The Rapture

It's hard to remember when a more loopy movie than "The Rapture" last came along.

Get this: Mimi Rogers plays a Los Angeles woman who gets away from her humdrum day job as a telephone information operator by spending her nights with her boyfriend. Together they prowl bars and airports looking for other couples who are game for various combinations of sex (shown in R-rated detail).

But then something happens. Rogers suddenly gets religion and becomes a born-again fanatic. And it comes in a most unusual way.

First she overhears colleagues talking about the dreams they have, in which they see "the pearl." And about the boy who preaches about Armageddon. Then a pair of goofy missionaries knock on her door and give her some more vague information — and a pocket Bible.

But her actual conversion comes in force one night when she wakes up, kicks a lover out of bed, changes the sheets and says she has to start over. She then joins a Christian cult — the one led by the young boy she had heard about, a boy who has visions. And later she persuades her lover to join with her.

Six years later, they have a little girl and are active in the cult, which has grown from a small circle of believers to a church-full congregation.

But when tragedy strikes and Rogers is left alone, she has a vision that tells her to go into the desert and await the Second Coming. The church members decline to go, but encourage her to do what she feels she must. So, Rogers and her daughter go alone — fasting for days in a state park, expecting each morning to be taken up, to receive "The Rapture."

All of this is pretty weird, but it has nothing on the film's final quarter, when the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse appear, earthquakes cause buildings to shake and a televised football game is interrupted as Gabriel's horn sounds its final warnings.

In the end, all Rogers has to do is say she loves Jesus and she will be saved. Sounds pretty easy. But it's not. She's been through a lot.

And so has the audience.

In part an exercise in soft-core sex, in part a superficial examination of modern Christianity and in part a literal adaptation of events Christians believe will precede the Second Coming, "The Rapture" is a muddled, pretentious mess that will doubtless offend any practicing Christian who makes the mistake of taking it in.

Not that movies portraying Christians as nutcases are rare. As a matter of fact, when Christians are shown in movies it's rare that they are portrayed as sane.

But, aside from the fact that this movie has the most basic Christian doctrines inside-out, Rogers' character is a wacko of the first order, and when she commits an unbelievably heinous act toward the end of the film, any suspension of disbelief this film had going for it is likely to be out the window for the entire audience.

"The Rapture," written and directed by Michael Tolkin (whose only other film credit is the screenplay for "Gleaming the Cube"), takes on the persona of a thriller and seems to be sincere in its efforts to persuade us that the off-the-wall beliefs expressed in this film represent the Christian world. (Blind faith seems to guide all "believers" shown here.)

But Tolkin has really just taken an array of intriguing ideas and turned them into a routine exploitation film with a bizarre setting.

It's not much of an accomplishment.

"The Rapture" is rated R for violence, sex, nudity and profanity.