Sharon, a young Los Angeles woman, engages in a swinging, libidinous lifestyle. She comes into contact with a sect that advises her that the Rapture is imminent. In time, she comes to accept this belief herself and becomes a born-again Christian. She then starts living a pious life, eventually marrying and having a daughter, Mary. When her husband Randy is killed in a senseless murder, however, she begins to question the benevolence of God. She believes God has called her to go to the desert to wait for the Rapture, and instead of leaving her daughter safely with friends, she decides Mary must come with her. Foster, a police officer, is concerned for their well-being after they are reduced to stealing food while they wait, but Sharon is insistent that the end is near. Sharon begins to despair after a period of time and, at her daughter's urging, decides to hasten their ascendance to heaven. She kills Mary with a gunshot but is unable to take her own life afterwards, afraid she will be condemned as having killed herself. She confesses to Foster what she had done and is jailed. After an apparition of Mary in the night, the Rapture occurs. While Sharon sits in her cell early the next morning, a loud trumpet blast is heard all over the world, signaling the start of the Rapture. Later on, Sharon and Foster, after driving out into the desert, are both raptured to a purgatory-like landscape. Foster, who had been an atheist his whole life, accepts God and is allowed entrance to Heaven, but Sharon blames God for Mary's death, even though God did not tell her to bring Mary with her to the desert, and she cannot renounce her anger at what she sees as God's cruelty. Mary pleads with her to accept God back into her heart so she can join her and Randy in Heaven, but Sharon refuses, choosing to remain alone in the purgatory-like landscape for eternity.
Prior to Rogers' involvement, Sissy Spacek, Meg Ryan, and Rachel Ward passed on taking the role of Sharon. Tolkin noted that Rogers' Scientology beliefs played no bearing on her casting: "Mimi's background in Scientology played no role in my casting her, nor did I see it as a problem — we never even discussed it." Rogers added that "my own religious views didn't affect my approach to the picture at all." In another interview, though, she noted that the role was easier thanks to her view of Jesus:
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 66% based on 29 reviews, with an average rating of 6.5/10. Rogers especially won praise for her performance, with the Los Angeles Times calling it an "astonishingly stunning performance." Entertainment Weekly noted that Rogers "delivers a subtle and complex performance." Roger Ebert gave The Rapture 4/4 stars and praised Tolkin for avoiding the "pious banalities" of most religious movies, instead "examining the logic of the final judgment as radically and uncompromisingly as he can."
