182 - 2025 - The World enslaved by a Virus

Your Stupid Minds opens 2022 by covering Twitter's latest punching bag: a Christian film where a group of German Christian youth start a religious movement in an oppressive dystopian society by spray painting Jesus fish on trees and mailing people DVDs. It's 2025 - The World enslaved by a Virus (2021). Taken directly from the description: "It's 2025, The world as we have known in 2020 does not exist anymore. The Virus changed the world, and communism is all over the place. A global world language developed, meetings are illegal, traveling is illegal, and Christianity is illegal. A group of Christians is trying to fight back." Roy (writer and director Joshua Wesely) is a young(ish) man trying to be Christian in a world where it's banned. He and his sister Hannah (Antonia Joy Speer) spray Jesus fish around the place until Hannah is shot by one of the government's goons. They eventually ban together with an ex-Marine, a hacker, and a woman on the inside named Leila (played by Wesely's now-wife) to spread the gospel and keep out of reach of the authorities. This description sounds a lot cooler than what is actually in the film. The reality of what's presented is a muddy, sloppy, half-written mess of meandering scenes, a surprising lack of conflict, sub-iMovie special effects, and ear-bleedingly bad Christian rock songs played in their entirety. Due to the recent heat from this film and the suspicious and unconfirmed age difference between Wesely and his now wife, both of their Instagram accounts are currently set to private. We'll go into more detail about that in the episode.