The words \u201cChristian\u201d and \u201chorror movie\u201d rarely appear in the same sentence, much less in the same film\u2019s promotional material.<\/p>\n
Yet that\u2019s exactly what Tim Chey, writer and director of \u201cFinal: The Rapture,\u201d does to promote his picture in its city-by-city rollout.<\/p>\n
As the movie\u2019s poster promises: \u201cWhen the Rapture strikes \u2026 all of hell will break loose.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\nIn an interview outside the Orlando, Fla., multiplex where his film is playing on a Sunday afternoon, Chey said he\u2019s comfortable with the Christian horror movie label, or even \u201cChristian disaster movie.\u201d<\/p>\n
Acknowledging that a movie theater is no substitute for a sanctuary, Chey said his purpose is \u201cto scare the living daylights out of nonbelievers. \u2026 If it means I have to make a horror film to make it realistic to win people to Christ, then so be it.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\nFrom church-sponsored, Halloween \u201cHell Houses\u201d \u2014 designed to dramatize the wages of sin \u2014 to the best-selling \u201cLeft Behind\u201d pulp novels and movies, evangelical Christians have had an ambivalent relationship with horror and terror in their home-grown popular culture.<\/p>\n
The question is how far to go while serving a higher purpose.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can be as violent as I can, without being gratuitous,\u201d Chey said. \u201cAnything goes.\u201d<\/strong> Well, that\u2019s \u201canything\u201d in the evangelical Christian sense; he draws the line at nudity and profanity.<\/p>\nBut as they have with other genres that appeal to sometimes rebellious, media-savvy young people \u2014 rock music, cartoons and video games \u2014 evangelicals have shown themselves innovative in appropriating and adapting popular culture to their own ends.<\/p>\n
The goal, the movie\u2019s creators said, is twofold: To reach out to nonbelievers, while at the same time fostering a sense of cultural inclusion for the young of their flock.<\/strong><\/p>\nChey\u2019s wife Susan, the film\u2019s producer, called it \u201ca Trojan horse.\u201d <\/strong>. . .<\/p>\n\u201cFinal\u201d imagines the apocalyptic chaos for four nonbelievers: an African-American, an Asian, a Hispanic and a white man living in Los Angeles, Tokyo, Buenos Aires and on a South Pacific island. Chey said his movie is more scarily realistic than the \u201cLeft Behind\u201d movie, which covers the same subject, but generated a meager $4 million at the box office. . .<\/p>\n
While it may be counterintuitive, \u201cThe stronger the message, the better the box office,\u201d [Chey] said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\u00a0<\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Final:\u00a0 The Rapture is another end times movie.\u00a0 It\u2019s billed as a \u201cChristian horror movie.\u201d\u00a0 The purpose, according to filmmaker Tim Chey, is to \u201cwin people to Christ\u201d by scaring \u201cthe living daylights out of nonbelievers.\u201d After the jump, I excerpt a story about the movie with various quotations that I put in bold.\u00a0\u00a0 I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,31,47],"tags":[790,3030,1263],"class_list":["post-18066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christ","category-movies","category-theology","tag-evangelism","tag-final-the-rapture","tag-law-gospel"],"yoast_head":"\n
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