By Eddie King
Staff Writer
As the post-apocalyptic genre has become commonplace in the film industry, “Left Behind” feels like nothing more than Hollywood rushing a popular premise through production to profit off of an unsuspecting public.
The film’s plot is a convoluted mess, containing obvious plot loopholes and character flaws. Paired with a combination of absurd events and awful acting, the film crumbles into catastrophe.
The movie is split between following a pilot, Ray Steele (Nicolas Cage), and his daughter, Chloe (Cassi Thomson), as they attempt to contact one another after millions of civilians simply vanish out of thin air. A majority of the film tracks Steele’s attempt to land a commercial airliner and find Chloe in the wake of the surrounding madness.
The movie begins slowly, with multiple unrelated events and unnecessary characters. The film jumps between random events, from the Steeles’ personal lives to insignificant characters on the plane that have no relationship to the main story. Due to these exorbiant events and characters, it becomes increasingly difficult to recognize the film’s purpose.
Furthermore, the film has numerous, glaring plot holes. Steele cannot land his plane because the street is packed with abandoned cars, yet his daughter Chloe is seen driving through the road that is somehow suddenly empty. This is just one of the many narrative oversights that plague the film, and the abundance of such problems make the story even harder to comprehend.
A further detriment to the film are the underwhelming performances, as the actors’ lack of feeling further the film’s demise. Cage is disappointing, speaking monotonously throughout the film and seeming unrealistically disinterested with the catastrophic events taking place around him.
In the end, “Left Behind” is incredibly overwhelmed with flaws to the point where it becomes unwatchable. Simply, it is a cataclysim in and of itself.
“Left Behind” is rated PG-13 and is now playing in theaters.
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