Shifter

I've never seen barf be so central a theme as in this movie.

Functional Sci Fi movies make sense internally and have a sense of cohesiveness. This one doesn't. At all. Because a young girl can assemble a clock, we are asked to accept the fact that she, as a young adult, can make a time machine from barnyard parts. No mention of HOW time travel or shifting is possible, what the method is, or how it was discovered, etc.

Then we shift into incredibly wooden acting and even worse dialog. Like a high school demo reel, if that.

Then it's on to fits of fast-forward (on my part) to see if there's anything worth watching.

And there isn't.

You have been warned.

"Shifter" from writer and director Jacob Leighton Burns was definitely not your average run-of-the-mill time travelling movie, for better or worse. There were some very interesting aspects to the storyline, to say the least.

Now, "Shift" is a semi-slow paced movie, to be honest, and it is because of the fact that you feel as is very little is actually happening throughout of the course of the entire movie. A fact, actually, because not all that much actually did happen in the movie.

I liked the part of the time travel, how one body becomes unraveled by the fabric of time as the other replace it. And it was definitely something very interesting in terms of originality from writer and director Jacob Leighton Burns.

Nicole Fancher (playing Theresa Chaney) carries the movie quite well with her performance. I am not familiar with her work, but I was pleased with her performance in "Shifter". And I also enjoyed the performance of Ashley Mandanas (playing Blake Douglass), even though I was fully unfamiliar with her prior to this movie. Just a shame that Ashley Mandanas wasn't given more screen time.

The special effects in the movie were good, and they definitely helped bring the movie to life on the screen.

Ultimately, it was the fact that so very little actually happened in the movie that made this movie suffer. And for me, it turned out to be a less than mediocre movie experience. Especially since there was so much potential readily available to be used here in the movie. It felt like writer and director Jacob Leighton Burns simply skipped on too many aspects of the movie or failed to delve deep enough to make it interesting.

My rating of "Shifter" is a mere four out of ten stars. I was disappointed with the pacing of the storyline and the fact that it actually feels like an incomplete movie.

This film seems to be getting some fairly brutal reviews, but I think it might be because this is an especially difficult film to review as and entire package because there are so many conflicting layers to it. Conceptually, you have an incredibly unique and inventive cautionary tale about time manipulation, but the narrative is repeatedly dragged down by too many bland, poorly conceived, and unrealistic characters, given to actors who can't make the poor dialogue and awkward scenes work very well. Then you have really solid visual and sound editing, with some very passable ultra low-budget special effects to keep the story going. Despite all the failings of this film, it's important to consider the budget they had to work with, and time of production; which was seemingly none in both cases.

For fans of unique scifi, especially inventive takes on time travel, I highly recommend giving this film a shot for it's overall concepts and production, but keep your expectations on performances and dialogue especially low to make your trudge through the film much easier.

One of the best horrors I've ever seen. This movie destroyed me mentally and physically. After just 15 minutes of watching the film, I found myself sweating profusely and crying like a baby at the end. 10/10