"Miracles from Heaven" Review

As you could probably tell from my review of Heaven is for Real, I'm not a big fan of these "true story of miracles" movies. It's not that I don't believe in miracles, I do, it's just that these are rarely done even slightly well. So when I saw that Miracles from Heaven was coming out, I wasn't excited and wasn't planning on seeing it. But through curiosity and certain circumstances, I decided to go ahead and give it a shot. So, was this a bigger flop than Heaven is for Real? Or did give miracle movies a better name?


 The story is about the Beam family of Texas. The dad, Kevin, is a veterinarian and the mom, Christy, is a loving mother of her three daughters Abbie, Anna, and Adelynn. They all go to church together, and they are an over all normal family. All until one day when Anna unexpectedly get sick. They take her to the hospital, but they tell them that is lactose intolerance or that she has bad acid reflex or other guesses. Christy knows there is something more wrong and convinces them to allow a doctor to take a better look at her. It turns out she has an extremely serious condition called pseudo-obstruction motility disorder which makes it almost impossible to digest food. Nothing seems to be helping their daughter, so Christy takes a chance and takes Anna to a specialist in Boston to see if there is anyway he can help. Along the way, Christy struggles with her faith, and wonders why God could allow such a terrible thing to happen to Anna.

I have to say that Miracles from Heaven was a huge improvement over Heaven is for Real. It's definitely not perfect, they still managed to throw the whole "I went to Heaven" aspect in there toward the end, but over all I was not disappointed.  The story was interesting and had good pacing. The characters overall acted normally. And the message was both true to life and inspiring. If you were interested it seeing it, but wasn't sure, I'd go ahead and see it.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Story- 9/10

While the story is based on true events, I do think that they stayed pretty true to the story.

Main Characters- 8/10

Sometimes the characters overacted, but overall they were good.

Side Characters- 7/10

Most of the side characters were okay, but some of them felt like they were just there for no reason and didn't do much. Mostly the other Beam family members like Kevin and the littlest sister.

Villain- 7/10

Besides the disease, there were these characters in the church that made Christy (and me) very mad. They accused not only her and her husband of doing something to bring this sickness to the family, but also Anna. As if God had punished them for some reason. But this came out of no where and ended up going a bit too far.

Effects/Animation- 8/10
   
Nothing too amazing, but the camera work was solid and the coloring added a lot of atmosphere to the differently toned scenes.

Songs/Score- 6/10
   
I honestly didn't hear much of the score at all. 

Entertainment Factor- 9/10

I pretty much enjoyed the entire movie. There were a couple of slow parts, but they kept it moving very well.


Total Score-  78%
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------