I’ve been to Jerusalem. Twice. Both times for several days.

I got up close and personal with almost every landmark you can think of. 

Temple mount: check.

Wailing wall: check.

The Via Dolorosa: check. 

Mount of Olives: check.

Garden of Gethsemane: check.

Hell, I even snuck into the King David Hotel to swim in their pool. When asked, I told security my room number, which was in fact across the street at the Y, but how were they supposed to know that? They shrugged and let me in. 

Funny thing about Jerusalem: the media never gets it right. A few days into my first trip, our tour guide, a renowned Israeli archaeologist, warned us that the next day we’d hear alarms and shouldn’t panic. The state had just announced a military drill testing some of their early warning systems. 

The next day came and went. I think it was one of my favourites of the whole trip. We ate the best shawarma I’ve ever had and later, while walking down the street, a man came out of his restaurant built into an old Roman arch and offered us fresh falafels served off a shiny silver platter. They were still steaming and the oils dripped down my chin as I downed two without pause. I’m not a vegetarian, but damn were those falafels good.

That night I got a call from my mom. She was worried sick. The news was saying there’d been an attack, details were still incoming, and alarms were going off all over the state. 

I turned on CNN. Sure enough, the anchors were in full panic. They showed a reporter standing in front of a blurred image with beige rocks and a tree or two that was supposed to be Jerusalem. I swear it was a printout. And they never gave more details or showed any images from an attack.

One possibility: my tour guide is a terrorist mastermind and I’m lucky to be alive. Makes for a better story. It’s also bullshit.

I’ve only encountered such garbage misrepresentation of Jerusalem in the media once since then.

This week’s found footage horror recommendation: JeruZalem.

Yes, the capital Z is intended. With a title like that, I should have gone in with lower standards.

And yet here I am, still recommending it, because it’s the epitome of “so bad I had to watch it three times” movies. 

JeruZalem has some great horror sequences, and it isn’t just zombies. They tie in scattered references from the Hadith, the Talmud, and the Old Testament to deliver a full apocalyptic invasion of Jerusalem by winged animated corpses and evil giants. It’s a wild ride.

But in every other way that counts, this movie is so bad it hurts. 

The dialogue is strained and terrible right from the start. I despise the main characters. The lead actress wears “smart glasses” with campy overlays and distracting interruptions, but what better way to justify a continuous stream of her Jerusalem trip? 

And like every bad found footage flick, there’s always a fake expert. JeruZalem introduces us to Kevin, an anthropology student with all the answers. I stopped giving a rip about him after he delivered the film’s absolute worst line. He mentions something he read in the Bible. One of the characters asks, “Which one?” And Kevin responds, “All of them!” 

Umm, what?

He’s also party to the movie’s awkward sex scene, which we watch through the smart glasses on the nightstand while the girl’s father sends her worried texts including this gem: “Are you still daddy’s sweet little girl?”

Cringe.

And while this last one will slip past most viewers, I was embarrassed on the producers’ behalf by this particular error. Early in the film, characters tell us a recently killed woman who’s returned from the dead was buried near Golgotha.

You know, the hill where Jesus died. 

Except there are two possible spots we think Golgotha, “place of the skull,” might have been. The Catholics built the Holy Sepulchre over the first spot, which in ancient times was beyond the city walls but today is well within the bustling streets. And the Protestants found a garden tomb next to a hill that to this day looks like it has a skull staring back at you out of the rocks. It’s also a freaking bus stop and has been for decades. 

So where’s this lady supposed to have been buried. What, did the writers read the name Golgotha in the Bible and think “Hey, that sounds cool!”

Gimme a break.  

Tim McKay - Tim studied theology and worked as a pastor before leaving it all behind, making him the perfect cliche apostate from every religious horror flick.