Left Behind: The Vanished, Part 1

I’m having a hard time right now. We are all having a hard time. You all know what my preferred coping mechanism is for that? An easy dunk. And what is an easier dunk than a new Left Behind movie? If only there were a SECRET FUCKING LEFT BEHIND MOVIE THAT I HAD NEVER HEARD OF WTF???? I discovered this a few days ago and my friends, it’s as if you had told me that they just discovered a new fragment of the Epic of Gilgamesh, or the world’s tiniest frog. I am full of joy and the Lord.

Wait, how are there more Left Behind movies? I thought I had seen all the Left Behind movies! But apparently there was one made in 2017 that must have gone straight to YouTube, and you are never going to guess who produced it. No, really, I’m leaving this as a mystery because you are going to LOSE YOUR SHIT. (This joke is going to be extremely funny to you in about 5 minutes, depending on your reading speed.)

It’s loosely adapted from the spinoff series The Kids, which is Left Behind For the Teens, and is a blatant attempt to cash in, several years too late, on the whole YA post-apocalyptic craze. It even stars several people from Teen Wolf! (Disappointingly, not any of the characters I remember.)

Okay, the other disappointing news is that this is the best Left Behind adaptation to date, which is not saying very much. Because it’s not based on the main series, we don’t have to deal with the worst characters in fiction, and our young protagonists are free to be massively more likable people than Rayford Steele or Buck Williams. Which is to say they get to be protagonists instead of merely enabling the villain. The Jesus/Revelations stuff is definitely backgrounded, so most of the film has to do with running around in forests, which is harder, though not impossible as we’ll see, to fuck up. Which is not to say it’s a good movie (I promise that in fact it is a really terrible movie), just that it avoids so many of the pitfalls of both the books and earlier films that it’s almost shocking.

If you’re interested in some gossipy inside baseball, the reason why it’s better has something to do with the lawsuit between Cloud Ten and Tim LaHaye, who famously hated the Cloud Ten/Namesake movies. LaHaye was basically dying during this production, which was led by his grandson, Randy LaHaye. Randy wanted to make a film that Tim would be proud of, and he did it with a series of sketchy investment companies that only appear to exist to make films like this. They still did a better job than Cloud Ten, which is an incredibly low bar.

Let’s get to it!

( apocalypse time! )