Written by Matt Kelly
Plot: When millions of people vanish out of nowhere, one family has to figure out what’s going on and survive long enough to find each other again.
It’s hard to criticize a religious movie. Both the people reviewing the movie and the people responding to the review can almost never divorce themselves from their own personal feelings about the story. I don’t care for most religious movies. When it’s Christian Bale making another Moses movie, my first thought is usually “Come on. We’ve already seen this a thousand times!” Of course, I didn’t mind one bit when Christian Bale made another Batman movie, so what do I know? Nobody’s perfect…well nobody except for Nic Cage. That man is something special. Either way, I’m going to do my best to be as objective as possible when describing this movie. Here we go.
Objectively, Left Behind was pretty bad.
And it’s not the fun kind of bad where Nic Cage is running around screaming, either. Left Behind is more of the boring bad. You know you have a problem when Nic Cage’s character is the guy who says, “Calm down. I don’t want anyone to panic. I will take care of this” and then he does. Mr. Cage should get paid to open his eyes wider then you ever thought possible and say crazy nonsense. This is a huge waste of his talent.
Instead we follow two technically related storylines through the first couple of hours of the pre-apocalypse. You see, a bunch of people disappear out of nowhere and that causes a fair amount of chaos. In the sky, that amounts to pilot Rayford Steele (played by the incomparable Nicolas Cage) trying to land his plane while all of the passenger’s try to solve the most obvious mystery of all time.
On the ground, Rayford’s daughter Chloe (Cassi Thomson) has to figure out what happened to her brother and mother without losing her mind. Rioting and looting have taken over. Left Behind makes this clear by showing someone carrying a new flat-screen TV in the background of every scene. Also, there is even more chaos because everyone who was raptured seems to have been driving a vehicle. On three separate occasions, Chloe narrowly avoids being hit by three different vehicles including a small airplane. Rayford and his plane are also in a similar situation when he narrowly misses an unbelievably unlikely midair collision with what is apparently a plane full of nuns being flown by more nuns because when Rayford’s plane passes it, he is able to observe that there is no one flying the plane.
My second biggest issue with this movie, besides the extraordinarily bad green screen, is how long it takes the characters to figure out what’s going on. Chloe gets it quick enough but that’s only because her mom mentioned it about half an hour before the rapture. Everyone on the plane, however, goes through tons of stupid ideas before they arrive at the obvious conclusion. First they think everyone that got raptured (which is all of the children and one adult from every pair of adults) is still on the plane. That’s understandable although a little silly considering that their clothes are all lying on the seats and they just saw them vanish. Then they think the government took them. Then they think it’s aliens. One person thinks she is hallucinating, which would probably be my first avenue too. A mother even thinks that her daughter was stolen from her and this is all an elaborate ruse that makes Inception look realistic. Every single one of those theories is brought up before the rapture. This isn’t an alternate reality. They have Bibles. They have U2. People are aware of religion. Pretty much every conversation pre-rapture is about religion. You think everyone would figure it out a minute or two in.
The biggest problem I had with this movie, by a country mile, was its title. Sure, Left Behind is based on a book series, but Left Behind was already a movie. Kirk Cameron starred in the 2000 adaptation, which I have also seen. Plus, HBO’s horribly depressing The Leftovers is basically the same story and it has basically the same name. Stoney Lake Entertainment should know better. So listen up Stoney Lake. I have the perfect title for you. This movie is about a rapture, right? What’s special about it? It takes place, for the most part, on a plane. That plane is being flown by Nicolas Cage. So why on Earth didn’t you call it Gone Air?… Ya know? Like Con Air, but with Gone because of the rapture. I mean seriously. This is Filmmaking 101. That would have netted you a 10/10 but the best I can give this is a
Rating: 3/10
P.S. I would have also accepted Holy-Ghost Glider, but I realize that one’s a little long.
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Matthew Nando Kelly is a contributing writer for Pop-Break. Aside from TV reviews, he also writes about films, music, and video games. Matthew also has a podcast called Mad Bracket Status where he discusses pop culture related brackets with fellow Pop-Break writer DJ Chapman. He loves U2, cats, and the New Orleans Saints. He can also occasionally be found writing lists on Topless Robot. His twitter is @NationofNando
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