At the beginning of this semester, my roommate introduced me to an online program he had seen advertised online called VidAngel. He had never used it, but when he saw it, he thought of me and let me know that it exists. I looked it up, and was surprised by what I saw, so much so that I had to do research as to whether or not it was legitimate. Sure enough, it was a legal and valid organization with credentials, one that had been reviewed by many different Christian communities as a valuable resource. So, what is it?
VidAngel is a service that allows you to rent movies and filter out the objectionable content. This includes any language, vulgar comments, or inappropriate scenes, and can be applied to their vast library of films, and even a small amount of television show episodes. The way the filter is applied, silence is heard in the film where language or crude comments should be, and inappropriate scenes are simply removed.
I have personally tried out this service, rewatching the movie "Ant-Man" with my friends. It was a very satisfying experience: the movie had a few s-words and a crude comment, and when I left the theater after watching it the first time, I was irritated because the movie was so much fun and largely enjoyable, but the language and one comment ruined the experience for me. When we watched it to test drive VidAngel, we enjoyed it just as much as we enjoyed the movie in the theaters, although there were some flaws.
The movie was complete, with high-quality streaming off of the VidAngel website. There is no watermark and the resolution is not lowered for the service. We never encountered a problem with the website buffering, and the website has very few ads that don't interrupt your viewing. The issues were with the filtering: when a curse word is censored, it's silenced, as I have previously said. The soundtrack cuts out, and the word is removed, but you see that the person's mouth is moving. This could be a disorienting experience, making us feel as if the volume was cutting out on our television for some reason before we remembered that there was a curse word in that sentence.
The filter is also not perfect. Sometimes it would cut out some of the sentence, as well. I have also seen some reviews that let the viewer know that if you are watching a curse-heavy movie, there may be some that fell through the cracks and end up uncensored. However, the minor inconveniences that we experienced were worth it to experience the movie in a clean and acceptable context.
That minor negative aside, the service is remarkably efficient and is completely customizable. In every movie they have on the website, they have a certain number of filters. For example, "The Martian" has 70 filters available, including censoring language, crude remarks, and partial nudity. A movie such as "Fury," which is infamous for the intensity of the language it contains and its graphic violence, has 423 filters. These filters can be chosen and manipulated by the viewer. You can pick and choose what you want censored, and the filter will specifically tell you what is being censored, be it a curse or a crude remark. You can watch a movie with no filters, or a movie with all of the filters enabled that the website offers. This doesn't just make movies that are rated R contain nothing more objectionable than what can be shown in a PG-13 movie. The filters can also be used on children's movies. The film "Inside Out" has 83 filters, and these include the times when characters use the word "stupid," the lines about cursing, and scenes that could be potentially scary for younger viewers. This movie doesn't necessarily need these filters, but the fact that they are present shows you how thorough this company has been.
Practically, it works as follows. You pay this company a starting total, giving you four options: $25, $50, $100, and $200. I chose the starting credit of $25, because you don't need any more than that to begin your VidAngel experience. The site advertises itself as a service that allows you to rent movies for $1, and this is true after the initial purchase. They get away with it in an interesting manner: When you watch a movie on VidAngel, you purchase it for $20. You then have two options after you finish watching. You can either sell it back for a $19 credit, or keep it so that you can watch it for as long as VidAngel is running. If you do keep it, you won't be able to get those $19 refunded. So after your initial purchase, you can watch five movies if you sell it back at the end of the film (this process is simple, and you can set the movie to sell back automatically when you are done, so there's no risk of accidentally keeping it and wasting the money you could be using on another film). After that credit is complete, each movie costs you $1 to watch, because you have already invested the initial $20. So at worst, this service allows you to legally rent movies for a single dollar, some of which are not available on Netflix or Amazon Prime. At best, it's a filtered movie experience that allows you to watch a movie you wouldn't have wanted to see otherwise.
This service is very well put together, and is extremely useful for watching movies without objectionable content, which is something that can be a struggle for us as Christians trying to interact with a depraved world. Whether we think that there's a place for viewing these movies as cultural phenomena or not, I feel that this is a resource that can allow us to watch a movie without worrying about what's going to be in it, and enjoy it in a way we might not have if this content was present.
I highly recommend this service to anyone who has ever looked at a movie and felt tempted to watch it despite its objectionable content, because this allows you to do so without worry of encountering something you don't want to see. I think we can all profit from a service like this, and I am pleased to share one that functions properly and is so conveniently accessible.
