THESE STONES: Episode 101 and Episode 106

THESE STONES is a faith-based series streaming on UP Faith & Family about a young woman who gets drawn into a supernatural system where Bible characters work undercover to help people today. The series makes it clear that it is a fantasy using biblical elements. Madeline Carroll plays the young woman, McKenna.

In the first episode of Season One, McKenna’s mother, Eliana, leaves a message on her phone saying if McKenna watches a video, it means she’s dead. McKenna handles her grief differently from her father, who sleeps late into the day and drinks away his grief. Despite her best efforts, McKenna isn’t connecting with her father, because he blames himself for his wife’s death.

However, McKenna’s outlook on everything changes when she receives a mysterious text message from “Central Dispatch.” After following the message’s instructions, she finds a secret door in her mother’s room. The door leads her to Miriam, who tells McKenna about a secret program that utilizes real, and very much alive, biblical characters as couriers, helping those in need in the real world. McKenna learns her mother was a helper who worked with Miriam before her death.

In the first episode of Season One, McKenna agrees to help and soon finds herself working with a man named Aaron. Together, they heal a broken relationship between a son and his dying father.

In the final episode of Season One, McKenna tries to escape Miriam and the program because they won’t help her father. However, when Miriam and Aaron explain that it’s not her father who needs help, McKenna must face what happened to her mother.

THESE STONES has a unique approach to teaching valuable biblical lessons. While the production values are sub-par, the central performances by Madeline Carroll, Karen Abercrombie and Cameron Arnett as McKenna, Miriam and Aaron, respectively, are excellent. The character’s learned lessons are represented by small stones with words like “listen, courage, forgiveness, and love” engraved on them. The stones are tangible fantasy touch points for biblical virtues.

THESE STONES has a Christian worldview in a fantasy setting that is extra biblical. The Word of God is mentioned several times, along with biblical truths. The series also has Christian practices such as prayer and reading the Bible. To the program’s benefit, it never explicitly depicts God as a character. However, there’s a clear and uplifting undertone of God always being present and never leaving those He loves. MOVIEGUIDE® advises caution because of some violent depictions of death, discussions of death and references to other adult themes in THESE STONES. Also, the storyline raises some theological questions because of the use of the fantastic.