Movies with themes of death have mushroomed in just the last year, but unlike those of earlier decades, these films are in sharper conflict with Christian narratives and more likely to replace them with a “vague spirituality, nihilism and even existential humanism,” according to Joseph Holmes in Religion Unplugged (July 7). He adds that whereas in past decades, movies dealing with death were still framed within a Christian context, even by writers and producers who didn’t believe in these teachings but sought to appeal to a largely Judeo-Christian culture, there is far less cultural pressure to make such movies today with the increasing secularization of America. So far in 2025, there have been several movies about death, from Presence, The Monkey, The Life of Chuck, and Death of a Unicorn, to Final Destination: Bloodlines, 28 Years Later, Sinners, and Bring Her Back. These films “not only deal with death but explicitly attempt to answer how we have the best life possible under its shadow.” The answers these movies give to death and dying usually concern death’s inevitability and the impossibility of cheating it.
Bring Her Back follows a grieving mother who tries to bring back her dead daughter and nephew by killing other children and using their bodies as vessels. Holmes writes that “religion is typically looked upon badly in these films, as a form of denial of death that makes you feel better but ultimately is a bad coping mechanism. The Monkey constantly mocks religious people who claim to have the answers to death or downplay the question. Along with accepting the inevitability of death, recent films stress enjoying the life we have. The Life of Chuck and The Monkey make this point that in the face of death, the only response is to enjoy life now and not worry so much about tomorrow. Holmes thinks that some of these movies do hold out hope for a vague version of life after death. For example, Death of a Unicorn has both father and daughter having visions through the unicorns of an afterlife, where their wife and mother is alive. Sinners has the hero seeing a vision of his dead lover and their dead child as he’s about to die. But Holmes adds that “both of them affirm that most attempts in this life are to preserve it and that doing so can only corrupt.”
(Religion Unplugged, https://religionunplugged.com/news/gospel-of-death-what-hollywoods-afterlife-looks-like-now?)
