.webp?h=8 "P-Hat (blue) - Ughhhh coming up with different descriptions for RuneScape party hats")
Synopsis
Months after the sudden disappearance of everyone's most irritating relatives 
, newly minted Christian Rayford Steele 
attempts to convert his millennial daughter Chloe 
to the Christian faith. Meanwhile, Chloe's boyfriend Cameron "Buck" Williams 
, the host of cable television's most obnoxious opinion program, stumbles across evidence that the elite 
is lying about the covid rapture numbers.
Soon Buck discovers a plot to exploit everyone's fear and anxiety to establish a one world government, one world currency, and universal social credit system, all under the control of incredibly uncharismatic Antichrist Nicolae "Jetty" Carpathia. 
Review
It's hard to explain what makes something look like a "real movie," but this looks like a real movie. The shots are well composed and the color grading feels cinematic without looking artificial. The interiors are gloomy and lived in, while the streets capture a sense of urban blight and despair. Everything feels like a run-down shithole. Finally Detroit's filmmaking tax credit is paying off. 
The script also makes major improvements to the novel. The book's biggest flaw was failing to connect the Antichrist plot to the Rapture plot--in the book, the one world government emerges simply because that's the kind of thing those people do. The movie, meanwhile, draws the obvious connection of authoritarians seizing power in a crisis. 
The down side of this is that the whole thing is obviously an extremely hamfisted covid metaphor rushed through production during the coofdemic. And because fundamentalists don't understand subtext, covid gets mentioned by name multiple times so you'll be sure to connect the dots. Aside from the name drops it's just a general pileup of every current rightoid grievance with a loose coat of Bible prophecy paint. 
The government fakes additional rapture-like disappearances and tells non-essential workers to stay home (?).
All of the stats about the vanishings come through a single company called "Dominator Analytics"
All media outlets, social media, and payment processing systems are owned by the same globalist billionaire who wants to take over the world
The protagonist googles "Bible prophecy" and all the videos have been removed for violating the "terms of service." Then he gets his account suspended for unspecified violations (yes jannies got called out in a rapture movie)
Anyone who catches onto all of this gets the
treatment.
Actual dialogue
"It's like, everybody knows there was a second wave, but nobody's actually seen it happen."
"Welcome to a new reality. A Great Reset."
"I think these new vanishing counts that we now proudly display on every broadcast are probably fake."
"The Rapture wasn't debunked. Someone on TV told you it was debunked and you believed them."
[Of the Antichrist] "I haven't seen anything like this since Obama."
Miscellaneous
They didn't have the rights to the UN logo (?) so they made their own version with the map at the wrong projection
The whole thing is narrated by a lispy black guy who's still delivering exposition well past the one hour mark
This is in the Left Behind (2014) continuity, not the Left Behind: The Movie (2000) continuity. Note that both series recast between every movie. Nic Cage was too expensive so they got church basement DVD actor Kevin Sorbo to be Rayford Steele instead.
Somebody vandalized a church by scrawling "SCIENCE!!!!" on the wall
The filmmakers either forgot or retconned that literally all children canonically vanished. The world should have freaked out a lot harder; instead they act like this was maaaybe 3x as bad as covid
One character is killed by a car bomb (with flashing lights, which is just sitting in the back seat of the car that the protagonists were just riding in and they didn't notice) that goes off only after the other characters have already left the car
The movie ends with the Antichrist shooting people gangsta style
One scene after characters discuss the importance of faith even in times of doubt, they dig up the dead grandma's coffin to prove that her body vanished and the rapture was real
Overall this is still an objective improvement over both previous LB adaptations. However, nothing will top the fever dream charm of the classic 80's budget rapture movies. IMO this kind of movie actually gets worse when you do it well. You lose the clumsy earnestness and are left with smugness. !christians
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
If it were a pseudo doc like ancient
aliens 
id watcg
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Not exactly the same thing, but "Apocalypse" (1998) delivers the end times/rapture plot heavily through mock newscasts. This technique has been overdone more recently because low budget filmmakers realized how effective it was, but this movie was actually one of the better examples. It captured the blend of heightened reality and absurd unreality that we get from watching strange, disturbing, and inexplicable things on the news.This sort of put me in the headspace of a jittery fundamentalist grandma watching Fox coverage of Iran launching missiles at Israel, waiting/hoping/fearing for the whole thing to morph into apocalyptic spiritual drama at any moment. And "Apocalypse" committed to the news bit instead of just using it for an opening exposition montage.
One of these Apocalypse movies also has the exact same scene of someone digging up a relative to prove the rapture is real, which is pretty funny--that it's happened twice, and that the film in the OP thought it was good enough to rip off. I think this is the first Apocalypse but it might be the second
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Also !christians if you are posting on rdrama you are the PERFECT audience for old end times movies because you can appreciate the level of absolute dreck, while still perceiving the sublime God that the filmmakers are trying, however clumsily, to tell you about. What a contrast between the fallen (shitty-art) state of man and the transcendent nature of the gospel. No Christian movie made with sincerity can ever be 100% bad, because it contains that little divine spark. Faith has knit the human and divine together. In some small, stupid way, the garbage movie belongs to God--just like we garbage people do.
The fun in laughing at a these movies doesn't go away just because God's around. But I like to think it richens it. Like we're just kind of laughing about absurdity, about the strange emotional heights of faith and the oddness of our own beliefs. And the fact that the filmmakers proudly and sincerely presented this clumsy, stupid art to God like a child's macaroni picture, and he still put it on the fridge with all the others. Not because it deserves to be there. But because he loves us.
When one of these movies hits just right, you get this perfect pathos/bathos explosion that's just
unlike anything else. One of these movies had me laughing at the ending, AND crying, at the same time.
I should say that there's a big difference between classic VHS slop (SOVL) and the stuff they're making nowadays. The old stuff was created because they thought their shitkino would save souls. The new stuff is largely just circlejerking to make money. The Left Behind franchise killed the apocalypse
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Posts like this is why I do Heroine.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
Ty.
(Blaire witch
and its consequences....)
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context