The millennium came and went largely without incident, let alone global annihilation. But for the direct-to-video world, the Rapture-themed apocalypse genre—based on a literal translation of the book of Revelation—shows no sign of slowing down. Sequels to The Omega Code and Left Behind: The Movie are in the works, while the even-more-modest Apocalypse series has capitalized on the success and visibility of recent fundamentalist films by making the jump from Christian bookstores to secular video-store chains. Shot on video in 1998 and pre-dating The Omega Code by a year, Apocalypse stars Leigh Lewis as a newswoman at a suspiciously cheap-looking CNN-like news station who maintains the same grimly determined look whether chatting with her boyfriend or reporting mankind's imminent demise. As the film opens, the world teeters on the brink of nuclear destruction due to an international dispute in Israel's Armageddon Valley. But the conflict is miraculously brought to a halt by the arrival of a Jesus-dissing man who proclaims himself humanity's savior, immediately institutes a one-world government, sets himself up as its ruler, and begins to hunt down Christian fundamentalists. Perhaps to compensate for a minuscule budget, the first half of Apocalypse consists largely of news footage manipulated to seem like part of the film's narrative, suggesting what War Of The Worlds might have been like had Pat Robertson been pulling the strings instead of Orson Welles. After developing its central conceit, however, Apocalypse degenerates into laughable melodramatics, with stiff acting, static camerawork, and cheap sets all lending it the feel of the world's most devout daytime soap opera. Apocalypse clumsily lays out the series' rigid formula, introducing fixtures such as the non-believing protagonist who finds the Lord, a dour sensibility devoid of humor, and, most obnoxiously, extensive real-life footage of televangelists explaining Revelation's intricacies. But Apocalypse's stiffness actually works to the series' advantage: Compared to the first film, the sequels Revelation and Tribulation can't help but look like lost Jerry Bruckheimer blockbusters, complete with phenomenal production values, adrenaline-pumping action, and pricey name actors. Lowering his voice into a Clint Eastwood rasp, Jeff Fahey stars in Revelation as an atheist government agent who learns too late the folly of skipping church when his churchgoing wife and daughter are caught up in the Rapture. After their mysterious disappearance, Fahey indifferently goes about his job hunting down "Haters," renegade Christians framed for crimes committed by the glowering dark armies of Antichrist Nick Mancuso. But Fahey discovers that the Rapture left plenty of strident, self-righteous Christians behind when he joins forces with a group of Haters to expose Mancuso, assisted by blind cynic Carol Alt and wheelchair-bound computer genius Tony Nappo, who speaks largely in bumper-sticker-derived one-liners. Combining the narrative craft of Ed Wood with a total lack of moral ambiguity, Revelation is a veritable encyclopedia of far-right-wing fundamentalist paranoia; a scene in which a nerdy dad turns in his chipmunk-cheeked son for reading the Bible is only the tip of the iceberg. But Revelation doesn't hit its apex of loopiness until its climax, a divine-intervention-assisted howler of literally and figuratively Biblical proportions. The third, priciest, and highest-profile entry in the series, Tribulation, finds Mancuso's original Antichrist Superstar up to his old humanity-bedeviling ways once again, this time attempting to organize a malevolent global-unity event that sounds suspiciously like a giant Satanic be-in. Thankfully, humanity has some of its flakiest thespians on its side, led by Gary Busey as an atheist cop who learns the folly of his ways, Howie Mandel as a crystal-hugging crazy who finally sees the light, and Margot Kidder as Busey's devout sister. Although technically more accomplished than Revelation, Tribulation similarly alternates between grindingly arbitrary action sequences and extended conversations about the truth of fundamentalist doctrine, which, aside from a welcome absence of references to scripture, could easily have been drawn directly from Jack Chick tracts. Preaching to the converted has seldom been creepier, or less entertaining.