Left Behind: Rise of the Antichrist (2022) rewrote a cookie cutter rapture story into an extremely butthurt covid seethe movie

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