- Released: December 17th, 2025
- Directed by: Phil Cunningham, Brent Dawes
- Running time: 1h 49min
- Rating 4.5/5
Synopsis
My Thoughts
This one just left me in awe. Like, the trailers already looked pretty promising, but the movie actually is like, really, really good.
I previously reviewed another Angel religious movie, The King of Kings, and while I liked that one fine, it did suffer a bit from its framing device and the comic relief taking up too much screentime and distracting from the Biblical story it was trying to tell. In this movie? There's none of those issues. There's no framing device; it's simply being told from David's POV straight-forward. And this works greatly in the movie's favor. There's also way less comic relief. I think at most there's a kinda funny guy who steals David's sandals and he's played for a laugh once or twice, but aside from that the movie knows that this is a serious story, and it sticks to the tone wonderfully.
I also am just in awe of how the characters are handled. David is a really likable protagonist, a hero who at first refuses the call but eventually lives up to his full potential. His character development was really neat. I also greatly enjoyed characters like David's mother and Jonathan, Saul's son who ends up developing a close brotherly bond with David once he grows up. David's two oldest brothers, Eliab and Abidanab, don't have much screen-time, but even they have small arcs and clearly distinct personalities.
The character whose writing was the absolute best, though, was King Saul. It would've been so easy to write him as a one-dimensional, morally reprehensible, uninteresting villain. But no, the movie clearly humanizes him. He's not a goody two-shoes, either. The movie does show that he's clearly capable of evil and corruption, and he is an antagonist for a solid portion of the film. But man, the way in which the writing humanizes Saul was really something I didn't see coming. He doesn't feel like a one-dimensional villain you'd find in most cartoons, he feels like a legit person with a clearly defined personality, who has both a lot of faults but also some admirable elements to him. He's a pretty darn deep character with the way he is portrayed here.
And I legit didn't see this coming. When he was at first introduced as this impatient king with anger issues who punishes his musicians over nothing, I was so ready to hate this guy, and feared I'd get a one-dimensional boring villain. But then the movie goes out of its way to show that he's a troubled three-dimensional person, and it's so well-handled. I'm not denying that he's an antagonist throughout a big portion of the movie, and that he has done some despicable things, but the writing of this guy is on-point and I'm legit really impressed by is. This is the type of deeper character writing you don't find in most cartoons, especially not in the villains.
The animation and visuals are also really, really nice. I liked The King of Kings fine, like I said before, but some of its character designs didn't work for me, and the animation was decent but nothing to write home about. Here, the animation and designs are overall really well done. I think the only design I didn't really vibe with was that of King Achish, who feels just a tad too cartoony to mesh well with the other character designs, which are slightly more semi-realistic in look. There's also some really nice cinematography here, particularly some shots of David walking onto the battlefield and his face being reflected in the sword look really visually striking.
I think that the only thing I preferred in The King of Kings over David was the use of color. The color palette wasn't bad in David by any means, but King of Kings had some really nice and striking colors for some scenes, which I didn't really see here as much.
I wasn't expecting this to be a music, but honestly, I didn't mind. Musical for me personally are usually pretty hit-or-miss. Sometimes I really like them, and other times I'm like "why couldn't this story have been told without songs". But I'm pleased to say that I really liked the songs in David, and I also feel that they enriched the story. Some are even pretty catchy and I do catch myself humming sometimes.
If I do have one tiny criticism, it's that I wish that the movie went more into Saul's fate and the battle with the Philistines. Because as-is he just kinda vanishes from the story, as does King Achish and the other Philistines. I know that one can look up what happened in the Bible and all that, but that's not the point here. As a movie it feels kinda too vague and open what happened to Saul and the battle with the Philistines because they just kinda disappear from the story. I know that Saul commits suicide in the Bible so obviously we can't show that in a family movie, but they still could've at least used some symbolism or something to show or at least imply that he died without making it explicit?
But that's like the only criticism I have for this movie. The rest is just so good and this criticism is so minor that it legit doesn't hurt the movie much at all for me. I genuinely really enjoyed this one and hope that it gets a physical release outside of streaming in the Netherlands, I need this in my DVD collection.
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