Terri Minton | Through the Shattered Lens

In 2015’s Deadly Sanctuary, Philadelphia reporter Kendall O’Dell (Rebekah Kochan) relocates to a small town in Arizona and proceeds to spend the majority of the movie complaining about it.

Seriously, I could relate to Kendall to an extent. We both have red hair. We both have asthma. We both hate snakes. We both wear high heels in the desert. We’ve both run outside in our underwear after coming across a tarantula in our house. But, even with all that in mind, even I quickly got annoyed with listening to her complain about every little thing. Her father got her a job at the Arizona newspaper so, of course, Kendall calls him up to complain about the desert. An old man stops and helps to shoo a snake away from Kendall’s car so, of course, Kendall gives him the glare of death when he casually calls her “sweetie.” (The guy’s 70 and was clearly not hitting on Kendall so maybe he can be forgiven for not speaking like a 30-something grad student.) Kendall shows up late for her job interview so, of course, she complains about the newspaper to her editor (Eric Roberts). Kendall gets a place to live, rent-free. She complains about the house being located near a mental hospital. Kendall’s co-worker, Ginger (Teri Lee), sets Kendall up with both a handsome cowboy (Marco Dapper) and the richest man in town (Peter Greene) and, of course, Kendall finds an excuse to complain about it.

Eventually, a plot of sorts kicks in. Kendall investigates the death of her predecessor and discovers that the sheriff (Dean Cain) doesn’t seem to be all the interested in solving any of the murders that seem to occur around town. She also tries to set up an interview with Dr. Price (Daniel Baldwin), the owner of the mental hospital, but it turns out that he doesn’t want to talk to her. He doesn’t care that she once wrote a series of articles about mental health in Philadelphia. (Yikes! I’ve seen Parking Wars so I can only guess how scary that must have been.)

Kendall hears strange voices in her house and spiders keep showing up at inopportune moments. Who can she trust? Who is the bad guy here? The rich guy or the salt-of-the-Earth cowboy dude? Well, I won’t spoil the film. I will say that the plot had potential but the poor pacing and the unlikable lead character eventually combine to do this movie in.

Eric Roberts is his usual avuncular self in this film. He spends most of his scenes sitting behind a desk. The rest of the film’s celebrity cameo budget was apparently spent on Dean Cain and Daniel Baldwin, both of whom seem rather bored with the whole thing.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

The Taylor family returns in 2019’s Catching Faith 2!

It’s been four years since Alexa (Lorena Segura York) and John Taylor (Dariush Moslemi) forced their son to confess to drinking two beers at a high school party. As a result of his confession, Beau Taylor (Garrett Westton) was suspended from playing during the regular season and was briefly the most unpopular guy at his high school. However, it appears that did not keep Beau from getting into a good college and eventually make it to the NFL.

Meanwhile, Ravyn Taylor (Bethany Peterson) has also moved out of the house, presumably to attend MIT. As we saw in the previous movie, she was so moved by Beau’s decision to confess that she decided not to cheat on her Latin midterm. Apparently, that decision paid off because Ravyn still became the class valedictorian.

Alexa and John now live in their huge house with only Alexa’s mother, Loretta (Sandra Flagstad). Loretta is suffering from Alzheimer’s and she is often confused and angry. Alexa has been offered a job with an up-and-coming design firm but she’s not sure how she can balance working and taking care of her mom.

When he’s injured in a game, Beau is informed that his football career is over. Using crutches and struggling to find the strength to even bend his knee, Beau returns home and takes a job as an assistant to his old football coach (played by Bill Engvall). While Beau is learning how to coach and coming to terms with the loss of his dreams, Ravyn is preparing for her wedding!

Alexa is excited that Ravyn has gotten married because Alexa has spent the last 20 years planning Ravyn’s wedding. However, she’s a bit less excited when she learns that Ravyn’s husband is in the army and is scheduled to be deployed to Afghanistan and that he’s Nathan Adams (Shane McCamant). Nathan is a good and responsible guy but he’s also the son of Jezi Adams (Alexandra Boylan), who was once Alexa’s best friend until they had a falling out over Alexa forcing her son to confess to drinking beer. Jezi felt that, by forcing Beau to confess, Alexa put the future of the entire team (including her son, who was the quarterback) at risk. Jezi and Alexa immediately start to argue, in their own passive aggressive way, over their conflicting visions of what the wedding should be like. Of course, neither one ever bother to ask Ravyn what she wants.

Changing Faith 2 is better than the first one, largely because the characters are all now adults and there’s nothing in the film as ridiculous as Alexa and John forcing their son to put his entire future at risk just because he had a beer at a high school party. As opposed to the first film, there are only a few scenes — mostly featuring Alexa talking to her bible study group about how difficult it is to balance all of her responsibilites — that indicate that this is meant to be a religious movie. I also liked the fact that the sequel spent more time focusing on Alexa’s heritage, which was something the first film barely acknowledged.

That said, with the possible exception of Ravyn, none of the Taylors were particularly sympathetic characters and the film features a “shocking” death that, because you’ll see coming from a mile away, ultimately feels a bit manipulative. The scenes at Alexa’s new job (where everyone is a flakey millennial) feels like some sort of boomer fever dream of what young people are like and Jezi is portrayed in such a cartoonish fashion that the ultimate reconciliation between her and Alexa never quite carries the emotional punch that it should. Catching Faith 2 is an improvement on the first film but it’s still weighted down by its own heavy-handedness.