'Exemplum:' Christian thriller dares take evil seriously

“Can’t you see you’re not making Christianity better? You’re just making rock and roll worse!” Hank Hill’s trenchant observation easily applies to most Christian films as well. While the massive success of 2004’s “The Passion of the Christ” showed how huge the market could be, subsequent attempts to bring the good news to the big screen have largely failed to break out of the “faith-based” niche. With all due respect to the filmmakers, it’s not hard to see why. The attempt to counter Hollywood’s rampant secularism may be in earnest, but the skills and star power are lacking.

Lately, however, that’s starting to change. This summer, Angel Studios grossed some $250 million on a $14.5 million budget with “Sound of Freedom,” an anti-sex-trafficking thriller that makes no attempt to hide its religious subtext. The same production company is behind the blockbuster streaming series “The Chosen,” which has made lead Jonathan Roumie the most famous Jesus since “Sound of Freedom” star Jim Caveizel. And then there’s “Nefarious,” a twist on the possession movie that evangelizes via its depiction of demonic evil.

To their ranks we can now add first-time director Paul Roland’s “Exemplum,” which winningly applies '70s-style grittiness to a Christopher Nolan-esque psychological thriller – all on a budget of just under $10,000.

“Exemplum” takes its name from the medieval genre of short, morally edifying tales used to educate the laity. It is also the name of the YouTube series that has turned its creator, young Catholic priest Colin Jacobi (convincingly played by Roland), into a bona fide influencer.

But Fr. Jacobi owes his success to a grave transgression: The stories his viewers find so compelling come straight from the confessions he hears. In a misguided attempt to protect himself from any false accusations of sexual harassment, Jacobi began secretly recording these confessions, an illicit but technically victimless act. It is when he yields to the temptation to exploit those recordings for entertainment that he risks excommunication, to say nothing of damnation, for violating the seal of confession.

As the pursuit of fame consumes Fr. Jacobi, his priestly duties go unattended, causing his archbishop to relocate him and force him to cancel the show. Fr. Jacobi’s growing resentment of his colleagues and his God leads him to denounce his faith and embark upon a destructive campaign of blackmail with the help of an anonymous hacker called the Night Owl. It is this collaboration that threatens to bring about his total undoing.

“Exemplum” forsakes Hollywood’s usual concern with the Church’s shameful record of enabling and covering for the pedophiles and sexual predators among its clergy. Instead it focuses on one more-or-less “good” priest’s inner struggle with his demanding vocation.

Fr. Jacobi's crisis of conscience is fueled by his unwillingness to accept the unfortunate reality that each of us carries the capacity for evil within his heart. Instead of accepting that reality and soldiering on, Fr. Jacobi resorts to self-righteousness, seeing himself as morally superior to his fellow priests and even to God. This is the rare movie that takes Catholicism seriously, examining guilt, frustration, and temptation from the perspective of someone for whom the Church is the foundation of reality itself.

The stakes, in other words, couldn’t be higher. And so “Exemplum” – with the help of Roland’s sharply written script and a talented cast that includes Francis Cronin, Joseph Griffin, Brittany Lewis, and Jennifer Ann Massey – pulls us in, succeeding where so many more lurid and sensationalistic depictions of evil have failed. This success is a reminder that winning the culture war requires culture and that the artists willing to defend the good, the true, and the beautiful deserve our support as much as any politician.