Like talk-show bookers, filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady find the biggest, most bizarro performers for their liberal-nightmare porn: rapt and red-faced children at a Pentecostal camp called “Kids on Fire.” At the camp, located in Devil’s Lake, North Dakota, prayers and political indoctrination are one, making for a devastating show of faith twisted to ideological purposes. The kids chant for the appointment of “righteous judges,” and camp mastermind Becky Fischer is ultimately revealed as a down-home fascist who believes democracy is dangerous. Yet this is also yet another case of liberal oversell of a slam dunk and a lesson in how documentaries work, as the film tacitly (and not so tacitly) allows the unsettling histrionics of a group of Pentacostals to stand for all evangelical Christians. With only a liberal evangelical radio-show host presenting common-man objections, who’s stoking who? Regardless, you won’t soon forget the religious fervor here, so rare to see on screen.
Opens September 22
Opens September 22
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