The Rapture (film)

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The Rapture
The Rapture DVD cover
Directed by	Michael Tolkin
Produced by	Karen Koch Laurie Parker (executive producer) Nancy Tenenbaum Nick Wechsler
Written by	Michael Tolkin
Starring	Mimi Rogers Darwyn Carson
Music by	Thomas Newman
Cinematography	Bojan Bazelli
Editing by	Suzanne Fenn
Distributed by	New Line Cinema
Release date(s)	September 6, 1991
Running time	100 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

The Rapture is a 1991 psychological/religious drama film starring Mimi Rogers, David Duchovny, Darwyn Carson, Patrick Bauchau, Marvin Elkins, and Stephanie Menuez; directed by Michael Tolkin; rated R; 100 minutes long; and produced by New Line Cinema.

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The film tells the story of Sharon, a young Los Angeles woman who engages in a swinging, libidinous lifestyle with her male partner. She comes into contact with various people who hint to her that a true Rapture is imminent. In time, she comes to accept this belief herself and becomes a born-again Christian. She begins a new, pious lifestyle, eventually marrying and having a daughter. When her husband is killed in a senseless murder, however, she begins to question the benevolence of God. She believes she must wait in the desert for the coming of the Rapture, but eventually loses patience. At her daughter's urging, she decides to hasten her and her daughter's ascendance to heaven. She kills her daughter with a gunshot, but is unable to take her own life afterwards, afraid she'll be condemned as a suicide. She is arrested and imprisoned. Until this point, the film appears to be a story about a born-again cultist whose beliefs eventually lead to murder, but in a twist ending, the Rapture does indeed arrive, and the saved are taken to Heaven. Still Sharon refuses to renounce her anger at God for his cruelty. Her young daughter begs her to accept God back into her heart so she can join her husband and daughter in Heaven, but Sharon declines, preferring to remain in purgatory-like landscape for eternity.