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Left Behind (2014), PG-13, 0 stars

Nicolas Cage trapped in yet another disaster movie.
Post-apocalyptic nightmares. Well, about every year a studio wants to create a film full of special effects and scenes of spectacular shots of fire blazing and debris flying in the air that makes you awestruck. How many films do you think are worth viewing repeatedly? Recently, not many. And, the streak continues with this film adaptation of another film adaptation of a book that results into one of the goofiest disaster flicks I have ever seen.

Cameron "Buck" Williams (Chad Michael Murray) is this hunky reporter who gets on board on a plane. He's not really a developed character.

The story shifts to Rayford Steele (Nicolas Cage), as a father and a pilot who gets called to work when Chloe (Cassi Thomson), his daughter, has come home for his birthday party. She also meets Buck who is also going on the plane and then all of a sudden, up in the air, the Rapture occurs. The Rapture is an event where all of Christ's believers are ascended into Heaven and Earth is left unsaved.  People are suddenly missing and chaos is afoot when people panic in the aisles and also on the ground. And, then, we are left with special effects, explosions, Bible verse quotations, and religious debates regarding the future of mankind and Christianity.

Chad Michael Murray capturing the missing people's belongings.
Yeah, most of this movie takes on a plane and this is perhaps the worst airplane movie ever made.

I don't know what to say but it was almost impossible to find a film worse than the recent Transformers film and we have less than 3 months to go in the year, and it is very likely that this film will have a place of honor in the "worst-of-the-year" list in December. It is nothing but amateurish storytelling because it is hardly a story going on around here. It's like when a director's and editor's work is finally finished and then some kid was playing with the equipment putting his version in the computer without the two people in charge knowing about it and they take it to the studio where they can release it.

This movie is full of disaster clichés, terrible and dense acting, murky special effects, endless quotations of Biblical verses, horrendous dialogue, running, screaming, ranting, and fire. The set designs look big on paper, but they are small and tacky. The pacing is so inconsistent that we do not know if the narrative is suppose to be straight or non-linear. I was laughing to see why Jordin Sparks as cast as a paranoid mother who somehow smuggled a handgun on a plane. I guess, the airport security really sucks.

And, then, last but not least, there is Nicolas Cage. What has happened to him? He just picks projects just to earn money. What happened with his passion for projects? Look at Leaving Las Vegas, Adaptation, Moonstruck, Raising Arizona, and even Face/Off. Those are some compelling performances in that list. He is now sleepwalking through roles like he gets a free million-dollar paycheck without even remotely professionally performing at a high level. Right now, his luck is at an all-time low. He needs to think about his career and resurrect it, otherwise, he's going to be very difficult to trust.

This is just an abysmal film full of Christianity non-sense that doesn't explain or drives the film forward. You know what, just read the book, it's much better in writing than on film. I actually rather watch Nicolas Cage be consumed with bees on YouTube than watch this film. I kind of feel his pain, "NOT THE BEES! NOT THE BEES! AHHHHH! OH MY EYES! OH MY EYES! AHHHH!" Yep, my eyes were stinging when I saw the film and the pain was excruciating.

ZERO

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