AND GOD SAID TO ABRAHAM

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Turner (who also wrote Dates Without Chicks and FYT) here reworks, often hilariously, the Old Testament tale of Abraham and Sarah. The script initially parallels that childless couple’s delight when God grants them a son, Isaac, and their panic when the same inscrutable God orders Abraham to sacrifice him.

Turner sets his story in a contemporary backwoods burg where the pioneering Knight family are near extinction. The raving patriarch is Winston, an isolationist Baptist with a personal god called B.L.A.H. (it stands for “Blue Light and Hum”). He lives with his patient wife Sarah and dog Blue, railing at the outsiders to whom the Knights are a local joke. In a burst of sound and fury B.L.A.H. makes Sarah pregnant. Ten years later, B.L.A.H. orders Winston to shoot his son, J.R. Afraid that J.R. will become one more corporate zombie, Winston almost does it, but then he has a bad dream that panics J.R. into accidentally shooting himself.