This work is a disaster film with a difference: masses of people struck by a mysterious "sudden death" syndrome while others are left living to face the apocalypse predicted by the Book of Revelations. During this ordeal, a group of young friends - one of them about to be wed - are forced to survive a nightmarish situation while examining their feelings for each other, in a church, then a hospital, then an emergency shelter. Most of them don't survive, and the ending, as vast Biblical loci descend from the sky toward the emergency camp, is ambiguous as to who will survive.
This film is fairly well-done; it's special effects effective, the chaos well-conveyed via hand-held camera. The characters were not original but believable.
What made me queasy was the the apocalypse itself. Horror is visited upon people who aren't actually sinners, but simply lax in their beliefs (one character, a doubting pastor, says those who were initially struck dead were mankind's purest). This apocalypse, it seems, pushes those doubting or indifferent to faith toward belief, a "white light" representing God. But they were good people whatever and hardly responsible for blasphemy or evil. The film doesn't show bad or dubious people being punished; thus, the punishment doesn't fit the "crime." Of course, it's realistic even in this film's context to remind one it's always the little people who suffer the worst.
Review of The Remaining
