Title – Faith Community (2017)

Director – Faith R Johnson (feature debut)

Cast – Jeremy Harris, Jeffrey Brabant, Janessa Floyd, Aidan Hart, Oliver Palmer

Plot – 3 students, led by Hannah (Floyd) and cameraman Colin (Brabant) head off into the wilderness to meet with religious leader The Messenger (Harris) and try to get closer to God only to discover The Messenger’s sect is hiding a dark secret.

“None of this is cruel”

Review by Eddie on 24/10/2017

The nicest thing I could say about Faith Community, the newest found footage “horror” to come along our way, is that at its core it has a fairly neat idea that touches on both people’s willingness to be led by potentially dangerous religious zealots and the dangers of visiting a cult.

When it comes to niceties however, that’s about as far as it can go with Faith R Johnson’s film.

Filmed over a couple of days on a miniscule budget, Faith Community is student film like in its rough and raw nature, there’s little to no character exposition, some scenes play out far too long while others barely have time to breathe and the film is one of the most shockingly shot I’ve seen in some time.

For a film that runs long at 90 minutes, there’s a large portion of screen time where you will be either watching something out of focus, starring at such fascinating objects like sticks on the ground or someone’s hands and while with any POV or found footage horror you expect things to have a home movie type of feel, Faith Community takes this aspect to a whole new level and makes a number of key scenes borderline unwatchable.

The plot of the film also begins to blur into a quick-fire procession of unbelievable events and before you even get to sit around the campfire of “The Messenger’s” weird little cult camp things start going haywire rapidly fast, giving us very little time to even gather our thoughts or time for us to begin to care about what is about to happen to our group of college students out to investigate a way to get closer to God.

Faith Community’s terrible execution and undercooked narrative works against its cast almost from the beginning and you get the sense had the material been a little stronger, its performers like Jeremy Harris as cult leader The Messenger and Jeffrey Brabant as cameraman Colin may’ve been able to save the film slightly with their committed and sometimes on-point turns deserving of a stronger film.

Final Say –

Devoid of scares or thrills and with only a few minor chills, Faith Community is a truly amateurish production that squanders a potentially engaging plot line and instead delivers an extremely unpolished experience that you’d do best to avoid.

1 barrel of water out of 5