Post Mortem: The Remaining

Possibly the best comedy I’ve seen in quite some time, The Remaining sells itself as a horror movie about what happens during the end of days. Fair enough, I thought to myself; I’ll give it a shot! Could have some real possibilities, with foul demons and undead that could crawl from vast crevices within the broken earth as God unleashes the four horsemen upon the world, bringing about a fiery wake of death and destruction that would leave nothing but the sickened sinners (like me) to remain on our demon-infested world as the true believers ascend to Heaven, away from the violence.

What I got was a poor Sunday school movie about why you should believe in God.

The entire film, from about minute thirty, hammers over and over that you should believe in God or else when this happens, you’ll be left behind and face these rather pitiful horrors. I mean if this is what we can expect to be the creatures to torture mankind after the Rapture, then God has a fairly weak imagination. The “Fallen” are the creatures that assault one of the main characters in the film, and the assault leaves her with two dislocated arms and a stab wound on the back.

To give you an idea of what a “Fallen” looks like, imagine a smoky face with smoky limbs, and a scorpion stinger mixed in there somewhere. For you see, we never do get to see what a “Fallen” looks like. We see a freeze frame of one, which looks like a howling specter, but we are assured these are the “Fallen” not ghosts.

Alright?

Alright.

Now, the “Fallen” fly with wings that beat like that of charging horses and somehow turn bible paper to charred dust, which they do twice, while whipping about a venom tipped dagger-like tail that causes horrid infections that antibiotics cannot fix. The previously mentioned main character? She dies of this infection. And she was a church going girl who, admittedly, “went to fill the seat,” which means that you have to truly accept Jesus into your life or you’re just a fake Christian. Hell, the leader of a refuge they take is a Pastor that apparently didn’t believe. He even tells on person, after finishing a prayer, admits that “that was the first genuine time I’ve ever prayed.” And this is coming from a Pastor.

Forgive my ignorance, but aren’t these the people that spends years in seminary learning how to convert lost souls and how to counsel the troubled youth within their flock with bible verses? How could this be the first time he has genuinely prayed to God? I mean maybe he lost his faith over the years and has been going through the motions for a while, fine. But he went through seminary without actually accepting Jesus as a genuine act?

Really?

This film, along with its lack of real monsters other than the six seconds of fame the Fallen get and the complete one-dimensional acting on the part of the actors, show perhaps the most boring group of sinners in the world. Should the rapture occur and leave behind all of the heathens and bad people, I would imagine there would be some looting and pillaging, not to mention drinking and raping. And drugs! This is when all the drugs would come out and be used. I mean, who would care? The police and military are trying to set up aid stations for the surprisingly calm survivors of the apocalypse. There are multiple scenes where they are all seen calmly walking in lines, when the Fallen are lurking about.

The story had more holes in it than any other film I’ve seen, and it didn’t even qualify as horror; it was a sad Christian group’s heavy-handed attempt to scare teens looking for a cheap thrill into accepting Jesus. The film was a propaganda piece that was poorly made, had weak dialogue, even weaker acting, and paper thin covers over gaping plot holes, placed at the last second to keep people from noticing them, barring they were observant.

While watching this film, behind me were a group of kids that were thoroughly enjoying the film. Not one to begrudge them, I merely tried to look at it through their youthful lenses: and still all I saw was an insipid piece of flim-flam film that Kirk Cameron probably had a hand in at one point. The fact that he wasn’t in it surprised me.

If you want to see bad religious propaganda, then wait for a Mormon to show up at your door. If you want something even more boring than that, enjoy this film for what its worth. Just note that at the end, when hordes of the Fallen were coming down, they were pouring from the sky, not some abyss that was blasted open by an angels trumpet. If you want to blame someone for the Rapture, blame God. He’s the one doing it all anyway.