My God…
The H-Bomb: The personal life of college student Chloe Steele (Cassi Thomson) has been in turmoil ever since her mom, Irene (Lea Thompson) became a super-Christian about a year ago. It’s that religious metamorphosis, especially the way she keeps carrying on about “The Rapture,” that keeps Chloe from visiting home, and that keeps her father, airline pilot Rayford Steele (Nicolas Cage), perpetually out of town, willfully working overtime. Nevertheless, Chloe flies home to “New York” (by way of Baton Rouge) for her father’s birthday.
Unfortunately, she finds out shortly after landing that Rayford has been called in to work and will be flying to London. So, after briefly meeting with him at the airport, where she catches him flirting with a cute young flight attendant, Chloe heads over to the family house to face mother alone. After about thirty seconds of idle chitchat, Irene starts with the Jesus stuff, and Chloe starts for the door, deciding she’d rather take her little brother, Raymie (Major Dodson), to the mall than listen to another one of her mother’s theological diatribes.
So, Raymie is busy nagging his sister for a remote controlled helicopter when suddenly, he vanishes in a flash, leaving behind only a pile of his clothes. Chloe sees that hundreds of other people in the mall have also vanished. At that exact same moment, on Rayford’s flight to London, several people, including all the children on the flight, have also disappeared without a trace, including Rayford’s co-pilot. The passengers are all understandably frightened and confused by this, and while Rayford tries to simultaneously keep them calm and fly the plane, Buck Williams (Chad Michael Murray), a famous investigative journalist aboard the flight, starts looking in to what could possibly be going on.
Turns out, millions of people around the world have vanished in a single moment, and while we the viewers know immediately what’s going on, it takes the characters longer, a whole lot longer, to piece it together. And that, it pains me to say, is the least of this movie’s problems.
Okay look, I wasn’t expecting any miracles from Left Behind. For God’s sake, this is a remake of a Kirk Cameron flick we’re talking about here. However, I was hoping maybe for some laughable cheese, and at least a few instances of Nic Cage’s over-the-top, bat-shit histrionics. Sadly, this tedious religious thriller provides neither. Yeah, there is an unintended chuckle here and there (the midget getting kicked down the emergency slide got a hardy yuck out of me), most of it, though, is just God awful… no pun intended.
Now, I’m not a religious person, but I’m not necessarily put off by films with religious themes. After all, I am a big fan of Saved!, and Dogma. Okay, maybe those aren’t the best examples, but you get my meaning, I’m not going to dislike a movie just because it has religious overtones. However, at the beginning of Left Behind, we are treated to some very forced, very on-the-nose discussions about religion that make it very clear that the messages in this movie are going to be put across with all the subtlety of a Michael Moore documentary.
When we enter the home of Lea Thompson’s obnoxiously pious character, who thankfully is called up during the big event, so we don’t have to put up with her for two hours, we see the word “PRAY” spelled out in big letters in one of the rooms in her house. We see this word again, and again, and again… and this is one of the film’s more understated ways of ramming its message down our throats. Later on, we meet a minister who’s still around after The Rapture, because, as he explains, “I spoke the words, but I didn’t really believe.”
See, and I am getting on my soapbox, here, that’s what I find so fucking offensive about this sect of fundamentalist (emphasis on mental) Christianity who believe this Rapture horse shit, they feel it’s not enough to simply be a good person who does good deeds, to get into Heaven. No, you must be a Christian, and not just any Christian, but a strict, fervent Christian who buys into their very specific brand of Bible-thumping bullshit. This point is made clear when one of those who is left behind is a Muslim man, who is a perfectly decent person, but because he ain’t Christian, he’s left here to burn. Sorry movie, but fuck you!!!
Okay, putting the whacko religious politics of Left Behind aside, on all of its other potential merits; writing, direction, acting, it’s still a turd of the lowest order. Director Vic Armstrong, who is a legendary stunt coordinator- I’m talking James Bond, Indiana Jones, you name it- needs to stick to throwing himself through windows and down staircases, because I have seen infomercials with more inspired direction. With its flat, sunshiny bright cinematography and its by-the-numbers shot compositions, this looks like a film that would have been made for the Lifetime Channel… in the early 90’s.
Being that Armstrong is this great stunt coordinator, you think he would at least get the action sequences right, such as Rayford’s plane nearly colliding with another, and the riots that occur on the streets following The Rapture. But no, he fucks those up to with clunky staging and, in the case of the airplane sequence, bargain basement visual effects. The riot scenes are pathetically unconvincing. Armstrong should have just spliced in footage from The Purge: Anarchy or The Dark Knight Rises, he would have been far better off.
The performances are about on par with everything else in the film, which is too say they are pretty piss poor, though, as you may have surmised, they didn’t exactly have the greatest material to work with. When I think of Nicolas Cage in an apocalyptic thriller, I imagine potential awesomeness, with Cage doing one of his famous freak outs and going totally bonkers. Sadly, I have to keep imagining, because that doesn’t happen at all. With the exception of one moment, where Cage shouts “SIT DOWN!!!” at a passenger in all his hammy Nic Cage glory, the dude mostly underplays it, and comes off as really fucking boring. Yes, a boring Nicolas Cage performance. I never thought it possible, yet here it is.
As sad and painful as it is to see Mr. Cage rendered so utterly dull, his performance is genuinely award worthy compared to that of Thomson, as his daughter, Chloe. Holy Moses, she is cringingly awful, and exceptionally annoying. During the Rapture, she has not one, but two empty vehicles nearly crash into her, which can only mean one thing, God is more pissed off by her shitty acting than I am. Her climatic scene, where she climbs to the top of a bridge to cry and ask her mother’s forgiveness is more howlingly hysterical than anything in The Interview, that I guaran-damn-tee.
I could go on for ages about the endless shortcomings of Left Behind, but frankly, it’s just not fucking worth it. It’s good for a few unintended laughs, like how people leave piles of their clothing when they vanish (God is now ripping off The Langoliers), but not enough to set it along side such awesomely awful classics as The Room or Plan 9 from Outer Space. No, Left Behind is nothing more than plodding, poorly made, sanctimonious dreck. If you’re a true believer who is willing to buy the bullshit this flick is shoveling, then by all means, you can have it. However, if you happen to be a normal person, Christian or not, then may the power of Christ compel you from seeing this wretched waste of celluloid. Blessed be.
