Critic Reviews

This one, taken on its own terms, isn’t bad in a TV-movie-fodder-as-parable way.

As handsomely mounted, TV-movie-quality cinema goes, “Light in Darkness” is at once the best looking, most coherent, and least histrionic of the franchise.

While God's Not Dead: A Light in Darkness proves less fiery in its preaching than its predecessors, it's also a significantly duller offering. How could it not be, considering that its main plot element involves a courtroom battle over real estate?

A lot of grappling happens. The community grapples. The characters grapple. People grapple alone, people grapple together. Grappling is more interesting to watch than certainty, any day of the week.

God's Not Dead: A Light in Darkness, directed by Michael Mason, is less strident than the two surprise hits that preceded it, but it still tells a programmatic story, rooted in presumptions.

To its credit, this third GND installment earnestly attempts to give some degree of lip service to diverging perspectives on the socio-religious-political scale without too much proselytizing, although there’s never any question about who’s side it’s on.

It has to be said that “A Light in Darkness” is considerably better than the two movies that preceded it. Mason, in stark contrast to OG franchise director Harold Cronk, actually knows how to frame a shot like he’s ever actually seen a film before. Corbett also lends a real credibility to the scenes between Reverend Dave and his brother.

The virtues of God’s Not Dead: A Light in Darkness, are few. So let’s get them out of the way right out of the gate. It’s replaced the generally hostile, defensive and political tone of the first two films with a veneer of “We have to learn to get along.” It’s still toxic, only less so.

A Light In Darkness isn’t as offensive as the first film—it lacks the requisite misogyny and Islamophobia, and does a better job of looking like it’s almost a real movie—but it’s not far behind, an emblematic film for the foul moment.