Its best attribute is the inclusion of doubt, an aspect the series will increasingly jettison as it continues.Ĭameron’s Buck Williams is a hot-shot, agnostic reporter, introduced outside a Jerusalem that looks suspiciously like a rock quarry outside of Ontario ( because that’s exactly what it is). Left Behind: The Movie (not to be confused with Left Behind: The Book, Left Behind: The Musical, or Left Behind: 35 Meatless Recipes For A Post-Rapture Picnic) sets the stage for the original, Cameron-heavy trilogy. What does it matter if we think we know? In the end, there’s no denying the truth,” Kirk Cameron’s first foray into adapting the blockbuster Left Behind novels is the best of the bunch. Left Behind: The Movieĭespite its direct-to-video aesthetic, the presence of characters hilariously named “Buck Williams” and “Rayford Steele”, and a voiceover that includes the line “How do you describe both the beginning and an end? We should have known better, but we didn’t.

(Note: This may not be the actual structure of the Scriptures.) 1.

Here are the Left Behind films, ranked, just like the moral precepts contained in the Scriptures, from Hot to Not. As penance, I watched them and will now, appropriately, pass judgement.

This is, as Kirk Cameron would no doubt assure me, bearing false witness. In the Left Behind films, first Kirk Cameron and then others tried to infuse their scolding narratives with a sense of epic grandeur and existential angst, to varying degrees of success.ĭespite my limited familiarity with the films, I’ve made just as much fun of these films as anyone. But the field isn’t completely identical, even if it might look so from the outside: the Left Behind franchise in and of itself demonstrates that there are a number of forms these appeals can take.įor a whole host of reasons, overtly religious entreaties and polemics don’t often make for engaging films, unless you have arrived at the theater simply to cheer for your team, in a contest with no opponent. This is at least in part because it’s generally been the case. It’s exceedingly easy to dismiss evangelical cinema as an amateurish, maudlin, pandering, and cynical exercise in preaching to the converted.

Left behind series in order