Vengeance is Mine, Says the Lord

The filmmaker did a great job of drawing the viewer into

with the parents. You understand their grief and rage and frustration with the system. Even as a Christian, I've told my wife that if you're going to break the news to me that somebody has done something to one of our kids, make sure I'm out of state, because I'll tend to take revenge and deal with it later.

But it's the epitome of a story told by somebody without a hopeful world view. These people are enraged and grief-stricken, but clearly their answer is not the answer. They compound the crime, and it gets them nothing. This picture ends on such a hopeless, devastating note. There's no satisfaction whatsoever in the deed. The kid is still dead and we're left with nothing. It's just hopeless. It's very gritty and real and beautifully rendered, but it's one of the reasons I'm a filmmaker now. Not that all my pictures are going to be sweetness and light. People are going to go through tough stuff, but.

Our first picture was released in January. It's sort of an uplifting high school football film. We enter it in competitions and then go to see the rest of the films. While we feel we've made a credible film--one Christians don't have to cringe at, or say it looks like it was made in the church basement--it look almost like pollyanna next to what some people are doing, because they are filming things so literally. They'll put a filter on the lens to film something literally darker, say about child abuse, and it ends just hopelessly.

Those are the ones that usually win the awards. This one is done so beautifully, except that it's such a downer. At one point the father's friend says you need to move out of town. If I were making this picture, I have the friend say I need to protect you from making this worse. Let's do what we have to do to make sure justice is rendered. That's a true friend, someone who would help this father to work through the grief and talk him out of ruining his life.

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