With Christmas season suddenly in our rearview mirrors, it's time to move foward and acknowledge that we are one year closer to Jesus's return. Something about the year number switching on Jan. 1 feels very apocalyptic, so we return to rapture themes in Christian media with the obscure and extremely entertaining THE GATHERING. Director Danny Carrales is an artist we respect for his work on a few key features in the faith-based film scene, especially his most recent CGI-heavy work HEAVEN'S WAR (2018). We also look forward to formally reviewing ESCAPE FROM HELL, a film we like but haven't covered yet, which is directed by Carrales and also stars hunky Christian leading man Daniel Kruse who appears in several Carrales features from the 2000s and seems to be a muse of his. Daniel Kruse had a stint in the 2000s as a TV and film actor both in secular and Christian spheres; he brings his soap opera gravitas to his role as Michael in THE GATHERING, a high-powered white collar worker in the corporate world who has a "come to Jesus" moment and begins to suspect his company has a foundational role in the coming of the Antichrist and the New World Order. Michael is also visited by several apocalyptic visions that convince him Jesus's return is imminent. These revelations come much to the chagrin of his wife Lisa, who feels jealous at the newfound role of Jesus in Michael's life. Lisa's mother Alex is also threatened by Michael's Christianity, since she is an avowed atheist college professor who delights in owning her pathetic Christian undergrad students with logic and reason (as professors frequently do in these movies.) But when Alex and Lisa start experiencing visions of their own, the promise of Jesus's second coming is too powerful even for them to ignore. THE GATHERING is a well paced and pulpy rapture thriller that we recommend for it's over-the-top dialogue and one of the best "characters discover a scary website" scenes in all of Christian media.

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