His Only Son

Every year at approximately this time, an Easter oriented film is released, and with next week being Easter week, "His Only Son" was released as the offing. There are aplenty of stories in the bible that would be amazing subjects in which to write and convey to an audience, and this story, however is known by many, it is no less profound.

This story is the first feature length film chronicling one of the most controversial moments in all of scripture--when the Lord God (voice of Daniel da Silva) gave Abraham (Nicolas Mouawad) the ultimate test by commanding him to sacrifice his only son, Isaac (Edaan Moskowitz) on the mountain of Moriah. Answering age-old questions as to why the Lord would require such a sacrifice, "His Only Son" profoundly explores mankind's relationship to God and encourages viewers to turn inward and ask: Can your faith still stand when you are asked to give everything?

Others to round out the cast are Sara Seyed as Sarah, wife of Abraham, Ottavio Taddei as Kelzar, Nicolai Perez as Eshcolam, Luis Fernandez-Gil as Eliezer, Scot Cooper as the Centurion, Arianna White as Harlot and Alexandria Lior as Stolen Daughter. 

This was directed with such pathos and conviction by David Helling (shorts). This filmmaker has directed a number of shorts which I'm sure enabled him to direct with an amazing sense of feeling, and therefore was able to extract the incredible emotions out of his actors. Even though this is only his first outing as a feature film director, this filmmaker will certainly go far in this biz. This film was also incredibly well chronicled by writer David Helling (shorts). This story is told as an alternate flashback and present situation so as to understand why Abraham was on this trek to Moriah in order to perform this sacrifice. There's a certain amount of backstory involved in order to prep the audience. Since this is a well known biblical story, suffice it to say, the Lord ends up not having Abraham sacrifice his son. This certainly does not spoil the plot since, as stated, this is well known. This isn't because God changed His mind. This sacrifice was to test Abraham's faith, so he had no other way to think, but to realize that, for some reason, God wanted him to take his son's life. This story was chronicled according to scripture and you could see the agony Abraham was going through up until they reached Moriah. This was written in a concise, cohesive, tight and thought out way where it really teaches us all of what would we do.

To go back to the preface, will our faith still stand if asked to give up everything? In today's world, that could mean giving up things or people in one's life that cause you to consistently stumble or sin. This is what makes this film convicting, but in a good way. We all have fallen short of the glory of God, which means we all have sins, issues, problems, you get the point. This is a film that needs to be seen by all--old, young, male female. I beseech all to see this with an open mind so you can make a more meaningful decision in your life. 

Out of 4 Stars: 4                                            Rated: PG-13                                          106mins.