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Anguish in Paradise: A Reader’s Request Review of “The Encounter: Paradise Lost.”

Anguish in Paradise: A Reader’s Request Review of “The Encounter: Paradise Lost.”

Last updated on: June 2, 2016 at 6:06 pm by Mary Pezzulo

Anguish in Paradise: A Reader’s Request Review of “The Encounter: Paradise Lost.” 2016-06-02T18:06:01-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

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You know you’re in trouble when a friend messages you in the middle of your busy day with a desperate request like the one I just received.

“You have GOT to review The Encounter: Paradise Lost!” she said to me.

“What’s it about?” I asked. “Sex? Aliens?”

“No,” she said. “Jesus. It’s a PureFlix film.”

I had just closed my PureFlix subscription, with the intention of not beating a dead horse any further, but The Encounter: Paradise Lost is available on Netflix, so I did what any good friend does. I shooed my daughter off of her cartoons to go play outside. I watched the film from beginning to end. I will now write a review, and if I end up in the loony bin I will send my friend the bill.

The Encounter: Paradise Lost concerns a group of characters of diverse backgrounds trapped at a vacation resort somewhere in Thailand during a hurricane. After some poorly choreographed gun violence and suspense, none other than the Lord Jesus Christ appears to them in the persona of an extremely creepy white guy wearing brown penny loafers without socks.

The next hour and ten minutes of the film involve the whole cast sitting around on ugly sofas as Jesus attempts to convince them that he is, indeed, Jesus. He’s not very good at this, and the fault goes in equal parts to the terrible writing and Bruce Marchiano’s performance. This Jesus is like a cross between a touchy-feely faith healer, a life coach, and a creepy guy muttering to himself on the subway. Jesus has nothing interesting to say. All of his lines seem to be lifted from a particularly lame proselytizing pamphlet put out by an Evangelical Protestant church. But he gamely says the lines anyway, grinning like a peeping tom, rubbing people with his hands and just generally making my flesh crawl. I’ve never before understood the kind of angry atheist commentator who refers to Christ as “Sky Daddy” or “your imaginary friend,” but I get it completely now. They must have all watched this movie and thought it was representative of Christianity. In fact, I am not going to insult the actual King of Kings by using His name to refer to Bruce Marchiano’s character anymore; I’ll go ahead and refer to the character as Sky Daddy for the rest of the review.

Sky Daddy sits on the sofa uncomfortably close to a frizzy-haired Thai woman named Mimi, and proceeds to tell everyone his or her life story while leering at them. Mimi’s story comes first– and I know I can’t blame PureFlix for the notion that “Mimi” is an authentic Asian woman’s name, but I hate them for perpetuating the myth nonetheless. Apparently she used to go to a Buddhist monastery school until she was trafficked into sex slavery by her opium-growing parents. In the flashback sequence we get to see what PureFlix thinks a Buddhist monastery school looks like– a four-year-old girl in Western clothing with long hair sitting solemnly in lotus position on top of a cement block, which cement block is on top of a white-clothed table, in a black room all surrounded by pink and white votive candles. I am not a Buddhist and I’m afraid that my study of their faith has been limited, but somehow I don’t think that’s how it works. Mimi was purchased from the brothel by a white American drug dealer named Bruno, who wanted to marry her and save her from that sordid life. She then tried heroin, which she’d never used before in all her years at the brothel, in order to impress his friends, and has been hooked ever since. Sky Daddy heals her addiction then and there by creepily rubbing her head. She sits up, smiling and with smooth hair all of a sudden, accepts Sky Daddy as her savior, and goes to make everyone coffee. Sky Daddy says “Today you are my precious, precious daughter.”

The other characters get the same treatment, hearing their life stories with way too much stilted dialogue and not enough flashback sequences. None are quite as offensive as Mimi’s, but they try to be. Chris was a businessman who sold subprime mortgages though he knew he shouldn’t. Helen is his long-suffering wife, who has mastered the art of crying without smearing her eyelid glitter. She got saved at the age of fourteen, but lost her faith when her son was drowned in the 2004 tsunami. Bruce is a gangster who also got saved as a teenager, but lost his faith after his friends called him a sissy. Bruno, Mimi’s white savior husband, is a gangster drug dealer who feels awful about the whole business and is ready to quit. There’s even a guest appearance by Satan, looking a bit like Raymond Burr.

The worst character of all, though, for sheer miscasting, is Ric, a DEA agent with a grudge. Ric is played by the mop-haired David A. R. White, who also played the lovable clumsy preacher in God’s Not Dead 2. He appears in nearly every PureFlix film. I’d say the way he got cast as a DEA agent was by holding the director’s wife at gunpoint, but it’s very clear from his performance that the man has never held a gun in his life. Ric holds his prop pistol as though it’s a croissant. He has no clue what he’s doing with his gun; his fight sequences are ludicrous; he spends the entirety of the stilted proselytizing dialogue tied to a chair with his slightly pudgy gut and breasts sagging at the camera. This man is the weakest, most effeminate and neurasthenic DEA agent imaginable. I couldn’t see him serving meals in the DEA’s cafeteria. Yet here he is, foisted upon us as a hard-boiled and cruel lawman. It should be laughable, but it’s not even that. It’s boring. The entire middle portion of the film is excruciatingly boring.

At the end, with no warning or logical progression of actions whatsoever, we go back to poorly choreographed fight sequences. One character who has been shot in the arm wrestles a character who has been shot in the gut in an ornamental fountain during the light rain shower foisted upon us as a hurricane. Neither one of them bleeds out. One drowns, but then sits up and looks sulky. I honestly don’t know if his sitting up is part of the film’s action or something that should have been edited out. Ric sits on the beach while Sky Daddy and the devil trade insults over his fate.

I’m at a loss for words. The Book of Esther and God’s Not Dead 2 were Pure Flix movies that I might have recommended as guilty pleasures for people who want to throw popcorn at a cheesy amateur film. The Encounter: Paradise Lost doesn’t even go that far. It’s not just that its dreadful stereotyping is offensive, or that it’s unrepresentative of Christianity. The Book of Esther and God’s Not Dead 2 did that as well. But this is just boring. It’s horrifically boring. Well over half the movie is a badly written argument between a stereotypical submissive Asian woman, a leering counterfeit Jesus and David A. R. White’s breasts. There is nothing to like here.

I don’t think that the Evangelical Protestants behind PureFlix view Catholic me as a Christian in the first place, but I view myself as one. And on behalf of all Christians with common sense, I’m outraged. This lemon should never have gotten beyond the planning stages. They had no good ideas to start with and things only got worse as the project progressed. If you want to watch a group of unpleasant people arguing in a room, watch No Exit. If you want to learn about Jesus, read the Bible and the Catechism, or ask someone who knows. But don’t waste your time with The Encounter: Paradise Lost. They have nothing to say and they’re boring saying it.

(Image courtesy of Pixabay)

The Encounter: Paradise Lost

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