I saw the movie last week and I liked it. It is simply a dramatized report of a little boy’s near death experience and that is all that it is. People need to keep in mind that the NDE of a child who has not, in theory anyway, sinned because he has not yet reached the age of reason, is going to be different than those of an adult. Howard Storm’s NDE was horrifying.
I didn’t see the universalism angle likely because in my mind when someone says Heaven is for real, it implies that Hell is too. Who goes where and how many nobody knows. As Bishop Fulton Sheen says: “There will be three surprises when you get to heaven. You will be surprised who is there, you will be surprised who is not there, and you will be surprised that you are there.”
The part of the movie I liked the most was when the kid told his mom that he had met his “other sister” in heaven. This sister was a miscarriage that the kid had never been told about by his parents. His mother had been skeptical of the her son’s nde until that moment. That must have been quite shocking for her. I thought it was a prime moment for the movie to make a pro life statement but it left that one hanging. Too bad.
You got it.
What we are dealing here is a little kid and his NDE experience.