Coming Face to Face with the Christian Film Industry

A Patreon Subscriber and Devout Christian Requested a Specific Review of a Christian Film prompting me to Examine the Industry

Rather than target a general audience, this next review is going to target a specific new Patreon who asked me to review a Christian film: “The Girl Next Door” (2022).

This friend is a devout Christian and often quotes scripture (though, thankfully, not in an offensive or threatening way to me as a non-Christian) so I can understand the appeal of being involved in a Christian film industry. At the same time, I’m stricken with curiosity as to why such a film industry needs to exist.

When I was young, my father (whose media-consuming habits I’m often critical of) felt I watched too much TV. He said I could watch educational things like PBS or news instead. I argued then that there’s pedagogical value in all kinds of TV programs. The Good Place turned me onto ethics; Rough Diamonds educated me about European Judaism and the diamond industry that my Jewish relatives in New York are involved in; Lessons in Chemistry educated me about food science. More than that, however, most TV series show you windows into different cultures like inner-city schools (Abbott Elementary), certain corners of Europe (White Nights, Lilliehammer, Servant of the People); how Black life might have been viewed in the 1990s through a White lens, or how domesticity might have been viewed in the…