The recent spate of apocalyptic Christian thrillers appeals to at least two distinct audiences. For obvious reasons, such films resonate strongly with fundamentalist Christians, but they also boast considerable allure for kitsch aficionados eager to see a dazed and confused Gary Busey scampering through an antichrist-controlled hellscape while sporting a ridiculous Rip Van Winkle beard. Central to the genre's camp appeal is its colorful portrayal of the antichrist, who is invariably a warm, fuzzy, Satanic internationalist in cahoots with the U.N. and a sinister one-world government. The Omega Code movies set the gold standard for Satanic overacting with Michael York's delicious depiction of the antichrist as a scenery-chewing Shakespearean ham. In the Apocalypse series, a similarly over-the-top Nick Mancuso offered the antichrist as a New Age charlatan, while in the Left Behind book-to-film adaptations, Gordon Currie plays him as a cross between Ted Turner and Count Dracula. The first movie in the latter series boasted a thudding, television-movie-style earnestness that made it the least campy–and therefore least entertaining–film in its cycle. Left Behind II: Tribulation Force finds God once again inexplicably working largely through Kirk Cameron, who reprises his role as a hotshot journalist at a CNN-like news station owned and operated by the evil Currie. Fellow C-lister Brad Johnson also returns as a pilot who sees the light after his wife and daughter get swept up in the Rapture. In Tribulation Force, Cameron and his cabal of glassy-eyed Stepford believers set out to spread the gospel while discrediting Currie in a world much like our own, only with fewer street lights and way more trash-can fires. Where Left Behind opted for dull professionalism, its sequel leaps headfirst into Biblical high camp and never looks back. Cloud Ten is also behind the Ed Wood-esque Apocalypse series, and like those films, Tribulation Force isn't shy about passing off huge chunks of scripture as dialogue, or devoting much of its running time to massive, clunky blocks of exposition. Its characters spend a lot of time explaining various biblical prophecies to each other, and even more time being redeemed, saving the non-redeemed, and doling out hugs. Like all the films in its peculiar subgenre, Tribulation Force shamelessly plays to its audience's feelings of persecution and righteousness, which makes it feel a little like a 90-minute missionary visit to non-believers. The video release of the first Left Behind movie included Cameron's plea that fans go see the movie again during its theatrical run, in order to improve the box-office chances of future Christian films. Tribulation Force contains no such plea, although its DVD does contain some of the godliest bloopers and outtakes ever committed to film. Perhaps the filmmakers realize that now they're preaching exclusively to the converted.