Title – Left Behind (2014)

Director – Vic Armstrong (Joshua Tree)

Cast – Nicolas Cage, Chad Michael Murray, Cassi Thomson, Lea Thompson, Nicky Whelan, Jordan Sparks

Plot – Its Nicolas Cage vs The Rapture as pilot Rayford Steele (Cage) finds his flight to London interrupted by the end of the world.

 “I know you all want answers, and believe me, so do I”

Review by Eddie on 23/04/2015

After the hugely entertaining deriding it received from critics and audiences upon release over in the USA, I was absolutely awaiting Left Behind’s release on Australian shores with bated breath as it sounded like one of those hilariously bad movies that lends itself to a watching purely on the basis that it’s like watching a train wreck you can’t turn away from. After now watching this atrocious excuse for a feature length film it’s undoubtedly a movie as bad as its reputation suggests yet also a film that I found completely and utterly boring, a movie therefore that can’t even be recommend as a so bad it’s good watch.

In keeping with the faith based themes on offer here in the adaptation of Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim LaHaye’s hugely popular novel of the same name, the biggest movie sin a film can commit is that of boredom and my goodness does Vic (Indiana Jones’s stunt double) Armstrong’s film deliver the ultimate sin en masse. It’s truly hard to explain just how dull and intently lacking in spark this film is. From the films downright cheesy opening segments set in an airport through to its staging of high stakes life and death on a plane in the sky, Left Behind quite literally never even gets on the runway, let alone takes off. What’s most confusing about this sleep inducing event is that it cost around 16 million dollars to make, where did this money go? Absolutely not on special effects or locations (the whole film feels as though it’s set in one part of plane) and not on actors, unless Mr. Cage charged an exuberant fee in another one of his incredibly bad movie roles.

Not sure if we’ll ever now see the end of Cage’s tax woes, Cage here as flirtatious U2 loving pilot Rayford Steele can’t even summon up the looney energy he is known for to save Left Behind in any way shape or form. Looking like he can barely muster the energy to utter his lines Cage is a ghostly presence in a cast of horribly out of sort’s actors. From one time teenage girl crush Chad Michael Murray through to Cassi Thomson and Nicky Whelan’s eye candy females, Left Behind must surely contain one of 2014’s most lacklustre ensembles who more than likely started to realise what a mistake they had made by signing on for this project from day one.

Left Behind is sadly not as bad as you’d hoped in that the most predominant thing it displays is an uncanny knack to deliver everything including the end of the world as we know it in such an incredibly boring way. There’s no real memorably horrible dialogue, no ranting and raving Nic Cage and just generally nothing at all that suggests this movie will even be a cult favourite of those among us that crave the very worst of cinema. This ladies and gentleman, is the end of the world as boring as we could ever know it.

1 quick off the mark looter out of 5