His Only Son
His Only Son
Starring Nicolas Mouawad, Sara Seyed, Edaan Moskowitz, Ottavio Taddei
Directed by David Helling
Before being known as the Father of Humanity, Abraham (Nicolas Mouawad) and his wife Sarah (Sara Seyed) couldn't conceive a child, even though God Himself told Abraham that he would be the father of many nations. After decades of waiting and foolish impatience, Sarah finally conceived and gave birth to Abraham's son, Isaac (Edaan Moskowitz). Years later, God speaks to Abraham, telling him to travel to Moriah and sacrifice his only son to Him, testing his will and his faith. Abraham obeys, taking Isaac and a few servants with him on the three-day trek, and along the way he reminisces about God's faithfulness and struggles with understanding why God would want him to sacrifice his only son, and how that would coincide with the covenant God had made with him to make him the father of many nations.
The Good:
"His Only Son" is a re-telling of the Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac, and for those who have never read it, here's the basic premise: Abraham was chosen by God to be the father of nations, but he and his wife could never conceive a child, even into their old age. God finally blessed Sarah with a child - Isaac - and after he was born God instructs Abraham to sacrifice him. Abraham obeys, but at the last moment God tells Abraham to not sacrifice him, and offers a ram instead - it was all a test of his obedience. Not that this is a major spoiler, because the only people who would watch this film are the believing Sunday-attending churchees, so they already have a home-grown base.
I don't know what it is with church folk, but they're willing to disregard style and substance for something more simple. Having been a part of the church for years myself, I saw numerous church productions (and have been a part of them) and have seen stuff that literally blew my mind, while other stuff where I was left trying not to laugh at the cheesiness of it - but on both ends, the church goers go absolutely crazy over both, and I could never understand why. So no matter how terrible the quality of this film is, the devout will devour it with Godly zeal that, again, I'll never understand.
The Bad:
While "His Only Son" is geared for the church-going faithful, it's not really marketed for anyone else. Of course, this makes sense, as why would an Atheist or a non-believer attend an overtly Christian film? Still, by pigeonholing itself, it causes a large swap of the moviegoing audience to pass on it when they didn't need to. Another faith-based film that came out earlier this year, "Jesus Revolution," managed to become a modest hit by reaching out to the non-believers as well as the believers.
Still, if non-believers even tried to watch this film, they'd find themselves passed out from boredom fifteen minutes in. This Biblical epic should've been spellbinding, with tremendous performances and top-notch effects, but with a small budget and even smaller pool of talent to choose from, "His Only Son" seems something set for a direct-to-streaming film rather than something on the big screen.
Before the film started, the director gave an impassioned plea to judge the film based on the story and not on the performances, effects, or set designs, because it was made on a meager budget. This only made me judge the film more on those facts, because I felt almost challenged to do so. It doesn't matter if the intent means well, if you produce something that's total crap - it's total crap. You can talk up a turd on the street - the texture of it, the appearance of it, how it smells - but in the end, it's still turd on the street.
While "His Only Son" isn't a turd in and of itself, it's something possibly worse - boring. I found myself struggling to stay awake as the film meanders...slowly...so...so...slowly toward its obvious conclusion, and along the way there's flashbacks of Abraham and Sarah's story that repeats itself, as it goes from Abraham's journey to flashbacks of Sarah yelling at him for not giving a child, taking her out of their homeland, etcetera etcetera. They also tried to throw in some exciting, non-Biblical, moments involving a traveling band of baddies, but not even that could muster any sort of excitement.
Nicolas Mouawad seemed to sleepwalk through his performance of Abraham, maintaining a steadfast monotone performance throughout no matter what was happening - from having his wife yell at him to sacrificing his only son, it all seemed like a day's work for him. Sara Seyed's Sarah didn't fare any better, as she was reduced to a one-note-tone character who just squabbled about everything all the time. Edaan Moskowitz's Isaac is completely naive and blind to anything going on around him, and all of them muster up just enough to pull out the bare minimum. The set designs were laughably bad, as it basically consisted of them traveling through deserts with some castles in the background shaded like something inserted with Photoshop. The costumes looked like something they took from a mega-church before their Easter production.
The Verdict:
While its heart is in the right place, there's nothing about "His Only Son" that screams "please see this movie" apart from the fact that it says "from the company that brought you 'The Chosen'...you liked 'The Chosen' right? You'll love this then!" And we wouldn't.
The Score: D-
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