Today’s quick review: Left Behind. Captain Ray Steele (Nicolas Cage) is flying to London to get away from his religious wife when something inexplicable happens: his copilot and half his passengers disappear without a trace. With the help of a journalist (Chad Michael Murray) and a stewardess (Nicky Whelan), Ray must find a way to land the plane safely. Meanwhile, his daughter Chloe (Cassi Thomson) tries to cope with the disappearance of her family.
Left Behind is a religious thriller about the Rapture. The premise is simple: all at once, millions of people around the world vanish into thin air, leaving the rest of humanity to deal with the chaos. Left Behind leans heavily into its religious themes: almost all of the drama involves characters coming to grips with Christian morality. Unfortunately, the thriller side of the story is given short shrift, making it a less than engaging watch.
The core issue with Left Behind is that there’s nowhere for its premise to go. The movie drags its feet getting to the Rapture, then spends nearly an hour waiting for its characters to figure out what happened. There’s no mystery for the audience, only a half-decent look at the aftermath of a global disappearance and a tacked-on crisis about Ray landing the plane. The result is a slow, static movie that spends most of its time on moral speculation.
These heavy moral themes could have been the basis for a solid drama, but Left Behind lacks the subtlety to pull it off. The characters are hard to care about, one-note caricatures whose purpose is to illustrate the movie’s moral points. There is some decent drama that crops up incidentally, such as Ray trying to keep his terrified passengers calm. But the movie quickly goes back to the heavy-handed character arcs it originally had in mind.
Left Behind earns a few points for taking a sensitive premise and playing it as earnestly as it can. But the movie doesn’t have the finesse needed to spin its premise into a compelling story. Those who are interested in the subject matter for its own sake may get some value out of seeing it portrayed as part of a full story, but those hoping for either a nuanced moral tale or a thrilling disaster movie will be disappointed.
For an eerier disaster movie starring Nicolas Cage, try Knowing. For a sci-fi thriller that tries for a similar mystery with similar results, try The Happening. For a goofier take on an airplane disaster, try Snakees on a Plane or Airplane!.
3.1 out of 10 on IMDB. I give it a 4.5 for an original premise with weak execution.