saved the movie business and buoyed the international box office back to its prepandemic heyday, a smaller, independently produced thriller about child trafficking quietly snuck its way onto US screens, outgrosseda serious run for its money.
OUR became known for entrapping child traffickers in countries around the world; making their recordings and videos of these sting operations available to watch online; and even inviting “rich tech bros and celebrities longing to feel like heroes”, to participate, according to a recent Slate.com article.
Both Caviezel and the film’s real-life subject Ballard have appeared in recent years on far-right talkshows, platforms and at unapologetically pro-QAnon events to promote hysterical conspiracy theories about child trafficking, including the idea that US furniture company Wayfair is a front for the nefarious practice and that uberrich US child abusers drain the blood of their innocent, terrified victims to produce a serum that prevents ageing.
As with so many topics these days, the hot-button one of child sex trafficking has sharply polarised online debate between extreme right-leaning viewers, who dismiss criticism of the movie from the left and mainstream press as the thoughts of “paedophiles, satanists and other malicious parties”, and left-leaning audiences who believe the movie’s messaging is “aligned with QAnon, racism, white supremacy, Christo-fascism, anti-Semitism” and decry it as “overall deceitful”, according to a...