The New York Times reported Sunday on the upstart Asylum Films, which has been churning out films it calls “mockbusters”—though schlockbusters might be a better word. Their low-budget movies imitate box-office hits, mostly in their titles. Their “Transmorphers” made a tidy profit, though it had none of the stars or production values of “Transformers.” Ditto “The DaVinci Treasure” and “Snakes on a Train.”

But it’s worth asking whether Asylum’s End Times flick “The Apocalypse” will actually earn more than the abysmal “Left Behind” movies whose audiences they are lifting. The authorized “Left Behind” movies have been so awful—one critic gave 2005’s “Left Behind: World at War” half a star—that Left Behind authors Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye sued the films’ producers, Cloud Ten, for breach of contract.
It’s even possible that Asylum, which has formed a subsidiary called Faith Films to market its End Times thriller, will have more spiritual intelligence than its source. The mockbuster producers say they consulted about religious views of the end of the world with priests and rabbis. Neither group has ever had much good to say about the theology of “Left Behind.”