Rapture film to debut in Houston theaters
Friday night, the Rapture starts in Houston. No, not the actual apocalypse but a movie premiere. And no, not of the Kirk Cameron variety.
Instead of a new installment of the infamous “Left Behind” series from the past decade, “Final: The Rapture” is opening in Houston — before anywhere else in the U.S. — to audiences intrigued by what the Christian Post called “the scariest Christian movie of the decade.”
The movie will be shown at the Edwards Marq’E Stadium 23 and Premiere Renaissance 15 at Greenspoint Mall.
Directed by Tim Chey, the film took six months to make, with scenes shot in Tokyo; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Tijuana, Mexico; Los Angeles; Singapore; and New York for the story of four people whose lives change forever when the Rapture — the belief that Christ’s faithful followers will be taken bodily into heaven before the tribulation period — strikes.
The film’s backers hope it will prove gripping to moviegoers looking for a film worth watching in a genre that typically appeals to a niche audience.
“We’re in the end times,” said Chey, veteran director of nine films, including “The Genius Club.” “I wanted to make a very clinical, realistic film on the coming Rapture.” So, Chey said, they spent nearly $10 million to produce “a very sobering look at what will happen
in the next great event of mankind: Christ returning.”
Although apocalyptic TVshows such as AMC’s “The Walking Dead” or NBC’s “Revolution” are successful — and 2013 has featured a plethora of doomsday features from the serious “Oblivion” sci-fi film to the comedic “This is the End” — Christian films about the end times have not done well historically. The “Left Behind” series’ first film was the only one that made it to the big screen, and it brought in only $2 million.
Chey and movie promoters met personally with Houston clergy, including pastor Joel Osteen of Lakewood Church.
Kym See, a producer at River Rain Productions, which is behind the movie, said that most coming to Friday’s premiere will be from local churches.
Beyond the Houston market, the movie may or may not find widespread traction. According to a Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life report, just 41 percent of Americans believe Jesus’ return is imminent. Slightly more (46 percent) believe he will not return before 2050. Nearly two-thirds of evangelical pastors (61 percent) believe in the Rapture, and half (52 percent) say it will happen in their lifetime.
Even so, Christians in the U.S. are not a unified bloc when it comes to views on the end times. “There are various ways that Christians talk about the end times,” said Frederick L. Ware, an associate professor of theology at Howard University’s School of Divinity.
In fact, Ware said, premillennialism — the belief that includes the Rapture event and says Jesus will return before the beginning of the millennium and be the impetus for the final battle between good and evil — is not even the predominate view of world Christianity. Instead, Ware posited that amillennialism — that we are already living in the “end times” but that Jesus will not have a dramatic return involving tribulation, or an epic battle between good and evil — is the view held by the majority of the world’s Christians.
Still, reactions from early screenings in Los Angeles were jarring. One viewer said that when he heard a water bottle drop in the back of the theater, he “thought the Rapture was coming right then.”
Chey said he made the film “to scare the living daylights out of adult non-believers.”