One Church (2016)

 What made me curious about 'One Church' was the presence of Jessica Lynch in the cast. Twenty years ago the story of private Jessica Lynch, her capture and rescue from behind enemy lines, was a major "feel good" story of the early days of America's Second Iraq War. I vaugly recall Ms. Lynch publicly expressing an interest in being an actress, on Imdb she has 5 acting credits, all between 2015 & 2017, then a music video appernece in 2021.

The title of the film and the poster image of a generic looking protestant church suggested to me a movie about various goings on within a single congregation, but 'One Church' is an apocalypse lite conspiracy theory film that Marjorie Taylor Green might get behind. Jessica Lynch plays the daughter of an American president, who embittered by an elder daughters death in a cult suicide 18 years earlier, is pushing legislation to essentially nationalize all Churchs. This plays into a perennial motif of a church of the devil which goes hand in hand with evil world government stuff; the movie has neither the budget or talent to pull it's conceit off well, instead it just seems silly and cheap.

Poorly acted (sorry Jessica) and mostly a slog, there is still some charm to its rediculusness. Lynch's lack of secret service protection and central role in "the resistance" is a howler if you think about it. Because of budgetary reasons nothing looks high end, even the White House interior is a suburban home. Nearly everyone in the country is complelty unconcerned with internment camps and the roll back of nearly all religious liberties. Where is the Supreme Court? How in a country of such division are one worlders getting elected uniformly to congress? This religion hating president is supposed to be a Republican? Such leaps, but in the worldview that underlies this production people are  unthinking sheep because they have to be for the far fatched paranoid plot to work. Sadly many people see the things postulated in this fairly stupid movie as not just possible but probably inevitable. *1/2