An Interview with God (2018)

An Interview with God works because it treats its headline-grabbing premise not as a gimmick, but as a quiet, intimate doorway into the questions people carry when life stops making sense. David Strathairn plays “God” with disarming calm and human warmth, turning each conversation into something you can lean into rather than brace yourself for, while Brenton Thwaites keeps the story grounded in the weary, searching reality of a journalist whose certainty has been shaken. The vibe is thoughtful and gently mysterious—more coffeehouse confession than thunderbolt spectacle—and it finds its power in the push and pull between skepticism, longing, and the hard work of repairing a life. It can feel sermon-adjacent at times, so viewers allergic to overt spiritual framing may resist it, but if you’re open to a sincere, actor-driven drama that invites reflection instead of cynicism, it’s an unexpectedly compelling watch.

An Interview with God is clearly aiming for an earnest, faith-forward thought experiment: what happens when a broken, traumatized journalist gets the chance to ask the biggest questions to someone claiming to be God. The problem is the execution leans heavily on long, dialogue-driven interview scenes that can feel more like a sermon than a drama, with themes stated bluntly instead of earned, and a few threads that come off muddled rather than mysterious. If you want nuanced ambiguity, sharp writing, or a wide-ranging philosophical debate, this may frustrate you because it tends to circle familiar biblical ideas without digging much deeper. Still, David Strathairn brings a calm, watchable presence, and if you’re in the mood for a gentle, accessible, spiritually reassuring film rather than a challenging one, it might land better.