Nate At The Movies

In an effort to take the pressure off of my fantasy football team on this playoff Sunday, I headed to the theater for an early screening of David, which I’ve had on my list for a while if only out of desperate interest. I’m not a big Angel Studios fan, but with the studio hyping it up so hard and believing it could take on Avatar: Fire and Ash at the box office, I had to check it out. While David wasn’t great, in most ways, it was a step in the right direction for Angel.

The biggest complaints that I had with The King of Kings, Angel’s last 2025 animated release, were its lack of tonal consistency, its shoddy animation, and the infantilization of its audience. David improved on two of these mistakes, with some prettier and more consistent animation and a few moments where the dark realities of David’s story got to shine. The film still skewed toward its youngest viewers and felt the need to inject dumb jokes or silly voices and characters into a story that didn’t need them. I don’t need The Prince of Egypt levels of doom and gloom, but Angel still doesn’t seem to understand how smart kids are, and that they could totally handle this story without the sugar.

David made a few huge improvements that lifted it above The King of Kings for me, the most of important of which should surprise no one. Making this film a musical was a great idea, even if I didn’t think that every single song hit. With Jonas Myrin ostensibly at the helm (Angel has kept this really under wraps for some reason), most songs had a “modern worship” Hillsong kind of feel: insanely catchy, musically simple and satisfying, but narratively sparse. Two of the movie’s best songs—“Adventure Song” and “Shalom” were right at the beginning, which excited me, and while there were occasional hits later on like “Follow the Light”, the rest of the soundtrack was hit-or-miss.

Most of the voice cast held their own, even if they were a little over-expressive, and many of them were also good singers, which helps more than some studios realize. In particular, Brandon Engman was great as young David (which makes sense; he’s been voicing the character for the last few years), and what a singing voice that young man has! Miri Mesika was doing her best Ofra Haza, which hit on occasion, but she defaulted to “megachurch voice” more often than I would have liked. I was not a fan of Phil Wickham, who clearly had little to no musical theater or acting experience. His voice didn’t fit in at all, even if he has a great singing voice, and his performance as adult David left a lot to be desired.

Lastly, Angel played it way too safe with this story, as they also did with The King of Kings, especially when it came to the ending. I can appreciate the “everybody coming together” move, but the singing and the sunlight were a little silly, not to mention the plot holes. Why didn’t the Amalekite just kill David in the minute it took the Israelites to get there? It’s fine. David was a big step forward for Angel Studios, but now as the dust settles, Light of the World still comes out on top as the best animated Bible movie of 2025. Props to David for the musical touches, but if you want the top spot, take some risks, Angel!