Though in apparent lose continuity with the Nic Cage 'Left Behind' reboot from 2014, 'Left Behind: Rise of the Antichrist' contains no carryover performances. Kevin Sobro directs and takes over the Rayford Steele role from Cage, he also has considerably less money to work with (not that 2014's 'Left Behind' had a huge budget), this movie looks sometimes embarrassingly cheap.
Greg Perrow takes over the "Buck" Williams role from Chad Micheal Murray (they couldn't even get Chad Micheal Murray back), Sarah Fisher plays Steele's daughter. Corbin Bernsen plays a Roger Ailes-lite cable news head, Neal McDonough does some steely eyed scene chewing as a social media billionaire and the films red herring potential Antichrist, if it wasn't already obvious that Baily Chase's Romanian Nicoli Carpathia was destined for that role. Film also features two of Sobros immediate family members in supporting parts.
The original Tim LeHaye/ Jerry B. Jenkins 'Left Behind' novels rose from a very 1990's Evangelical context, this film updates things and includes refrences to many of the major bugaboo's of contempory right-wing American evangelicalism; including "fake news", Barack Obama, Covid-19, and an attitude of both general and deeprooted skeptism of all institutions that aren't hard line Evangelical Christian.
Though obviously overt in its religious messaging 2014's 'Left Behind' was still rooted in the disaster movie tradition and consequently kind of fun, while 'Rise of the Antichrist' on the other hand is rooted in the tradition of arguing with people on Facebook. This is an extremly talkie movie, one loaded with buzz words and concepts well (and sometimes vocally) received by the largely older and white audiance I saw this with in a mostly full (if small) theater.
All three lead characters get saved over the course of the film and you get a chance to be as well, between the end of the (what could loosely be called) action of the film and the end credits come not one but two mini sermons. The first of these is by Sorbo, now out of character "playing" himself, and the second from former Arkansa governer Mike Huckabee, can't say I've seen anything quite like this in a theater before. While the film is "religious" it is even more so poltical, less a tool of outreach then a rally for the faithful. Talkie, stilted, cheap looking, kind of boaring and containing no surprises apart from Huckabee, this is a bad movie. It is still watchable though and genuinely interesting as an artifact of American Evangelicalism in the afterwash of the Covid era. *1/2
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