17 Miracles (2011)

IMDb plot summary: As part of the Willie Handcart Company, Levi Savage feared that leaving late in the season would lead to despair and death. What he came to find out is that for every tragedy, there is a multitude of miracles.
Directed by T.C. Christensen. Starring Jasen Wade, Emily Wadley, Jason Celaya, and Natalie Blackman.

(Spoilers ahead.)

This is one of the most tonally confused faith-based movies I have ever seen. It's certainly the most depressing one. I suspect it's supposed to be a triumphant, inspirational story about God taking care of his people, but there are FAR more tragic moments throughout than there are happy ones, and nobody really wrestles with the disconnect. Characters proclaim, "God will take care of us," and "God is watching over us," while around them people starve to death. It's a little hard to wholeheartedly celebrate one child's miraculous resurrection from the dead when less than 10 minutes later, two more children freeze to death in the snow.

I'm all about looking at both the positive and negative aspects of something, but I feel like this movie doesn't know it IS doing that. I genuinely think the filmmakers feel like this is an inspirational film, while, in actuality, my reaction watching it was more like a horror movie -- the kind where you're kind of surprised ANYONE is alive at the end because there sure is a lot of death throughout.

Can horror movie endings be triumphant and inspirational too? Sure, but those characters are driven, in many cases, by a desperate certainty that they're going to die but they still have to do SOMETHING, which means when they finally survive, there's an adrenaline rush. This movie is not at all the same thing. This movie has characters saying over and over again, "God will save us. God will save us. God will save us." And then someone else dies because there's no food, and people just keep saying, "God will save us," without even really wrestling with the fact that God clearly didn't save that little child, so why should *anyone* believe they'll make it through alive? Instead of showcasing the strength of their faith, it makes them appear as if they're in denial.

(I was PARTICULARLY bothered by the story of the old man who was essentially peer pressured into going along despite the fact that he worried he wasn't strong enough to make the journey. Well, turns out he wasn't. That was a particularly senseless, depressing death.)

The technical aspects of the movie are all decent, and the story was paced and told fairly well, so no problems there. I didn't even necessarily mind how depressing it was on its own -- I'm totally OK with very dark stories -- except for the fact that I don't think the movie was supposed to be like that, leading to kind of a jarring disconnect. I admit, I spent much more time being confused about that than I did thinking about anything else in this movie.

Flickchart: #1452 out of 2089, below Chinatown and above Unknown.

2.5 stars.