The Girl Who Believes in Miracles (2021)

The Girl Who Believes in Miracles (2021) embodies the worst vices of faith-based drama in particular and religion in general. It’s not just that the title character goes around resurrecting dead animals like a Traveling Pet Sematary and restoring sight to the blind like a modern-day Simon Magus. It’s mostly that co-writer/director Richard Correll handles this material with a literalism of biblical proportions.

This is a movie that condones kidnapping a girl with a brain tumor from the hospital, driving her through a storm to a secluded spot in the woods, and praying for a miracle. From what I’ve seen on TV, hospitals have chapels — why not pray there? Despite being omnipresent, this particular place in the forest apparently has “some special meaning” for God. Maybe He has a better signal there?

Sara Hopkins (Austyn Johnson) not only believes in, but uses and abuses the power of prayer. There’s nothing she won’t pray for. Like his older brother’s soccer team winning the game. Her prayer, however, is only good for one goal. “You said that if I prayed a lot, we would win,” Sara complains to her grandfather (Peter Coyote). It never occurs to her that maybe somebody on the other team prayed harder — or, more likely, that God doesn’t give two shits about peewee soccer.

Later that day, Sara finds a dead bird on the shore of a lake and prays it back to life. Not only is her prayer answered but also, as if to compensate her for the soccer fiasco, God reveals Himself to her in the guise of a “young and kind” man who may or may not have been “wearing a T-shirt and jeans.” Sara’s story is initially met with disbelief. “Danny and Cindy saw it happen and they don’t even believe it. They told Mum that it was probably a strange reflection in the water, or the bird was probably dazed or sick.” Perhaps it was just pining for the fjords.

Nevertheless, Sara soon graduates to resurrecting larger animals — specifically the local bully’s dog, whose heart grows three sizes following this incident (the bully’s, not the dog’s). Human trials are obviously next. Conveniently, Sara’s best friend is in a wheelchair. Sarah prays with her friend, and the next day he gets up out of his wheelchair like Peter Sellers at the end of Dr. Strangelove. This unexpected turn of events upsets Dr. Ben Riley (Kevin Sorbo), not so much because it goes against everything he learned in med school, but because Doctor Hercules resents God for the death of his own son. We know the good doctor will regain his faith because, again, he’s played by Kevin Sorbo. Speaking of ancient Greeks, Sara’s mother is Mira Sorvino, who only a few decades ago was winning an Oscar for Mighty Aphrodite. How the mighty fall.

The shoemaker’s son always goes barefoot, as they say in the parlance of our times. It turns out that Sara’s dying of an inoperable brain tumor, incurable even for her. Hence, her brother and his girlfriend — the aforementioned Danny (Luke Harmon) and Cindy (Tommi Rose) — sneak her out of the hospital and take her to the lake where it all began. A wolf, which I guess must be the devil or something, stands in their way. Would you believe that the bully’s mutt comes out of nowhere to the rescue?

Correll is either a cynical exploiter of other people’s faith or a True Believer himself. The latter would not get him off the hook. As Saint Jerome wrote, “it is worse still to ignore your ignorance.”