I’m not a religious man, but I make a point of seeing Nicolas Cage films.

What’s It About? When the Rapture causes millions of people worldwide to spontaneously disappear, those left behind – including airliner pilot Rayford Steele – find themselves in perilous situations.

STRAIGHT UP: Poorly made and void of interest. I hated it. 1/10

What I Liked

The pastor – One of the people left behind is, ironically, the pastor at the church Mrs. Steele attended. Throughout his single brief scene, I found myself thinking that a more interesting story could be told about this character.

The plane landing – The movie’s final sequence pushes suspension of disbelief to its absolute limits, but it’s so memorably absurd that I have to admire it. The film’s sole signature moment.

What I Disliked

Misuse of Nicolas Cage – Given that Cage is the best in the business at freaking out on camera, it’s so disappointing to see him cast as a stoic, level-headed character.

Nobody to like – I couldn’t get on board with any of the main characters here. Chloe is excessively standoffish with everyone she meets, Buck is nosy and waaay to attached to a girl he just met, and Ray is chronically unimpressed with everything to the point of lifelessness.

Nearsighted story focus – The Left Behind novels, which serve as source material for this film, are essentially apocalyptic tales inspired by material from the Bible. That sounds to me like ripe ground for any number of interesting plotlines. This movie, however, focuses almost exclusively on Ray trying to land his plane. It’s a premise that runs out of dramatic potential quickly, while simultaneously blocking out any of the many more expansive and interesting directions the story could go.

Strange narrative sequencing – On the ground, there’s practically an instant shift from “everyday society” to “riots, murder, and looting” after the Rapture occurs. On Ray’s plane, everyone forms an orderly queue and takes turns having a sanity crisis. Neither of these situations seems believable, and the cuts between them feel disjointed.

Low production values – Even for a lower-budget film, they’re noticeably bad. The CG is barely above the level of a SyFy Original, and the overall video quality is distressingly poor.

The soundtrack – Uplifting Christian rock is not a thematically appropriate companion to a movie about the End of Days.

The Muslim guy – Seems to me like he got a raw deal. He’s a good person whose only crime was picking the “wrong” religion.

CLOSING THOUGHT: I find myself wondering why this film was made. It’s a sedate, uninteresting reboot of a severely dated franchise that paints an oddly unappealing picture of faith. I can’t think of anyone who might be entertained by this – even Nicolas Cage, an actor who can make almost anything watchable, brings nothing to the table in this one. These faults have nothing to do with the fact that this is a Christian movie, or that it utilizes material from the Bible – after all, I enjoyed Aronofsky’s Noah, and I think that Wyler’s Ben-Hur stands the test of time. The problem is that Left Behind (2014) is just not good on any level – the acting is poor, the technical aspects are unimpressive, the religious messages miss the mark, and nothing about the film is bizarre enough to attract ironic viewers.