Left Behind: The Vanished, Part 1
Mar. 13th, 2025 12:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyWait, 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!
Wait, where is the fourth horse? I was promised there would be four horses, plus Hades presumably on foot after Death on the pale horse. WTF, producers?
We open on the obligatory terrible Christian contemporary soundtrack and what is presumably a drone shot of Chicago. The song is about being in love with a beautiful 16-year-old girl, which is skeevy as all fuck.
The writers quickly use search-and-replace to rename the characters from their last fanfic. Typical Teenager Katniss Gabby is on her phone, walking down the street, since she is a Typical Teenager™. She picks up her 11-year-old sister, Primrose Claire. They go through a typical day. Their mom is at work. Not sure why these two aren’t at school but anyway. They are joined by Peeta Josh, the Typical Boy Next Door™, who will be the second point on our Obligatory Love Triangle. I already hate him.
If you’re thinking that this child is an improbable age given the story, you’re not alone. I got tripped up by this scene. According to Left Behind canon, everyone 12 and under gets Raptured. Keep that in the back of your head during these first few scenes.
Because Josh is an actual piece of shit, he makes fun of Gabby’s rock collection, but I am too distracted by the fact that one of the executive producers is RICK SANTORUM. Yes, that Rick Santorum, the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter. Honestly, the fact that he is making terrible movies instead of shitting up the American political system like the rest of his ghoul brethren is a refreshing surprise. Given the thwarted Hollywood ambitions of some of the worst people on the planet (Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Candace Owens, etc.) I think we should set up a government-funded initiative so that these people can make their little movies and then have a botnet that tells them that they did a good job at it. It will keep them busy so that they don’t have time to murder trans people and immigrants.
Also notable in this scene, though problematic from a continuity and geographical perspective, is that Gabby, Claire, and Josh all live in an apartment, presumably downtown. As we’ll see, the authors of Left Behind view cities as Sodom and Gomorrah, lawless wastelands where only the presence of a handful of brave Christians lies between civilization and anarchy. If you’re obsessed with this series like I am, you’ll remember that New Hope Village Church is located in Mount Prospect, a suburb of Chicago. It is far enough away that when Chicago is nuked in Nicolae: Rise of the Antichrist (spoilers), New Hope is completely untouched. This will be important later. Regardless, I didn’t know that LaHaye and Jenkins knew that people could live in apartment buildings.
Gabby’s parents are divorced and her dad lives in a small town, like God intended. Josh has asked Gabby to Homecoming, which places this film in fall (again, this will be important later). This contradicts previous canon, which had the Rapture occurring at 12 midnight, Eastern Time, probably in February. Also Josh makes me hate him even more by describing himself as a “Finlandian” man. He’s very excited because his Instagram post asking Gabby to Homecoming has 214 likes. Which is more than I ever get for my shitposts, but I think it is not a very big number for teenagers. They are “just BFFs” but it’s clear Josh wants more.
While in previous scenes, Gabby appeared to have a good relationship with her mom, this is all ruined when they go out walking (in broad daylight, which will be important later) and Gabby suddenly turns into an ungrateful whiny brat for no reason. That can only mean one thing…
That’s right! It’s Rapture Time! And unlike the two other versions, they get right to the money shots.
Everything immediately goes to hell, like people running everywhere, cars on fire, sirens going, everyone screaming. Also, it looks like a lot of people got Raptured, given that this is Godless Downtown Chicago. The remainder get right down to smashing things and looting. Mom gets Raptured so Gabby goes off to look for Claire. She tries to call someone (either Claire or 911) but while the phone works, she can’t get through to anyone. Remember this when we get the official explanation of what happened later on.
She runs home and finds all the lights out in her building, except the lights that are on. Josh is there but Claire is not, and she remembers that Claire went out for ice cream with her friend. Both of Josh’s parents got Raptured.
It’s suddenly night time for no reason, unless Gabby and Josh were in that apartment for a very long time.
Claire has been taken by Gale Flynn, the third point in the love triangle. He claims to have been trying to rescue her and she seems to know him. Flynn is a suspiciously clean and well-groomed street kid. They take refuge in…
A church, which is handing out supplies and USB drives with the video from Rev. Vernon Billings explaining the Rapture. This makes sense, given that people would naturally run to churches when disaster strikes. There are only two problems:
This teenage pastor is Bruce Barnes, who is an adult in all the other Left Behind stories
The church is New Hope Village, which is located, as I mentioned, eight hours by foot from downtown Chicago.
The phones are working, because Gabby gets a call from her father, who’s in a car. The call is abruptly cut off. Again, remember this when we get the explanation that everyone believes for what happened.
Kudos to the filmmakers for blowing up New Hope Village Church with a random gas leak before it becomes even more of a continuity error. Of course, this creates another, larger, continuity error. At least it means we get a cool scene where the kids run from an explosion and Bruce Barnes presumably dies in a better way than he does in the books.
The kids inexplicably decide to join the aimless running around, and then to flee the city. This doesn’t make a lot of sense. It’s later confirmed that Gabby’s dad was on his way to get to her, and it’s logical to assume that he is either still on his way or dead. Josh thinks that they need to get out of the city, but…why? They have two apartments (plus who knows however many empty apartments) with food in the fridge and locks on them, making it an infinitely safer place than tramping around the woods. There are simple narrative fixes (have the church explosion be a targeted attack rather than a gas leak, cut the phone call that reveals dad’s in a car) but that would have entailed a second draft of the script and we don’t have the budget for that.
Claire freaks out because Gabby won’t offer an explanation for their mom’s disappearance beyond “she’s gone.” Josh manages to console her with “it’s okay,” which objectively it isn’t. This is the first of many times someone gets hugged and told “it’s okay” repeatedly.
Josh doesn’t want Flynn to come with them for no apparent reason beyond that the two boys have to fight over the girl, but he’s overruled by Gabby, who obviously prefers Flynn’s Bad Boy Charm™ and the fact that he’s slightly more competent than Josh. Again, this is a very low bar. They try to loot a bakery–sorry, it’s “find food” when white people are doing it—but there’s no food, only Christian contemporary music.
The montage of them walking through the grass is very nice, though why they wouldn’t take a road is left to the viewer’s imagination.
Also we get confirmation that Claire is 11, so she must have been a really bad kid to not get Raptured.
They find a tractor with a Raptured owner and get a sandwich. Inexplicably, they don’t take the tractor, which presumably has keys in it and would be very useful for what comes next. The kids throw around theories. Again to the filmmakers’ credit, they describe the Rapture as “disintegration,” making this slightly more believable than the original series, where no one acts like the Raptured people are dead because they already believe in premillennial dispensationalism. The kids come upon a campsite where the campers have been disintegrated, and I really hope we get a Cuck Tent like in Twilight.
We do get the first of many extremely odd blocking choices, where Katniss and Primrose gather wood for the fire, and then Gale and Katniss have a conversation by the fire, but Prim and Peeta are nowhere in sight because we need Gale and Katniss to have sexual tension. Gale drops some angsty backstory and then Peeta and Prim finally show up to be awkward about it.
The next day, they wander around an empty town. Gabby has a cell signal but the lines remain busy. Claire explains that she’s met Flynn before when he was living on the streets and that she gave him her french fries. I am not sure who lets their 11-year-old wander the street talking to homeless teenagers but it must be okay because Mom got into Heaven anyway. Also despite not being religious, an 11-year-old gave her french fries to a homeless kid and didn’t get into Heaven, which is double-fucked.
They have walked all the way to Georgia!
The cops are all Raptured except for one who’s been killed. So the kids leave and go for another stroll, this time through an empty neighbourhood where all the houses have been boarded up. People just went straight to spray painting “We have a gun” on their garage doors in 24 hours, huh? Actually given America, this doesn’t surprise me. They might have done that before the Rapture.
Throughout this whole time, they spin off theories: Chemical weapon, terrorism, alien invasion (which to me would be the most reasonable theory, but for some reason people always discount the possibility in Left Behind). Again, the fact that this is actually a discussion makes this whole movie, and the characters, infinitely more believable than in any of the other five Left Behind movies or the books.
The car accidents in the city make sense, because some of the drivers were Raptured while driving, but I’m not sure what flipped the trucks in the more rural area, or, for that matter, why the houses that obviously still have occupants in them have random furniture strewn over the lawn. Well, except this is America so maybe it was like that before.
They find Gabby and Claire’s dad’s truck, which hasn’t been flipped over but has rammed into a tree. There’s blood on the windshield, but no clothes, and we know he wasn’t Raptured anyway because of the phone call. (But in the hands of more competent writers, this could have been a more interesting point of mystery, because the characters don’t know that the Rapture was a one-time thing.)
They go into the house, and find several of the extras from Deliverance, who menace them menacingly. Gabby manages to cut a bitch, Flynn smashes open a window, and they all flee to the woods. For whatever reason the Deliverance guys give chase, but they hide in a secret hidey hole that Eric, the dad, has made on his property for some reason.
Claire is able to run just fine with no limp, so it’s a surprise when they discover that she’s cut her leg open on the glass. Gabby says, “it’s okay, it’s okay” but neither the kid nor the practical effects department are in fact okay. They do some preliminary first aid with a dirty hoodie and a piece of twine, and then Josh returns to tell them that he’s found a farm nearby. It’s okay, Claire will look cute with a pegleg.
The owner of the farm is named Damon, so you know he’s bad news. Conveniently, his sister, Sarah, is a nurse. This is confusing because he also says that she’s as good as a doctor despite having no college book-larnin’. They do know that nurses go to college, right? Anyway, Gabby is left with the womenfolk and Damon takes the boys on a tour of—spoiler—his cult compound.
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Date: 2025-03-13 05:48 pm (UTC)That one is relatively explicable, because it's just humans doing odd things, not violations of the laws of physics.
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Date: 2025-03-13 05:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-03-13 06:04 pm (UTC)The real problem is, what 11-year-old would want to wander aimlessly downtown and talk to homeless strangers? I'm coming at the permission problem from what I realize is an odd angle: I was taking the subway to school before my twelfth birthday, and I don't think my parents would have noticed if I wandered around midtown Manhattan for a bit before getting on the train home. (When I was in seventh grade my school was in a temporary location a couple of blocks from Grand Central.) I don't remember whether I did wander a bit at that age, but the street grid makes it hard to get lost.
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Date: 2025-03-13 08:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-03-13 06:43 pm (UTC)Rick Santorum, jeezus stone the crows, that's hilarious.
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Date: 2025-03-13 08:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-03-13 06:46 pm (UTC)I was going to speculate that maybe she’d turned twelve a couple of days earlier, so the heavenly bureaucracy cut her off?
Also despite not being religious, an 11-year-old gave her french fries to a homeless kid and didn’t get into Heaven, which is double-fucked.
But very accurate, I gather, to the book series’ theology.
People just went straight to spray painting “We have a gun” on their garage doors in 24 hours, huh?
I feel like the most unlikely part of that is that they used the singular "gun." C’mon, it’s the Apocalypse, feel free to bluff!
alien invasion (which to me would be the most reasonable theory, but for some reason people always discount the possibility in Left Behind)
I recall a YA SF novel I read as a kid, interesting in some ways, which lost me towards the end when the characters, after the main plot is over, speculate about Who Could Have Been Behind the Mysterious Events and discount "aliens" because nobody involved had any ray-guns, even though they did have incredibly-lifelike-android technology. Twelve-ish me was like "I don't think aliens are *legally required* to carry rayguns."
Have you ever come across a short graphic novel called Therefore Repent? It’s about (rot-13 for spoiler) na nccnerag Encgher gung gheaf bhg gb npghnyyl or na nyvra vainfvba
ETA--I was promised there would be four horses, plus Hades presumably on foot after Death on the pale horse. WTF, producers?
I figured they were ripping off the Tri-Star logo.
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Date: 2025-03-13 08:27 pm (UTC)It's very stereotypical to assume that aliens carry rayguns. Maybe some aliens are pacifists!
Therefore Repent! I remember being all over that when it came out. I had a lovely interaction with Jim Munroe a few weeks ago after not having thought about him for years (he's still cool, of course).
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Date: 2025-03-13 08:12 pm (UTC)I realize this recommendation nerfs the entire point of watching a terrible movie, but have you seen Clément Cogitore's Ni le ciel ni la terre (2015), which played the 'Thon in 2017 under the straight title of Neither Heaven nor Earth and now seems to have been distributed as The Wakhan Front? It has to do with disappearances and one of the things I liked about it was its characters' willingness to spitball, without the meta bending too far back on itself, all sorts of sfnal/spiritual explanations for the weirdness that is going down whether they actually credit them or not, because when faced with the inexplicable that's what real people do. (Also reasonably freak out.)
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Date: 2025-03-13 08:29 pm (UTC)Now I'm thinking of this zombie movie I saw where the dead come back, but rather than eat brains, they just repeat the things they did in life over and over again, and there's some great discussions about what this means and what to do with them and how to relate to them. I don't remember what it was called but I remember it was very haunting.
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Date: 2025-03-13 08:40 pm (UTC)I'll see if I can track it down; it sounds great.
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Date: 2025-03-13 08:46 pm (UTC)I would like some Bad Boy Charm™
Date: 2025-03-14 09:10 am (UTC)Anyway, this is hilariously fun.
Also hilarious, Rick Santorum is on top of Jeff Sheets. Which I feel is the kind of special bedding you might need.
(Also, Bannon and Munuchin were film producers too. LiEberal Hollywood!)
Re: I would like some Bad Boy Charm™
Date: 2025-03-14 10:53 am (UTC)All of these guys wanna be Leni Riefenstahl but no one bothers watching liberal Hollywood films or art films or reading any books, so their films all suck. This is interesting in that someone involved did watch another movie and tried to copy it, which is why it's better than the other ones.
Re: I would like some Bad Boy Charm™
Date: 2025-03-14 11:38 am (UTC)Money guys are money guys.
Because I am watching Only Murders S3 I now have *Left Behind: Kids!* with jazz hands and as a musical.
Re: I would like some Bad Boy Charm™
Date: 2025-03-14 11:55 pm (UTC)Re: I would like some Bad Boy Charm™
Date: 2025-03-15 06:39 am (UTC)So it was probably Atlas Shrugged.