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(REVIEW) “Left Behind: Rise of the Antichrist,” the new movie about the end of the world, has it all: boring action sequences, jokes about the COVID-19 vaccine, altar calls, a postscript message from former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, a joke about former President Barack Obama being the Antichrist, a painfully clunky script and even a Romanian politician who has a bland American accent. 

It’s a movie concerned with the end of days that’s more interested in current issues facing conservative Christians: “misinformation” from the left, changing technology and liberal authority figures. It’s a vessel for a very specific type of Christian to play make-believe about the righteous persecution they believe they’re facing for being political conservatives, and it’s horrible. 

“Rise of the Antichrist” is just the latest in a long line of adaptations, following the original 16-book series, four movies, an audio drama and four PC video games in the Left Behind franchise. 

This movie is billed as a sequel to the 2014 movie starring Nicholas Cage, but that’s an unnecessary connection. It involves the same characters as the 2014 movie and original novels, and the plot is a direct continuation, but nothing else is the same. 

The cast is entirely different, and the characters may as well be different too; their characterization is done so poorly they’re practically unrecognizable.

That doesn’t matter, though, because a narrator — Pastor Bruce Barnes, introduced near the midpoint of the movie — spoon-feeds every plot point, connection to the 2014 movie and even how characters are feeling to the audience at regular intervals, as if they’re not smart enough to understand a movie on their own. 

Plus, the movies couldn’t be more different in tone. 

“Left Behind” is almost entirely devoid of religious substance, more concerned with explosions than exploring the spiritual and psychological ramifications of being left behind. Conversely, “Rise of the Antichrist” is an overbearing allegory, a springboard for the included Bible study discussion guide and three-part sermon series included on the movie’s website.

The movie begins after the rapture — called “the vanishings” — has already taken place, and the tribulation has begun. The world is searching for answers, but no one outside the fringes of society is willing to believe these events are connected to the Bible. 

News media outlets are pushing false narratives on purpose, helping world leaders fake a second round of vanishings. In the meantime, leaders at the United Nations are advocating for one world government and introducing a new form of electronic payment everyone will soon be forced to use. 

Romanian president Nicolae Carpathia is primed to take on this mantle of world leadership, but his plan is more sinister than anyone realizes. 

This all happens as the main group of characters find their way to God and fight against evil forces to discover and share the truth. Pilot Raymond Steele and his daughter Chloe were left behind by Raymond’s wife and son, and they both accept Christianity. Chloe’s boyfriend, famous journalist Buck Williams, is being forced to spread misinformation on his news segment; he goes against the FBI, CIA and world governments to uncover the truth and becomes a believer along the way, too. 

After Raymond becomes a Christian, he turns to the Bible for the first time and begins searching for information about the Bible on the internet. For everything, he gets “no result.” Videos have been removed for speech violations. Even the Bible app has been censored. Eventually, Raymond is told his account has been suspended for making too many inappropriate searches. 

Religion has been politicized past the point of no return, and this scene is one laughable example. 

A very specific theology

“Left Behind” adaptations will always be somehow relevant because the original novels by Tim Lahaye and Jerry B. Jenkins were bestsellers even beyond evangelical Christian circles — and the novels were relevant in the first place because they were published in the late 1990s, as fears of the year 2000 were coming to a head. 

The biblical Armageddon and the Y2K scare had little in common, but books about any kind of apocalypse at all were a logical outlet for people already terrified of the end of the world.

“Rise of the Antichrist” made the fears present alongside the Y2K scare relevant to a modern audience. Frankly, it’s the only way the movie makes sense at all. 

It articulates the things that American evangelicals are most terrified of, but it can’t articulate them in a way that gives them any real credibility. 

It’s also not even close to representing the beliefs of all Christians. In fact, the very specific theology behind “Rise of the Antichrist” and all of the “Left Behind” franchise is closely connected to some branches of Pentecostal and evangelical Protestant Christianity that believe in thriller eschatology, emphasizing dramatic events about the end times in the general purview of the “Left Behind” series. Few other Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox Christian denominations hold such eschatology. . 

At heart, it’s a pretribulation, premillennial, dispensationalist theology, which means the following things:

• The rapture, the event in which all Christians are called to heaven, happens before the seven-year tribulation.

• The 1,000-year reign of Jesus described in Revelation 20:1-6 will play out to the letter as it’s written, and that 1,000-year reign hasn’t started yet.

• Israel and Christians — both described in the Bible as God’s people — are two separate groups. Dispensationalist theology believes that Christians will be brought to heaven during the rapture, but Israel won’t; however, other rewards and restoration will be brought to Israel. 

In short, it’s a theology that’s dependent on a literal reading of one of the Bible’s most symbolic, metaphorical books. 

There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, just as there’s nothing inherently wrong with an attempt to make sense of the parts of the Bible that have always puzzled and divided Christians. There’s also nothing wrong with fictionalized interpretations of Bible stories and themes, whether they be thrillers or dramas or comedies or harbingers of the coming apocalypse. 

It’s just abundantly clear that “Left Behind” isn’t valued by the literary world as a piece of fiction. It’s valued as dramatized prophecy. And some of that drama might lend itself to a film treatment, although this film treatment won’t be receiving critical acclaim or winning any Academy Awards.

“The way to make prophecy clear to people is to put it in fiction,” said Jerry B. Jenkins, a co-writer of the novels. 

Of course, the makers and supporters of “Rise of the Antichrist” don’t care to explore varying biblical interpretations.

After a scene that plays out like a straw-man debate between Christian and atheist, Chloe goes to dig up her grandmother’s grave.

Why? Because she read the passage from 1 Thessalonians 4 that says during the rapture, “the dead in Christ will rise first.” She digs up the grave for hours into the night, and upon opening the casket finds her grandmother’s body is gone. That’s the proof that Chloe needs to become a Christian, which is great for her. But it hinges the movie and all belief in God on this very specific understanding. 

That isn’t the problem entirely. Literalism is the chosen interpretation for the story, which isn’t better or worse than any other interpretation. The problem is that the creators likely wouldn’t agree with that statement. 

When characters say repeatedly that God is the only way to find the truth, it’s clear that they mean they trust their own interpretation of God and decry everything else as evil misinformation. They’re just as closed off to any other interpretation as the people they claim to want to save.

Proof of that is in the additional resources provided with the movie. The Bible study discussion guide asks groups to discuss “Why do you think the media would knowingly be misleading?” The sermon encourages pastors to share “three quotes from ‘Left Behind’ that should terrify you.”

Armageddon is scary enough, but the real horror is groups of people with no understanding of the news media industry talking about its challenges — and, most likely, why all news outlets and journalists are evil, greedy liars — with little knowledge of how the news media actually works. 

There aren’t just three terrifying quotes from “Left Behind: Rise of the Antichrist.” It’s terrifying that people made this film and that some audiences will take this thinly constructed fiction as truth.

”Left Behind: Rise of the Antichrist” is playing in select theaters until Feb. 8.

Jillian Cheney is a contributing culture writer for Religion Unplugged. She also writes on American Protestantism and evangelical Christianity and was Religion Unplugged’s 2020-21 Poynter-Koch fellow. You can find her on Twitter @_jilliancheney.