I often find myself scrolling through the various streaming services I have access to just looking for something good to watch. This movie intrigued me from the little bit I knew about it. It looked suitably dark and mysterious. I’m in!

A surprise to me was that this is a story about Earth after the Rapture. Hmmmm. Less than a minute in and already I’m a bit less “in.” The problem with Rapture stories is that the core concept is that all the good people ascended to a reward of eternal life in heaven, leaving behind the bad people who don’t deserve that reward. But the idea of who is good and bad is subjective. And when you use religion as a baseline for that, you effectively get a partisan style result. Now Rapture stories are going to, by default, be told with a Christian mentality.

So right off the bat, we have the knowledge that nobody in this world is “good.” And that’s a bit of a problem. But getting to the story itself. We start with two people, a man and a woman. I should mention that this movie has essentially zero dialogue. There is a plot aspect here that people in this area were part of a cult that removed their own vocal chords. Which does add a super cool element of a whistle language. Sort of. People whistle, and I assumed this was done with communication in mind. Could just be signals though. But I had watched a fascinating documentary about a Greek area where they had an actual whistle language. So it may be a point I look at differently than most here.

So these two people are a couple. But they get interrupted in their quiet moment in the woods by a group of “bad guys” who kidnap them. Toss them in the trunks of two different cars, which then go slightly different places. We follow the girl Azrael (to be fair, it’s Samara Weaving, and she is the star. The guy is Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, who I had not seen in a movie before.) They stop and pull her out of the trunk, drag her into the woods (well, they were already in the woods, so they drag her to a different part) and tie her to a tree stump. There’s a handful of bad guys who start chanting. I say chanting, but with no vocal chords, it is more just a quiet gutteral grunting. Azrael is trying to break free as she sees these charred figures coming toward her. Some sort of demonic entity that she is being sacrificed to.

Jumping ahead. She escapes and runs to a shanty town where this cult makes their home. Infiltrating the camp, she finds evidence that her partner was here, but appears to have been killed. Now she needs to escape. And fails. Booo… But then she escapes. Yay…. But then she gets caught again. Booo…. But wait, she escapes again. Yay…. Then she gets caught again. (In a rope trap. Seems like a dumb way to get caught because there was literally one spot to step and get caught.) Booo…. Multiple charred demons attack and she manages to escape again. Yay…. Then she decides to go back to the camp. And gets caught again. To be honest, I’m not sure which escape or capture I’m on right now.

This movie was very meh. I don’t hate that I watched it, but my life isn’t better for having done so. It’s very predictable. And also a bit silly when the main character keeps making decisions to go into danger rather than simply escape. I did very much like the charred demonic creatures in this. Are they demons come to Earth in the Rapture? Is that a thing? I know that the good people get alien abducted by Angels to Lando’s Cloud City…. err, heaven I mean. But is part of the Rapture demons swarming across the planet? And why do they have a cult that sacrifices people to them? Why don’t the charred demons simply eat the wannabe Gregorian chanters? Ok, that scene does sort of have that happen, but they chanters seem to feel safe from the charred ones. Only the person strapped to the stump is in danger. When a chanter tries to stop Azrael from escaping is the moment he is put in danger and falls to the charred one. Sorta.

I want to see more of this world, but focusing on the charred ones. I feel like this movie took the world building elements of a post Rapture world and fast forwarded too far ahead. Reminds me of when Walking Dead announced the new series Fear the Walking Dead and promised this was a show about the beginning and what happened. But then it felt like the first episode or two was the real world and then someone comes back as a zombie and now it’s just Walking Dead but near the Mexican border. Show me more of the charred ones and I promise more stars!

But as it is, this gets a 4 Star rating for me. And I think I’m being generous here.

Oh yeah, there was a baby element to this. Which I’m not too sure I get. Although it is very obvious, but too obvious. I totally understand it, but it’s like…. why? Why would you do something so obvious? If you were trying to be clever, you failed miserably. I should stop writing, or I’m going to take away a star.