Ketrivie
It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.
james-gloprem1
Let me declare myself: I am a Bible-believing Christian who has studied and written more about this subject than most other people. Escape from hell is not a new movie, it's a poor remake of Flatliners with an emphasis on what many are discovering is a thoroughly discredited doctrine. The mainstream Christian world-view is that all unbelievers go to a place of fire and torture at the end of their lives. This is based on cherry-picking scriptures to support a pre-formed mindset, rather than a whole Bible revelation. This movie does nothing to remedy this 1500 year old error. Global grace books and documentaries have soundly rebutted this error in teaching, yet this movie and others like it persist in promoting an outmoded fallacy that seeks to terrify people back into church. It's a discredited fairytale from the middle ages with a 21st century makeover, yet, like the doctrine it's supposed to represent, Escape from Hell fails the credibility test on every level.
D.P. Sergeani
This is the kind of movie that is bound to get trolled by bored hipsters looking for an online fight to rile the blood. And, OK, maybe it deserves it a little bit. But in trashing this movie so, one skips over some very valid, very pertinent reasons why this movie is an abomination to cinema.One could, for example, take extensive issue with the film's theology. That's fair. No matter how closely it follows the scriptural account of how souls are sorted in the Christian afterlife, the enduring motif of the film, for the uninitiated humanist (the audience to whom the film is obviously trying to pander) is that "Hey, Jesus is kind of a dick." That's not, of course, to say that Jesus WAS a dick. Just that you wouldn't be able to make a fair assessment from this film's interpretation of the facts.All that, I might add, and Jesus/God the Father never ONCE even makes an appearance. What a ripoff.And though I could go on and on about the troubling theological implications of the film, and though I would not be totally unjustified in doing so (the back of the DVD, after all, suggests that it is the perfect conversation starter for unsaved neighbors and family), I feel the need to put aside such petty judgements and address the film's higher crimes and misdemeanors - that is to say, its crimes against narrative.Allow me to be succinct. This film sucks. Sucks, suck sucks. There no two ways about it. (The late Jerry Falwell thought enough of it to give it 4 stars, but I do not believe he has reviewed many other movies, therefore making hi standard for comparison weak at best). The dialogue is, at best, less than intellectually engaging; at worst, it is the kind of ham- handed buffoonery that would make Jack Chick cringe in disgust. The characters are little more than paper-bag puppets, existing from scene to scene, with little in the way of personal development or emotional maturity. They are worse than static caricatures; they change their personas as fits the convenience of the director, going - at least in the male lead's case - from Byronic anti-hero to love-hungry son, from hardcore rationalist to aesthetic humanist, all within a jaunty 76 minutes. Whew!Most perplexingly, though the film is called "Escape from Hell," we, the audience, see Hell for maybe 10-15 minutes, tops - at the very end. At least Dante had the good sense to drop us into the eponymous Inferno by the third chapter. And rest assured, it is filled with the kind of basic 3D CGI effects that for some reason may have passed muster in the 80s but have, in the years since Tron, become woefully outdated. (Satan, as it turns out, has a major thing for the Photoshop solarization filter. Oh, and the path t Hell is just like those tunnels in Sliders).Again, I must cut short a potentially-lengthy criticism and jump right to the point. Why do Christians feel the need to blindly praise every film that dares to call itself a "Christian film"? When critical judgement gives way to blind factional fist-pumping, we open dangerous doors - doors that, as history teaches us, lead us down paths lined with aggression, hate, and violence. I will not go so far as to far as to imply that Escape from Hell incites inter-religious hatred; I will, however, stand in abject defiance to all those who proclaim, without a whiff of objectivism, that this film is anything but a masturbatory endeavor for evangelical Christians under the hopeless guise of 'reaching out' to the unsaved. Anyone who has been 'saved' by this kind of pathetic storytelling is probably worth more lost.
cbcpastor
Well acted with some great special effects but it's too bad scriptural integrity was the first casualty. There were so many blatant errors for the sake of making a "more scary movie" that we could not recommend nor show this to our church. Satan was painted as the monarch of Hell when scripture teaches that Hell is a place of torment created for the Devil and his angels. The list goes on as Hell is portrayed as a physical house of horrors and all but denies the spiritual essence that those souls in Hell will live in the anguish of being forever isolated from God's love and provision. Menacing demons search the earth seeking to drag living souls to the abyss? My Bible teaches that men choose Hell by denying salvation. You can't blame the Devil for man's choice of eternal separation from God.When we seek to add error to increase the scare effect, we deny the power of God's Spirit to work through truth. I wish there were an accurate portrayal of Hell to offer to our church, I think it would be helpful. Movies that stretch the truth to this level only hurt evangelism through those that will laugh themselves right out of our churches and ignore the truth of genuine warning.
Adam Graham
This has to be one of the best films ever made on the subject of Hell. A skeptical doctor is shaken by the death of his estranged father and a fellow doctor enthralls him with tales of people going to Heaven. He believes Hell is a cruel myth and sets out on a radical course of action. He plans to kill himself in the boiler room of the hospital while providing his best friend, the tools to bring him back to life before it's too late.The drama and tension of the film begins from the opening credits and doesn't stop until it's over. The plot is clever and the acting believable. A must-see movie for Christian and unbeliever alike. I haven't seen any other films from DRC productions, but this one will be a tough act to follow.
