Still suffering from intense inner turmoil due to the disappearance and murder of his youngest daughter, Mackenzie Phillips (yes, really) seeks to find some closure when a strange letter signed by God is delivered to his mailbox, asking him to spend a weekend at his/her little home in the wilderness. THE SHACK potentially could have been a great exploration of human suffering, salvation, and the power of love and forgiveness via the framework of a Christian film but alas it's a painfully long experience of predictability and schmaltz. The grimness and blissfulness of the story should been carefully balanced out in order to ring out every worthy tear and existential question out of the viewer. Unfortunately, director Stuart Hazeldine doesn't care about that and would rather just smother every frame with as much syrupy tripe that he can get. His utter lack of genuine care is best exemplified when "Mac" walks from the snowy real world to a lush area of heaven; the camera is pulled so far back that you'll easily notice that the crew just dumped a ton of fake snow in the middle of a prosperous forest and didn't choose to keep it out of the frame. The script doesn't actually showcase faith at all, instead relying on simple riddles and generic phrases to push the plot forward: Don't get stuck in the past, someone's form of good is someone else's form of bad, to heal you must forgive, etc. Why should the three screenwriters give a damn when the director isn't and they can just coast on pure hibbidi jibbidi bibbidi swibbidi? They certainly also didn't care about further addressing why "Mac" is a murderer in his own right, making sense of why "The Holy Spirit" likes to collect human tears, or tying up the two and quarter hour picture better than "it was all a dream... or was it?" The only redemptive elements of this film comes from the acting department. God bless this cast because they desperately tried to resuscitate this lifeless corpse, particularly Octavia Spencer who tries to dig real deep in one scene. Unfortunately, the film rests entirely on Sam Worthington as "Mac". I don't hate the actor as much as the rest of the Internet but oh my god, this is his worst performance to date. He spends the whole film saying his lines in a constant whisper, he can barely cover his Aussie accent, all of his facial expressions and tones of voice are the exact same, and he just loves to pout around like he just got cut from the football team. The movie isn't as bad as other Christian crap films but it's too much of a chore to ever watch again and offers no real substance.
FINAL REVIEW: 1 / 5
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