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OK. You see the title of this? Consciousness Stream for Left Behind? You realize what Left Behind IS right? Hilarity is pretty much guaranteed to ensue here. We start off, as movies often do, with the logos of the companies involved. Cloud Ten Studios and Namesake Entertainment. These are totally legit movie companies who totally make real movies worthy of your respect. And they don't at all have logos and credit fonts that make this look like a 10th grader's video production project. Much as this opening montage totally isn't comprised of cheap stock footage of famous landmarks of the middle east.
OK, so we have a bunch of bad CG tanks and planes labelled as being in various locations in the region, and... here's frelling Kirk Cameron. He's interviewing an israeli scientist who has managed to get a field of wheat to grow in the middle of the desert. And we are going to BOMB THE @#$% OUT OF THAT WHEAT! Seriously, like, 300 or so jets fly in and start firing freaking missiles at this field of wheat. And we have frelling Kirk Cameron standing here. Totally not looking at all like someone who is playing a character. He actually has the distinct look of someone deliberately trying to look like their real legitimate self and not a character they play, as one does when making public service announcements, or going on talk shows trying to convert people to evolution and big bang denying fundamentalist Christianity.
So, he's a reporter, and he's giving a live report on this now, and we cut away to his circle of reporter friends talking about how awesome and brave and noble he is. "He would have covered Hiroshima from ground zero." Anyway, apparently the planes have started to spontaneously explode in mid air as they approach. We're also actively avoiding what country they're from. Now here's an N*Sync song! Just to prove that we are that out of touch. We're introducing some new character here, Air Force Guy. He has to go defend Israel from the spontaneously exploding planes I guess... or maybe he's just a regular ol' pilot for some airline who's just getting called in to work on his day off. Yeah, that's it. I was thrown off by how heavy handed the dialog was.
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So... all tension has kinda disappeared. Kirk has returned to his "GNN" offices in New York and is kinda bubbly all things considered. Oh, but now he's getting a call from Deep Throat to go meet him at the parking garage for info on who sent the planes. Deep Throat is hilariously bad at this whole acting thing. He has a CD the size of a penny, or possibly just a penny, which apparently has some kind of vital information on how there's a conspiracy between two random guys to create a unified global currency. So, you know, they sent 300 planes to bomb a wheat field in Israel. Oh, and did I mention how God appeared during that whole bit and gave some dire prophecy in [language you expect to hear] and we just kinda and we just kinda let that totally slide? Well we're apparently getting back to it now because Kirk JUST realized that's kinda weird.
So here's these two guys. One of them is good and one of them is evil. I know this because they are frelling cartoonishly visually obviously painted as such. By the way, I'm not catching anyone's real name in this movie, because none of these people seem capable of speaking clearly. Oh, now that mumbley conversation is over and Mr. Evil is explaining how he wants to bring about world peace by destroying all food in the middle east and making sure all the arab children starve. That'll scare their parents into no longer fighting!
And with something approaching plot attempting to happen, it's time to cut to Kirk Cameron again, on an airplane, flying somewhere. And it's being flown by that pilot we saw earlier. So... are people going to get Raptured up any time soon? The overly wholesome characters are annoying me and I'd like to just get to the - oh here we go! An old lady on the plane just woke up from a nap to notice her husband was missing, but not his clothes. The theory is that when nobody was looking he slipped off to the restroom. After stripping. On an airplane. You'd think someone would notice a thing like that. This random couple's kids are also mysteriously missing, but the dramatic music sting comes when we confirm that THE BATHROOM IS EMPTY! So... our incredibly wholesome reporter and Doofy Pilot are sinners I guess. As is this rabbi. And now everyone is freaking out at all the evaporating passengers. Here's some crazy guy trying to rip the door open and jump out so he can't disappear.
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Now here's some big highway wreck caused by an 18-wheeler's pilot vanishing. Because those guys are totally good red state christian salt of the earth praying types. Now, this isn't me bashing truckers or Christians or anything, I'm just saying that strikes me as really pandering to what you're hoping is your audience. I've met a few truckers, and it really doesn't strike me as a profession that lends itself to being really religious, what with the crazy demanding schedule and lack of human contact it involves. Oh, and here's a not-raptured guy in a turban, gotta be clear on that. This is totally a Christians only sorta deal. I would assume protestants only even. Who go to church every sunday. Oh, and the President was raptured. Actually, that one's pretty surprising because this came out in 2000 and is based on a book. So... I guess this is set in the future, what with Clinton being a known adulter and all. Speaking of which, I guess the pilot was cheating on his wife, so his whole family went poof but not him. Or at least his wife and son, he might have had one of those sinful teenage daughters with the audacity to have a social life who's just not home. So he is sad and crying. Then he throws THE BIBLE at a mirror in grief. But then he's all, hey, waaaaiiit a minute. Lemme read this sucker again. Seriously, he's mourning the vaporization of his entire family, then he starts reading the bible and is suddenly calmed down.
Yup. Sinful daughter. Oh, and here's Evil Dude smirking about how none of his employees vanished and being totally calm about *UNDEFINED* percent of the population of the world going poof. Also, why is Kirk Cameron in Pilot's house now? Did he just decide to crash on his couch for a while? Did they even actually meet each other ever? It's not like 90% of the people on the plane weren't... LEFT BEHIND or anything. Also? That movie All Dogs Go to Heaven? Apparently that's total BS, because we keep showing this here dog laying next to his owner's clothes for days on end, presumably waiting for him to reappear.
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Oh, and another thing. The only person in this movie who approaches being famous is Kirk Cameron. There's a whole bunch of people who KINDA look and sound like famous people in bad lighting. Oh, and here's a stupid line. "Maybe the common factor isn't in those who were taken, maybe it's those who were left behind." Uh, I'm pretty sure we're saying more people are still here than went poof, aren't we? Even if we're 50/50 that's like "Maybe it wasn't all the blond people were grabbed, it's all the not-blond people WEREN'T grabbed!" How the heck does that change anything, or matter in any way, and isn't spontaneously vanishing, by virtue of being weird, the special case by default?
Anyway. Pilot's wife spent "most of her time" in church, and also Deep Throat was apparently killed by a sniper just before Kirk wandered by to see him. He gets the penny disc off his corpse, because yeah, the reporter's source didn't call him to GIVE him the hard evidence of badness he found, just to hold it up to him. Oh, and here's someone else who wasn't raptured! The token black character in the whole movie! Apparently he's the preacher at Pilot's church and did his best but clearly he's secretly evil because why else would he be marked with the evil besmirched skin of the devil? OK, that's not totally fair, because presumably his son was raptured, as absolutely all children in this movie were, because as we all know all children are inherently totally good and never do anything the slightest bit mean or non-Christian to anyone ever. Still though, this is another one of those Conspicuous Examples this movie is teaming with. Oh yeah, but getting back to the sniper? He tries to kill Kirk Cameron too, but he is an AMAZINGLY bad shot. I mean, it seemed like he was intentionally aiming for pottery and not the stationary human target who was totally unaware that there was a threat.
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Oh. Apparently the penny disc had a jpg of the Temple of Solomon on it. Also there's a whole lot of not happening in this movie. I mean, "the rapture happens" is the one thing the audience knows going in here, and you're not making a mystery out of it. This is absolutely an established point. Oh, and seriously, how was Pilot not raptured? He's trying to explain to his daughter how he's worked out that the rapture happened, and he's all "Don't blame God! He gave us a precious gift and we're the ones who squandered it." So even in a world where all the good righteous evangelical Christians were assumed into heaven, somehow everyone who wasn't seems to be a good righteous evangelical Christian. Who are overwhelmingly non-white, female (ESPECIALLY girls between the ages of 14 and 30), and possessed of intellectual type jobs more often than not. Good salt of the earth type jobs like school bus driver and housewife are all cool. Oh, and here's another unraptured black preacher. Oh, OK. I take it back. That was a pre-recorded speech. I take that unfortunate implication chip back with interest.
Anyway, the closet thing we've had so far to a plot is Kirk Cameron here trying to unravel this wheat bombing conspiracy, but it turns out the answers are all right there in the bible! Evil Dude is the antichrist. Simple enough. And again, the preacher who I guess just wasn't raptured because he wasn't committed enough is all "Don't deny it! You can feel god tugging at your heart!" This by the way is something that's always severely creeped me out about really religious types. They're always all "Can't you feel God's love in your heart? Don't you hear his voice in your head?" Yeah, I totally don't. Never have. Can't think of anything I've ever experienced which is even roughly similar enough that I could conceivably interpret it as such. So... either those people are schizophrenic, or God is totally real but arbitrarily decided to leave me out of the conference call. Although honestly, there's a whole lot about all the monotheistic religions that makes a LOT more sense if you assume a god who is totally unconcerned with anything beyond a particular group of people in a particular region. Like where all these other people keep wandering in from that aren't established in the whole detailed family tree segment.
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Anyway though, Kirk here has finally come to realize that yeah. Evil Guy is totally the antichrist, looking to use this scientist's crazy miracle wheat technology to rule the world from a rebuilt temple of Solomon. So... he runs to the bathroom and cries and prays. While a Christian Rock ballad plays. And... now he's addressing the U.N. and getting all full blown supervillain. Wait, this isn't Evil Guy. This is some Russian Guy. Apparently the previously established Evil Dude was just his business partner. Oh, and right in the middle of his I am totally a supervillain speech, he goes "Hey, security guard? Mind giving me your gun?" "Durr... OK Mr. Clearly Evil Guy!" Then he shoots someone in the head to prove he's serious. So... he's conducting a U.N. meeting like he's a Bond villain. Also, why is there only the one security guard in a U.N. meeting? For that matter, why are there only like, 10 people in the room? Dear gods this movie is stupid. And apparently everyone is just kind of going to cover for him when questioned... oh, because he used magical mind control powers on everyone but Kirk Cameron I guess.
Seriously. Even though the premise is really lame, and it's openly written by an evangelist, there's ways you could go with this that are halfway watchable. I mean, you could flat out show the apocalypse... well, OK, not on this budget. You could make SOME effort to show how much people would freak out if a bunch of people just spontaneously vanished, instead of crying for a day, reading the bible, and going "Ohhhh. Whoops!" You could at least try and show a society where nobody has any morals because everyone who did went poof. That'd be potentially interesting... and... uh? What? End credits? What the hell? That was not anything appropriate to an end point. That was like, where you end the first act when doing the whole 3 act structure bit. You just established that this guy is the antagonist, and then stopped. No wait, that would at least have been some kind of cliffhanger. No, you established he was the antagonist, and then everyone went home, and then nothing happened for a while, and then you rolled the credits. Dang movie. As I was saying though, yeah, with the exception of the out of left field antichrist and Evil Dude, everyone in this movie was a totally straight-laced lawful good evangelical Christian (or a member of some other religion that they were equally gung-ho about) who apparently missed being Raptured based on some minor technicality we don't actually look at... and hey! That's another way this movie could have had a plot! You can reveal the deep hidden secrets all these people have that kept them from being Raptured! But... no. These are just the people we're arbitrarily declaring are insufficiently good despite all evidence to the contrary, and anyone less super-christian than THEM just never existed to begin with I guess. So... yeah, the guy who wrote this is REALLY living in a bubble. Wow. Also it's kind of scary that there's an audience for something so poorly written big enough to justify producing a movie, and marketing it to the point I'd heard of it. Oh and I accidentally clicked a preview in the special features for "Revelation" which appeared to be a cheap knock-off of this very movie. And... this movie already has home movie level production values, so yon trailer was freaking hilarious.
