Faith of Angels

In September 1989 a ten-year-old boy went missing inside an abandoned Utah mine, and the whole of the United States followed the search for five days. 'Faith of Angels' comes out of that, written and directed by Garrett Batty, who had already brought other true stories of faith to the screen, and led by J. Michael Finley, the singer from 'I Can Only Imagine'. At heart it is a rescue film told from the waiting room.

Josh Dennis goes out with his Boy Scout troop and his father to the Hidden Treasure, a mine of eight levels and dozens of passages in Tooele County. Somewhere along the way he gets separated from the group and, with his torch gone, he is left in the dark inside a maze nobody knows well. When the adults count heads and a boy is missing, an operation begins that keeps growing until it reaches the national news.

While the teams work the tunnels and turn up nothing, the film splits its attention between the mother waiting at the surface and John Skinner, a local who has been down that mine more than a hundred times and who, at first, isn't allowed to join the search. He keeps pushing because he thinks he knows where to look, and because he feels something nudging him underground. The days pass, hope thins out and the decision to seal the mine draws closer.

Finley plays Skinner and young Michael Bradford is Josh. Around them are Cameron Arnett as the county sheriff, Jasen Wade and Ava Kostia. Ryan Little, director of 'Saints & Soldiers: Airborne Creed', shot it, and a good part of the running time plays out in narrow, unlit passages, which is where the film works best.

It opened in American cinemas on 12 September 2024 and reached British screens late in 2025. The closing credits carry footage from the real 1989 rescue, with the voices of some of the people who were there. The reviews, few and mostly from family and faith outlets, were fairly kind: nearly all of them single out the story and the cast, and nearly all make the same complaint, that the staging stays flat and the emotional underlining is laid on too thick.

• Biography
• Drama
• Family