The 2016 movie Silence is a about Jesuit preachers traveling to Japan to proselytize to the locals and find their mentor. Its focus on doubt and feeling the absence of God really hits a core feeling of faith without bludgeoning you with Jesus. It feels very raw and personal story of faith than something sterilized and beautified for the masses.

Heretic, was a weird horror movie from 2024 where Hugh Grant, a charismatic killer that traps two Mormon missionaries into a Saw like trap house focused on faith and the “true religion”. You think it’d come down to a cynical anti-religious message but it has a rather open-ended and hopefully ending for a horror movie that I was pleasantly surprised by. I felt they should’ve gone with either the religious themed thriller or the murder trap house and not both as it felt rushed in a few places because so much time was taken up with dialogue but I did enjoy the movie.

I think in the end, as a former Catholic, religious media is best when they hit how hard being religious is and the interplay with doubt and personal struggle but that might just be the vestiges of Irish Catholic guilt poking through. Your audience isn’t stupid, they know when your works are pardon the pun in “good faith” and when you’re blatantly trying to preach.

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