God Awful Movies - 550: The Girl Who Believes in Miracles

Episode Date: March 31, 2026

This week, Jay Novella of The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe joins us to review a movie so generically dumb we couldn't tell for sure if we'd already watched it.===Hear more from Jay on The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.===To see us live in San Francisco, click here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/god-awful-movies-live-in-san-francisco-california-tickets-1976632374642If you’d like to make a per episode donation and get monthly bonus episodes, please check us out on Patreon: http://patreon.com/godawfulCheck out our other shows, The Scathing Atheist, The Skepticrat, Citation Needed, and D&D Minus.Our theme music is written and performed by Ryan Slotnick of Evil Giraffes on Mars. If you’d like to hear more, check out their Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/EvilGiraffesOnMars/Report instances of harassment or abuse connected to this show to the Creator Accountability Network here: https://creatoraccountabilitynetwork.org/

Yeah. That's the build-up in this whole scene, which is pretty, you know, that's crazy for a Christian movie. Like, you know, they're defying the parents' wishes. They're following the crazy old grandfather. And they're literally taking a dying girl out in a rainstorm, a hailstorm or whatever, to a lake at night. Yeah, at least one of those is a commandment. Yeah. In a height, they're doing remission impossible.

That's what I'm making. That's great. Oh, God. An awful movie. Movies. Welcome back to the GameCast, where each week we sample another selection from Christian cinema,

because no matter how much you watch, there's always a worse one waiting. I'm your host, Noah Lusions, and sitting 700 miles to my immediate left as my good friend Heath. Enright, Heath, welcome back. We got a Christian miracle girl. I'm very excited.

We're going to explore the science of this and see if it's real. Yeah, yeah. This is a movie, not for the lactose intolerant, by the way. A lot of cheese. coming your way. And sitting 900 miles to my northeast is my bad friend, Eli Bosnick. Eli, how are you this fine afternoon, sir? Well, it might sound like I have my son's baby cold, no,

but I'll have you know I was just curing some cancer on the front lawn, and this is what happens when I do it. And we're very excited to welcome in a brand new guest massacist. You might know, Jay, Novela, from the skeptics guide to the universe. And if you don't, you should. Jay, welcome to god-awful movies. Guys, this movie was so freaking bad. It made me. We rethink the Last Jedi. Coming in hot. This was bad first world. Oh, bad.

So 550 movies in, we have this weird thing where you see, like the worst movie in theaters and everybody's like, oh, God, that's the worst thing I've ever seen. And I'm like, it's in the top half for me.

But yeah, it's really bad. I'm going to list like 551 answers to your question that I have. Guys, does watching all of these bad movies actually make, you know, other movies look better? Like, have you been kind of trained? kind of trained to think, wow. Well, yeah, it's like swinging three baseball bats when you're in the on-deck circle,

for sure. Well, but it's partly like that, but also part of it's just, it's just ruined cinema all together for me, you know, like so when no matter what you watch, you're always just being hypercritical of it because that's what you're used to doing. So, you know. So tell us, Heath, what movie has alienated our ability to enjoy cinema today? We watched The Girl Who Believes in Miracles. It's the story of a girl who can heal sickness and death by speaking with God, but she might be sucking all the disease into herself.

Ooh. It's the picture of Dorian Prey. Oh. All right. I was going to say that wasn't quite an accurate description, but I'm like, I'll let you. For that pun, well, for that pun, I'll play along. And Eli, how bad was this movie? Well, if you love the magical child genre of Christian movies,

but you wish it had more morally indefensible cutesyism, you will love this movie. They never get this right with the concept of what would happen, what you would have to do ethically if you could heal dead people and the sick. They never get it right. Never even get close. Nobody ever even shows up at the hospital for a shift. It's crazy.

never even asked the question. No. So is there anything you guys you want to nominate this one for being the best, to be in the worst hat? Ah, so many possibilities. I'm going to go with best worst

depiction of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. Okay. Great point. Yeah, he looked like a crackhead to me. Not looking great at the end. Agree. Crackhead, Jesus.

But it's some contrast, too, because we also see, I guess, what the movie believes is a good depiction of Jesus Christ. And it was, I think a looks-smaxer. I think it was clavicular as Jesus Christ. So we get some big clavicular vibes there.

Here's my favorite little detail about this. He's not, the guy who plays Jesus is not listed in the credits of the movie. But if you check on IMDB, he's listed as Caucasian Jesus. Fucking. Wow. That's in my notes as a joke. Yes, I know. Okay. Wait, wait.

Was that not portrayed by a real person? I mean, I think so. but maybe it was just somebody who was too ashamed of it to be like, I don't want this on my acting credits. Or that's his schick. That's all he does. He's going to ruin my reputation as a lookspac. I'm kind of a Caucasian Jesus specialist.

Yeah, right. So I'm not going to spoil anything now. I'm just going to say best, worst, wolf, and we'll get there when we get there. Yes, we will. It's so silly. So I observed anything to do with Christians and Christianity, there's way too many people happy and smiling,

and it's complete bullshit because they're literally the most hate-filled subclass of people that I've ever personally... This is correct. Yeah. They have resting bigot face, but they portray them as like... And I'm going to go with best worst. No, wait, we already watched this movie. So I spent this entire fucking movie like grandma trying to find her way back to the room

at the old age home. I was like, oh, it's finally happened. We watched a Christian movie for the second time. But no, my friends, no. I was thinking of episode 20 of this program, Heaven's Door, which is about a little girl who has a brief experience with God that gives her magical healing powers, powers, which are doubted by her doctor,

who is played by a former secular celebrity who only makes Christian movies now. Anyways, it turns out her healing powers make her sicker and sicker until she dies, but then her family praise her, life. That's the plot of heaven's door. Is it really? Oh my God. Was it that close? Yeah. I kept picture. I was like, Jennifer Garner I swear she's going to be in this because of my head. I saw this and she's in it.

All right. Well, we're about to take a slow descent into Crazy Town. So we're going to give everybody a minute to buckle up their seatbelts and put up their trade tables. But we'll be back in a flash with all the imbecilic screenwriting of the girl who believes in miracles. Guys, guys. What is it, Eli? The statute of limitations run out because we asked you not to announce those in front of Jay. Okay, first of all, Jay supports freedom of speech,

unlike some people at that Wendy's, but second of all, we don't need to do our Green Chef ad this week. What's Green Chef? Green Chef cuts through the noise as the trusted authority and delivering only real farm-sourced ingredients. Right, but we don't need that because I brought these salty choice salt bites. Salt bites?

Hold on. Let me see those. With Green Chef, you can trust every bite with over 40 customizable weekly recipes designed to give you peace of mind. A lot of sodium in these. Plus, Green Chef cuts down food waste by 20% versus grocery shopping and offsets 100% of delivery emissions. Like mostly sodium. But have you actually tried them? I sure have, Jay. Green Chef sent us a box to try when they first became a sponsor.

I love that I got delicious and healthy meals delivered straight to my door. All right, Noah. I'm sold. Where do I sign up? Head to greenchef.com slash 50 awful and use code 50 awful to get 50% off your first month. Then 20% off for two months with free shipping. That's code 50 awful at green shop.com slash 50 awful. All right, Noah, thanks. I think it's a subsidiary of the Morton's company. Okay, Heath, we get it.

I'm just saying, real obvious. All right, everyone. Welcome to the first ever writer's room meeting for the girl who believes in miracles. So it's all about a little girl who sees God, and it gives her the power to heal any illness and even reverse death. Wow. Yeah. And all the while she'll be drawing these prophetic drawings about who she's going to heal next

and even her own impending death. Amazing. And then at the end, it turns out she's been working for Satan the whole time. Sorry, what? Yeah, yeah, you know, because of the false miracles and the Gospels. Oh, we thought we thought we were just making a movie about Christian healing. Christian healing. Guys, Matthew is very clear that only the prophets can heal.

This would be like a supernatural thriller. Oh, okay. Well, I think we can make most of that movie. Most of it? Yeah, most of it. Bless the child. Oh, shit. I was thinking of blessed.

a child. Yeah, let's do the Christian one. You guys want to do the Christian one? Yeah, nobody thought of that before. And we're back for the breakdown. And we're just, we're going to start off with a couple of curious production logos. Yes, Jay, we even make fun of the production logos here. To be fair, the very first logo is for something called Gerson films. And for a movie that'll be about bullshit cures, it does kind of track. It's all interesting. Interesting. Yeah. Drinking a fiber smoothie and shit in a movie for two hours. That's accurate.

Yeah, right. I also, the other one is 120 decibel films, which is like an incredibly unpleasantly loud and damaging sound. So I'm like, okay, well, I get it. My ears are bleeding movies.

You guys are doing a lot of metaphors for Christianity, right from the top. It's the all caps of movie making. Yeah, right, right. Exactly. So then, but then the movie starts proper with this drone shot. And as soon as you see the drone shot, you're like, all right, well, this is going to be a higher production value than most of Kevin Sorpo's movies.

But we're in small town America, and a preacher is delivering us the mustard seed line that they love so much about how mustard seeds worth of faith can move mountains. Yeah, and look, this is so easy not to embarrass yourself with, right? You just have to leave out the first two lines, which they don't, where Jesus is like, I think we could all agree the smallest seed possible is the mustard seed. Fact check me. If that's wrong, I'm just the... guy from the Middle East. With that factually established, I will now continue the perfect word of God

from the Bible. Yes, yes, with my entire reputation of factuality hanging on that, yeah. I'm a punk of peccat corn for some reason. While the camera was panning around at first, I thought the preacher was Paul Giamati, and then of course I'm like, no, no, this movie sucks. No, no, no. This is Paul Giamatti. I would love a Paul Giamatti Christian movie. Oh my God, am I fucking sold? Yeah. And the Sherman is so fucking boring and the movie shows us how boring it is by showing us the cast, the extras in the pews. And even the front of the class kid, the girl in the front row is fucking bored and they pan over very slowly and we watch her be bored.

But we ultimately, we land on the girl who is like the main character. And she's the first example of Jay's best words, right? She is into this shit. Oh, yeah. Yeah. she's beaming, like she's Christian beaming all over that place. And it's the most unrealistic thing I've ever seen in my life. Because I went to church and I remember literally losing my mind while I was in church.

No kid is sitting there. Oh, you're yawning and you're just trying, you're like stretching your face. You're imagining a little dude running along behind the preacher just to give your eyes something to do. Yeah. Any depiction of a child in church that isn't a silent fight with their mom while their nervous system tries to remove them from their body is a lie. Exactly, yeah. So, but she hears the mustard seed line. She's very excited because she doesn't know about jewel orchid seeds, which are 20 times smaller than mustard seeds. And then we cut to soccer. Well, and we get this amazing soccer shot because there's no defense, right? Because they have to

have this kid kick through, but he's not very good at soccer. So everybody just has to sort of stand there, like the kickoff and flag footballers. I almost had best worst soccering because this was rough. Because they got, like, it appears that this is a real local soccer team in wherever the fuck. Yes. It's scripted. And like you said, yeah, the kid has to get through to make the thing make sense. So defending players, they keep doing like real defending and then they get too close to the ball and the offensive player with the ball. And they just like run, run, no, no, no, oh, we're close.

Stop. And then they like curl away from no reason. Oh, my ankle. And Heath, you know, this was like. That guy has the ball. This, to me, was the best scene in the entire movie because it's the only scene in the movie where I actually felt something for half a second, right? You know, the animosity between the good kid and the bad kid.

Sure. I'm like, all right, cool. Let's see a fight. Like, take it, take it there. Yeah. Of course, it doesn't happen, but it was the best scene in the movie. Yeah. Absolutely.

Because at this point in the movie, you could still hope that maybe this was a movie about this kid and his soccer rifle or something. Right. Okay. I did enjoy the realistic soccer dad. Maybe I turned on the wrong movie and I get to watch a soccer movie. The realistic soccer dad is an American guy who doesn't know anything about the sport of soccer, but he's trying to cheer on and be the dad.

So he's like, good job, son. Way to soccer. To be more accurate, though, like, it's usually some dude that is screaming at his son to, like, be playing at goddamn, like, college level when he's, you know, 13 years old. God damn it, Kyler. Soccer the soccer. Yeah. So, but Jay, Heath will assure you that that's actually good.

That's good daddy. That's good parenting, actually. It's great. You have to teach them. All right. And we meet at this point. We meet Sarah. That's the little girl from church.

We meet her brother's girlfriend, Cindy, right? Who's like her brother is the kid in the game and the soccer game who's got his soccer rival. So we meet the two of them. and then we go over to meet Grandpa. Now, Grandpa, for some fucking reason that will never make any sense in the movie, felt that he needed a proving scene.

Yep. Right? Okay, just real quick, when the girlfriend of Danny, Danny's the kid playing soccer, Cindy, his girlfriend, shows up, and he immediately gets blasted so fucking hard by somebody on the other team and knocked over.

And I was like, okay, I can relate to this. genuinely the first time my girlfriend in high school came to a tennis match, I waved to her when I saw her, and I immediately got hit in the face with a tennis ball. We were even playing it. We were in warmups, and I waved, hit in the face. And I was like, ha, I doubled over, almost bomb. Your dad had to bring his racket from home to set it up and everything is the whole thing.

Okay. So then we cut over to the hot dog stand where grandpa's waiting for hot dogs. and there's a couple of punk kids hanging out there and they try to steal somebody else's hot dogs and run off. So grandpa has to kick their ass with some old man risk control fantasies. Yeah, because there's nothing more empathetic than violence enacted on children for the crime of stealing food. He does legit get them into a chokehold.

Like, yes? Now, guys, follow me here. I think it would have played better if he cut their throats. Yeah, absolutely. just gutted them. Hey, so the actor said that and it was like, cut, cut, no, you can't cut their throats, bud. I see that you have a knife ready. Please don't.

I brought one from home. That's not a prop knife. That's not even a prop knife. When I've imagined doing this and home alone by myself, which I have multiple times, don't say tactical. I use this tactical man. So, yeah, so this 80-year-old actor does this ridiculous. like choking this one kid out and elbowing this other kid.

And then eventually he's like, I know who your dads are. You guys got to come to my house and work off your debt of these hot dogs to be or whatever. We will never revisit this. No. But can I pitch you on the upside of scenes like this? And you're probably thinking, Eli, what could the upside of a scene that glorifies violence to children who literally are just trying to get food? It's every time you see a video of an old Republican getting punched in the face, he was inspired by this movie. He was like, I'm going to catch his hand at center mass.

What I'm going to do is I'm going to get inside his car. Oh, I'm asleep on the ground. Never mind. There are thousands of these guys at Walmart just waiting for conflict. Just waiting for their chance. I wouldn't be the head of the DHS one day. Yeah. Yeah. It's okay.

I'm Mark Queen, one word. So that we get back to soccer and what we're learning here is that the purple team is playing dirty, right? And the refs are like WWE levels of blind to it. Yeah. Yeah. And the mechanics of these soccer fouls is ramping up to crazy

real fast. Like earlier it was just like, oh, Danny got shoulder bumped. But now it's like, you know, kids stacking up and like standing behind one kid and pushing him over like into a pool. It's getting absurd. The other team hits him with their car.

Yeah. Yeah. They were one click away from a shank coming out. Yes, exactly. So, yeah, so, but grandpa gets back with the hot dogs and Sarah, the little girl's like, oh, I'm so nervous. They're down a point and the game's almost over. And grandpa says, well, why don't you pray about it? Right?

She's like, oh, that's a great idea. So she prays, and she specifically prays that her brother can, quote, kick harder and faster than the other team. Now, Heath, I didn't play soccer. You did. is, would kicking harder and faster be a advantage in the game of soccer? You know, out of context, generally no. That wouldn't just by itself.

It wouldn't really do anything. Especially if it suddenly happened to you in the middle of the game. Yeah. Yeah, you don't want a Ricky of the year situation with your leg. Yeah. So the God of the universe had actually some trouble interpreting this prayer too. So she prays for that. And God's like, I don't even know what soccer really is.

Okay. And he sets up Danny to do the most absurd thing that they're trying to do this heroic thing in soccer called a bicycle kick where you like flip backwards and kick and he scores a goal. He does score the goal. But they show it as the ball gets headed up in the air by one of his teammates as like a pass. He runs towards the ball and then he turns around backward for no reason. Yes, it's not like, yes. It would just be a showboaty as. And then does a bicycle kick, flippy thing.

Yeah. And guys, you know, does it bother you? Like, people praying to God about winning a soccer game. Like, I hate all these trivial prayers to God. Like, yeah. Don't they, do they ever teach kids? Like, don't waste Jesus's time with this bullshit. Yes.

Yeah, right. Just once in one of these movies, I want someone to pray for the soccer game. And then the sky opens up and you hear, that's your one. And then it closes and she's just looking around all embarrassed. Oh, fuck, Gaza. Oh, should have. Oh. World peace was on the table.

I really do hate the cyclone. This isn't even the final match of the year. It's not even the tournament. Prayer is so one-sided and selfish if you think about it. Because, you know, there's other people on the other team that could be praying too. So what about that? Right. You don't know what their needs are.

But this, you know, this rival town right next to them in Oklahoma is mostly Muslims, I think. So I guess now is a bunch of heathens and Muslims. But if they did that, if they did that, if they did that, they actually went there, respect. You know what I mean? Just be honest about your bullshit. You guys are going up against the Jewish school, huh? So yeah.

So, but then the main character kid, well, he's not the main character, but the main character's brother, Danny, he draws a yellow card because this other kid's all cheating and shit. And the movie has to stop because they're like, like mom goes, what does a yellow card mean, right? Oh, yeah. Because they know that the movie, like the viewers aren't going to know what that means. So ultimately, though, the bad guy kid, the bully kid, gets a penalty kick and he wins the game with it. Yeah. Sorry, just one more soccer detail, I promised last one. He gets the penalty kick by, like, taking a dive and the ref calls the fake penalty.

So they get a penalty kick. They score at the buzzer. We watch like the time ticking off the clock on the score. There's no buzzers in soccer. It's not how it works. You can't have a buzzer beat. in soccer. When the Europeans want to smoke, that's when soccer games are over.

Right, right. But then Sarah turns to her grandpa and she goes, wait, hold on a second. I pray this is fucking bullshit. I want my money back, right? She goes, I thought you said if I prayed really hard, we would win, which is not at all what he said. I mean, he didn't say anything remotely like that. No.

But then he explains mysterious ways to her and she's fine. I said, God might help. He said he likes to help. It's the big whitewash. It's part of the scam, you know? Yeah. And I find it curious. Like, so God wouldn't do something very easy for her,

like let her brother win the soccer game on this prayer. The next time she prays, she gets magic powers. Right. He brings birds back to fucking life. I guess this is just warming up here. Yeah, her average turns out to be great. Yeah. There's just like another little sister on the opposite side of the stands being like,

ha ha ha. Beets you? There's a me, me, me, me going on. Yeah, fuck yeah. Yeah, there's counter spells. Right, right. Yeah, exactly. It's an interrupt.

So, yeah. Oh, I was just about to make an interrupt. So then we cut to Cindy and Sarah. That's the Danny's girlfriend and the main character in the backseat of a car on their way to like grandpas and their quote unquote dancing to the Christian music. Yeah. And I know this is such a tiny quibble to have with this morally repugnant. movie, but it's always so weird to me when I realize, like, what parts of life religion steals away from you, including getting to dance to good music?

Right. Yeah. I mean, there's just a statistical anomaly here because, you know, there's got to be hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of Christian songs written throughout the ages, right? And not one of them is good. I know. It's impressive. It is remarkable.

Yeah. If anything, they should take credit for having a god of bad music. Right. Yeah, exactly. It's like they put their load with Amazing Grace. Yeah, right. Amazing Grace. After that, they were just like, it's like, it's like how Jaws ate up all the good shark movie that was ever going to exist in the world.

That's true. Right? So maybe Amazing Grace did that. Okay, if they had high energy choreography dancing in the backseat of this car to Amazing Grace, that would have been pretty funny. That would be good. Because that's what they're doing here with this terrible. Yeah, no, right, right.

So, but ultimately they get to Grandpa's place. We meet Grandpa's dog. so dogo This is a great dog though Sadie Yeah he's pretty He's pretty awesome dog Nice

We never see him again Unfortunately but yeah So She scritches Yeah Scurches So and then We have this weird

moment where like The dad is supposed to be like Talking his son up He's like you know You played a great game But the dad doesn't have any actual lines They've clearly asked him to improvise And the son can barely speak legible English

Despite that being his first language I mean, you know, I always like ironically want to hear just the truth spoken. It's like, look, you had a great game, son. God turned his back on you and he couldn't even help you. It's not your fault, boy, your sister. Even with your sister's prayers, you know. Your sister phrased her prayer weird. We all know you were masturbating and that's why that happens.

Either you or your sister is a complete asshole because God's not listening. Look, God loves a monkey's paw, okay? So, okay. So, but then they want to all go up to the lake to fish, all the kids do, right? So Sarah and Danny and Cindy go to the lake. And Danny and Cindy are like, hey, sis, why don't you stay here and fish? And we'll wander off into the woods together, right? These two teenagers are going to go do hand stuff.

We're just going to check out the, you know, where that leather swing with the strappy things is and the little bridle. You can't see from here. We're going to be over there. they actually went there. I mean, the girl calls them out. Are you going to kiss? It's like, yeah, we're going to go grope each other 20 feet over here while you're doing whatever completely, you know, we're not watching the little girl.

Right. By the side of the fucking water, guys. Right. This is why you lost the soccer game and my prayer didn't work. Okay, bye. Right, yeah, because all the hand stuff. So before they can go do hand stuff, though, Sarah finds a little dead bird sitting by the side of the lake.

And she picks it up and everybody's like, oh, gross, don't do that. And she's like, no, it's not dirty. there's no bugs on it. It's fine. I'm like, I don't think it's fine. That's not how that works. That's not how dirt or dirty works. I know. But then there's also, there's this adorable moment where her brother like checks it for a heartbeat with his little, with his finger. And that's.

Yeah. Like you're going to feel a bird's heartbeat with the tip of your finger. Yes. But it's a cute thing to do. He goes, no, no, no, no. That one's dead. And she's like, well, maybe we can pray for it to be alive again. Now, in reality, what we're seeing is why you shouldn't lie. to your children about magic.

Right? Because this is the kind of thing a kid actually does. And then they're heartbroken when God doesn't listen to them. And they're heartbroken because the bird's dead. And you've actually just made everything worse. Right. And the adults in your life don't drop the bit. So they have to be like, well, God didn't say whiskers because whiskers was a sinner. Pentecostal. Fuck.

Maybe I read a movie about how this works for me next time. Fuck. they'll typically say God needed whiskers to help him with something else. It's like continue the illusion and the fantasy. There is no reality check here. Absolutely. So we're going to hurt him with it again later.

Or make a whole fucking movie to hurt him with it, right? So, you know. Now, at this point, Noah, it's too bad that that actress, you know, couldn't actually do miracles because she would have been able to resurrect her and the other actor's careers. Kevin Sorbo comes up. Hey, kid, I heard you had resurrection powers. Please lay your hands on me.

They're doing reboots everything. Why the fuck haven't they done a reboot of anything? Zena Warrior Princess keeps making fun of me on Twitter. Can you fix that? Come you peanut and it stuck. And could you just make people forget about that? Like, Dr. Strange at the end of Spider-Man. So, okay.

I look like a horse. Can you fix that as well? But then she... But so she starts praying. The two teenagers wander off to go grope each other. As she starts praying, And she's like, hey, God, this bird's little bird family's probably missing him or something, huh? Yeah, I got some bad news for her about tar fur.

And it's in this moment that God hatches a plan. Yes. God's like, the whole thing, God becomes completely aware, I'm going to give this girl magic powers. And then if she uses them, I'm going to kill her. I'm going to kill her. Yes, yes. Just a couple of angels being like, oh, okay, is it? It's kind of getting complicated now.

Well, you're doing like a long con of these people. So, yeah, so we're going to go there. Like, you really are committing to that. Yeah. Right. Hell yeah, I'm going to kill her. So then we cut to Danny and Cindy. And despite all our jokes to the contrary,

apparently they actually were fishing that whole time. Lame. They didn't go to do hands stuff because he's caught like three fish. Or he came really fast. Okay. Yeah, though he's young. You can do the like stick of fishing pole at down while you do hand stuff. Either way, that kid's smelling like fish coming out of those.

Oh, okay. Well, yeah, they got to the. Grotto and he was like, oh, you actually meant go, you said go fishing, like, like, over the pants, go very, but like, okay, yeah, no, let's fish. Let's fish from this leather swing, I guess,

together. I don't think the euphemism for over the pants should be go fishing. That's on the against that. I think it's metaphorically improper. Under the pants. Yes. Hey, guys, I'm watching this thing on Amazon, right? So like, a commercial cuts in and I'm like, for a couple of seconds, I'm like, the movie

suddenly got better. Yeah, right. All, like, all They're trying to show. They hired a lighting director. Billy Bob Thornton's here to talk to me about Verizon. At last. But Cindy and Danny now are done with their hand stuff. They're done with their fishing. And now they're ready to leave.

So they go back to get the sister. And she's still holding this dead bird for what must have been like hours at this point. Yeah. Wasn't it nighttime when this happens? Yeah. It's like, we'd be coming evening at this point. And she looks out into the water. And she's like, do you see him?

And they're like, what are you looking at? And she's like, I see God. Right. Now, in reality, it's time to get this kid in and get her tested, right? But in this movie, it is God. And so the bird comes back to life and flies away. You know, wouldn't she, if she saw God at some point during that prayer session, wouldn't she like drop the bird and run back to the groping teenagers and tell them? Yeah. She's taking this all in stride. Oh, yeah, I saw God. Right. Hey, put your clothes back on. God's coming. Yeah. So, okay. So now we cut to Grandpa Sam chopping a little wood.

It's not a euphemism. He's just chopping wood. He's kind of bad at chopping wood. He's disappointing. He's 80. I feel like at 80. If I can chop wood this fucking good, I'm pretty happy with me.

That's what Noah's going to do for his 80th birthday. He's going to chop 80 wood. They can choose their take and he like splits it like 2080 instead of 50-50. Like my dad is angry right now. He's been. dead for like six years. You're giving the producers way more credit than they deserve. Like they didn't give a shit about that.

You know, they just like pick up that piece of wood and swing that a couple of times and that's it. And how many takes do you think they gave these actors? It literally was one take. One take. Exactly. I guarantee you Peter Coyote was going like, I can actually split wood more 50-50 than that.

Let's do that again. And they're like, no, Peter. You said that three times already. When we gave you the Zen pouches that we paid you to do this movie, we told you. You can't have a second take. But so while he's chopping wood, Sarah comes out to tell him about the bird she resurrected, right? And he like takes a minute to figure out that she's not just like fucking with him or whatever. And he's like, mm, okay, so mental illness, right? God. And it's great because look, I know it's going to turn out to be true in this movie, which is lame, but we get

to see that moment where a lying adult is caught in their lie and they're like, Okay, so Santa's elves don't have PlayStation's for us. Yeah, right. Because. Right, yeah, exactly. They're Pentecostal. They tried to get on the list at GameStop, but then they refreshed the screen too late.

They said it was too. Oh, God damn. They said it was going to be. They said they were doing raises this year, but actually they just fired Carol and then her husband killed himself. Should we buy some of their stock? And what's the lesson here? You know, like she comes back in the movie, she legit used the power of God to bring that bird back to life.

She comes back. And every person she talks to doesn't believe her. So, you know, there's a problem here because God is supposed to be real. And the Christian mind, God is real. And this could happen. Right. But to all the adults, they're like, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. Nobody believes her.

So what does that tell you about God and their actual relationship with God? Well, and not just these fictional characters, right? what does that tell you that the writer knows the viewers, the Christian viewer's attitude about this would be as well, right? Now, the one person, though, the one exception to that is Grandpa, right? Grandpa thinks, well, you know, God can resurrect birds, but he urges her not to tell anybody else about it or they'll think she's nuts. Yeah, he's got that, this is supposed to be an old-timey wisdom trope, right?

Like, Grandpa's the only one who sees clear enough to see a miracle. Right. But actually, it's just the generation that got fooled by A. pictures into voting against Hillary Clinton. Yeah, exactly, right. I took him telling her to not talk about it as protecting her from people judging her, and he probably never believed it. You know, like, to him, it's like, hey, yeah, don't tell anyone because they're going to think

you're crazy. Yeah, well, he certainly didn't behave later like he actually thought she had magic powers, not until much later in the film. So, yeah, you're probably right. Yeah, he takes a turn closer to the end, right. Yeah. So, okay, so then we cut to Sarah. She's calling her friend Mark, who we haven't met yet.

yet because some of her best friends, by the way, are black. This movie is very diverse. Oh, my God. It feels, this movie feels like they shot the whole thing. And they were sitting at the rap party. And someone was like, hey, guys, did we hire any black actors for the movie? And they were like, shit, shit, okay. Chris, you're fired.

From now on, we just got to reshoot two scenes. And we're just going to reshoot two scenes, okay? But they had to pile in all of, like, you know, the inclusion thing into one character. right? Yes. He's crippled and he's a little black kid. Yes. Which I just felt, I felt her relationship with him had zero.

There was nothing there. No. Those two actors, like, seemingly they met each other the day of the shoot. Yeah. So she explains to him that, you know, she has bird resurrection powers now. And at first he's not buying it. And then she's like, but I swear on the whole Bible that it happened. He's like, oh, okay.

Well, in that case, she must be telling the truth. He asked at this point, she's like, he's like, you saw God. What did he look like? And she goes like, oh, he's a white guy. Yeah, it turns out he was a white guy. Looks like Kirk Cameron and the repressed gay thoughts of the writer of this movie. White Jesus, man. They can't let it go.

No. They cannot let the white Jesus go. Wouldn't it be cool if the kid said something? Oh, he's white? Yeah, that's weird. Jesus is white. Okay. It's a weird place for a white person to be born.

Yeah, Mark. He looks kind of, you know, opposite of, you know, how you look, right? Not that. Delights some legs. So but then she has to hang up when mom comes in because she's not supposed to have her phone or whatever. She stole her brother's phone. Mom, by the way, is Mirosorvino, who deserves better than this, y'all.

Her dad was a piece of shit, but she endorsed Kamala. She should get better movies. But she lays down with her daughter and she's like, okay, so let's do that thing we do every night where we say all the best things that happened to us today. God gave me healing powers. Okay, this moment I actually laughed.

I enjoyed the performance by Sarah, the little girl. I thought she was a pretty good actor here. Sure, she was fine. You're not bad. So mom comes in and is like, yeah, let's do some mindful reflection on the day. And she's like, shut up, Buddhist. I talked to God and necromanced a bird, motherfuckers. We're talking about this.

I'm magic. My, Heath, my takeaway from this scene was literally this one line. Mom, God said he's going to kill me. Yeah, Jesus. Right. Because she goes, she goes, well, you know, know, when I was talking to God today, he said I was going to be, he was going to be taking me to heaven very soon. And mom's like, okay, well, let's not talk about that. Problem solved, right?

Yeah, yeah. All right. Don't, yeah. Don't kill yourself based on the lie that I'm still maintaining. Fuck, seriously. Yeah, right. The mother kind of leans into it, though, because she's like, you need to die to go to heaven. Like, she picks up on the morbidity of that comment. Right. She runs back into the room with the kitchen knife. All right, we got this. I don't know. I don't know. Like in a Christian movie that's supposed to be in support of faith and God, she says, mom, God is going

to kill me. Like that, that's what she communicated to her mother. And that is what God told her in the movie. He actually said to you, I'm going to fucking kill you. Did you spare an Amalekite? And he's, a spoiler alert, he's going to make good on that. Yeah. So mom's like,

all right, no more talking about dying. And the daughter says, hey, can we go to grandpa's next weekend. She's like, do you promise not to resurrect any road kill? You know, I don't know, because it get weird when we go out there. But then late that night, we got Danny runs into mom and dad's room to tell him that Sarah is pretty sick. So they call the family doctor Dr. Kevin Sorbo. Oh, yeah. Now, don't put him down here because look, he plays a vital role in this film. Casting Kevin Sorbo was freaking brilliant because he makes all the other actors seem a lot better.

Yes. Yeah. Miro Sorvino seems Oscar worthy when he shows up. Yeah. But he checks her out. She's got fever and nausea. He says it's just the flu,

not the kind of thing to wake him up in the middle of the fucking night over anyway. Kevin Sorbo acts in every movie. You ever see an old guy go into a bar and he obviously thinks he's there to pick up chicks, not drink 11 scotches and then be escorted out when the lights are owned. This is how Kevin Sorbo

enters a movie that way. You're a middle-aged man who does that. Thank you. So yeah. For the correction. But he's like, yeah, your kid's probably going to be fine. If anything gets worse, bring her to my office tomorrow. And Mama Miro Servino says, well, okay, but one other thing, though, is she had a prophetic

she had a prophetic death vision. Sorry. And do you do anything about that as a doctor? Can you prescribe something for prophetic death? death visions. And he's like, yeah, no, I'm sure God was just kidding about going here. Just take a fucking gummy vitamin over that one on. So, yeah, so, but he leaves.

And then dad goes in to tuck the girl back into bed. And he sees that she's drawn this picture of God moving over the waters. But it's like absurdly good for a 10-year-old's picture. Well, it's absurdly good for a Christian 10-year-old. it's got real boardwalk the thing they're not going to draw for you energy Yeah In that moment I'm like thinking

She's like dad don't tell anyone But I'm actually Banksy Yeah Yeah and the vision of God In this picture is kind of weird Like she drew Slender Man Like right Like it's Slender Man

went to the boardwalking got a caricature. That's what we're looking at. Like slender man's child with the Shrike. It's so fucked up. Yeah. I should have told that guy

like to roller skate. I mean, you know, the whole art thing with her, I'm like seriously. Like it, you know, God gave me the ability to draw. It's just a coincidence that it looks like AI.

You know what I mean? It's like, if somebody made this or if AI did it, it's the worst style. Like it doesn't look cool. It doesn't draw you in. It doesn't look. It's lifeless, yes.

Yeah, you're right. It's wooden. Yep. And by the way, I checked the credits. There was no one listed as an artist. There was no artist credited with these drawings. So I'm assuming that. I don't know.

Is this 2021 that seems like the right time for AI Slops? There's just this one guy named Claude under art. Okay. Who or whatever made this art? We agree it shouldn't have as much water as it does. Well said. All right. So then we cut to Sarah and Mark in downtown Smallville.

And Mark is, she's giving Mark is the black best friend in the wheelchair. She's giving him a drawing that she made for him, which is a caricature of him dunking a basketball. And he's like, oh. Which seems like a cruel thing to give to the kid in the... You drew me doing a stereotype that's also impossible because of my disability. Thanks. This is awesome. This is great. Yes, very nice. I love this.

Nice thing. Now, let's go find Jaime Goldschmidt so I can give him this drawing. I mean, running a bank. and killing Jesus. So, but just then a couple of bullies show up and start picking on her for saying that she can bring dead animals back from the dead, right? And they start, like they're all circling the two of them on their bicycles like bullies doing movies. Yeah.

But just then, Danny happens by and nobody messes with his little sister, damn it. So he does this fucking Xander. cage-esque soccer kick that knocks all three of the bullies over? He explodes them with a soccer ball because that's his thematic weapon that he kicks over and he It's his signature weapon. He hits one of the three bullies and then the other two also somehow explode sideways from the soccer ball. Well, when you hit the mother ship, they fall over in solidarity.

All of the other ships shunned down. Oh, it's like Independence Day. Yeah. Yeah, no. Yeah. You missed the scene where he was planning this with Jeff Goldblum. Yeah. well at least his girlfriend got turned on

yeah clearly clearly yeah she was into it the little girl turns to and says what happened to turning the other cheek and this movie makes the most tortured effort to make a butt cheek joke but it's just not there right he looks at the kid's butt and he goes like well i did something cheek related can i say something we are 550 christian movies in we have heard turn the other cheek two dozen times three dozen times, not once has someone said, yes, I am turning the other cheek, that very famous Jesus

phrase. It is always a Christian going, I know I'm supposed to turn the other cheek, but frip-da-dip-da-p-p-d-d- Jews don't do that shit, okay? We're never like split the scene, more like put the water together. Stick by your guy. I mean, is that indicative of real life, though? Are Christians really out there turning the other cheek? Yeah, exactly.

Right, right. Well, that's just the thing. They've abandoned it to the point where they won't even pretend to be that way in their movies. Yeah. So, okay. So now they're walking all, they're all walking together now. And the bad guy kid from the soccer team earlier shows up. He's him and his heathen friends are drinking and smoking and engaging in risk behaviors, you know.

And yeah, this is, he's like, you know, another, he's another atheist street tough, but he's also the rival from that soccer. him. And he comes over and he starts taunting Danny and he's all angry, but he won the game. Yeah, right. How dare you lose to me? Like, I don't understand. Yeah, that's not like they set up any kind of rivalry with these guys beforehand. It was just like field hatred. Okay, he's being a dick because it's the opposing team. Yeah, because he's the bully character. Yeah, right. So, and he's got a dog, by the way, the dog's very growly and very intimidating or whatever. So they're talking shit to each other. and as they are, one of the bully kid's friends

who isn't paying attention starts his truck and just hauls ass and almost runs over the bully kid. Okay, but like, it's not motivated at all, right? There are universes you could create where it makes sense for this car to go speeding forward

at 60 miles an hour. Right. The only explainable thing is that this guy starts his car every single time by being like, I'm going to look to the right, I'm going to close my eyes and I'm going to go 90. Well, yeah, exactly.

Right, because he would know that his friend's not in the fucking truck. He would know where his friend is. His friend is yelling things. So you would be real obvious. Yeah. But at any rate, so they managed to set this up in the stupidest fucking possible way.

Danny, because he's a good Christian kid, jumps out and he saves bully kid's life. He pushes him out of the way. But the dog didn't make it out of way in time. And I wrote my notes, if only there was somebody here who could cast raised dead at level five or higher. Can I say,

I think it was brave of them to put a little hormal chili around the dogs to be like, no, no, no. It's dead, guys. You know, what would have happened was,

and I've seen this several times, a dog would have shit himself. Sure. When a dog gets hit by a car, it always goes to, you know, it always goes to the bathroom. Yep.

It is what it is. It doesn't do their research. Yeah, you're right, they threw a little, a little chutney down on the ground. And they're like, this is it. This is the dog's blood and intestines that that's next to next.

Yeah, they got ran over to death. Jay, do you remember when we first got on the Skype call and you said, can I talk about my hobby of running over dogs? And we said, no. Do you remember we were really clear about that, Jay? So then the God whisperer comes over. Yes. Right.

She's like, she like summons her God powers, brings the dog back to life. I wrote my nose. Like, I want him to turn out to be evil now, like in Pet Cemetery. Yes. But now. Okay, so she goes over and starts doing the, you know, necromancy on the dog. And the rival kid, I guess who's the dog's person is like, tell her to keep her hands off my dog. Why are you like, what did you think was going to, like she was going to mutilate the corpse of the dog?

Yeah, start whipping it to shreds or something. Yeah. But no, she resurrects it. And everybody is like way to chill about this, right? nobody like screams, nobody's like pulling their phones out, nothing. No. I guess she's a necromancer, cool. Oh, wow.

Let's take off. It's like when you're a magician and you want people to ask you to do a magic trick, so you do like a little magic trick, and then everybody ignores it because they don't want you to do magic. That's what they knew to her. Yeah, right, right. Hypothetically. I mean, the whole thing with the dog, they're setting up a callback, right?

Because they want to show like the evolution of the bad guy, which again, this is the only character in the entire movie. In my opinion, it actually has an arc. He's got an arc. Everyone else is still, they're all just happy Christians. They're all smiling. They start out happy Christians and end happy Christians. Right. Yeah, he's the only character that has any kind of growth throughout the film. Yeah. So now we've got Mark and Sarah, they're walking home. And Mark is like hinting around that maybe, you know, she should try making the lame walk while she's doing God stuff, right? That was a fun thing you did for a stranger's dog today. How's your day going, Mark.

Yeah. So she's like, oh, you know, I'll give it a try. And so she praised to God. She's like, God, Mark is pretty swell. He should be able to walk, huh? Kind of weird that you made it so he can't walk. I don't know. That's just like a strange thing.

Did you want to maybe fix that? Go back on that? Yeah. I wanted Mark to be like, sell it harder. Sell it, so. And Sarah, while you're praying for me, can you also clear up this jock itch? Yeah. Right.

She's like, oh, you know, nothing happened. maybe God's a racist. That would explain a lot, actually. I want her to be like, oh, apparently it only works if I kill you first. Do you mind? Mark just stands up out of the wheelchair immediately falls. She's just like, yeah, okay, well, I guess you deserved it. That was my one for the day.

All right. Maybe it's just animals. Well, I'll tell you what, this movie is about to crank the bullshit to 11. So while you prepare your ears, we're going to take another quick break. But we'll be back in a flash with even more of the girl who believes in miracles. All right, so in this scene, Sarah calls her best friend Mark Miller, right, to tell him about her new powers. Okay, nice, yeah. Yeah, and Mark is black, by the way.

Okay. You guys want to write that down? I think we can just hire a black actor. We got it. Okay, you guys will remember, though? Yeah, no, this is the only character you've mentioned by race, so I think we'll remember. Right. Yeah, well, that's because everybody else is just normal colors.

normal colored. Don't, don't get in. Also, he's in a wheelchair. Oh, okay. Yeah, black guy in a wheelchair. It's her best friend. Yeah, we heard you. And he's gay.

You know, why don't we take lunch? Yes, I love some lunch. No, guys, it would be a good, it's a good thing, though. And we're back for more of this shit. We're going to rejoin the action at the offices of Dr. Sorbo, where he's checking on Mark the wheelchair friend. Turns out he managed a toad. wiggle that morning, guys. Yeah.

And Dr. Sorbo, the atheist, is like, come on, prove it. Liar, you're lying. Lying bullshit-ass kid. They set him up as being, you know, he doesn't believe, doesn't believe, and then he sees it. And there is no appropriate response.

Sure, right? This is a medical professional who just witnessed something that he said is medically impossible. And he doesn't have, this is Kevin Sorbo. You could literally hit the guy in the face with a baseball bat and his expression doesn't

Right. Just sits there. Okay. Disappointed. Yeah. Yeah. So, but he, well, at first he can't, right? Like, he's like, wiggle your toes, you fucking liar.

And the kid doesn't do anything. He's like, see, gotcha. Bullshit. You're full of shit. Too slow atheism. Exactly. You convert in your face. But then he does wiggle his toes.

And he's like, hmm. Yeah, no science can't explain that at all. So he goes outside in the hall to talk to mom. Okay. Sorry. Just to be clear. That means in their. narrative, God is kind of in a snit, but he will heal Mark slowly, starting with toe movement.

Selectively, yes. Yeah. So they walk out, and this is how ham-fisted this fucking movie is they walk out into the hallway to talk about Mark's miraculous healing. And mom turns down and she goes, hold on a second. Is that Dolores from the Channel 12 News? Oh, God. She is a news reporter, I said to ourselves.

news. Anywho, oh my God, Mark is walking. It's a miracle. Yeah, and then Mark walks out and everybody yells about what a miracle it is. And then he says to no one in particular, it was Sarah Hopkins. She's the one that wields the God powers and is the second coming of Christ. You know, whatever the hell it is. Hello, random lady.

Was it Dolores? I don't know. I have no idea if you're in the media. That wasn't known. I didn't hear that part. But anyway, I got healed by God and Sarah. Hopkins. That's Sarah Hopkins, H-O-P-I-N-S. And then Sorbo from, he sees the toe wiggle. And then the next scene with him talking to the reporter, he fully doesn't believe it.

Yeah. No, no, no, wait, we got to make sure. Let's get the facts. All right. But, you know, dude, you just said it's medically impossible. So there is something going on. Right. Yeah. Yeah, exactly the kind of thing that you'd want somebody to investigate. Yeah. I do love, though, the Christian movie version of skeptics, right?

Because in their heads, there's no evidence that would convince us. Because in actuality, the reverse is true, right? We saw evidence that their God isn't real, and that's why we think and feel the things we think and feel. But in their heads, God would come down from heaven twirling a basketball, and we'd be like, nah. Yes, right, right. You know, they don't even give us the scene, though, okay, okay, during that moment and he's, like, hardcore against God. and he doesn't, you know, he doesn't want to believe because he has a personal motivation, right?

But, you know, scientifically he's correct throughout the film. Right. You know, his opinion is. But, okay, he sees the healed kid. Where's the scene with him at like 11 o'clock at night in his medical office having some whiskey going, the fuck is going on here?

Yeah, right, like surrounded by like the medical journals that he's been reading through or whatever. Yeah, yeah, right. So, okay, so meanwhile, Danny and Sarah are playing video games together. And I love this goddamn scene so much. It's one fucking second. But it just demonstrates the stupidity of this film.

The two kids are playing one steam deck together. How fuck does that work? You take the thumbs sticks. I'll do the buttons. I mean, what the fuck are you even doing? Maybe those kids never saw a real video game before. Yeah. 100%.

Right, right. Yeah. No, they're Christian. So they're not allowed to play heathenest things. You know, Batman has ghosts in it. That ain't Christian. I think you could just snap it in half. They just snap the thing at half.

Yeah. Oh, there you go. Yeah. Like, yeah. That's the Solomon thing to do. So, okay. But then Dr. Kevin Sorbo shows up, along with the preacher from the opening scene, right? The fucking Robin to his Batman now, apparently. Right. Because according to the movie, this pastor is the real scientist now. Yeah. So he has to accompany Sorbo to all the scenes. I thought that was weird, too. Like, you know, these are the little nuances of storytelling.

Like if these guys know each other or they're going to show up in a scene together, why don't they have, it would have been so good if they had these two guys talking behind the scenes and debating. Yes. They could actually state the philosophy then. It would have worked really well. Then they show up together. They establish their friends, but they happen to not agree. And they agree to not agree.

Right. You know what I mean? What happened? Did they meet at the front door, like anything? Yes, exactly. Did he stop by? Did he, he's like, wow, I'm going to need a God guy. I better pick up Mac on the way or something.

Yeah, what happened here? Yeah. Right. Like that scene you were describing where it's like dark and Sorbo's, you know, reading through journals and weeping a little bit into his whiskey. But the pastor's also there and he talks him into like, all right, all right, I'm going to, I'll cancel my subscriptions to the New England Journal of Medicine because nothing is real about science.

Right. Right. So, okay. But then, so Sorbo and the preacher show up and they're like, we want to talk to your daughter about the miracle healing she did for her friend Mark. Right? Yeah. So the little girl's like, yeah, no, I actually wield God powers, resurrect birds,

all kinds of shit at this point now, dogs. He's like, hey, you know, why don't you bring her into my office sometime? I'll check her for miracles there. And then he takes the parents outside to tell them how dangerous it might be to play along with, you know, her kid's miraculous superpowers. He literally said to them, I'm paraphrasing, but he literally said to them, I'm paraphrasing, but he said, your kid's crazy and she needs to be examined.

Yes. Which I thought, you know, again, like the movie isn't consistent with itself because he saw the result of the claim, right, there was a claim. Yes. I prayed over him. Now the kid has a medical miracle.

It was a medical miracle, right? That, you know, that phrase works well. Now he's already, like, again, he's discredited any evidence that he's seen and he's already back to your kid's crazy and she needs to like, She needs more medical attention because she's crazy. Right.

Yeah. Right. Well, there's also a great moment here where mom says, you know, well, you know, if my daughter says she healed him with a miracle, she healed him with a miracle. My daughter would never outright lie. I'm like, said a mom who doesn't know her kid very well. Says no mom ever. Yeah, but there's the undertone here of discrediting the quote unquote scientist.

You know, the message this scene conveyed. the don't trust your medical professionals bullshit. Yes. Yeah. Prayer is more powerful than, you know, a medicine that's been developed over hundreds of years. Like this movie is really fun until you back off for a second and realize how insidious its messages, which is that, hey, sometimes faith healing actually is the best option. Right. Atheist Dr. Sorbo actually says, I'm worried about the health of your child in ways that are fucking real.

said the bad guy and then Pastor Jerry, who was a little bit late to the sea and has to like run over and yell at Dr. Sorbo, be like, no, no, this is real. That kid can't lie. She's the other door. So how could it? It would have been so much better if they just

slow down a little bit, right? The movie's only an hour and a half. They had another 20 minutes to play with. How cool would it have been if they had a real discussion? If Sorbo was like, look, I'll believe it. I just need to make sure, like, I got to dot all my eyes and cross my teas here. I'm not saying it's impossible to get me there, but let's follow this through. And like, none of that happens.

It's all like, look, the kid's walking. Jesus is real. No, right. He is a caricature of atheism throughout. Yeah. Exactly. And then we really drill down on that on the next scene, right? Because the next scene is where he comes home to his wife and his wife chastises him for being so mad at God

and rejecting the miracles before his very. eyes. And he says the one thing, we hear this so much as atheists and as people who are critical thinkers and everything. He's like, if there was a God, would he create a world that

has crippled kids in it and all this stuff? It's like, yeah, but yes, yes, that is the reality we live in. You believe in God or the Christians believe in God and we legitimately do live in a world that is wrought with war, disease, hunger, you know, terrible

things happening, kids being born, deformed. Yes, that is your God. If you believe in them, you got to own the whole fucking beach. Right. And this is a movie. So they get to choose what happens, but they set up the problem of evil for them to smash into and not know what to do. They even mentioned that Sorbo and his wife have a kid who died, right? That's where it's real right now. Yeah. I mean, like so many bingo squares here, just like full board. Right. Yeah. Well, he doesn't, his mom didn't have cancer, so he must have a dead kid, Eve. I actually wrote cancer mom or dead kid.

Dead kid. Got it. And they actually came up with a way to add to the shit list of horrible things that their God thinks is fine. Let's kill a perfectly healthy, completely innocent, God-loving eight-year-old little girl. For no reason. I'm just going to take her out.

Why? Because fuck you. Yeah. Well, and here's the thing. And they do this in these Christian movies all the time. They have a character present the problem with evil. because that's so, you know, it stares him in the face so obviously, and they can't not write that into the atheist's mouths.

But how do they answer it? Well, something comes on the news and they have to go listen to that, right? Like, there's never. Seriously. That's genuinely, they're like, oh, there's another scene over in this room. The movie has no answer to itself when it asked scriptedly about the problem. They just do a long pause. Genuinely, we watch the question happen from Sorbo.

if God exists, why would he kill kids like ours? Long pause. Should we walk to a different room in our house? And they do. It was a living example of cognitive dissidents. It's like, okay. I can't spend the time to think about that because it's going to make me really uncomfortable.

So let's just literally write a scene that steps on the one that we're in. Right. Yeah. Let's table that. There's a perfectly timed news report that just came on the TV in the other room. It's on mute. I'll turn it on. you're making that noise

of your mouth. No, no, let's go look at the thing. So they unmute the TV and damn it if Dolores didn't run with the story. So we hear her going like, can Sarah Hopkins, the child who lives at 2614 Evergreen Way really wield

magical resurrection and healing powers? Probably. Find out after the weather. Yeah, right. Yeah. They've got a fucking her head shot. You're tuned to O-A-N. So I thought at this moment

that Sarah was going to necromance their like decomposed kid like Sorbo. Oh, that would have been so good. That would have been so cool. They spend the rest of the movie fighting off their son zombie hordes. There you go. Sold. So then we cut to Sarah.

She's knocking out another one of her Louvre Ready art pieces. And honestly, okay, so they have established at the beginning of this that she's drawing all this stuff with the fucking 101 piece big box art set that Grandpa got her for Christmas. nobody could draw anything good with that fucking set. Give me a goddamn break. It's a piece of shit. So, but yeah, so she's drawing a horse, right? And dad comes in and he's like, hey, kid, you're kind of freaking me out with these pictures, right?

Because it's like, if God gave you healing powers, why would he also give you art powers? It seems so fucking random. Feels weird that God felt like the message wasn't hitting home unless it was shitty high school watercolors as well. Yeah. I mean, you know, Noah, following your, like, you know, healing, you know, I need a fifth level healer here. Like, yeah, these are like her secondary skills, right? Right. Right. Yeah. She leveled to fifth level healer, and she also got drawing and dancing. Well, my background says I weave baskets. Yeah, I don't really know what to do with that. You just bring people back to life. I get an extra luck check if I want to now.

Nice. Yeah. So the idea is that she's drawing stuff from the, Bible sort of, right? So like, I wanted her to be like, oh, so I also drew another thing here. Check it out. It's a lady fucking a guy with the donkey dick and the ejaculation is like a stallion. Oh, my God. That's cool. It's in the Bible. Yeah. Yeah. She's drawing God's memories. Jerusalem being horish with the, like, but then they look at, he looks at the drawing and he's like, what are you drawing here? And he's like, I don't know. I think it's a girl that wants to be my friend. And we zoom in and it's a cancer kid. So and she's right. She's got, she's got, she's going to draw in her writing a horse, right? Yeah. By the way,

spoilers for the movie, they don't end up friends. Just because you cure someone's cancer once. Doesn't make them your fucking friend. If anything, Sarah probably later extorts money out of it. Well, you know, if we're going by the history, yeah. So, okay, so then, but we zoom in suddenly on

a cancer girl playing with her horses. And I say playing with her horses because I'm describing this liberally. She's doing that thing that actors do when they're told to play with stuff where they just like hold one on either hand and then look at it smiling. Yeah.

It reminded me of Peewee's movie. Are you screwing in a light bulb bombing a horse? What is that? I know, it's so stupid. It's like pee-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la. Lou-l-l-lu doing horse stuff.

Oh, seen. Okay. Yep, yep. So, but then as she's playing horses, her uncle Alonzo, who is a Catholic priest, comes in, he brought her a present,

and it's another horse. She's got 57 of these fucking things. But he's like, here's another horse. for you. And she's like, oh, I sure wish God wasn't murdering me with cancer so I could play with it. And he's like, yeah, he does that. Yeah. She's also just, they couldn't get an actor quite young enough to do the horse girl. Yeah. So he's like, huh? A new horse. And she's like, yeah, I'm probably 15 or 16. This is nice, though. Thanks. I appreciate it. And then so he's counseling her, right? Like he's like trying to, no, because she's got imminently going to die. And she's like, was Jesus afraid to die?

I can't help. It pops in my head. He's like, no, honey, Jesus is only afraid of the church being taxed. Yeah.

It's such a weird because they have this bizarre conversation. She's like, you know, I'm not sure what will happen when I die. And he's like, ah,

Jesus says all fucking blowjob fountains or I guess cunneling his fountains in your instance. And she goes, well, if you believe that, why are you so sad

about the fact that I'm dying? And he's like, oh, man, that gets us, doesn't it? Fuck. Yeah.

Why don't you just ask be the problem of evil. Fuck. Also, in terms of costuming, they've chosen to give, this is Teresa, who has cancer, they've chosen to give her

a head band instead of a head scarf. And I guess they did that because they wanted to show that, oh, she's also bald so they can show the top of her head that has a bald cap on it.

But I can see her sideburns, so that doesn't help. Like the sideburns, I guess, a radiation proof. It's cool. They only did chemo from, you know,

the head up from the half way up. Sure. Oh, it's just a top chemo. Sure. Yes. But I will say, okay, I'm going to ask, actually, am I supposed to be offended that this healthy child actor is playing a kid with cancer, like in representation-wise? You bring up a good question there. Get a real cancer kid. Let's get ahead of the canceling. Let's be on the forefront.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's a tangled web they weave with all that, right? It's like, you know, we, now we're predicting what people are going to be offended by in the future. Yeah. So believe me, I feel like we've got some pretty solid predictions in the past of this show. I'm really good at it, Jay, in case you're wondering, it's the things I say. So, but then Alonzo's leaving and Teresa's mom sees that news story about the miraculous Sarah Hopkins. And she's like, hey, man, you're a religious expert.

Can, you know, can people wield God powers like that? And he's like, well, I guess. Anything's possible. You know, she's not Catholic, but. Still act too. we'll see. Yeah, right. So, okay.

So then we cut this goddamn hilarious shot of all the sick and injured people showing up at the Hopkins house. Zombie horde slowly ambling up to their house. Why would they be coming from all directions? There's only two ways the road comes from. Right? But nobody's coming from the backyard, weirdly enough. Yeah. Right, right.

Clim it over the fences. Yeah. So they all come ambling in. And they've all got to have some. like visibly wrong with them, right? So they've all got their like blind sunglasses or their wheelchair or their crutches or something like that. And like this is fair though.

Like if this is real, if you take the narrative at face value, all these sick people also believe that there's a healer in town. Sure. They should show up as a zombie horde and be like, hey assholes really thought you'd go to the hospital for children. Why make us? But we here, we had to walk here. Some of us have crutches and wheelchairs and shit.

God damn it. Yeah, and if you want to follow the realism, the father would have been like, you know, she healed me T-shirt here. Yeah, right, right, yeah, exactly. So Danny, he sees all of these zombies shambling towards the house, and he goes, dad, the fucking poem from the Statue of Liberty is outside. And dad comes, okay, this is, I think that this dad is the most evil character in the history of cinema.

Right? Because he turns to the daughter and he goes, look, if you go out there and you heal these people and all of them are healed, then even more people are going to come and you're going to have to heal them. And then you will never have time to play with your My Little Pony's anymore. I mean, what? Yeah. And then to take it to the next step, he goes out and he lies to everyone.

My daughter can't heal people. Yes. What kind of Christian teachings are we getting here? Right. How about telling them the truth? You know what I mean? When my daughter heals people, it damages her. Yeah.

So we've got to be, we've got to titrate this. Yeah. I still want you to do it. Who amongst you is the sickest? Right. Who's dying the most? To be clear, I don't care about your kid. No, but dad's like, yeah, no, these kids are going to get complacent.

It's like, well-fair if you start healing. You know, I was like, give a kid a cancer cure, you know, teach a kid a cancer. Why don't your kids go up to the lake and hold a bird for an afternoon and then we can all do together. My taxes pay for a bird. I don't really understand the economy. Sarah goes out there, then she starts shotguning healing people, and no one goes, hey, you asshole, why did you lie to us? She can't heal people.

Like, no one calls the dad out. Yeah, she goes out there. She sees the girl from her horse drawing, and she runs up to her, and she goes, you like horses, don't you? And then everybody's shocked, and I'm like, okay, but like nine out of ten, you ask a little girl if she likes horses, she's going to find you. That's an easy guess. I wanted the kid who she passes by to be like, oh, I was actually here first.

I don't know if you saw, oh, is there obviously not an official line, but I am closest to the horse. She just showed us. As soon as that little girl's blindness got cured, there would a bum rush to the door. Yes. It would have turned into pandemonium in three seconds. Yes.

I love, because she heals Teresa first. And of course, Teresa has cancer, so there's no visible healing. So Teresa just has to say, I can feel it. I'm cured. I want her to pull off the fucking cap and have hair again or something.

That would have been better, yeah. Or just some kid yells from the background. I'm stage three over here. And I feel like the line should be based on, you know, waited by that or something? Lady at the back is like, I have really bad IBS

and I know I know we should do the cancer people first but I would like to go. Hey, you know what? Let's help the lady with IBS. I think that's good for everybody. Let's do that first. I'm going to shit on this lawn

like a dog that Jayneauvela just ran over. Let me tell you. There are kids here who I would like you not to heal. And I don't want to say why. Because I feel like it means you won't heal me late. It's okay.

But you know. So, and of course, as she's out here healing everybody, the bully kid with the dog is watching on having his character arc in the background. Well, we pay attention to less interesting things. So she heals a blind kid. She makes the wheelchair boy stand. And then she's like, all right, that's it for the healing today. Thank you.

And then she passes out. Right. So then we check back in with Dr. Sorbo, who's furious that his worldview is being so thoroughly destroyed by all these miraculous healings. Right? What's even going to do for a living if she heals everybody? You know, the idea here, the premise here, is this little innocent girl who has a lot of faith and God notices and then bestows healing powers on her.

Like, his healing powers are actually killing her. Yeah. That's what that scene tells us. Like, God's healing kills the wielder. Right. Why would he do that? Like actually, picture of Dorian pray. That's where this is introduced.

Yeah. So God is, I guess, slowly killing Sarah because she was fucking with his mysterious ways. Could be like the other interpretation there. Right. What a fucked up thing to do. But yeah, but they check her, they bring her in to give her an MRI to check for miracle disease or whatever. And he keeps, you know, of course, he's the fucking atheist in a Christian movie. So he keeps insisting that there has to be a secular explanation.

for it, even though she's now healed another blind kid, another kid in a wheelchair, and a kid with cancer. Right? Like, Jay, I feel like you can speak on behalf of fucking skeptics here. If we've got five miracle healings in two days from the same kid on the same lawn, we're hanging up our spurs, right? Well, that's when you would, that's when, you know, it goes off the rails because if this news is getting out and those claims are being made, you know,

Ben Radford would show the fuck up. Right, yeah. Somebody from the skeptic community would find that and, you know, talk to other skeptics about it. And then a legit investigation would be held. And we are like completely glossing over the white elephant in the room, which is the Vatican would have sent people there yesterday. Yeah, absolutely. As soon as Uncle Alonzo heard about it. Just Jay and, Jay and, like, Marsh walking around the town.

Get out of the fucking sketch, Jay and Marsh. You're fucking up. Yeah, right, right. Do you wonder if people might ask, stop it. I don't even if you're going to use the British Jew questions. I don't have to show you the emails. They're private.

So, yeah, but then as they're having this discussion about how he's not buying into this miracle stuff, his assistant comes out and he's like, hey, we have to interrupt the scene for another news alert. So she takes him out to see the news. And now that Dolores is telling him even more miracles. have happened and there's a media circus outside the hospital now. Yeah, I mean, she's basically, she's got a dog whistle to have the entire tri-state area to ascend on this little girl. Yeah.

Yeah. They're all hanging outside of this little girl's doctor's office to get their story. So they're like, okay, well, we can sneak her out to back and go to Grandpa's house. They don't know about Grandpa's, apparently, the medium, right? So then we cut to Grandpa's house. and we have this amazing moment where I think the two best actors in the movie, right? The grandpa and Mira Servino are having this conversation, but the dialogue is so hilariously understated.

Right? He says at this point, and I quote, nothing like this has ever happened in our family before. Oh, I didn't tell you about the time Memo was a miracle healer. Yeah, no. This is a little bit before she met Grandpa. I've done a lot of genealogy. haven't found a single necromancer in our history.

So this, I guess, first one. Weird. So, but this thing gets interrupted when mom gets a call from the doctor. And we don't hear what the news is, but we know it's bad because she goes and gives Gramps a hug afterwards, right? Yeah. Something's pretty wrong. So, okay.

So then we cut to Grandpa's at the, like, this is Peter Coyote's Oscar clip. Right? This is where this 80-year-old man. is going to yell at God, please don't take the girl. Yeah, I mean, this was, from a cinematography standpoint, not that I am an expert in this, but I have done a lot in my day. This is one of the worst shot scenes in the entire movie.

Oh, it's incredible. Everything, every decision, you know, the DP made and the director made here were just so weird and wrong. And, you know, my sense was that they were losing sunlight and they had to hurry the whole thing up. Oh my God. That would make so, like, I guarantee you that Peter Coyote got out there and he was just being such a pain in the ass going like, you know, I've been in movies with actors you've heard of. And he just did a big fussy, bitchy thing for like the first four hours.

And they're like, well, now we only have 40 goddamn minutes to shoot this scene. Yep, 100%. No, I bet you they rehearsed it. And we know your real name isn't Coyote. You know, they're not even being consistent with the character. It would have been such a better scene if he's straight up threatened God. Like, I killed those four. I'll kill you next bitch.

Oh, are we going to talk about the fact that he admits to doing war crimes during his God, please don't kill my granddaughter's speech? It's pretty fucking weird. He's like, I know I did some fucked up stuff in Nam. And it's like, what did you do in Nam, man? Maybe now is not the time to talk about it, but I think about it all the time. And I'm sure you're thinking about it too. He goes, she's such a beautiful child.

And I'm like, what? I could understand it as she was an ugly kid. But what is the point of that? But we, yeah, we see Peter Coyote's whole acting range. It is much of a single octave here. God. And then we get Dr. Sorbo and the preacher showing up to have a chat with mom and dad, right? They send Danny and Sarah out to play.

Okay. Just real quick on the strategy. If you believe what's happening is happening here, you think you have a healer daughter. But now she's getting sick. Don't you just like use the healing for her too? Yeah, do it on your own face. There you go. Do it in the mirror?

There you go. Is it like tickling? Yeah, I think if she did that, her head would explode, guys. Oh, yeah. It's a stucing situation. Yeah, smart. So why wouldn't everybody else just go to the lake and find a dead bird, right? Like, give it a try.

See if that's the key, right? So there's actually a funny moment here because they send. Everyone's in there crushing birds in their hands. Yeah, right. In the hopes of gaining superpowers. There's not enough dead ones. Somebody kill a bunch of birds. So they send Danny and Sarah out and they're like, can we go to the lake?

And mom's like, there's a lot of strange deities hang in. out around there. I would rather you didn't. Just don't go to the lake where she made a death pack with a ghost, please? Just anywhere else to be cool. Maybe you guys could play some

throw rocks at cans. Huh? I thought in that scene it would have been cool if she like prayed to God and she shot lightning at the cans with her days. Her power is growing.

Come on, she could draw. She's got all sorts of skills falling out of her pockets. We don't know what else is on this skill tree. Yeah. And now, Ken's, you will. die. You know, they fucking shoot the lightning bolts. Exactly, yes. Next

scene is in Osama bin Laden's cave somewhere. Yeah, right. She just comes floating down into the entrance. So, like, the brother tries to get her excited about throw rocks of the can, but she's not really into it because she can tell she's dying. All right. See if you can kill Yoda here. See what you got with that. Anything? So, but she dupes her brother with the old, okay, I'll play your game, but could you turn your back for a minute? First trick? So she sneaks off, right? And she wanders back into hear what the doctor is saying, and what he's saying is that she has an inoperable brain tumor. And his mom and dad ask a lot of questions that you should understand the answer to as soon as he says,

inoperable brain tumor. None of which are, hey, maybe we use the magic she has on her brain tumor. It seems like we've got a solution built right in. Right, right. You know, he also was like telling them, you know, that her healing isn't real. it's the power of suggestion and placebo, you know, and as a critical thinker, I'm just like, please, like, that's what they think. That is their character of us.

And then, you know, when Sorbo is telling them about the healing powers being fake and it happened right in front of him, I thought appropriately the priest should have like chump punched him right in the back of the head. Because, you know, at that point, a blind kid sees cancer's cured, legs are working, all this proof. And the priests are sitting there like, yeah, okay. is placebo. No, hit him. Right. Shut up.

They're describing like placebo chemo as real here. That's what they say. Yes, exactly. Like the chemo ward and one guy has just like a box a capri or a bag of capri son instead of the bag of chemo and it's like, yeah, it's worked. Yeah, that's gross. But how pathetic is it that like at this point in the movie, I'm legit rooting for the Paul Giamati priest guy to hit the doctor?

Right. Well, yeah, because they've made him such a big. pain in the ass. And that's the thing, of course, the reason that they don't do any of that stuff that Jay was talking about earlier about where they actually have this conversation is because they cannot possibly present the skeptic as being a reasonable person, right? It has to be a person who would no matter what the evidence is, say, oh, that's the placebo effect. Because, of course, when they present their stupid evidence to us, that's probably what we say, because they're probably talking about the placebo effect, about how they fucking prayed and then

suddenly they didn't feel their headache anymore or whatever dumb shit they're trying to convince us with, right? So I had something funny happened. So, you know, I'm watching the last part of the movie. My daughter came in. And of course, like, she sees a little girl and she comes over and she asked me. And I give her the quick, you know, I give her the elevator pitch of the movie, like, explained to her. And this is exactly what she said because I was at my computer and I wrote it down. She goes,

so God kills her for no reason and then brings her back. Why did he do it? This is so stupid. She's ready to be on the show. Yeah, right, right. So I ask you, guys, what is God's plan in this whole thing? Let's try to make it make sense. What did God want the end result of this entire thing to be? Okay, so we're going to get there, Jay, but I have to wait until we get to the end and we've unfolded the entire amazing plot for the, but I have some theories. So, okay. Mysterious ways. Yeah, right. Honestly, at this point, I like, I genuinely, the movie

was so cheesy. I checked to see if Sam Sorbo wrote it. She didn't, but I had to double. check. That's how fucking bad it is. So then Mira Sorvino, right? She's the best actor in the cast by far, right? So she's just received the news that her daughter is dying of a brain tumor and she's acting appropriately.

The daughter comes out from behind and she's like it's okay, mom, I'm going to heaven. Why are you sad? And she's like because that's just a thing that grown up say, honey, you're actually just going to cease to exist and it's really hard to even think of out. It's a bummer. This is so.

so terrifying. Sarah is still on board because she's an eight-year-old kids. She's like, I don't want to go to the hospital. I'd like a DNR, actually, because of Eternal Paradise. I'd like a DNR now. Yeah. Right. So she's like, well, I want to go back to the lake. And they're like, no, we need to take you to the hospital. And she passes out. They're like, grab her, get her to the hospital right now. On the way out the door, she turns to Grandpa. And she says, Grandpa, please take me to the lake. And change the format of the movie drastically, frankly. Yes. Yeah, right. All right, well, the stakes are as high as they can be when an omnipotent, omnibenevolent being is at the center of your story.

So we're going to take another break here. But first, let me give Act 3 the hard sell. Will the next scene be Grandpa gearing up and scrawling black camo stripes across his face with shoe polish? Will he fight his way through the hospital's guards with wrist control and dive rolls? Because why the fuck else would they have established his badassery before? Find out the answers to these questions more when we return for the. that she's tastic conclusion of the girl who believes

in miracles. I want to kill somebody with my comb. You see like a ramp fixture? You're thinking ramp? No, that's great. Mommy, Daddy, what are you doing? Oh, sweetie, you're up. Perfect. How long does it take you to heal someone when you pray? Oh, well, yes, it depends on the prayer.

Okay, so we need variable speed belts. Belts? Sorry, honey. Yeah, so your father, he's just excited. We're figuring out how to best use your healing powers. I'm thinking we can use some kind of conveyor belt system to kind of speed, heal people, you know, a couple hundred times a day. A couple hundred a day?

Or, or we can do it the old-fashioned way with like ropes and winches. Ropes and winches. Look, Pumpkin, you've got a magical gift that can heal any illness. It's our moral imperative to use that gift as much as we possibly can. No matter the cost. to help other people, even if it means quite literally sanding you down to the bone. I don't think God wants me to use my powers that way. Because he has the efficiency?

No. Because we can do ropes and winches. I said ropes and winches. I said, no, I heard you. We could make you into a soup. What? And we're back for still more of this shit. We're going to rejoin the action at the media circus outside the hospital where people just can't get enough of this dying miracle kit. Yeah, I mean, of course.

This is actually true. The media would do this. It would even be, it would be an order of magnitude more at this point with all of the people that she healed and all that news getting out. Yeah, except there'd be like a TikToker doing a slap the healing girl challenge also. Whoever Kai Sinat is would be there and I don't know how I'm supposed to feel about that. Mike Lindell with a pillow kiosk. Yeah. Yeah, right, right.

but then Danny and Cindy go visit her. They bring her art supplies. And this is where Sarah's like, Danny, I'm not going to live long enough to fall in love. I wonder what that's like. She's like, I never got to grope anyone. Yeah, right, right. I never got to do a over-the-pants handy.

Sure wouldn't call it going fishing. Wouldn't be apropos at all. Well, Sarah, I actually don't know what that's like. Wink, wink, yeah. And Cindy's right there. I wanted her to jump in and be like. like, oh my God, so good, Sarah. I do.

I sure know. No, so good, though. Danny, take off. Yeah. So, Danny, he says, he's telling her all about how awesome it is to be in love. And I'm like, hey, man, that feels braggy. Back off. You know, you can tell her about some of the shitty parts.

You know, she can never figure out where she wants to go eat, but she doesn't want to go to eat where I want to go to eat. That's wrong. But suddenly this side is nothing's right. And you can do something like that. But then Sarah turns to Cindy. And she goes, Cindy. could you sing for me? And I'm like, oh my God, that's exactly what I'm going to do

if Heath ever visits my deathbed. Yes. Heath, the only thing that I want before I die. Toro laura, Laura. Actually, I was thinking Toro laura. You're not doing the dance. What do we say? Oh, I'm doing the macarena with his arms.

I invented this dance. And I was sure that they did. this so that they could shoe in a song for this girl who I thought, oh, okay, she's a Christian musician and they had to figure out some dumb way to get her to sing. But no, she just, like, she tries to do an Anne Hathaway and just make snorty noises for a couple of minutes until some other actors come in and save her. I thought Sarah was going to be like, hey, Cindy, you're butchering the song with the weeping. You're killing me.

And I'm dying. Yeah, it's like, thanks a lot. I'm fucking dying over here. And that's the shit you bring? Like, what's happening? Yeah, right. Right, come on, come on, bring your A game. Maybe we just play the radio.

So mom and dad come in and just as they do, Danny gets a text from Grandpa telling him and Cindy to get over to his house, stat. Right. So they pull up to Grandpa's house. Now, for whatever reason, the movies decided that there needs to be a mon fucking soon going on in the background of this, right? Well, wait, it makes perfect sense because it has to stop. It's a punctuation mark. Oh, right. God shows up.

Yeah, right, of course, yeah. So they pull up to the house. It's poured down right. And they run into the house. I'm like, being kind of an asshole, you could just run on and get an umbrella and come back for her if you were a fucking gentleman. But no, he makes her run in.

And when they get inside, Grandpa has apparently gathered together all the people that she's healed throughout the movie, right? They're all sitting there trying to decide how they can kidnap her and rescue her from the hospital and take her to the lake. Yeah, I mean, his logic is like, Sarah wants to freeze to death by the lake. We have to take her. Right.

It's like, no, you don't do a goddamn thing because the parents are in charge. Like, this is literally the grandfather and he's like having a nam flashback over here. Like, he's going to go kidnap his granddaughter. Sarah's a freeman on the land. Like, she's not, man. She's not, though. That doesn't it feel like God would just, like, go to the hospital to do whatever? Like, why would they, God demand they go to the...

God's not allowed near the hospital. Everyone's always giving them. shit. They're always like, oh, hey. It's a secular hospital. Look who finally showed up. So, yeah. So, but everybody's in, but Danny's like, he's like, but in order to do this,

we'll have to pull off some Oceans 11 type shit, right? My God. He actually says there's too much security. And the music kicks in. And I was like, oh, my God, it's turning into a heist movie. Yes. And it really does. Yes, absolutely.

You know, I was thinking when this whole part of the movie unfolded, I'm like, okay, so we got a bunch of Christians lying, plotting, sneaking, kidnapping, and driving recklessly. Yeah. That's the buildup in this whole scene, which is pretty, you know, that's crazy for a Christian movie. Like, you know, they're defying the parents' wishes. They're following the crazy old grandfather. And they're literally taking a dying girl out in a rainstorm, a hailstorm or whatever, to a lake at night.

Yeah, at least one of those is a commandment. Yeah. In a height. They're doing remission impossible. That was great. Oh, God. I'm glad you went back for that. So, okay, so we cut back to the hospital now.

And, okay, I don't know who the fuck did this, but they must have done this on purpose. There were like four scenes in this movie that were mixed really quietly. So I turned up my fucking volume. And then it was like, we cut to this cacophonous hospital scene and all the volume goes back up to normal.

I think that's what 120 decibel films was all about. I noticed it too. There's many, many spots in here where the audio is just flat out garbage. Or it echoes. There are a couple of points where the audio just suddenly echoes in the max. Yeah, it's fucking terrible. So, okay. So now they're breaking into the hospital, right? And it's Danny, it's Teresa's mom, who apparently works at the hospital, and it's Teresa, the cancer girl. But they've put a wig on her, like to disguise her. For shenanigans purposes. As, Sarah. She's going to play Sarah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Because at first I'm like,

well, come on. Cancerhead plays great at the hospital. You're fucking up your own cover. But no, so they sneak into a closet. They put on scrubs. And then grandpa's job in the heist is to go and distract mom and dad and get him to both come out to the cafeteria together. Yeah. And it works. And then

he's like, rooms clear. Red team go. Red team go. They actually clear the room to do their kidnapping. Yes. And then they have to do the like the thing with the idol at the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark with her like heartbeat monitor. Oh yeah, yeah, exactly.

They switch it out just on the same beat. Yeah. The pulse monitor. So to be clear, that would mean Teresa had the exact same pulse as Sarah to make that. Yeah, she'd be like calm down. Calm down before we do this. Nope, little more excited. Little more excited.

Getting up to 75. Teresa, fuck. Oh, my God. We're going to need you to run in place, you lazy. Do three jumping jacks, exactly. Well, I can explain that, okay, because the nurses were clearly completely out to lunch. They had a young girl faint in front of them and hit the deck, and they literally just bend over and look at her. Yes, they did.

Right. Well, so, yeah, so Cindy's job, Cindy and Mark's job. Most realistic part of the movie. In this heist is that they've got to distract the admissions nurses or whatever. So Cindy comes and she fakes wounds, right? She passes out and then they all gather around her to look at her. They don't call anybody over with a gurney or anything like that. They just wave at her with their fucking clipboards and shit.

So they sneak the girl by as soon as they're safe, Mark and Cindy take off. We cut back to mom and dad very clearly telling Grandpa, no, you cannot take our daughter to the lake. She's very sick. We want her to stay in the hospital. Well, she did like a final message whisper thing. Yeah. And by the way, again, to emphasize Jay's point about what inept filmmakers they are, way to eliminate any potential pretension in this scene by having everything go exactly to plan.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, it came off without a hitch. The only problem they encountered were the two dumbest police officers on the planet. Well, yeah, we'll get to them in a second. So as they're leaving, we have a character. sees the little girl in the car and he goes, whoa, and we haven't met this fucking character yet. He's one of the newscasters, right? So the implication is now the news knows that the little girl's on the move.

But why not use the newscaster character that we've met? Exactly. I know we already established, you know, not well, but we already know who she is and that she's hungry for the story. Right. Yeah, what gives? We would understand the implications of this when it happens. Yeah.

Or at least have like hospital security notice and start like, shooting out their tires as they're trying to leave. There you go. That's exciting. Grandpa blows up the security gate with a bazooka that he had. Like, there's a lot of stuff they could have done. Yeah, there's no doubt that guy had C2. Right, exactly, exactly. So, okay, so now we have a chase scene where it's pouring down rain.

Danny has got the little girl. He's taken off with her. Gramps is following Danny. Mom and dad are following Gramps and the news is following mom and dad. I really wanted one of the characters to turn to another one and be like, this movie's spiraled out of control, huh? Hey, are we in a fucking car chase right now? Yeah, it feels like a very different movie than we started out to make.

Senior pets rolls up into the car. I feel like maybe these bits have gotten a lot of control. So Teresa's, the cops now suddenly get involved, right? They see these guys driving too fast or whatever. So they spin around and they're going to try to pull over Danny. And Danny's there with Teresa's mom and the kid. And she goes, we have to pull over. And Danny's like, no, I'm a white guy.

Trust me. We're good. So he doesn't. So then grandpa shows up with his truck. He's got the pastor in the truck with him. So now he cuts the cops off and he starts like driving real slow to like so the cops can't catch up with Danny. Right. Grandpa and his buddy, the pastor

start doing like the Matrix 2 twins thing. They phase into the top cars. So and then, so Danny's going to get away now except God tosses a tree down on the road in front of Danny and I'm like, man, he really wants to kill that daughter, huh? Yeah, well this is

where like, you know, you're walking into the valley of death, you know, and all the monsters are going to come out now. Right, yeah, exactly. Everything, everything's going to stand in your way. So this is such a great fucking stupid moment. He stops and Teresa's mom is like, well, you can just carry her up to the lake. And he's like, I could never carry her that far all by myself.

And just then, the bully kid shows up. And he goes, what are you doing here? And the bully goes, you want to take your sister up to that lake, right? And I'm like, how the fuck would you know that? I know. Well, apparently he's been stalking her since the dog healing. Clearly. Sometimes I just hang out here in case there's like a kidnapping situation, but like on the good team.

and then I'm there to help with the last part of it. So you see it paid off today. Wow. I'm here because the script told me to be here. Yeah, right, right, exactly. The movie demands it. I have an arc, do I not? Quit asking stupid questions.

So, okay, so now we watch them, like, running her up this muddy hill, passing her back and forth, like a fucking baton in a relay. So stupid. So to be clear, this evil soccer rival now turned good, he says, I know a shortcut through the woods to the lake.

Yeah. And I was like, that, that's just, that's just towards the lake. Like everybody's right. Exactly. It's not a bad. Don't touch any of my porn. And I left selective stumps on the way. That's what he, that's, he dragged his victims clearly.

Oh, yeah, right. We have a wormhole? No, I just meant walk towards the lake. I just meant this. Straight line. It's that sense of diagonal that most people think means shortcut, but actually in physical space doesn't. It's pretty confusing if you're a stupid person. So, but the dog is also there.

He big help. But we cut away from that for a second because now Sam is going to chase after him up into the woods. But the cops stop him. And they're like, hey, man, you can't just go now. You're under arrest or some shit. Yeah, good thing those weren't ice agents, by the way. Yeah, right, right.

Yeah, exactly. But he explains the plot to the cops. And one of the cops goes, you mean the girl that's been healing all those people? And their hearts grow three sizes that day. And they're like, oh, shucks, go finish your movie. Go ahead. Kill a kid, by the way. That does mean crimes don't count.

You're allowed to do kidnapping now. That's cool. All right, yeah, yeah, we'll help. We'll help. Yeah. The Make a Wish Foundation must do a lot of kidnapping that we don't hear about very often. Right, right. And then, like, all the named characters show up one after the other to all pile in and run up the fucking muddy hill together.

What are you guys all doing here? We wanted Crafty. We're here. So we get all the characters mucking their way up through the muck. There's a great moment here where the pastor slips and somebody goes to help him. He goes, leave me, go on without me. But he's not dying. He's just muddy.

You could just stand up and come with us. Yes. This would have been a good time in the movie to put in a Wilhelm scream, you know, just to ignore all the tropes. So, yeah, so they're all running. I can't help but notice that Mirosorvino and the guy that play the husband or the only ones in like proper rain gear. And I guarantee it because those two actors were like,

well, I'm not going to just stand out here my fucking shirt. Okay. So. And then, okay, then we get my best worst, right? So Danny and the bully, they're carrying Sarah up. They got to dog with him. And suddenly, fucking wolf pops out and starts growling out. Oh, God.

Okay. Who had a wolf? And what power relationship did they have? to the rest of the cast that it was included in the movie. Well, so, okay, so I did watch the credits looking to see if that was AI slopper if somebody actually drew it.

And I believe that the wolf was provided by Good Boy Productions, if I recall correctly. It was CG. Yeah, I could tell it was CG. No, it was a real wolf. It was a wolf. It was? Oh, my God.

That must have been the most ugly, deformed wolf of him. It was born with that many toes, actually. He's a good boy, not necessarily a pretty boy. boy. So the wolf was provided by a company. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

But according to the narrative of the movie, provided by God. God sent a dire wolf as just a hurdle, you know, for extra drama. Yeah, right. But of course, it's so that the dog can have something to do because the dog comes up and he's like, trust me, this girl's actually cool, right? No, this girl saved my life. And the wolf is like, oh, well, she saves dogs. Well, I guess it must be all right.

So he backs off. Hey, are we a part of the movie? Guys, I know a shortcut to the lake. Oh, no, it's right there. You just go that. Oh, no, you're just going to go towards a specific distance. I mean, this would be like, you know, like in Lord of the Rings, you know, the wolf's like, you show, you know, like trying to stop them.

Yeah. And then the dog barks. You got a dog that's a quarter of the size of this thing. The dog barks and the wolf runs away. Yeah, the wolf's like, well, I didn't know we were going to be barking at each other. Wow. Snippy. I'm going to take off.

How dare you? I'm going to head out. I don't love these vibes. Genuinely one of the silliest moments in the history of this fucking show. That is our word. Wow. So yeah. But they get Sarah to the lake and they're like, oh, fuck, what are we supposed to do now?

So they like, they pay together and Sam shows up and the pastor shows up. And then they suddenly realize that they just have a dying cancer girl out in a thunderstorm at the lake. It's freezing to town. Yeah. I know. It was really anti-climactic at that point because it's like, okay, we're all here. Okay. And she dies on cue and everyone's just like, oh, shit, what the fuck are we doing here?

Hey, guys, we got to get our story straight, okay? She pooped a lot. That's when the cops to start shooting people. Right, yeah. I was straight, warned us about kids. So Miris Orvino, she's yelling at everybody. She's like, how dare you take my daughter out to the fucking. and lake in the middle of the rain when she's dying,

a brain tumor's in shit. If anything happens to her, I'm going to hold you personally responsible, Dad. And then she dies. And she's like, well, God damn it. Well, now I hold you responsible. You have to do chores. Yes.

But just then, a light moves across the face of the waters. Oh, shit. Noah, at this point, no, I'm like, okay, this is, you want to say what's happening first? And I'll tell you why it's so unbelievably ridiculous. Oh, yes.

So, yes, of course, God is coming to take her to heaven personally. Okay, so we have this scene, right? They're all on the shore. It's nighttime. You know, the rain stops, and the light of heaven lights up the scene

of all the 20 actors that are there, right? Yes. And it's about as powerful as a $20 LED flashlight. What the fuck? If there was ever a time to see, spend your special effects budget. It's the scene when God shows up and it was the

most horrible. Oh, it was the fucking tactical flashlight that you can fucking just use it. You can recharge by spinning it. It's just God, God, real quick. I see you're trying to do like a dramatic light thing. You should probably get like a fill light and a key light together.

This is just really disappointing. At least two. Okay. And I like that all 20 of them are like in a kind of awkward moment you don't know what to, if you think God's light is appearing and God is walking towards you

across a lake, they're just like, guys are we, should we like kneel or is it like standing ovation slow? Well, the pastor leads the way he kneels and everyone's like,

oh yeah, no, that's probably a good goal. So they all kneel. And then God steps out of the light and God is just some white dude. He's wearing Costco jeans. He is.

He's, he's rocking. fucking dad jeans. A lot of hair gel. And just in case, because, because apparently some fucking idiots in their test audience were like, who is the guy who stepped out of the light?

He suddenly turns into like classic Jesus face. Why is clavicular saving the dead kid? I don't get that. Change him into Jesus for a second. So he has to morph into white Jesus here. Yes. And this is the scene. Was it of complete special effect?

I don't know, but this is where we get a view into heaven, right behind Jesus. And I swear to God, talk about a dystopia. It was like the hunger games back there. Yes. It's like a million people jammed in to like one acre. They line up for the picture, Jay. Remember the Star Trek episode where the planet was overpopulated? Yeah, it was like that.

Yeah. We're all crowding in for just like a group. Picked it. Ah, this heaven's got a lot of weird shit that's annoying. God's like, you know, when I started, this actually was plenty of room, but I need to rethink the shit. Why are we letting people who died in the 1500s be at the front? They're not going to know anybody. Oh, my God.

Why is the IBS guy here? That's making it. Like, did God like 15 minutes before this with Jesus? He's like, all right, all right, you guys. I'm going to, you know, I need you in the background here. Need a big crowd. Need a big crowd. I'm opening a portal right here.

You're going to see a little. little girl. I'm going to murder her. Don't get upset. She's going to come in. Crowd in. Guys, over at the size, just cry. I can't even see you in the wings. All right. Hold on. Hold on. I'm going to set the timer. I want to be in it too. I'm going to set the timer. If you can't see me, I can't see you. Come on. He snaps a picture in his face. Hold on. Oh, God damn. I had it turned the wrong way. It was turned the wrong way. Now let's do a silly one. Okay. So, I got to do a system update. Just give me a second. Give me a second. So, but the kid dies, right? Like, so we see.

God, we see Jesus and all of that shit. But what happens in the universe of this movie is that the kid dies. So now this entire group of people that just walked up in the rain have to carry a dead kid back down in the muck. The cops are waiting at the bottom. And the cops are like, eh, I'm sure it's fine. These people carrying a corpse back down with them, I'm sure they didn't break any laws or anything while they were up there.

You guys got it? Cool. Yeah, you said yes. You said yes, you got it. right here. We'll be right here. But then one of the cops noticed is the dumbest of miracles. He goes, hey, wait a minute. It was pouring down rain just a moment ago, but all of them are dry. Oh, yeah, of course. This is going back to Fatima, you know, the lady of Fatima. You know the history on that? Oh, yeah. The dancing sun and all that. Yeah. Yeah. And exactly. But, you know, instantly, everybody was dry.

You know, so they definitely were pulling from that. Oh, that's a good point. Yeah. So, okay, so now we cut to a candlelight vigil at Grandpa's house, right? They've got her just, they've laid her corpse on the bed. I feel like shouldn't do that with a corpse, right? Like, what's the plan? Are they just going to leave it there, like fucking Lenin's body or something? I think that movies do a great disservice when they tell people you can have a corpse on clean sheets for more than three to six minutes.

So, but Dr. Sorbo shows up and he's like, yeah, it's all the way dead. there, sorry. Miris Sorvino has to turn to her dad now, turn to Peter Coyote. And she goes, like, I'm sorry, I blamed you for murdering my daughter. It was more of a manslaughter thing now that I think about it. Uncle priest shows up. You guys going to finish that?

No, bad time, bad time. Okay, cool. He goes, oh, one of them picks up this picture she drew of her rushing to Jesus and they're like, oh, look, it's the last picture she ever drew. And the priest is like, oh, cool, I'll put it on

the holy refrigerator or whatever. I wanted them to be like, oh, no, you don't get to take that. No, it's our daughter's last picture. We're the ones that didn't kidnap her and take her into the rain to die. So we're going to keep it. We'll make you a print, maybe, weird. You can take a picture of it. But then Cindy notices that there's another picture that she actually drew after that one.

It's a picture of her coming back from heaven, guys. Hey, Cindy, how many pictures are in the stack? just so we don't keep doing that. Let's look at all the pictures now. Just show us the last one. Oh, look, it says at Disney. Oh, no, this next one is her tripping on a rake and actually killing herself as she balls.

That's going to be expensive. Okay, and now there's one she's doing like an atheist podcast. I don't, no, no, no, mind. It's the one. So, yeah. Yeah, so they all pray and they all gather around her bed and then she gasps back to life. I just wrote,

this movie is the gift that keeps ungiven. You've got to be fucking. kidding me here. But no, but Sarah turns to him, she's like, yeah, I told God I still had shit going on. And he was like, oh, you still had shit going on. So you let me be alive again. And they're like,

yeah, no, that sounds like, hey. And he was like, fuck, all right. Well, this is going to be like a traumatic way to teach my lesson. I got to send you back one more time. All right. Right. I should have seen this coming in my omniscience. Fuck, that's on me. Or you would think, yeah. But at this point,

even Dr. Sorbo is convinced. Oh, yeah, you got that right. I mean, look, this was really like coming a mile away. He finally finds his faith, right? So I'm like thinking, you know, I like to think out of the box where I'm like, well, what happens to him? So I'm like, all right, he quits being a doctor and he ends up becoming an alcoholic because he's still dead. Right, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, God could have like brought his kid back to life at any point now. Yeah. Yeah. Sorbo actually says, like, wow. that all definitely happened for real, but it just doesn't make any sense. And then Uncle Pastor, priest, whatever is like, exactly. And I was like, wow, that really sums up religion right there. Doesn't it?

That doesn't make sense? Exactly. In a way that you probably didn't mean to, yeah. So, but then Sarah comes out to address the vigil outside and tell him that she's alive. And she's like, everybody kneels. And she's like, oh, don't kneel to me. That is going to piss him off. He will, he gets really freaky.

I'm going to have to feed you guys like ground up golden cow or some shit before this is over. So she gets them all back to their feet. And she's like, all right, well, so good news, bad news. Good news is I'm alive. Bad news is I can't cure your cancer anymore. So if you have cancer, you're just going to die on it. It was really just that one time. Just a big line of kids in wheelchairs rolling away angrily.

Fuck this. Wow. Waited this whole fucking. time. And the other bad news is, you know, in about a week's time, our town is going to turn into a mecca for lunatics. Yes. Start selling kitsch everywhere. Right. A lot of people are going to be drinking my urine. And I just need you all to be okay. Yeah, a lot of people are going to be drinking out of the lake now. And yeah, right, right. So, but she's like, but hey, but hey, here's the thing is that the power to heal, it was nevermind. It was God. So he actually could have healed you at any point. He just chose not to. Maybe you're all on like an evil soccer team or something. It's probably on you. She's like, God will help you if you pray, though, or maybe not mysteriously.

It turns out the whole movie's a dream, you know, she was at the soccer game. Ball hits her in the head. He passes out, wakes up. The whole thing's a dream. Oh, it's because he was talking about that mustard seed. The earlier and I was thinking about that with that, yeah. Auntie M? So, yeah, so we're going to.

We're going to finish up at the church. It sure is packed now. And we have this moment where the pastor's like, wow, it was some weird shit, right? That we just saw a lot of miracles now. You know, I thought here, this was a disappointing part of the movie for me because they blew a completely amazing ending, right?

Kevin Sorbo should have ended up being Satan and he fights Paul Giamatti's, the priest character. Yes. Yes, we needed a final battle. Exactly. He turns into Al Pacino and he goes, pride, my favorite sin. And this is a devil's advocate three-quel. I'm fucking in.

Oh, God. The Christian wholesomeness in this movie, this is not a feel-good movie. It's a feel-awful movie. The Christians were so gross and disgusting. It made me want to, like, turn to fucking crime. You know, like in a low-stakes kind of way. To even up here. It's terrible.

Right, right, yeah. And they're so shitty at this clothes. They had the clothes. The clothes is the dumb miracle that they made up. She's back. And then they're like, hold on. Yeah. The real miracle church attendance is slightly up this weekend.

And they give us that fucking moved mountains with a mustard seed line again, which, to be clear, the mountain moving was church attendance slightly up in small town. Yes. Not miracle recovery of girl. Right. Right. The mountain that was moved was fucking Dr. Kevin Sorbo became a Christian again.

And that, by the way, Jay, is my answer to your question of why would God do this. This was all God's plan to turn Kevin Sorbo into a Christian again. Oh, my God. And to resurrect his soul. If anything, Sorbo should pray that he doesn't get cast

in another movie. I don't think he has to worry too much about that. I'm praying against that. So I looked it up and this movie got a six on IMDB and I translate that into, I give it a 666. Oh shit. There you go.

Give it that three times. It'll scare them off. How does it get a 6? Yeah, IMDB is pretty easy to get a 6 on as it turns out. All right. Well, Jay, thank you so much for hanging out with us today. It's been an absolute blast. I love that guys. I love that. You guys have such a good show here and I hope to catch a live one at some point. Oh, awesome, man. Well, and of course, a quick reminder that if you want to hear more from Jay, be sure check out the skeptics guide of the universe. you'll find it wherever you find your podcast or you can just check the show notes. And while that does it for our review of The Girl Who Believes in Miracles, that's not going to do it for the episode just yet because we still need to pay more bills next week.

So Eli, tell us what's on deck. Well, Noah, we are headed to San Francisco Rock City. Not Rock City for our live showtacular to watch the much-weighted Melania. Oh, poor us. So with that to look forward to, we're going to bring episode 550 to a merciful close. once again, a huge thanks to J.4 for our helping out today, and a huger thanks to all the Patreon donors that help make the show go. If you'd like to get out yourself among their ranks,

you can make a per episode donation of Patreon.com slash Godoff, on there by order to access to an extended ad-free version of every episode. Okay, it's not extended, but it is ad-free. Sorry, that snuck in from the Skathing Atheist. You can also help it done by leaving a five-star review and by shaking the show on all your various social media platforms. And if you enjoyed this show, be sure to check out our sibling shows, The Scathing Athea, The Citation Needed, D&D, Minus,

and the Skeptor CatoreVille, wherever Podcasts live. If you have questions, come as a cinematic suggestion. You can email godiful movies at gmail.com. Tim Robertson takes care of our social media. Our theme song was written and performed by Ryan Slatleyville in Dress on Mars. All the other music was written and performed by our audio engineer, Morgan Clark, and was used with permission. Thanks again for giving us a chunk of your life this week for Heath Enright and Eli Bostig.

I'm no illusions promise to work hard to earn another chunk next week. Until then, we'll leave you with the American graffiti clothes. Sarah went back to being shitty at drawing, but nobody had the heart seller. God got back to murdering kids with cancer. irrevocably breaking their spines. Sarah goes on to start a cult. She marries the leader of Scientology, and they end up dying by falling off the segue.

Magic little girl spent the rest of her life being stalked by the desperate families of the terminally ill. It was actually kind of a bummer. The early IQ test, you've passed it. Ah, all right. Oh, man, I fail that so often. I didn't realize that was an IQ test. Damn.

Well, failing to realize that it's one, that's part of the test. We are in a fight. Yeah. All right. I'm going to outwit you, and I have a feeling. Yeah, no, I mean, I didn't say I was going to win. All right, here we go. It gets tough for the second time because I don't warn you.

So the IQ test is an escalating test. All right, here we go. So I pass twice now. Yeah, right. No, you're up over 100. Third time you actually have to replace me as host. It's how we trap people into it. It's kind of a monkey.

Paul situation. I'm going to tell my wife. She's going to love this. I've got to watch these now forever. Okay. You guys, I missed the second half of the No Kings Rally for you guys. Guys, what the fuck did I just say? What's happening here? You told a child you could make her into a soup. But literally, what did we just read? So the only thing, the only ethical thing you could do if you discovered that your kid could heal people's cancer. Make them into soup. Make them into a soup.

Yes. That's the only ethical thing if that was possible. A soup option would have to be discussed at the minimum. At the very least, at the very least, you'd have to wonder how much soup could you get out of it. Like ice nine of chemotherapy. That's what I, that's what we call it. No vegan option. No vegan option.

Speaking of which, we get a green chef ad as well. This content is scanned credentialed, which means you can report instances of harassment, abuse, or other harm to their hotline at 617-249-4-255 or on their website at creator-accountabilitynetwork.org. This podcast is a production of Puzzle and a Thunderstorm LLC and was created without the use of generative AI. Its contents may not be used for AI training. Copyright 2026. All rights reserved.