Lost amidst all of the furor of the purported blasphemy of the tongue-in-cheek religious horror/comedy The Wednesday Night Bible Study Club is just how one-the-nose its portrayal of modern American religious life it really is.  For those of us who have been reared in religious homes here in these United States, this portrayal is almost shockingly accurate—nigh nostalgic!  Far too often religious films in America are either provocative and intentionally offensive, or treacly and sentimental—either challenging or proselyting, debunking or evangelizing—in either case, it has an agenda.  But this just might be the first religious film in the history of America without an agenda; it takes religion as simply a fact of the universe, a known quantity, neither inherently righteous or wicked, but simply part of the structure of our lives.  The shock/laughter comes neither at the expense of the believing nor of the doubters, but simply from the situations that arise naturally from religious atmosphere, no more to be blamed than the weather (ironically, this just might be the only Christian film in existence that takes seriously Christ’s admonition to “judge not”).  That the denomination being lovingly lampooned here is LDS feels almost incidental.

It’s been said that God is in the details—or the devil’s in the details—in this case, here it just might be both.  Specifically, The Wednesday Night Scripture Study Club deals with the inherent humor and anxiety that comes with fellowshipping a new convert into the fold.  Taking the current wane of religious belief and rise of the “nones” in the U.S. as a given—a fact to be neither lamented or celebrated—the film charts the inherently awkward obstacles a congregation must inevitably navigate in order to integrate in a fresh-faced convert who is just…off.  Again, those who have been raised in a religious home or served any sort of proselyting mission, whether you are still practicing or not, will immediately recognize the phenotype of which I am referring to.  Because, of course, no one whose life is going well (or more precisely, no one who’s life is going predictably, because I’m not sure anyone is doing well in this life) is in the serious hunt for religion nowadays.  When you only have the inertia of old family tradition to keep those plateaued or hemorrhaging congregations alive, then you must latch on to every enthusiastic new convert you can get.  Yes, yes, you tell yourself all about how every soul is sacred to God, how “the worth of souls is great”, and how great shall be your joy if you can bring but one soul unto Christ, and are we not all sinners and are we not all fallen in the sight of God—and you may even be entirely genuine, honest, and sincere in telling yourself that!  But there is another part of you that is also fellowshipping out a deep-seated sense of desperation that you likely do not even dare admit to yourself.  Like a struggling brick-and-mortar business in the internet era, you no longer have the luxury of turning away customers; you accept every weirdo who comes through your door.

And Josiah Jesperson (an always game Bill Hader) is exactly that weirdo!  Again, everyone who’s shared the same religious upbringing as the present reviewer will immediately recognize the type: an eager people-pleaser and yet he lives alone; almost overly-friendly yet still strangely friendless; he looks at you but not quite into you—not even when he’s making eye-contact; he never seems to be responding to exactly what you just said, even when he’s repeating yourself back to you; he is somehow both child-like and childish all at once; so polite and non-threatening it’s actually a slightly creepy; just a touch too pale; clothes just a tad too out of date; just a bit too excited about their newfound faith, and just a scotch too upfront about previous piccadillos; the sort of person you joke about to yourself “might be a serial killer,” then immediately feel bad about for thinking that, but then also wonder, “no, but seriously.”  (Maybe he’s in your congregation right now.)  In any case, this film’s remarkably simply yet brilliant conceit is to take that last thought literally, and renders the new convert an actual serial killer.

The cast of soon-to-be-victims will be familiar to anyone raised in a church-going environment—the over-earnest choir director; the almost-effeminately fatherly Bishop; the wannabe-scholar Sunday School teacher; the Norman Rockwell-esque fellowshipping family; the gregarious mission leader; the trying-way-too-hard-to-be-cool youth pastor; the cranky old lady in the peanut gallery; the stern-yet-fair scripturian; the bored teenagers; the uptight organist—each of whose deaths are as predictable as they are hilarious (one particular “body of Christ” killing is especially groan-worthy).  Crucially, the film never once even implies that any of these folks had it coming (there are no closet-pedophiles or hell-fire-damnation preachers or mega-church religious hypocrites to be found here), no: this is a slasher film first and foremost, and the film knows it, and the deaths are shocking because they are so absurdly meaningless.

And in the grand tradition of all slasher films, it is almost aggressively without moral and without agenda.  It has no obvious anti- or pro-religious bias; it’s goal is not to persuade its audience against religion, but nor is it to warn the faithful against proselyting.  If the film has any sort point at all (a doubtful proposition), it is simply to take that aforementioned “hey, what if this guy’s a serial killer?” feeling and then renders it utterly ridiculous by pushing it to its logical extreme.  If the film has any sort of desired audience reaction at all, it is not to make you fearful of the odd new convert, but to make you laugh at yourself the next time you meet him.  Simply put, the film takes the thought seriously so you never have to; it breaks the spell.

Somewhat inspired, the director chooses not to give the killer a motive beyond a vague desire to “send you all to join your Eternal Family”, as though he were doing each of his victims a divine favor.  He never once claims to be—nor accused to be—possessed of a devil; he never claims membership in some devilish cult hellbent on cleansing the earth of Christians or what have you (the film’s lone pseudo-Satanist Goth teen runs away squealing in terror from the first murder, and is never seen or heard from again).  Almost refreshingly, there is no tragic backstory, no deranged monologues (this is not a quotable movie), no point-of-view killings: Josiah remains as opaque in in the end as he does in the beginning.

This is for the best.  The Wednesday Night Bible Study Club is almost radically disinterested in subverting the tropes of the slasher genre (if you guessed that there was a death fake-out and a last girl standing, then congrats, you’ve been alive since the ‘80s), merely placing them in a novel context.  If the atheist in you wants to find any sort of sympathetic reading at all, it may be that the slasher genre is as disconnected from and irrelevant to everyday reality as religion itself is.  But even that tenuous reading feels a little too overthought: this film, I think, does not treat religion and slasher flicks as disconnected from life and lived experience, but as an integral part of it.  It’s strange to think of a religious-themed horror/comedy as good-natured, but here it is.  As noted earlier, this film accepts the existence and presence of religion as freely as it does the slasher genre; they are both facts of life, neither to be praised nor opposed any more than the sky overhead.  Whether there is anyone else up there in the sky the film leaves you to yourself to decide.