Plot Summary
All Rayford Steele really cares about is his job as a pilot. He’s disillusioned with his family due to his wife’s Christian faith and due to his daughter’s growing absence. That’s why he’s buried himself in his work, overlooking the fact that both his wife and his daughter desperately want to see him again, as does his son. After briefly reuniting with his daughter, Ray’s job once again takes in a different direction. Chloe Steele returns home only to conflict with her mother over Christianity. But before any of them can reconcile, a global tragedy rocks their worlds. Before long, they realize that their lives will never be the same and they must grapple with the bigger questions they have been ignoring all along.
Production Quality (1 point)
The production of this Left Behind redo is the only remotely positive element. However, the only good aspect of the production is the semi-decent camera work, including average angles and video quality. However, the movie is also replete with cheap action sequences and poor special effects. The soundtrack is a stock suspense score. The editing is confusing, cutting in and out of scenes for no particular reason. There are also a number of stupid jump scares that give the movie a very odd feel. Unfortunately, the weirdness doesn’t end there.
Plot and Storyline Quality (0 points)
Where to start? The dialogue is among the worst, ranging from Christian clichés to action-adventure clichés to isolating technical lingo. Thus, the characters are either bland or unbearable. Also, there are a number of unnecessary characters that only seem to fill time in the already too-long story. Besides all of this, there is unsolicited profanity and suggestive content throughout. Overall, the plot line is aimless as it jumps from one trumped up action scene to the next and fills the rest in with wasted time, just trying to set up for a sequel. There is no driving point as the movie drags on, making the viewer want to get to the end as quickly as possible.
Addendum: With John Patus involved in both movies, this new version of Left Behind is basically the same plot as The Mark.
Acting Quality (.5 point)
A word of advice: never cast Nicolas Cage for an action movie. Some of the other actors are not awful, but overall, the delivery of lines is vanilla and unconvincing. Jordin Sparks is a decent actor and deserves a second chance. Moreover, there wasn’t much to work with, but the acting just gives the movie an overall B-grade feel.
Conclusion
The creators of this new Left Behind won a court battle with Tim LaHaye over using his concepts in a different way. Box Office Revolution has to wonder why they couldn’t just create their own characters, but we can affirmatively say that winning the copyright way did not pay off. This movie was really not worth making in any sense. The creators now blame everything on ‘Hollywood taking away the Christian message.’ BOR holds that this is not the whole truth. All that has been proven in this movie is that independent Christian films, except for the few exceptions, continue to contribute to their negative reputation by rolling out more and more unnecessary movies. A word of advice: if you don’t have the budget for and\or a lot of constructive critical feedback on your movie, then don’t make it.
Final Rating: 1.5 out of 10 points
Box Office Revolution 