The Remaining
The rapture is no longer a subject exclusive to evangelical Christians. While the excitement has worn off for a lot of us (it seems), the subject of the end times has captured the attention of Hollywood.
I’m not sure about you, but I love to see an outsider’s perspective on spiritual topics. While I don’t think this was a film produced and directed by non-believers, it certainly is an outside-the-box approach to the rapture, which is refreshing. It was interesting to watch the Nicolas Cage version of Left Behind and The Remaining within the same week. Both movies were released in the early fall of 2014 and both kind of disappeared quickly (at least from my limited perspective). Perhaps the voting block section of evangelicals in the United States decided they didn’t like these “different” perspectives. This is kind of a shame, because both of these movies are pretty good. Not amazing or deserving of high praise, but entertaining to a large degree.
Neither one deviated from the modern day theology of most evangelicals, either. The very unusual and fresh take that The Remaining took, however, was not adopting the typical “sudden disappearance of millions of Christians worldwide,” but instead the “sudden death of millions of Christians worldwide.” This could be how it happens.
“…we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them (the dead in Christ, who will rise first) in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.”
In the movie, these Christians fall over dead – or at least their bodies slump and are immediately left spirit-less, which is visually evidenced by the glassy, empty and glazed-over eyes – and their spirits would be transported into the clouds with Jesus. That is the artistic license that director Casey La Scala takes with the rapture event, and he might very well be right. I don’t think I had ever considered that possibility before. God’s calling of the elect might be yanking their spirits home, so to speak.
The movie follows a formula that we see in a lot of teen and horror flicks, which is quickly showing a montage of how a close-knit group of friends have bonded. Like the first miracle of Jesus, this movie starts with a wedding ceremony. A young couple weds, another couple deals with the tension of “when will he ask me to marry him?” and the awkward best friend crushing on his bud’s girl. We also see the fun-loving and unsuspecting teens heading straight towards the impending danger we can all feel coming. You’ve seen it a million times, but it sets the tone well for the scary action that follows.
We see the rapture, massive calamity, hailstorms, and even demon spirits swooping in and taking people out. The pre-tribulation theories about post-rapture conversions being difficult and fatal is also explored here. That is the explanation we sort of get partway through the movie – that the unleashed hordes of hell are taking out the ones who believe – seemingly at the point of acquiescence or belief.
This is the type of approach the fledgling Christian film industry should have taken with the slew of rapture films they have made in the past four decades. I’m sure they wanted to have strong elements of action and danger in their movies, but the desire to have a strong altar call inducing heart tug probably swayed them too far in the sentimental direction. It’s interesting to see how raw and conclusions left undone can leave an audience curious and hungry.
While it’s not a great supernatural thriller, teen horror movie or disaster film, it is better than average. [Sony Pictures] Doug Van Pelt
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