Back Fork is thoroughly connected to my home state of West Virginia. It was filmed there. It was written, directed and produced by people with strong roots in the Mountain State. Two of the producers, Bob and Jeff Tinnell, are my friends and I'm extremely proud of the hard work they put into this project.
West Virginia is a beautiful place and the film does a wonderful job of capturing some of that gorgeous scenery. West Virginia is also a broken place and that is clear in this movie. Over the last dozen years WV has been ravaged by addiction and death directly related to substance abuse. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse: "In 2017, there were 833 drug overdose deaths involving opioids in West Virginia - a rate of 49.6 deaths per 100,000 persons. This is double the rate in 2010 and threefold higher than the national rate of 14.6 deaths per 100,000 persons." These statistics place WV at the top of the list for drug overdose deaths in our nation. For obvious reasons people have used words like "crisis" and "epidemic" to describe this issue. But sadly, the problem seems to fade into the background like so much white noise. Enter Back Fork.
This movie is raw and graphic and poignant. At times, it is disturbing. The dark side of the truth is often disturbing, which is why we like to keep it in the dark. However, I believe it is time our nation was disturbed by this issue. These hard things, these tragic things, they need to be seen for what they are and the gravity of this issue needs to be felt. Back Fork brings all of this weight and leaves very little to the imagination.
I realize that some of my readers are conservative Christians. To be honest, this movie might be offensive to you. If you are accustomed to a pleasant, "sanitized" environment, you may not appreciate this film. But, if you are willing to risk being offended (which isn't always a bad thing) you may actually see something that will help you. Help you to see the unvarnished pain that is sometimes masked by religion and is rarely talked about openly or acknowledged in the church.
It is this pain, brokenness and addiction (that we all have) that can be healed through knowing Jesus. And while that particular hope is absent from the movie, the truth is, it is also absent in much of our world. And although some Christians know about this sort of hopelessness in theory, we rarely see it graphically depicted because we have cloistered ourselves too far away from the pain of our world. Furthermore, at times Christians fail to see that they too struggle with addictions (judgment, people pleasing, food, exercise, being right), ways we seek validation or comfort to mask our pain. Maybe these are not fatal, but they can be addictions just the same. Back Fork portrays the mess and struggle that is real. Sometimes we need to stare that mess in the face to be reminded of the magnitude of God's amazing grace - the powerful light that pierced this dark world, offering genuine hope, freedom and redemption.
Back Fork was hard for me to watch for several reasons. Mainly because it hit very close to home. For those willing to press into the dark and difficult, you might want to watch this film. Its currently available on Amazon Prime Video and few other streaming platforms.
