Escape from Hell (2001)

This is a Christian movie, but Christians are big on Hell so I figured it might have some potential, like maybe the main guy, condemned to Hell for some heinous crime against God like believing in evolution or eating pork on a Wednesday or whatever, fights his way out of the fiery pits, cold-cocking demons left and right and finally blowing Satan himself away with a mega-bore rifle that shoots, I dunno, Bibles (NIV) or something. Well, the main guy does indeed go to Hell -- after pulling a Flatliners -- but he's only there for maybe ten minutes, tops. The rest is just set-up, although there are lots of clever little touches along the way, like the fact that the chick researching near-death experiences has placed a sign on the hospital roof that she changes on an irregular basis, knowing that only people experiencing a legitimate out-of-the-body experience will see it on their way to Heaven and be able to report it back to her correctly. Although my sign would've said something a lot more funny, like "You left the oven on".

"Ahhhhhhhhhgggghhhh!!! My area!"

The scenes in Hell are effectively gruesome (which is kind of surprising, since Christians generally hate violence and gore, unless they're personally inflicting it on someone else, of course), but in the end there's just too much manipulative crap, like showing the kind, loving family man condemned to Hell just because he didn't kowtow to someone else's narrow view of the universe. This, of course, is one of Christianity's classic angles: scaring you into believing in Jesus, although I have to wonder if that's what God really wants, to spend eternity surrounded by a bunch of easily-manipulated, opportunistic hypocrites? According to this movie, the answer, apparently, is yes.

Still, I did appreciate the term the researcher chick came up with to describe near-death cases where the subject imagines that they've visited Hell: "non-positive near-death experiences". Seriously, bitch should be in marketing.

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