On the second Saturday night of each month, our church has a Faith and Film night. Several months ago, we showed Secret of the Cave and received rave reviews.* Quite a few people in our church--first generation Adventists or Adventists from overseas--had never heard of the book or Uncle Arthur (or even Southern Adventist University), so they viewed the movie on its own merits. We also showed the bloopers and the "making of the movie" features, which everyone enjoyed.

The story has been modernized a great deal, especially the addition of scary parts. (Uncle Arthur’s characters kept giving credit to angels, while the movie characters are suspicious of ghosts.) I sat in the back and watched everyone--young and old--literally jump in their seats at one of the scary parts. (It was a little two scary for my barely five-year-old daughter, who wasn’t able to follow the story line very well.)

We invited a salesperson from our local Adventist Book Center to come to the event and sell copies of the book and the DVD, which quite a few people purchased. We had free popcorn and soda. I recommend the movie as a great way for a church family to spend a Saturday evening together!

*We had to get the proper permission from the filmmakers to show the movie at our church.

I saw this movie recently, and while I'm proud that one of our schools was able to pull something as complex as a movie production off, I was still disappointed with the overall quality of the story. I might feel differently if I had kids and was just looking for a family-friendly movie (like the family who reviewed this), but even then I wonder if I'd be happy with the pat and easy answers presented.

I felt that the film fit right in the line of traditional Adventist publications--black and white, very explicit "this is the moral in case you missed it moments," and heavy-handedness. The voice-over was often redundant if you listened to the dialogue--I wondered if it was added at the last minute to make sure the message was crystal clear.

The production quality was great--it looked good, but the story felt very lackluster and clunky, although very "safe." To give them the benefit of the doubt though, I'm sure many of the direct-to-video types of family films are very much this way, so it might actually be an accomplishment in that genre.

Thanks Stanyer family for sharing your thoughts. I know from a bit of personal experience that filmmaking is incredibly hard, expensive, and time-consuming. I'm very impressed that Southern was able to pull this off. As an adult watching the film, I wanted a bit more depth and complexity of story, but I'm curious if those sentiments will change once I have children. I wonder if Adventist filmmakers would ever be able to fundraise for stories that push the envelope in terms of theme?

My husband worked on a film a few years ago called To End All Wars. It wasn't an explicitly "Christian" film, but many of the key members of the production were Christian. The film tells the (true) harrowing story of a group of allied soldiers imprisoned early on in WWII who endure all sorts of atrocities (it's the same group of prisoners that Bridge Over the River Kwai covered, but much more gritty and realistic).

There is violence, cursing, and no easy answers. However, the film's ultimate theme is reconciliation and redemption. A Books and Culture review asked the question, "Can a Christian film use the "f" word? Well, that's one question. But it begs another: what, exactly, is a Christian film?" The reviewer argued that if we're going to tell stories of redemption, there has to be something from which we need redemption from. Easy answers become fluff, cotton-candy if we as viewers haven't been deep into the character's psyche to know where he/she is coming from. When the main character in To End All Wars asks the question, "Who is my brother?" it has earned the right to ponder that theme--we know what there is to forgive.

I realize this is slightly off the thread of just discussing Secret of the Cave, but I think it's interesting that the first major film from Adventists (at least that I know of), picked a safe, family-friendly, classic Adventist-book topic. That's probably just good sense considering financial backing options, but I wonder if that's all we can ever do?

Secret of the Cave was one of my favorite books when I was growing up. I read it five or six times - I've always loved mysteries. I'd heard they were making it into a movie a couple years ago, and was super impatient to finally see it.

When I finally saw it last fall, I had the similar let down whenever I see a movie based on a book I love. Overall, I thought it was ok, but I found it much scarier than the book, and wasn't so happy with the references to ghosts. To me, the book was much more clear about some things that the movie left until the very end to really make plain. I *did* like the fact that the one character was updated to be a girl.

All in all, though, it was well made and certainly no slouch for the first movie to come out of Southern's Film School. Kudos!
jen*