Monday, September 7, 2015

Left Behind (2014) - 1 star out of 10

Left Behind (2014) - 1 star out of 10

The “Left Behind” reboot sure is a piece of work.  After the series’ first disappointing iteration with Kirk Cameron (produced on an understandably low budget), it seemed as if the only way to go was up.  Enter: Nicholas Cage.  His very association has spelled doom for any film over the past 10 years, and this one takes the cake.  While poor acting is one of the main faults of this film, much of the blame should be assigned to the script and the misappropriation of funds (the special effects looked like something off of a Wednesday night tv show, not a $15 million budget).  The “Left Behind” series tells such a fascinating story and it is a shame that this film is limited to little more than a far-fetched-emergency-plane-landing-disaster-story.  Character development is important but every aspect of the 12-book series revolves around the Rapture and its impact on the world.  The writers delay this big event until nearly the second half of the movie, effectively causing the first half to suffer from a major identity crisis in which we have to question whether something will actually happen during the course of this film.  To make matters worse, they decided that it was not important to introduce the main antagonist of the series and end the movie without covering the final 1/3 of the first book.  When you stretch this abbreviated version of the story over an hour and a half, it is no wonder that the movie felt so slow!  Still, the actors could have added interest to this failed script but there was not much good acting occurring in this film.  While the smaller names on the cast list delivered their lines with monotone inflection, Nicholas Cage, Lea Thompson, and Chad Michael Murray weren’t much better.  I was looking forward to this reboot of one of my favorite stories, but I’m afraid that “Left Behind” has simply provided the world with another opportunity to mock Christianity instead of bringing light to a very important topic. 

[Pictured: Someday, they will get this movie right.  But not today.]

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