GracefulFlavor

Quickly cutting to the chase: this movie is evangelical Christian fundamentalist propaganda masquerading as sci-fi. At the end of it, when half the theater was groaning at the impossibly stupid ending, I expected hardcore fundies to start handing out pamphlets about hell and salvation. If you watch the trailer for this film, you’ll think this is a tidy numerology/armageddon/slightly paranormal sci-fi thriller. You’d expect something squarely out of the M. Night Shyamalan playbook. But, no.

Spoilers follow, so if you’re planning to see this movie, stop here. The single star I give this is for some respectable effects during disaster scenes. And that’s it.

The movie is actually reasonably entertaining until about 2/3 of the way through, where its Pentecostal underpinnings wake up and trash the entire joint. Nicholas Cage plays an MIT astrophysicist who is impossibly dopey both as a scientist and a single dad (in one of his graduate level astrophysics classes — at MIT, remember — he challenges his students with stumpers like “How hot is the sun?” and “What is the sun made of?”). Further coloring the image of the foolish scientist, Cage’s house looks right out of Fight Club and you have to wonder what an MIT prof is doing in such squalor. Oh, right: he’s depressed, drinking his money away every night after he puts his detached, creepy son to bed. Cage’s character is socially retarded, aloof and friendless, awash in his decidedly unspiritual world.

Contrast that with Cage’s dad’s character, a Pentecostal preacher who lives in what appears to be a stately Southern plantation house, complete with abundant sunshine flowing through grand windows. The dad’s character is dressed impeccably and is always within earshot of his wife, dressed equally well but likely lobotomized, as she sits on the couch and stares out the window, as if awaiting something grand. The father’s deep booming voice hints at a man of conviction, whereas Cage’s scattered, afflicted character seems utterly rootless.

The main plot device is page of numbers that details major human disasters, along with bodycount and geocoordinates. Cage’s character discovers, through cliché smart-guy-working-late-at-night-on-a-computer scenes, that the word will be ending, um, tomorrow. Oh, and his kid hears whispers in his head, but seems utterly unfazed by them. Oh, and then a bunch of Aryan looking guys keep showing up on the edge of the forest outside of Cage’s dilapidated house, and they’re creepy at first but eventually just come across as a bunch of Billy Idol look-alikes with black eyes.

When Cage’s character realizes the world will be ending, he rushes back to his MIT office where he discovers that one of his own calculations about a terrible solar flare in another galaxy is — WHOOPS! Carry the one! — really going to happen to us. Stupid scientist. Math sucks.

From there, the movie turns into an unauthorized version of Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind series. Ultimately, Cage winds up in a forest clearing with his son and the daughter of another woman, and as the solar flare is beginning to ravage Earth, a spaceship appears and lands. The Billy Idol rejects suddenly turn into blue, glowing aliens, replete with cytoplasmic, ethereal wings. Cage and his son go to board the ship, but are stopped because “only those who heed the call” can be allowed to board. Cage has a stilted, tearful goodbye with his son, and then he lies on the forest floor, crying, as his son and the little girl board the ship and ascend into the heavens.

In the final scenes, we see the Earth being destroyed by solar fire while the children, up in heaven, are dressed in wedding-white linens and running through a field of amber grains, giggling like they’ve been huffing nitrous. They run towards a giant, shimmering, golden tree — the tree of life — in some of the most shameless fundamental religious imagery seen anywhere. Cage goes and reunites with his dad, who, as the world is ending, says, “This isn’t the end, son. It’s the beginning.” Cage, the dumb man of science, suddenly realizes his spiritual self and says, “I know.” Having had religion soundly trounce science, the world ends and everyone burns. But don’t worry, a gaggle of all-white children are up in space eating from a giant tree and they will repopulate the world when all the jerks are dead, this time without all that silly math and science stuff. The end.

I am not kidding.

If you are a rational person, the more you think about this movie after having seen it, the angrier you get. The manipulation and imagery are so purposeful, so in-your-face, that you can’t help but resent it. The numerology basis of the film could be interesting, but infused with hardcore fundamentalist quackery, quickly becomes a mockery of reason.