The Shift

Heasley first made “The Shift” as a 21-minute short, and there’s just enough here to support a feature.

As the storyline endlessly and confusingly shifts from one reality to another, it’s all too easy to tune out until we encounter one that’s interesting. Alas, that never happens.

A remarkably incoherent farrago of sci-fi tropes and Christian proselytizing.

The film starts smashing its smart sci-fi concept to smithereens by instead peddling some extremely inept faith-based propaganda your way.

As silly revolutionary parables go, it's less ridiculous than Arnold Schwarzenegger leading Dweezil Zappa in an uprising against the host of Family Feud. Or Mel Gibson driving Scotland to capital F "freedom" before siring Edward III with Queen Isabella.

This is a watchable sci-fi thriller, enlivened by strong performances and some nice ideas, but it fails to satisfy on a dramatic or emotional level

It’s all part of an alternate world Christianity so stylized it might make Christians cringe too.

The ham-fisted attempts to drive the message home get in the way of some strong storytelling and solid performances by Polaha, Tabish and Sean Astin as a nonbeliever who starts to get swayed by Kevin’s remembered scripture passages.

As a fan of the science fiction genre, I think the idea of a faithful man stuck in a faithless universe could have been a fascinating one. It is unfortunate that The Shift fails to give the audience enough reason to care about what happens.

I am not sure what the actual multiverse idea has to do with the story except to add a dramatic shortcut to everything happening to Kevin.