Jetset971
This movie is a travesty! I mean they take the subject of near death experiences and make it seem that everyone who has ever died, briefly, has either gone to the Christian heaven or Christian hell with absolutely no other option available. The fact is that when people have had near death experiences they all have different versions of what they saw. It was almost never heaven or hell based on their religious beliefs. They saw things like long lost loved ones or bright lights or any other number or phenomenon. To be fair there are those that have had bad after death experiences of terror and pain. However, I submit to you that if their is only one Christian heaven and hell after we die, then every near death experience would be like what was depicted in this movie, without exception. The fact is they are not black and white. Furthermore, one scene in particular made my blood boil. The doctor is interviewing a blind, from birth mind you, person who had a near death experience and saw heaven and an angel telling her to go back to earth because it wasn't her time. Even if this is based on a real blind person who said this, you have to realize that if she had been blind since birth she wouldn't understand what she saw. She testifies to seeing colors and such but it has been medically proved that a person born blind that suddenly gets their vision back is still "mentaly blind" and wouldn't understand or comprehend what they are seeing. This leads me to believe that its more likely that they made up this woman's story, or at least exaggerated it, for artistic license. All and all don't waste your time on this biased Christina propaganda.
D.P. Sergeani
This is the kind of movie that is bound to get trolled by bored hipsters looking for an online fight to rile the blood. And, OK, maybe it deserves it a little bit. But in trashing this movie so, one skips over some very valid, very pertinent reasons why this movie is an abomination to cinema.One could, for example, take extensive issue with the film's theology. That's fair. No matter how closely it follows the scriptural account of how souls are sorted in the Christian afterlife, the enduring motif of the film, for the uninitiated humanist (the audience to whom the film is obviously trying to pander) is that "Hey, Jesus is kind of a dick." That's not, of course, to say that Jesus WAS a dick. Just that you wouldn't be able to make a fair assessment from this film's interpretation of the facts.All that, I might add, and Jesus/God the Father never ONCE even makes an appearance. What a ripoff.And though I could go on and on about the troubling theological implications of the film, and though I would not be totally unjustified in doing so (the back of the DVD, after all, suggests that it is the perfect conversation starter for unsaved neighbors and family), I feel the need to put aside such petty judgements and address the film's higher crimes and misdemeanors - that is to say, its crimes against narrative.Allow me to be succinct. This film sucks. Sucks, suck sucks. There no two ways about it. (The late Jerry Falwell thought enough of it to give it 4 stars, but I do not believe he has reviewed many other movies, therefore making hi standard for comparison weak at best). The dialogue is, at best, less than intellectually engaging; at worst, it is the kind of ham- handed buffoonery that would make Jack Chick cringe in disgust. The characters are little more than paper-bag puppets, existing from scene to scene, with little in the way of personal development or emotional maturity. They are worse than static caricatures; they change their personas as fits the convenience of the director, going - at least in the male lead's case - from Byronic anti-hero to love-hungry son, from hardcore rationalist to aesthetic humanist, all within a jaunty 76 minutes. Whew!Most perplexingly, though the film is called "Escape from Hell," we, the audience, see Hell for maybe 10-15 minutes, tops - at the very end. At least Dante had the good sense to drop us into the eponymous Inferno by the third chapter. And rest assured, it is filled with the kind of basic 3D CGI effects that for some reason may have passed muster in the 80s but have, in the years since Tron, become woefully outdated. (Satan, as it turns out, has a major thing for the Photoshop solarization filter. Oh, and the path t Hell is just like those tunnels in Sliders).Again, I must cut short a potentially-lengthy criticism and jump right to the point. Why do Christians feel the need to blindly praise every film that dares to call itself a "Christian film"? When critical judgement gives way to blind factional fist-pumping, we open dangerous doors - doors that, as history teaches us, lead us down paths lined with aggression, hate, and violence. I will not go so far as to far as to imply that Escape from Hell incites inter-religious hatred; I will, however, stand in abject defiance to all those who proclaim, without a whiff of objectivism, that this film is anything but a masturbatory endeavor for evangelical Christians under the hopeless guise of 'reaching out' to the unsaved. Anyone who has been 'saved' by this kind of pathetic storytelling is probably worth more lost.
dwhitejr34
This film was excellent. I'm so glad to see filmmakers of faith beginning to make quality movies. This film will really get you thinking about the reality of heaven and hell. For those who believe that the Bible is truly God's Word, an instruction manual to how to live life on earth, then this film maintains the accuracy of scripture. I like the way the director took a NDE (Near Death Experience) of someone who had not accepted Christ as Savior and their eyes were opened to what Hell is really like. His use of a fictional story to make a point worked very well. I highly recommend this film to anyone interested in NDE's or to find out what the Bible says about Heaven and Hell or life after death.
Adam Graham
This has to be one of the best films ever made on the subject of Hell. A skeptical doctor is shaken by the death of his estranged father and a fellow doctor enthralls him with tales of people going to Heaven. He believes Hell is a cruel myth and sets out on a radical course of action. He plans to kill himself in the boiler room of the hospital while providing his best friend, the tools to bring him back to life before it's too late.The drama and tension of the film begins from the opening credits and doesn't stop until it's over. The plot is clever and the acting believable. A must-see movie for Christian and unbeliever alike. I haven't seen any other films from DRC productions, but this one will be a tough act to follow.
