Worst Movie EVER. LEFT BEHIND.

The trailer I watched was fantastic! There was that OMPH! So I bought a pair of tickets and watched it with my boo.

One word to sum up the movie; TERRIBLE.

It believes people might buy a ticket to Left Behind and not know the twist, like someone sitting down to watch Godzilla and being shocked by the entrance of a giant lizard.

Christian readers and audiences are the base here, but it’s hard to imagine that this incarnation of the story will persuade anyone else to find the Lord unless they’re sitting in the theater praying for the dialogue or special effects to improve. This is essentially an “Airport” movie with an Evangelical spin, but it lacks the self-awareness to turn such a wild concept into a guilty pleasure.

Director Vic Armstrong, a longtime stuntman making only his second feature (and his first in a couple of decades), had a larger budget than the original's, and a more established star in the lead. None of that shows up on screen. The "big" set pieces look small and chintzy, the lighting is hard and flat, and the pacing is a monotonous back-and-forth between an airplane in the skies across the Atlantic and the chaos on the ground below.

But the more serious disappointment comes from Cage’s performance. As the awesomely named Rayford Steele, a philandering airline pilot who sees the light as the end is nigh, Cage needed to bring the wild-eyed, full-bore crazy. This has been his bread and butter of late, and it’s been a thoroughly enjoyable career shift. Instead, he’s oddly inert as the movie's voice of reason. Looking distractingly rubbery with a helmet of fake, dark hair, he seems to have been Photoshopped into the film. His presence is so strangely awkward and unconvincing.

Then again, the script from Paul Lalonde (who also produced the original “Left Behind” movies) and John Patus doesn’t exactly give him or the rest of the cast much to work with. It’s full of flat character types and blandly expository dialogue. 

At the film’s start, Rayford’s daughter, Chloe (the perky Cassi Thomson), has come home from college for the weekend for her dad’s birthday. But Rayford got a last-minute assignment to fly from New York to London overnight, which will keep him away all that time. At least that’s what he told his wife Irene (Lea Thompson), who’s no fun anymore now that she’s found Jesus and is urging everyone around her to do the same. 

(The camera lingers as Irene tosses her gardening gloves on top of her ever-present Bible.) His real plan is to seduce a hot, blonde flight attendant (Nicky Whelan) over the weekend, beginning with prime tickets to see U2.

This is actually a vaguely intriguing premise: What happens to a marriage when one spouse undergoes a religious conversion and the other does not? It seems similar to what happens when one spouse gets sober and the other keeps drinking. What sort of wedge does this create? How does the family survive? But these aren’t the questions “Left Behind” cares to ponder. Armageddon is on the horizon.

Boo to Left Behind. I do not recommend you guys to watch.

I will score the movie 0 / 5.