Hostile Dimensions

This films is difficult to know what to do with.

By all rights, it should suck. Zero budget, not very good acting, plotting that seems rather arbitrary, and, worst of all, it’s needlessly shot “found footage” style, including the usual contrivance such as people filming while they’re running and not being able to turn their head back to look at something pursuing them without swinging the camera around too.

The plot is, a grafitti artist disappears into a freestanding door in an abandoned building, and a couple of filmmakers take the door back to their apartment to study it. It turns out to open to a different parallel dimension every time they open it, which leads to a lot of predictably random dangers and dimension-hopping through door after door as people are lost, found, or abducted between dimensions. A few intriguing encounters with other-dimensional selves are shown and then never explored. A physicist tells them the doors can open to “any universe you can imagine”, yet the same few extradimensional locales seem to be attracting multiple visits. A lot is left unexplained, with just “it’s a parallel dimension, it’s weird” handwaving.

And yet… it’s not as bad as all that. It’s weirdly entertaining despite its many, meny flaws. The lead actress is sort of appealing, and it has moments of more intelligence than it leads you to expect it will, plus an odd sort of humor, such as a running gag about a talking dog that periodically appears behind the opened doors, saying portentious things like “I have assumed this form so you will not fear me” and “At last, you have chosen to seek my wisdom” before the door is slammed in its face again.

I kind of liked it. It was a little different. I can’t recommend it, judging by how many people on IMDB seemed to absolutely hate it. But I was entertained, oddly.