I feel like I've been conned.

Last week I came across the movie 2012 on DVD cheap in Tesco. It was surprising such a recent film was cheap, but as I recalled it bombed in the box office, and having not seen it I bought the film. One or 2 things made me suspicious though. On the back was a description, suggesting it was a 'modern Christian epic in the tradition of the Omega Code (never heard of it) and left behind (wish I'd never etc...).

The people marketing this film should be prosecuted for passing off, because it's presented in a way that makes you think of this film, instead of a film like Biggles Adventures In Time.

The theology is 'interesting' and 'creative'. We have Mayans predicting the end of the world and having Roman Catholic-style crucifixes hidden in their temples dating from 300AD. We have a rapture where all the Christians are taken, except the ones that aren't. Then there's the need to place the recovered crucifix in a Mayan temple so that the Earth, which has been stopped by a black hole, can be restarted again. There's hints of another virgin birth and people doing odd drawings a la close encounters.

The special effects would qualify this for any of those 'world's worst movie' shows, with snow that doesn't settle, wind that only blows on actors (and not the film set) people dying when they're not needed any more, props left over from the third tomb raider movie that was never made and embarrassing fake hail. We had shots of menacing leaf-cutter ants and a dialogue scene where the continuously rotating camera left me feeling slightly sick after a little while.

Why is it that Christians cannot make films - at least, films one would actually wish to watch. There is no way I shall ever inflict Fireproof on myself. If I were a non-christian, seeing this would convince me that anyone who believed in Jesus was a total fruit-loop. Hope I got the only copy Tesco had, and saved a non-christian from buying it. The one redeeming feature was the soundtrack, which was at least somewhat appropriate to what was supposed to be happening.