Honk For Jesus. Save Your Soul. is an interesting new film, an offbeat comedy with a very specific setting but a universal reach. Regina Hall and Sterling K. Brown are phenomenal as husband-and-wife church leaders Trinitie and Lee-Curtis Childs, whose semi-megachurch has been essentially shut down ever since a major scandal. The Childs’ decide to bring a film crew in to document their planned resurgence in the weeks ahead of their Easter service. Of course, it’s not a smooth comeback.

Aside from Fear of a Black Hat in 1993, there haven’t really been any Black mockumentaries; it’s a subgenre dominated by very white influences, from the great films of Christopher Guest to the quasi-mockumentary TV style of The Office and Parks and Recreation. Christianity also hasn’t been incorporated into comedy films very efficiently, so Honk For Jesus has a lot of originality going for it, and combines these two things to great effect. Writer/director Adamma Ebo, producer (and Adamma’s sister) Adanne Ebo, and co-star Nicole Beharie spoke to MovieWeb about the film.

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Honk For Jesus: From Short to Feature Film

Honk For Jesus. Save Your Soul. originally came from a short film the Ebo sisters had made, which had gotten the attention of Issa Rae and her production company Hoorae Media (you can watch the short film above). From there, the short got the attention of Daniel Kaluuya and Jordan Peele, who decided to produce a feature film of it with their companies Monkeypaw Productions and 59%. With the Get Out star and director on board, the Ebo sisters were able to cast big names like Hall and Brown, along with Nicole Beharie and Conphidance to play a rival, up-and-coming husband-and-wife preaching team, Shakura and Keon Sumpter.

The result fleshes out the short film into a detailed picture of hypocrisy, insecurity, and repression, an often laugh-out-loud hilarious movie with two of the year’s best performances in Hall and Brown, but a picture that’s quietly tragic and insightful as well. If the short had potential, the feature film is fully grown. One of the big things a feature can do that a short often can’t is cover scope, which is especially important when your film is set in massive megachurches and is filled with wealth and consumerism.

“It was definitely the scope,” said Adamma Ebo, “because that’s part of that world. Part of the critique is the scope of what these megachurches can be and how these people live. But a very early draft of the feature was written actually before we did the short, and so it was always going to be a feature; we decided that it was best to do a short as like a proof of concept. I think what we also didn’t get to do in the short was like a diversity of perspective about what is happening to these characters, and we were able to explore that more in the feature.”

Adamma and Addane Ebo on Christianity in Their Movie

     Steve SwisherPinky Promise LLC

One of the interesting things Honk For Jesus does with this “diversity of perspective” is shifting from mockumentary to reality several times. Instead of the entire film being made under the guise of a mockumentary movie, the fake cameras are turned off occasionally to reveal a different reality, and thus display not just the hypocrisies of people but also the sadness and truth that lurks beneath the bubbly, smiling faces when the cameras are on. When the mockumentary is in production, we see characters lying to each other; when the camera are turned off, we see them lying to themselves.

Though the film has churches and organized religion as its setting, it’s never mean-spirited or controversial about faith or Christianity. The target isn’t the religion, but the people, and the way church congregations often run on the same politics and problems as everything else. The Ebo sisters themselves grew up going to these big churches, and the film is very true to life when it comes to mainstream Baptist (or even Pentecostal) religion, especially in Black communities.

“A lot of it was about our personal feelings on where we are with our faith, and what we feel about organized religion,” said Adamma Ebo, “and the truth is, it’s kind of in between. That’s sort of what the film is doing, showing the spectrum. You know, we don’t hate it, we actually think that it does a lot of good, but also feel like it could be doing a whole lot better, and so there has to be that.”

Adanne adds, “There are parts of it that we do, in fact, love,” reflecting a similar sentiment that many (especially North American) Christians may be feeling these days, in which they love their Christianity but are uncomfortable with how the religion is sometimes used and who’s using it. “It felt very natural to put that duality into the film,” Adamma adds.

Nicole Beharie Talks Honk For Jesus. Save Your Soul.

The movie is delightfully balanced along a fine line, something that Beharie was aware of; she handles the subtle jabs perfectly and is comically passive-aggressive in the film to a delicious degree. She says that Honk For Jesus, in many ways, is simply stating what’s on people’s minds and what is only usually said in private.

“I think it does reflect some things [about organized religion], but I also feel like this is a barbershop talk,” said Beharie. “This is the kind of stuff that people talk about, it’s taboo; we’re aware of it, maybe we haven’t seen a film about it yet, but it’s not new. So I hope people can have a good time and not feel attacked or anything like that. That’s definitely not the intention.”

Beharie starred in another great movie recently, Breaking. The two films are being released within a month of each other, but they couldn’t be more astonishingly different, and Beharie excels in each. She’s great here, barely concealing a catty ruthlessness beneath her artifice of church talk pleasantries. Beharie drew from some of her personal experiences, but also was happy to dive into a script that had fun with the church experience, having said:

I did actually go to a few churches in the south growing up here and there, and I’ve been in a few like megachurch surroundings, but I can’t necessarily speak to what happens behind the scenes. I don’t know. I think that the script is sort of giving us a little peek into things that we’ve seen in headlines and asking us to question leadership, and also having a little bit of fun, you know, just a little bit of fun without it being too dangerous. I mean, it’s a comedy, right?

The film is very funny, but it is grounded in some recent scandals that make its satire all the more sharp. A slew of megachurch pastors and even smaller, more ‘reliable’ and ‘progressive’ pastors, have recently been accused of sexual assault, money laundering, drug use, and more. Ted Haggard, Bruxy Cavey, Ravi Zacharias, Carl Lentz, Bill Hybels, and Jerry Fallwell Jr. have all had their cruel hypocrisies revealed in recent years, something which certainly seems reflected in Honk For Jesus. Save Your Soul.

Honk For Jesus Save Your Soul Laughs With, Not At, Religion

Honk For Jesus manages to be an extremely smooth and entertaining film, funny and perceptive without being pejorative, thanks largely to its incredible performances. “Some of it was on the page,” said Beharie, but credit must be given to the Ebo sisters, because the film has a looseness and vibrant energy to it that feels almost entirely improvised. There’s a real chemistry between all the actors, and Adamma Ebo must have developed some strong synergy to capture these kinds of performances with such flow and seeming ease.

“I got to meet and have a real sit down with Adamma, and I felt like she was really clear about different models out there,” said Beharie, referring to how she prepared to play Pastor Sumpter, and whether the characters or the film was reflecting any specific disgraced leader or incident. “I basically went to a few virtual churches during the pandemic, most things were shut down, and I was able to log in and watch services that were similar to what my character would have done.” Regardless, Beharie had some physical experience with religion, even if the more spiritually fulfilling sides of it aren’t exactly on display in Honk For Jesus (as she said, “it’s a comedy, right?”).

Beharie continued:

As a result, Honk For Jesus is a unique film, a movie that parodies parts of religious life was also being obviously fond of its foundation. A Black mockumentary that breaks its own mold, the film is a Christian comedy for Christians and non-Christians alike, one that says much more about actual believers and church congregations than absolutely any movie in the New Christian Cinema, such as Fireproof or God’s Not Dead. Filled with phenomenal performances, this film might not save your soul, but it probably will enrich it.

Growing up, I loved the way I felt in church. So that’s the other thing, I’m playing the leadership, but I also know what it’s like to be in the congregation. Like, the choir’s going, and they’re telling you life is great, and there’s so much hope and community. So I think that there’s something really beautiful here, it’s a little tongue in cheek, but we’re talking also about a really kind of beautiful part of so many people’s lives. I thought that that was important to share.

From Focus Features, Honk For Jesus. Save Your Soul. will be in theaters and streaming exclusively on Peacock starting Sep. 2nd.