Brock Heasley (director)
(studio)
12 (certificate)
112 (length)
25 March 2024 (released)
27 March 2024
The on and off narrator Kevin (Kristoffer Polaha) opens the film explaining that this is not his world, the disappears. Shortly after he’s hit by the financial crash and pondering his life over a beer when he’s chatted up by Molly (Elizabeth Tabish).
Montage of images show them dating, marrying and a child its idyllic. Later though Kevin’s in a rotten job and a call from his to Molly suggests all is not well. The car crashes and Kevin is brought round by The Benefactor (Neal McDonough) into a grey unpopulated world.
As The Benefactor explains they are in a multiverse, where a hair our of place can change a lifetime. He recruits shifters to move people around and he wants Kevin to be one. Things get tense and Kevin begins to pray, the act of which gets rid of The Benefactor. Leaving Kevin in that reality, his memories of Molly and a will to get back to her.
What unravels from there is a quest to find Molly and his world but also a test of his own faith and beliefs. To this end he battles his own scepticism, the forces in a world that The Benefactor has left in despair, and eventually The Benefactor too.
There’s little in the way of subtlety in The Shift from director and writer Brock Heasley. It’s obvious who The Benefactor represents and the arguments he puts over in his polemics to Kevin aren’t new or that profound.
The film sustains a reverential air for its duration propped by a quasi-celestial soundtrack. Those with a deeper knowledge of the Bible will likely get more from the references to the Book of Job. Others will get the gist of what is being put forward. The Christian message is laced throughout the film with the sci-fi elements not much more than a framework to work off.
With a film as overwhelmingly message orientated as this there’s not much else for the viewer to get involved with. The characters are well played, by a very good cast, though fundamentally hollow as the point is driven that they aren’t in control of anything and what will happen will happen, whatever the choice made.
The Shift is available now Digital Download & Blu-ray and DVD from 1st April 2024.
