You will love The Remaining if you love Biblical eschatological movies, i.e. Christian movies about the rapture and Revelations apocalypse. The Remaining takes a fresh approach to the genre. First, the raptured don’t leave a tidy pile of clothes behind. Second, unlike other Christian movies about the rapture, life isn’t that grand for those people who get saved after the rapture. While many Christian movies treat the apocalypse like a disaster movie, The Remaining treats it like a horror movie, which I loved. The Remaining deals with some less popular features of Revelations-such as the locusts in Revelation 9. The treatment of these creatures could lead to an interesting sequel and could explain rationally why people would do everything to abandon God, implement the mark of the Beast and make the anti-Christ popular if there was proof that the Bible was real. The Remaining is not a found footage genre movie, but it uses elements of the found footage genre to create narrative momentum. Think Cloverfield meets the rapture. John Pyper-Ferguson was delightful as a left behind pastor and should not be confused with Billy Campbell of The 4400 though they look similar and have a similar manner. Obviously The Remaining is inspired by the Bible, but not Biblically accurate per se, but it certainly was fun to watch.

SPOILERS

My main problem with The Remaining is what happened to Rachel, the nurse in the church. Throughout the movie, she is consistently willing to help people until it endangers her life then she’ll leave you to fend for yourself. So I don’t buy that when things got crazy in the church, the almost dead Skylar makes it to the cellar and not Rachel, who was tending to Skylar’s wounds throughout most of the movie.