An Honest Review
Preface: I am not religious. I went through an atheist phase as a teenager but since have just kind of ignored spirituality altogether. I say I'm a lazy Buddhist because I do believe in the conservation of energy and reincarnation but that's about it. So this film was not made for me. If you want to check my posting history you'll see I'm a horror movie fan specializing in Splattergore films.
I watched the Nicolas Cage Left Behind to try to mock how bad it was and only felt myself bored. Their ideas of the rapture were... kind of limited. Just having people turn into clothes? Focusing the rest of the movie on just Cage's plane and his daughter? The entire world of the movie seemed so limiting that, by the end, I just didn't care.
The Remaining is not a future horror classic. But, for what it sets out to do, I think it does so pretty well.
First off: I didn't know the Rapture was so much like a Cloverfield monster. The shaky cam, the trumpets sounding like roars, the Clover-fleas that apparently learned how to fly now...
I thought the acting was solid. I started watching the movie for Alexa VegaPena as I am a huge fan of hers since Repo The Genetic Opera. I thought her character, specifically in one scene, brought more emotion to those left behind than all the characters in Cage's movie did. Having her break down screaming that she did everything right and yet she's still there... I sensed that feeling of betrayal that didn't permeate the other film.
Was the movie preachy? It's hard to say. I'm looking at this from an outsider's point of view. What I saw was anyone accepting god after the Rapture dying a horribly death. It didn't really seem like a righteous end to one's life to me.
I see there are already claims that this movie is just Christian Propaganda but I just don't see it. To me it seemed like the movie Legion mixed with Cloverfield done in a city instead of in a tiny diner out in the desert.
The movie did the right thing, though, by having those who were raptured leave their bodies behind. Just being turned into clothes hurt Left Behind so much. But seeing a scene like a short order cook, raptured, with his now dead corpse frying on the grill? Beautiful.
For this movie to convert anyone to any religious belief, I would have to say their own beliefs would have been pretty shaky to begin with.
Even if you don't believe in God or if you think the Bible is fiction, that fiction can still inspire works of fiction in its own right. That's what I think is the case here.
Is the Remaining a great movie? No. It does feature a few cool scenes in it and it did seem to actually show the destruction of what a theoretical Rapture would look like exponentially better than left behind on what I'm sure was a shoe string budget. I would say the overall preachy scenes take up less than 5 minutes of the overall movie, so those who hate that kind of thing won't be having too much of an eye rolling work out.
Out of 5 stars, I'd give it a 3. If it ended with some kind of twist (I expected the Goth-y girl to reveal herself as the devil or something like that) instead of with a whimper, I might go higher. I don't regret the time I gave the movie like I did after watching Left Behind.
Is that faint praise? Then I guess I'm following in the footsteps of this movie's apparently attempts to preach God.