DVD Review: Left Behind

By Liam Freeman

Confusion, awkward acting and Nicolas Cage all add up to nothing much in Left Behind, a film which will leave you wondering “what in the world did I just watch?”

Released in some unfortunate parts of the world late last year, it has received a lot of bad attention and rightfully so – I’d personally never heard of the film before viewing the disc and so had no idea as to what to expect from it – and I was thoroughly surprised.

I was left with a lot of questions and not enough answers, and that’s always a problem when you watch a film – if you know there’s going to be another film (say like the Hobbit trilogy), then you know you’ll get another chance for answers but a film like this isn’t likely to get a second shot at the big time even if it ends with “it’s only just beginning”.

Now this is technically a disaster film but the “disaster” doesn’t actually happen for a good long time, not only does it take it’s time it is also portrayed in an almost laughable way with children and adults literally disappearing into thin air and leaving nothing but their clothes behind.

I know that some films like to also hide a lot of undertones and subtlety with topics but the religious tones are literally thrown in your face from the start and continue to do so until the very end with characters making sure to scream it to one another every now and again that some believe and some don’t.

I know it’s not exactly an original idea but I have to praise it on doing its best to try and cover a very confusing subject, it’s just that the director (Vic Armstrong) seems to have done it in such a confusing manner I’m unsure as to what even entirely happened.

With the addition of casual racism thrown into the works it does add up to be an extremely awkward film that leaves you uneasy just watching it with several scenes on the plane suggesting that a man is bad because of his religious views, or that he might be a terrorist which is not a good thing when trying to talk about religion.

Overall Left Behind is a bit of a mess – it tries to do something different and falls flat on its face – a film that’s bad but not in a good way.