Director: Jim Carroll
Stars: Morgan Roberts, Ilsa Levine, Lamar Usher, Gerardo Davila
Young genius Ram Goldstein accidentally invents time travel, only to see his scientific breakthrough immediately stolen by Muslim terrorists who want to go back 2,000 years and murder Jesus Christ. (Spoiler alert: Jesus dies.)
After so many years doing this, it’s rare that a movie manages to surprise me with its insanity, so let us give thanks for the miracle that is BLACK EASTER. There’s just something so special about watching a film made for Christian audiences where their Lord and Savior is executed at point blank range by a special forces mercenary who says this line:
With its twisty time traveling and absolutely bonkers plot, Black Easter is like a a two-hour episode of Rick and Morty meets Veggie Tales—now with 75% more blasphemy! Whether it was done with good intention or not, there’s a lot of bad decision-making on display here, especially when it comes to some of the offensive stereotypes at work. Combine that with the hammy acting, confused writing, and lackluster production values, and you have a final product that is wildly entertaining. And while it’s plenty bad on its own, a little context about the history of Black Easter really moves it to the upper echelon of B-movies.
For starters, the film was originally released in 2020 under the title ASSASSIN 33 A.D. Writer-director Jim Carroll—whose impressive resume also boasts careers as a professional poker player, private investigator, bounty hunter, reality TV producer, and CEO of multiple Texas businesses—conceived of a spiritual sci-fi movie that could entertain and inspire Christian audiences. Unfortunately, the initial response to ASSASSIN 33 A.D. instead focused on how dark and impossible-to-follow the complicated time travel plot was, as well as concerns about the film’s stereotypical, potentially racist portrayal of certain minority characters, including the Muslim terrorists (almost all of whom are played by Hispanic actors).
A year later, Carroll retooled his film and released a simplified director’s cut as Black Easter, which somehow ends up being four minutes longer. I haven’t seen the original ASSASSIN 33 A.D., but I can definitely see how the multiple timelines and different versions of characters could be confusing to its intended general audience. However, Carroll wildly overcorrected with his cut of Black Easter, almost to the point of parody.
To dumb down the time travel shenanigans, Carrol added title prompts that continually tell you which timeline and characters you’re following, as well as unnecessary amounts of cheesy narration. And not just the occasional voiceover to provide context to a scene—no, you get freeze frames and arrows pointing to new characters anytime they’re introduced and constant “Hey, remember this from earlier…” recaps that assume all audience members must have learning disabilities. (Just imagine if Primer or Donnie Darko had their main character interrupt the movie to give you Cliffs Notes.) Carroll also uses the narrator to fix that pesky Islamophobic problem, mainly by having him blatantly say, “Don’t be judgmental or hating on Muslims. Ahmed is an extremist. There’s a big difference!”
It all makes for a tremendously bizarre, hilarious experience.
You know you’re in for a treat when, instead of the traditional opening credits, the movie kicks off with a showcase of all the awards it’s received from completely obscure film festivals. And Black Easter does not let up from there. The first few minutes are an absolute barrage of information and setup: A contemplation on the ethics of time travel set against several minutes of random stock footage, an honest-to-God “Hey, that’s me! You’re probably wondering how I got here…” introduction to the main character, and finally a montage chronicling the central love story—that was clearly a bigger subplot in the original film but is whittled down to 30 seconds here. It’s exhausting and exhilarating.
The film’s hero, Ram Goldstein, is the self-declared smartest person alive; so smart, in fact, that he discovers time travel by accident. Even with that high-level intellect, though, Ram does not realize that his mysterious benefactor, a billionaire with the actual name Ahmed Akbar, is really the front man for a Muslim terrorist organization. (Ram’s excuse? Ahmed constantly tells everyone that his parents were killed by extremists, which makes it unfathomable that he would ever turn in to one himself.) With this newfound technology, Ahmed immediately sends a team of mercenaries to go back to biblical time and murder Jesus Christ before he can be resurrected, preventing Christianity from ever existing. The team is led by a decorated American war hero whose family recently died in a car accident and now has a personal vendetta against God.
What follows is a mind-bending, head-scratching race to stop Ahmed through multiple time continuums, as Ram and his crew bounce back and forth between the past, present, and future, creating new realities and different versions of themselves. This is actually where Black Easter sort of works, managing to be a pretty decent time travel movie. There are some cool ideas attempted and Carroll clearly put a lot of thought in to it. Unfortunately, effort is wasted as everything manages to somehow feel both overly convoluted and made for toddlers, at least in this version.
What doesn’t work as well? Pretty much everything else. You won’t believe some of the things that happen in this movie:
At the end of the day, Black Easter is still a faith-based movie, with the preachy moral messaging that you’d expect. But I have to say, if more Christian inspirational films featured blasphemy, murder, and characters who have to literally be crucified to find their faith again, I could bcomee a convert. Also, amongst the movie’s ten different endings, there’s a ludicrous tease for a sequel that I genuinely pray happens.
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