To use the senseless death of a school shooting victim to promote one’s warped political agenda is, to use a trendy term, deplorable. One should expect nothing less from the odious low-budget film company Pure Flix, whose work includes God’s Not Dead, God’s Not Dead 2 and the forthcoming God’s Not Dead 3. (Yes, God’s Not Dead 2 ended with a Marvel Studios-like stinger.)

Their latest, I’m Not Ashamed, bends the horrible tragedy of the Columbine massacre into a false narrative of Christian martyrdom. Rachel Scott was killed that horrible day because she didn’t hide her faith from the killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who, it is suggested, could have done great things had they only gone to church and not played video games and read about Darwin.

But Before I’m Not Ashamed unleashes its violence it is mostly just a long, winding high school drama. Rachel (Masey McLain) is a typical teen who wishes she stood out in the crowd more. After sneaking out one night with friends to meet with boys and sip beer, she is grounded by her religious mother, and later sent from Colorado to her cousins in Louisiana for the summer. Her inner tumult is calmed by accepting Jesus, visualized by a white light pouring into church windows before leaping off a deck with Adirondack chairs into a lake.

But back at school there’s still the usual awkwardness around boys. She likes Alex (Cameron McKendry), her drama club mentor, but she grows quite close to Nate (Ben Davies), a homeless kid she helps get back on his feet with her church group. There are also her friends, experimenting more with alcohol and dating, and who suggest she should tamp down her Jesus freak side if she ever wants to get what she truly wants.

I’m Not Ashamed features a lot of voiceover from Rachel’s diaries, in which, as teens are wont to do, she exaggerates her problems. Since her interest is religion, she sees every daily confrontation as some great ethical parable. “I’m drowning in a lake of my own despair,” she writes, worried if Alex sees her as a girlfriend or just a friend. It’s the type of thing that an adult would look back on and be mortified to think others would ever read.

Rachel’s spiritual journey eventually leads to aggressive do-gooderism. She’s sickened by school bullying and decides to be everyone’s confidante and support system. She even flirts with the disabled kid. Her positive energy, she hopes, will start a chain reaction. Wouldn’t you know that’s the same phrase used by Harris and Klebold, who similarly loathe the brutish jocks at the school. But instead of gospel they read about Hitler and play violent video games. “If only this was Columbine,” Klebold muses as he blasts people to digital bits. “Maybe it could be,” Harris responds.

To the film’s credit, these moments of absolute atrociousness aren’t too common. And there is a saving grace here with newcomer Masey McLain. She is, undeniably, a terrific, warm and engaging performer. Wearing kooky hats (as Rachel Scott often did) she exudes the excitability of a drama club kid with great intelligence. The public and private Rachel are, at first, quite different, until her eventual decision to be an out-of-the-closet believer. Even with this rancid script and amateurish direction, McLain sells this inherently undramatic turn as an emotional triumph. It’s not enough to actually recommend the film, but it gets you rooting that McLain cracks out of the “faith-based” ghetto and continues to work. The sky is the limit for her.

Whether or not Rachel Scott was specifically targeted during the attack, and if she was asked if she still believed in God before she was shot, is something that people on the internet like to quarrel about. I don’t much recommend looking into it too deeply because no one really knows, websites devoted to Columbine theories are horrible and, frankly, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is exploiting this young woman’s horrible fate to fit a previously constructed phony narrative of oppression. The only way that Pure Flix can continue to sell tickets (and tie-in books) is by whipping its audience to a froth of paranoia. Doing good, as Rachel Scott did, simply isn’t enough. One must be looking over one’s shoulder at all times for the secular humanists plotting to destroy America. It’s probably not a coincidence I’m Not Ashamed comes out just a few weeks before the general election.