There's nothing more of a let down than a movie turning out to not be what you thought it was. I feel like in the case of Faith. Hope. Love, the previews were awfully misleading, and although there were a few touching moments, I was quite disappointed overall. I first saw it advertised on Positiv. The concept looked so different and fresh. Six people gathering at a cabin in a remote area by a perplexing circumstance. None of them know one another beforehand. The only thing they have in common is being from the same generation - they're all millennials. When I was watching the previews, the first thought I had was finally! A film about people my age that doesn't revolve around sex. They were playing card games, board games, and other fun activities. Breaking bread together. They were just having wholesome, innocent fun without drooling over each other. When I found it on YouTube I was excited. I was expecting the film to be relatable, seeing as how I'm a Christian and at the same stage of life as the characters. Well, what I ended up seeing was nothing like the trailer. I felt mentally exhausted by the time it was over.

The film opens with the group arriving in the Rocky Mountains after they had responded to an email from an author named Oscar Fielding. He tells them he's conducting research and needs their help. Based on the information in a letter that was left for them, they discover they'll be spending a weekend at the cabin, and will be filmed with a camcorder for the purpose of sharing stories from their life, and their stories will be used as material for Fielding's book. They'll also have to forgo their cell phones, and won't receive them until it's time to go home. It was logical up until that scene. That's when my feelings for the movie began to change. For one thing, I noticed there was an inconsistency. When they're introducing themselves to the camcorder, they say their name and what they're studying in college. But then later in the movie, based on their comments, it sounds like they're somewhere in their mid-20s. I also noticed the date on the camcorder was January 2018. Okay... A person is 18, 19, 20, or 21 when they're in college. I was 25 in 2018. If they were between the ages of 18-22 in 2018, they're not a millennial. The only character who was believable as a millennial was the one who had a Master's from MIT (my first semester of grad school was the fall of that year). If everyone else was in the process of getting their Bachelor's during the year that the story was supposed to be taking place, they would've been born in the late 90s. Millennial birth years span from the early 1980s to 1996. So technically, with the exception of one person, they were all zoomers. Not to mention, I figured they were younger than millennials going off of their behavior. They seemed immature. Stuffing marshmallows in their mouth and then trying to say the words 'chubby bunny.' The one girl walking up to the pizza delivery guy and kissing him, then they burst out in laughter once the door is closed. They reminded me of teenagers more so than college students. The whole age thing didn't make sense, and I found myself focusing on that for the rest of the movie. It's like the filmmakers thought the audience lacked the intelligence to figure out that chronologically, their ages didn't add up to their generation.

From that point on, the film takes a nosedive into a depressing wasteland. The questions they ask each other are very intrusive, which results in them gradually becoming vulnerable and sharing deeply personal things about themselves. The rest of the movie was just awkward conversations. Not gonna lie - it was a chore to get through. By no means do certain topics make me feel uneasy. It was just more or less the setting of the characters' interactions that made listening to them talk about their prescription drug addiction, loss of virginity, relationship problems, and confusion about life overall seem far-fetched. The acting wasn't the best, so none of them seemed all that natural or believable discussing their issues. And it's not like there was a detailed examination into the human condition. The characters are all stereotypes: the Irish American rocker chick from Boston who was raised Catholic and has a wild side; the mousey light skinned black girl who only dates white men; the guy who's undercover gay and sitting on the fence: on one hand he wants to openly live his life, but on the other he feels ashamed of his sexuality. Movies like this contribute to why some people think religion is weird. God-fearing young adults are anything but perfect, but our lives aren't that messy. I couldn't relate to any of them, except for the guy who said he's never really made any poor decisions in his life (he was a film student. I thought it was so weird how everybody kept calling him Spielberg). It actually took me a long ways into the movie to realize they were all Mormons (at the beginning phase of the story, the formerly Catholic girl who said she converted and moved to Utah wasn't a clue). I'm Presbyterian, and I will admit - I've always thought Mormons were strange. I mean, don't get me wrong, I do make an effort to keep an open mind, but perhaps that clouded my perception. Even when you take the Mormon aspect out of it, it didn't really give off the vibe of being a religious film. There's a lot of discussion about kissing, and the black girl starts cuddling with one of the guys, which was odd, considering she was dropped off at the cabin by this guy when the movie first opened. So she was getting romantic with one of the group members when she already had a boyfriend? How is that glorifying to God? Her character bothered me the most, if I'm being honest. I wish she was made to be a little more ethnic than she was. I'm an African American woman of a lighter skin tone myself. My attraction also gravitates towards men outside of my race, but my personality is nowhere near as flat as this girl's was. She exemplified the narrow-mindedness of people who are tasked with formulating movie characterizations.

All in all, Faith. Hope. Love turned out to be nothing like the trailer. I was expecting to watch a group of 30-year-olds having meaningful conversations about the Bible, existence, and other thought-provoking subjects. Instead what I got was a total downer of a film. The pacing was incredibly slow. The ending was just terrible. Come to find out, the email wasn't from Oscar Fielding - it was from the film student nicknamed Spielberg. He wanted to get into USC's film program and they needed a sample of his work. Therefore, he had all of them come to the cabin for a weekend with the goal of filming them talk about their lives, but he had no idea their confessions would be heartfelt and authentic. So he basically tricked them. He documented painful stories from their past for his own academic advancement, and they were okay with that? Wow! Can you say unrealistic? I think the average person would be pretty unhappy they were lied to/misled, not have positive reactions like they did. It's a shame Faith. Hope. Love left a lot to be desired. It shouldn't be marketed as a story about millennials. Not to say all millennials are married and have started a family, but they're more settled compared to the generation under them. The characters in this movie acted like a bunch of kids. Watch if you want to, but trust me, you're not missing anything.

I really enjoyed this film. Actors and production were great, but better than that, was an amazing view of different journeys, diversity and what happens when we listen to others and try to see the world through their eyes. The movie has a very simple set up, but with a deep reflection on judgement, who we are and how we can make the church and world a better place.