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There are certainly popular films and TV shows that speak toward a more conservative ideology. American Sniper and Passion of the Christ were nominated for several Academy Awards in their respective years, with the latter receiving a four-star review from Roger Ebert. While these movies went on to critical acclaim, they are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to conservative films.

Dig a little deeper, and youll find what Slate calls an ever-flowing ouroboros of frenzied speculation and self-contradictory propaganda. My Son Hunter (about President Biden's son) and 2000 Mules (about Trump's election loss) are recent examples, but movies like them have existed for decades. In these films, right-wing ideology is disseminated through bizarre, confusing, and often empty reproductions of cinematic language.

These are films that speak directly to their niche audiences, movies that get so caught up in a miasma of talking points that they forget to be actual movies most of the time. They range from bizarre to hateful to genuine propaganda, but, more interestingly, theyre a close-up view of the often wacky and sometimes disquieting beliefs shared by a chunk of the American populace.

In a 2017 interview with Vulture, Judd Apatow explained why he thinks explicitly conservative-leaning entertainment tends to fail: [Republicans are] too concerned about trying to present themselves as correct They dont admit how lost they are. This is, in many cases, true.

Consider, for example, the Atlas Shrugged trilogy and its heroes. Protagonists Dagny Taggart and Hank Reardan, among their other benevolent, bootstrap-pulling mogul buddies, are never wrong; in fact, they are all so good at vaguely doing business that the country will fall into chaos without them. Its an absurd casting of billionaires and CEOs as the people who keep the world running, made even more surreal by the fact that none of the films' writers seem to have any understanding of the way actual business really works.

The hero of the Daily Wires premiere feature, Run Hide Fight, is similarly cast as perfect, though this time with a different flavor. Reviewers across the board recognized the movie as Die Hard in a high school, because its protagonist, Zoe Hull, is a telling mix of John McClaine and Mary Sue. With nothing but her instincts and intense knowledge of firearms, teenager Zoe can deal with her schools assailants where law enforcement cant. It's a pretty disgusting cinematic manifestation of conservative responses to school shootings, and Zoe is a disturbing mascot for the pro-gun movement.

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These characters arent just presented as perfect; theyre barely presented as people. Characters are rendered as nothing more than a visualization of Republican talking points, a sound board that drops in vague political messaging. Rebuttal isnt always offered, but when it is, it comes from the spineless liberal who is conniving, idiotic, or both. This isn't cinema, it's pure ideology.

Nowhere is this clearer in recent years than in the antagonists in My Son Hunter. Actor John James plays a Joe Biden that is equal parts mob boss and bumbling buffoon, the type of guy who mixes up the words election and erection without batting an eye. And, of course, he's always taking a long whiff of his female security guard's hair. The filmmakers here and in other Republican movies only want to express their political beliefs, and are thus incapable of any subtlety; getting their message across is more important than naturalistic cinema or any kind of style beyond 'high school debate team monologue.'

Meanwhile, the liberal Antifa members (the conservative's boogeymen) echo the stilted language of their perfect conservative counterparts in My Son Hunter. In an early scene, Grace, the protagonist, states in the most banal way, I think I got a viral video. Im gonna trend. Her friend dissuades her from this, though, because she doesnt want the protest to have bad optics. She states, Most people are too ignorant to understand complex moral issues. You have to withhold some things for their own good. You have to choose truth over facts. Grace agrees not to post the video, and the two trade the phrase Were on the right side of history like its some sort of secret handshake.

Theres another side to the conservative media sphere: so-called 'documentaries.' Rather than documenting any sort of reality, however, these conspiracy theory movies make outlandish, often bad faith claims that are easily disputable. Movies like 2000 Mules, Plandemic, and Alexs War distort the truth to disseminate lies to an audience that is already primed to receive it. These movies arent meant to document; theyre meant to propagandize and legitimize claims that are ultimately meant to serve the creators bottom line.

Documentarian and convicted felon Dinesh DSouzas film, 2000 Mules, is just one of many, but it aptly illustrates the problems all these movies have. The film purports to reveal incontrovertible evidence that the 2020 election was stolen, and that Donald Trump should have been reelected as President of the United States.

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In reality, the evidence the movie presents is little more than hidden camera videos of people dropping off their ballots. Intermingled with this are scenes of DSouza and members of the organization True the Vote (an organization which was once charged with felony crimes regarding forgery of signatures, and which illegally applied for tax-exempt status), explaining how the videos prove their points. To someone who takes everything the documentary presents at face value, it could be rather convincing. But dig in just a bit and the entire film falls apart.

For as long as people could pick up a camera, weirdos have been using film to spread their version of reality to the masses. Take, for instance, 1971s If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? The film is an adaptation of a sermon on the dangers of Communism by Baptist Minister Estus Pirkle. It portrays an alternate fantasy world in the United States after the country has been overtaken by the Communists, wherein good Christians are forced to denounce their faith or die.

The movie is a surreal, exploitation-fueled nightmare that was meant to frighten the intended churchgoing audience. Its messaging is clear: you and your fellow Christians are under threat from nefarious forces, and, thus, you must be ready to fight this illusory other.

Footmen is a look into the countrys past, a relic of a different time. It is also an oddly prescient piece, as religious and political leaders once again decry their opponents as socialists out to destroy the American way of life. Though not always through the explicitly religious lens of Pirkle, modern conservative media employs the same tactics. They aim to frighten and deceive for the sake of spreading and reinforcing a bad-faith political message. Little, it seems, has changed.

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My Son Hunter and the Weird World of Conservative Movies - MovieWeb