By Andy McKinney
The story of Abraham and Isaac is familiar to Christians, Jews, and Muslims.  It is a powerful story of the faith of Abraham and his fidelity to the commands of God. In this case, God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his long-awaited, beloved son on a high altar as if he were a sheep or a goat.
For most of the movie, we watch Abraham, his son Isaac and two servants travel for three days from the clan camp to the mountain of Moriah, where the sacrifice will take place. That gives us plenty of time to observe actor Nicolas Mouawad demonstrate Abraham’s anguish.
As they travel, Abraham remembers past events with his wife, Sari, and several encounters he had with God. We fully understand the torment and woe that Abraham must have been experiencing. He and his wife had not been able to conceive for decades of their married life. Now, they have a good son, much appreciated for the long delay in birthing a child, but now God demands that Abraham kill Isaac as a blood sacrifice.
Abraham is willing to do this terrible act, but he clearly doesn’t want to.
This film, written, directed, and produced by first-timer David Helling,
had a low budget of only $250,000. For distribution, Helling teamed with Angel Studios. In what is a first for a faith-based film,  or perhaps for any film, they raised over a million dollars by crowdfunding to provide the resources to distribute the movie to theaters nationwide.
Helling spent about five years on this project, his first feature-length film.
Sara Seyed played Sari/Sarah. She made a stand-out performance. Seyed has a history in TV. Lead actor Nicolas Mouawad recently played King Solomon in  “3,000 Years of Longing.”  In “His Only Son,” he mostly frowns and shows little emotion otherwise. Lucky for him, the story in itself is so powerful that the quality of his acting does not distract us.
“His Only Son” has already earned over five million dollars at the box office. With this success, we are sure to see more movies from David Helling.
“His Only Son” runs for one hour and forty-one minutes. It carries a mild PG-13 rating. It gets a medium three saw blades 🪚🪚🪚because of medium acting.
Writer, director, and producer David Helling was a Marine in Iraq when he came to Jesus. He went to film school after his enlistment ended. He has a clutch of short films to his credit. With the commercial success of “His Only Son,” he will bring us more films in the future.
Fun Fact-The Marine Corps taught Helling how to speak Korean, then sent him to the Arabic-speaking Middle East. Go figure.
SHOW TIMES: 12:30, 3:30, 6:30
