was Christian? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying her death wasn't sad in the movie, it's just that only her death was sad in the movie.

Her death was also the only death shown handled with care. With the "school shooting" part of the movie done, let's talk about the rest. Rachel is shown as a very helpful, although somewhat gullible, and overall a very nice person that isn't perfect.

That's perhaps what I like about this movie the most. The teenagers aren't portrayed as a G/PG movie would portray them. You'll see them drinking, smoking, engaging in intercourse and whatnot.

The swearing is still not present, though. I can never take some of these teen movies seriously because of that. Teens swear, a lot. We all know that. We've all been there. So, when you make a movie that's about two highschoolers killing 12 and injuring 21 people in a school enviroment, why can't you also make them swear a bit? It's a minor negative, but it takes away from the realism of it because bullies use some insults that are just laughably cringy and not even something kids would say.

The movie is set in 1998, but they play dubstep music on parties. Again, a minor negative, but you if you're making a movie that's set in the past, you have to be dedicated to making it actually look and sound like it's really 1998.

The acting was alright, though Rachel's cousin and aunt were horrible and their delivering of lines was flat. There's, just like in any other PureFlix movie, a big montage of people praying/going to church with a generic christian rock song playing.

The love triangle that Rachel is locked in is laughable and, even if it is based on her diary, it doesn't feel like it could happen. I don't know what else to say about this movie. It's another PureFlix produced Christian movie that only some Christians would find enjoyment and inspiriation in.

The tragedy is handled without any care and the main story with Rachel is very cringy, cheesy and feels overly sentimental to be real. All in all, I can only recommend this movie to religious people, but I think even they will find this movie to be quite exploitative and tasteless.