In 2001, Ewing and Grady went out to the suburbs of Kansas City and followed three youngsters to Fischer's camp, which, symbolically enough, takes place every year in Devil's Lake, N.D. What they find and present, with thinly veiled disdain, is Christian fundamentalism, unyielding and strange.
Among their tactics for conveying that strangeness is to play scary electronic music over many of the scenes. It makes a lot of ``Jesus Camp" seem like a horror film, which is a needlessly incriminating touch.
To be fair, the camp does have its share of odd, even morbid, moments. Fischer, for example, types out one sermon in a dripping-blood font right out of a schlock movie. She and her staff walk around the church and tell the devil to stay away. Stuffed animals are deployed as props in a lecture on the wages of sin. Eventually, Fischer beseeches the hypocrites in her mostly preadolescent flock to come forward, repent, and receive healing ablation from the water of the word of God.
Kids on Fire feels like a religious boot camp, and the filmmakers frame the documentary around the reality that these kids are being groomed for war. Fischer is the drill sergeant. Her training exercises include encouraging the campers to speak in tongues, as she does. The enemy could be liberals or Muslim fundamentalists. They train their children for holy war. Why shouldn't she?
Ewing and Grady, whose previous film was ``The Boys of Baraka," find three boundlessly committed kids to trail. Twelve-year-old Levi is an up-and-coming preacher. His close-cropped haircut ends in a rat's tail, and he spends part of some days watching the Intelligent Design series ``Creation Adventure." He's for-real about spreading God's word.
So is Rachael , a bubbly 9-year-old. Fearlessly, she approaches strangers and hands them fundamentalist literature. Clutching a cute stuffed animal, she also gives an explanation of faith that ends in certainty that she's not going to hell. (But you might.)
