"Between Worlds" is yet another crazy Nicholas Cage movie in which he pulls out all the stops on his deliberate overacting, and manages to score some points.
This has something to do with a mother played by Franka Potente who can briefly visit and alter things in the afterlife while being strangled (!). Cage plays a substance-abusing trucker grieving the tragic loss of his family. He stumbles upon Potente while she's being choked by a bruiser in order to "save" her comatose daughter. Cage "rescues" her only to become part of her life, and ends up asked to choke her himself. He begins a torrid affair with her and moves in with her and the daughter when the young woman comes home from the hospital. Since he's just had his truck seized by bill collectors, this couldn't come at a better time. But alas - the daughter has somehow become possessed by the spirit of Cage's dead wife! And also wants to sleep with him!
If this sounds ridiculous, be assured that it is. And it gets even more so. But the cast and especially Cage play it in a rough, gutteral working class way that makes it interesting. All the way to the explosion of stupid violence and melodrama that is the ending. And somewhere in all this there's a message about how one should not mess around with the supernatural.
If this were played straight with middle class or higher characters it would be just another dullish ghost movie. But since it is played manic with working poor ones, it remains watchable and different. Sort of like if Charles Bukowski wrote a ghost movie. It's terrible with its totally out-of-control ending, but, intentionally or not, is a funny watch a good deal of the way through.
One reviewer here makes fun of Potente's "on and off" German accent as if he thinks she's trying to hide it. But her German nationality is mentioned during the film's dialogue, and the reviewer obviously wasn't paying attention. As a German acting in a nutty movie made in Spain that is portraying a setting in the American South, she does a good job.
This is viewable on Netflix and is recommended for viewers looking for something flawed but somewhat creative in its own strange, perhaps accidental way.
