So, are you scared yet?
Main Cast: Annabel Logan, Joma West
Director: Graham Hughes
You find the craziest stuff when you’re just surfing the streamers.
I watched a found footage movie called HOSTILE DIMENSIONS, mostly because it was only 78 minutes long, but also partly because it’s a found footage movie that deals with parallel worlds. As a longtime comic book geek, the multiverse has always held special interest for me. So, HOSTILE DIMENSIONS it was.
Two graffiti artists are exploring an abandoned building when they find a freestanding doorway holding a closed door. One of the artists, Emily (Josie Rogers), opens the door while her friend Brian (Stephen Beavis) videotapes it—and then Emily is gone.
Some time later, two documentary filmmakers, Sam (Annabel Logan) and Ash (Joma West), find the video and, after confirming Emily is a real person and is actually lost, they find the doorway and decide to film their attempt to bring her home.
What they don’t know, but soon discover with the aid of a university professor, Innis (Paddy Kondracki), who lectures about just this very thing, is that this doorway will lead them to any world they can imagine. Their search for Emily leads them to impossible places, until eventually they come face to face with the one who made this, and several other doorways around the world.
HOSTILE DIMENSIONS is the brainchild of found footage veteran Graham Hughes (writer and director of DEATH OF A VLOGGER) who likes to film in as few locations as possible and make his super cheap films feel expensive. I don’t know what the travel or expense budget was for this one, but I was impressed.
Annabel Logan and Joma West make up the duo and, for me, they were hit and miss. Logan seems to be having a better time with her role than West, who at times just seemed to be reciting whatever lines were on that day’s pages but was either having a hard time connecting emotionally, or maybe just doesn’t have it. I’m not really criticizing the performance; I know I don’t have it either, but I’ve never thought it would be a good idea to try to act: because I know that, emotionally, I’m not there.
Paddy Kondracki makes up the rest of the investigative trio as Innis and he provided a great balance for the other two.
Hughes is exploring big ideas in this film, maybe even bigger than the budget allows, but at only one or two points does it ever look cheap. And given the nature of the physics of this world, that might just be on purpose. Either way, I was never yanked out of the movie by a bad effect.
HOSTILE DIMENSIONS is a lot of movie for such a short run time, and I appreciate the effort that went into making it look as impressive as it did. Seeing what he can do with these limitations and these actors makes me even more interested in seeing his previous movie, DEATH OF A VLOGGER.
HOSTILE DIMENSIONS is currently free to watch on Amazon Prime.
C. Dennis Moore is the author of over 60 published short stories and novellas in the speculative fiction genre. Most recent appearances are in the Dark Highlands 2, What Fears Become, Dead Bait 3 and Dark Highways anthologies. His novels are Revelations, and the Angel Hill stories, The Man in the Window, The Third Floor, and The Flip.
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