(Possible spoilers). Borrowing a line from Roger Ebert, I hated, hated, hated this movie. I have seen over 2000 movies in my life and I think I may rank this one dead last. No matter what category you choose, this movie is an inferior product.

The acting is below the quality of most TV dramas. Never once did I believe in the characters as people rather than as actors being put through their paces. There is one scene where a young woman hugs her father with the same emotion as if she were hugging a telephone pole. The acting is so wooden that one is inclined to avert his eyes.

The special effects were primitive, even by 1950 standards. I was hoping to be entertained by the science fiction aspects of this movie, but being disappointed understates my reaction. The main event of the story is the rapture - where all the "good" people are simultaneously taken to heaven by Jesus. In fact the good people do disappear about a quarter of the way into the film, but not once do we get to see an actual disappearance. We just see clothes left behind. I always thought the idea was that people's souls ascended to heaven while the body was left behind. But in this movie it appears that Jesus wants naked bodies in heaven. Big opportunities were missed by not allowing us to see the immediate effects of people being yanked off the planet - cars crashing, planes going down, dishes clattering to the floor, surgeries stopped in mid-stream, nuclear power plants going unmanned, dogs unleashed on their walks, and so forth. We see none of this actually happening. At best we get shots of the aftermath, like a multi-car accident, or passengers in a plane trying to figure out what happened. All the interesting stuff is left out and all we see is some obviously staged after effect shots. The only reasons I can think of for this are either a lack of imagination or a limited budget.

The music is unremarkable - some generic rock music (a transparent attempt to appeal to a younger audience) and a few swelling crescendos to accompany the "experiencing the awe of God" scenes.

But the worst thing about this movie is the horrendous screenplay. The script could have been written in a way to engage us in honest thought as to what constitutes a good life - the ultimate moral question. But, judging from the people who are taken in the rapture in this movie, it seems that the only good people are the devout Christians and children. This does not seem to me to be realistic. For one thing, based on my recollections of childhood, I recall an amazing number of acts of undisguised meanness. Should all children be given a free pass to heaven? And most of the people left behind seemed like pretty decent sorts to me - I would liked to have had more information as to just why they were left behind. We are given no first-hand knowledge of the people who were taken, so it is hard to compare their qualifications for being taken with those who are left behind. And one has to question the beneficence of a God who would, through an act of supposed kindness, cause such chaos and grief on earth - a loving mother ripped from her family, children taken, planes crashing, cars crashing, communication broken down, and so forth.

The ultimate message seems to be: turn to the Bible, family, and God. Is this message something we have never heard before? It is hard to know who this movie is aimed at. I guess for Christians the sermon delivered here is an affirmation of their faith, but for non-Christians this is a sermon they have endured ad nauseam.

Give your money to your favorite charity, don't give it in support of such worthless nonsense as "Left Behind."

If this commentary can save one person from seeing this movie, then the time I have spent writing it will not have been spent in vain.

Let me say that I'm not talking about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in the title. I'm talking about four people, Kirk Cameron, Brad Johnson, Clarence Gilyard, and Janaya Stephens who apparently out of all the people left on earth after the Rapture has occurred, have figured out who the anti-Christ is and what his intentions are.

There's a whole lot of theological debate out there as to whether the Rapture will even occur. But what that's supposed to be is at a given point all the true believing Christians and most of the children on this planet will all of a sudden vanish. What's happened is that God's taken them into heaven so they will avoid the coming events of the very last days on the planet.

For some reason these four have been Left Behind, but they've figured out what's going on. And the anti-Christ is none other than the Secretary-General of the United Nations. A guy named Karpathy who has a mittel-Europa accent popular in Hollywood films in the Thirties. The actor who plays him, Gordon Currie, does the best job in the film.

Brad Johnson and Janaya Stephens are father and daughter. His wife and son are among the raptured. Daughter is a rebellious college kid and Brad's been having an affair with stewardess Chelsea Noble. Brad's a pilot and he's heroic in a Jack Armstrong kind of way. Why a believing pastor like Clarence Gilyard's been left behind is a mystery to me, it surely isn't explained in the film. And Kirk Cameron just does not cut it as a cynical investigative reporter. Maybe I'm unfair, but I still see him as the kid from Growing Pains.

There's a problem with these kind of films as I see it besides the obvious one of that this is only one interpretation of what the last days will be like. Internationalism of any kind has always been an enemy to fundamentalism. The North American continent has NAFTA the European nations bind closer together from the Common Market up to the creation of the Euro Dollar, things like that are seen as evil.

Maybe I don't get it, but I always think that the more people talk the less likely they will fight. That's a good thing in my book. But if you think your belief system is the only true one in the world, you resist all forms of dialog. That's the logic behind this film and it's also the logic Al Queda operates with for their faith.

I've always thought that the Bible story that is the most insidious is the Tower of Babel. All people speaking a common language, working on a common goal even if it is to build a gigantic stratospheric tower. So God messes up languages to keep mankind forever apart. And as they come together, evil is supposed to happen.

I think the planet as a whole as more to fear from those left out as opposed to those left behind.

There is a worldwide food crisis. GNN TV reporter Buck Williams (Kirk Cameron) interviews scientist Chaim Rosenzweig in Israel about a surprising Eden-like harvest. Without warning, the country is attacked by an overwhelming enemy air force. The planes are destroyed by an invisible force. Rayford Steele leaves his family behind in Chicago to fly a plane from New York City to London on short notice. He's having an affair with flight attendant Hattie Durham. Back in NYC, Buck is contacted by his source Dirk Burton who warns him about a coming global currency, a crisis and a conspiracy by humanitarians Stonagal and Cothran. Buck takes the flight where people starts disappearing leaving behind their clothing.

This starts off badly with some pretty awful CGI. Not only does it look cheap. It looks really silly. Other problems continue throughout the movie. The writing, the acting and everything else are all pretty bad. People act in unrealistic ways. It is so unnatural that it becomes incredibly awkward. Obviously there is a apocalyptic conspiracy that is central to some believers. I try not to judge it unless it's done poorly. This is done very poorly with very simplistic unreal world politics. This is a movie that relies on the words faith-based. One must have faith to believe in the logic of this movie. There is more unreality here than the most ridiculous zombie TV show.