[This is the second of three movie reviews that were won in the auction, which assists fans of color who want to attend SFF conventions, principally WisCon.]

So, the first movie I was given for this auction was The Vampire Effect, which was horrible in sort of a whimsical, amusing way. (Plus, we learned an important lesson about the importance of banana extract in the vampire canon, so you can’t say the movie isn’t handy.)

The second movie, I had every reason to expect from LJ comments on the auction, would be Peter Coyote’s second-rate softcore disaster Bitter Moon. However, was apparently playing me like a violin, because her actual request was the literally and figuratively apocalyptic Left Behind.

I knew nothing about the movie when Kathy assigned it to me, except that it was Kirk Cameron’s right-wing wackadoo vanity project.

Now, I know way too much.

I can’t possibly go through this movie beat by beat (it’s too painful for all of us), so I watched it twice (TWICE), and have made a representative sample of data points, so that no one else ever has to see this movie, because seriously, nobody should.

Ten Things You Should Know about Left Behind.

1. Never has an apocalypse been so boring. The Rapture happens about twenty minutes into the movie. This movie is 94 minutes long. I recognize this must be the pre-tribulation Rapture and not the actual Second Coming, but if you blow your big trick in the opening act, then you only have seven years of standard-issue tribulation to look forward to, each of which feel as if they are chronicled in real-time in this film.

2. These jerks are…Left Behind! The half-planet’s worth of people left behind are sort of amazingly sorted. Reporter Buck Williams is an unbeliever. Pastor Bruce Barnes is the only one of his congregation who doesn’t ascend (awkwaaard). Airline pilot Rayford Steele (of course) gets left behind because he’s committing hot, hot adultery with flight-attendant-turned-UN-delegate Hattie (sure, that happens). His wife and son ascend, but his daughter Chloe gets no heavenly invitation because she got a nose ring against her father’s wishes. This is the actual reason she is left out of the Rapture.

3. You can judge a book by its cover. And I don’t mean the several Bibles (and one teen Bible!) that get handed around during this movie.

Look, I am the last person in the world to be a graphics snot, considering that anything beyond MS Paint continues to baffle me. On the other hand, I do have eyes. So, in case you were ever worried that you might pick up this movie by accident because of the slick cover design…uh, you don’t have to worry.

(It just seems like one element too many, you know? Like, take off one graphic element before you leave the house.)

Discarded DVD cover design.

4. Good luck with the plot. Besides all the Bible-passing and hugging, there’s a whole plot about how you can’t grow crops because of the Rapture (which is weird, because if anything, your demand just got cut in half, so there’s really never been a better time for some leisurely farming). Naturally, some scientist has a magical formula that will allow you to grow crops in this harsh wasteland that is often spoken of but never appears, and for some reason the bank president/UN delegate characters arrange some dude to be a pawn in their game to raise crops, and that dude literally turns into the Antichrist and fools everyone but newly-Christian reporter Buck. Full of smug self-satisfaction at not being fooled, Buck returns home to the three people who have made no attempt to gather or comfort others in the meantime and holes up with them in a church to wait out the seven years of turmoil?

This is the least comforting shot of a church I have seen in a long time. Well-done, filmmakers.

5. This movie is offensive. This movie, uh, plays fast and loose, shall we say, with perceptions of non-Christian groups. For instance, the scientist who perfects the magical serum is Chaim Rosenzweig, the only person of Jewish descent we meet, and he happily hands the serum over to the UN bank presidents and then gets the wool pulled over his eyes by the Antichrist. (Wow.)

6. NO SERIOUSLY. That whole scientist bit is not the worst thing in this movie. That would be this line, spoken from one bank executive/UN representative (sure) to another, regarding the Middle East: “What will we do with the Arabs? Their children cry from hunger, yet they still choose war.”

WOW, YOU GUYS. WOW.

7. Dogs are fucked. The Rapture is poignant. To bring home how poignant the Rapture is, there are not one, but two shots of dogs who have been left behind by their heaven-bound owners. I am not sure what this is supposed to convey, except that devout Christians are de facto bad pet owners. What it does mean is that we have a chance to compare two very different dogs, and how they approach their new lives.

First, we look at Jake. Jake is a noble, loyal animal that stays by his master’s side, pining majestically.

I don’t know if his real name is Jake, but he just looks like one, doesn’t he?

And then we have Noodles. Noodles must not have liked his previous owner much, because the minute the rapture hits, that dog hits the streets. Noodles has better things than you coming up, you departed jerks!

Please note that both these dogs are in scenes with our protagonists also in them, and at no time do our protagonists take a break from reading the Bible, quoting the Bible at each other, and tearfully hugging to help a helpless animal so that it doesn’t starve to death. I’m just saying.

8. The More You Know!They never explain how the bank presidents knew the Rapture was coming, but those dudes totally did! They bought property and crop serum and arranged for a UN president who would take action at the right moment and everything! If you are willing to sit through a whole movie to figure out the secret behind accurately predicting the date of the Rapture, this is not the movie for you.

9. The trailer.