The terms "faith film" and "horror movie" don't usually describe the same offering on the silver screen.
But writer and director Casey La Scala – whose credits include the mind-bending "Donnie Darko," horror remake "Amityville: The Awakening," and the groundbreaking faith film "A Walk to Remember" – may be just the guy to blend together what some would call incompatible: a clear, evangelical call to get right with God and a movie designed to scare "the hell" out of its audiences.
La Scala told WND in an exclusive interview that he pitched the idea for "The Remaining," his new movie coming to theaters Sept. 5, to Sony Affirm films, producers of faith-friendly projects like "Fireproof" and "When the Game Stands Tall" and distributor for movies like "Soul Surfer" and "Mom's Night Out."
"'The Remaining' has a lot of Christian themes; would this be embraced by faith-based community?" La Scala recalled. "They didn't know. I argued [faith consumers] would be interested in something like this, because when you look at 'The Passion of the Christ,' it's technically a horror movie. It's a faith-based horror movie. That's what it is."
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But La Scala says "The Remaining" was born from something far deeper than an effort to sell horror tickets to Christians.
"My father passed away, and he was alone, wishing he had more time with his friends and family. He had alienated a lot of people," La Scala revealed. "The theme of the movie came when I was dealing with that – this idea of don't wait until it's too late to embrace the people you love."
La Scala acknowledged some will be skeptical of how the horror genre can be a vehicle for messages on faith and love, laughing that his previous "A Walk to Remember" and "The Remaining" do seem like "polar opposite films."
"Yet inside 'The Remaining,' you can see themes of love, young people about to start their lives, young people faced with ultimate death, what can we do before we die and wanting to say all the things I should have said to you," La Scala explained. "That was the basis for 'A Walk to Remember,' too. At face value, they seem such different films, but inside, they're very similar."
In 2002, "A Walk to Remember" told the story of a wayward teen named Landon who fell in love with a Christian girl dying of leukemia. Yet for all the girl's efforts to distance him from her impending death, Landon found his life transformed by knowing her. It was one of the first major Hollywood films to actively recruit churches and youth groups to turn movie-going into a ministry.
"The Remaining" similarly puts its characters in a place where they question how they've lived their lives when faced with unexpected death, and it similarly brings Hollywood-quality filmmaking to a faith-themed film.
The movie follows – through a refined version of the "found footage" technique that has made the "Paranormal Activity" horror movies so popular – a group of post-college friends just starting life anew, as two of them celebrate their wedding day. Unbeknownst to the bride and groom, however, their wedding day is also the day of the Rapture – an event some Christians believe the Bible predicts, when Christ takes true believers to heaven in a mass exodus before a series of catastrophic "Tribulation" disasters.
Picking up in the Bible's Revelation, Chapters 8 and 9, "The Remaining" depicts the angels' trumpets of judgment: hail and fire falling from the sky, and even more terrifying, the release of demonic "locusts," with thundering wings and teeth like lions and stings like scorpions.
"The Bible is full of horror tales," La Scala's co-writer on the project, Chris Dowling, told WND. "If you want to read something scary, read Revelation. It's not a far cry to read Revelation and go, 'Wow, this sounds straight out of a horror film.' That's why it made sense [to make this movie]."
As the friends in the film flee from the raining disasters of the Tribulation, each of them must come face to face with why their loves ones were taken to heaven … and why they were not. And as people around them begin to die and the days look darker than they ever have, each of the friends must decide how they will live what are likely the last days of their lives.
"I've got two boys," La Scala told WND. "I wanted to create something they could watch and we could talk about faith and we could talk about choices. So underneath it, I wanted it to be a think piece: Where is your relationship with God? Where is your relationship with faith? Do you have a relationship with God? This was to my boys, but I wanted to do something on a mass level and do something that people can embrace.
"When I was a kid, I used to go to church camp, and the counselors talked about the Rapture, Tribulation and the end of the world," La Scala continued. "Put those things together, a global vision of 'Paranormal Activity,' the Book of Revelation, then my dad's death and thematically urging you, don't wait until it's too late – they all came together to become 'The Remaining.'
Watch a trailer for "The Remaining" below:
La Scala and Dowling both emphasized, however, that "The Remaining" is not just a movie for the faith-based community, but for the mainstream audience as well.
"I like the fact we're pushing the edge," Dowling told WND. "Yes, we are doing a faith-based thriller horror, and you're going to have people in the church who are going to think you shouldn't be doing that, and you're going to have the secular crowd that isn't going to want to see it. But we're getting such a good response across the board [from those in both camps who have seen the movie] that we think we've found a sweet spot.
"There's a time and place for films like 'God's Not Dead' that are going to appeal to the church, and there's a time and place for films that reach outside and broaden the appeal for films that are 'faith-based,'" he continued. "It doesn't have to be mutually exclusive: This is secular, this faith-based. No, 'The Remaining' is just a good film and there's faith in it. That's awesome. This isn't made just for Christians, this is a film made for all faiths and no faith to watch and ask questions."
La Scala insisted regardless of whether audiences believe in a biblical account of end times, or agree with a pre-tribulational Rapture, or acknowledge God at all, "The Remaining" reveals death could happen to any of us at any moment, even in the most surprising of ways.
"I wanted to make sure a mainstream audience could latch on to that," La Scala said. "That's what I wanted to make, a movie not so faith-based that you're going to isolate the mainstream audience. I wanted there to be something in there for everybody."
Yet LaScala also said he hopes Christian audiences and youth groups will embrace the movie as well.
"I want this film to represent a genre that's not exploiting the [faith] audience, but they're making films for the faith audience that are a cut above [the typical 'Christian' movie]," La Scala explained. "If we get the support, then there will be more films of this quality with these themes."
La Scala also dropped a hint of the next Christian horror movie he hopes will make it to the silver screen.
"You know the movie 'Heaven Is for Real''?" La Scala asked. "I'm doing 'Hell Is for Real' next. We'll see what happens."