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Adam A. Donaldson’s 10 Worst Films Of 2014

Not only in this the time of year where we look back and remember with fondness the best that cinema had to offer, but it’s that time of the year when we also look back with dread to recall the worst. Just as every year has its share of quality flicks, there is an equal and opposite portion of terrible films from 2014 that for one reason or another turned out horribly. It might have been the acting, the directing, the script, the pacing, the special effects, or the source material, but on screen, it all ends up the same: 90 to 120 minutes you’d have much rather spent doing anything else.

Left Behind

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There were a lot of Biblical-themed movies in 2014, from Hollywood mythologizing like Noah and Exodus: Gods and Kings to earnest Christian messaging like God’s Not Dead and Saving Christmas. And then there’s Left Behind. If this at all sounds familiar, it’s because this first volume of a 15-part end of the world Christian book series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins was already made into a movie in 2000 starring TV’s Kirk Cameron and Clarence Gilyard Jr. But since that was apparently not enough star power, and because the series petered out in 2005 with part three, Left Behind: World at War, someone thought this was primed for a reboot. Unfortunately though, they thought wrong.

First of all, someone on set should have woken up Nicolas Cage. Typically, when a movie is this bad, Cage will take things up to 11, or even 12. Remember The Wicker Man, and “Oh no, not the bees, not the bees! Auuuugh! Aglubah my eyes!” That was some prime overacting. Here, Cage’s pilot seems like he took too much Dramamine. A joke about being on autopilot would as be apt if it weren’t so on the nose.

Unfortunately, that leaves it up to also-rans like Chad Michael Murray, Cassi Thomson and Jordin Sparks to carry the load. Lea Thompson, meanwhile, is mercifully Raptured up 30 minutes in, sparring her maximum embarrassment.

The thing is, if you wanted a straightforward, serious, and cheesy-looking movie version of the Left Behind, they already made that 14 years ago. It’s also worth nothing that the super Christ-y message of the film was not lost in translation because that Left Behind star Cameron is, himself, super Christ-y. But this Left Behind is so tepid with the religiousness that the Rapture might as well have taken all the vegans, or all the NCIS fans. Any character of faith in the film is either as self-righteously shrill as Helen Lovejoy or as blissfully naive as Ned Flanders. The only salvation is when the film ends, and as the characters realize that for them armageddon has just begun, you realize that as far as you’re concerned, the nightmare is over.

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