How would your life be different? Maybe there was a job you took, and shouldn’t have, or didn’t get and wanted. Maybe there was someone, the one who got away, or the one you got but really didn’t want. Maybe you really took that trip to Europe, you wrote that novel, you listened to your instincts and went to bed early or stayed at that party. How would your life be different?

Multiverse movies have been having a moment, and it’s easy to understand why. No matter how specific and unique your life is, you’ve had those thoughts. You can see where the road forked, and with a little imagination, you can also see what another life might look like when other decisions are made. Multiverses were discussed by the ancient Greeks, kicked around during the Middle Ages, and the philosopher, Edwin Schrodinger, gave a lecture on them in Dublin in 1952. Even now, physicists debate the concept, partially because the idea of multiverses can’t be definitively disproven.*

Unfortunately, when it comes to movies about parallel realities, most of them haven’t been great about effectively utilizing the concept to its fullest.** I think that’s because the narrative needs to dig into either recognizable history or be willing to just go super weird. The new microbudget horror mockumentary Hostile Dimensions opts to go weird, and for a film that frequently looks like it cost around nine hundred bucks, I think that was a smart move.

We’re introduced to Emily (Josie Rogers), a Scottish graffiti artist. She and her pal Brian (Stephen Beavis) are exploring a derelict warehouse when they come across something odd. A door. I don’t mean your standard door attached to your standard wall. Insead, they encounter a free-standing door in the middle of a neglected room. Emily investigates, opens the door, then vanishes without a trace.

Much like The Blair Witch Project, later on Emily’s footage is found. It’s discovered by Sam (Annabel Logan) and Ash (Joma West), a pair of extremely low budget filmmakers whose previous film was not exactly a box office smash. They need a new project, something cinematic, gripping, and with a positive hook. They’ll investigate Emily’s disappearance, and with a little luck, rescue her.

Off Sam and Ash go, and after a little detective work, they discover The Door. While that’s a smart move, I’m not convinced that their decision to bring the mysterious door back to Ash’s flat is an equally smart move! They discover that the door acts as a portal to an infinite number of parallel realities, all based on whatever the person opening the door is thinking about. 

Sam and Ash experiment with The Door. They shoot hours of footage. They send in a toy car mounted with a camera, then go in themselves. They stumble upon an indoor play place with a very unconventional inhabitant. Once convinced of The Door’s reality, they bring in Innis (Paddy Kondracki), a theoretical physicist who becomes extremely excited to see his theories becoming reality. Then? Things get weird.

It’s important you understand that I’m not an investigative reporter. I don’t have the same drive as Sam and Ash to uncover the truth about how low the budget of Hostile Dimensions was. My gut tells me that its production budget was probably similar to the catering budget on Avengers: Endgame. There are moments in the film where the seams show. You know what? I don’t really care. The part that ultimately matters is the execution.

Director Graham Hughes is just as aware as you or I of his miniscule budget. Much like the directors of the aforementioned The Blair Witch Project, he utilizes that as an advantage. Smart lighting and camera angles transform a suburban play area to something forbidding. Six dozen free-standing doors on a shoreline creates real anticipation. Even when Hughes shoots The Door itself, he does it in such a way to emphasize its size and presence. When the door opens, he withholds what’s on the other side as long as possible, to create suspense. Hughes also does great work with tone. He knows alternate universes can be horrifying, ridiculous, and frequently a little bit of both. One moment in particular made me initially think, “Huh, that looks kind of chintzy.” But after I took in exactly what I was looking at, I then thought, “Okay, that’s really cool.”

Hughes’ screenplay is relatively solid, but not quite as nimble as his direction. Remember several thousand words ago when I said that a multiverse story is dependent on either weirdness or historical understanding? The script definitely moves in the former direction. That’s not bad, but what I wanted was a better understanding of how the existence of a multiverse affects these characters & makes them change. A subplot involving the death of Sam’s mother doesn’t pay off, which is tragic. Is the woman in an alternate reality who’s your mother still your mother? Does that person owe anything to you, considering they had no relationship with you? The script never digs into those thorny questions. 

Oftentimes with microbudget features, the acting tends to be…well, questionable. You get the sense that the director went with the people who said “Yes” as opposed to those with a degree of skill. Luckily, that’s not the case here. Annabel Logan and Joma West have a prickly chemistry as Sam and Ash. Their performances give us a sense of history with these two. I have no idea if Logan and West knew each other prior to production, but they make it feel like their characters have been friends forever. I also liked Paddy Kondracki’s Innis. When he shifts from the boredom of only talking about theoretical multiverses to the reality, Kondracki positively lights up.

There’s an alternate universe where Hostile Dimensions was dumb and obvious. There’s another where the film was never made at all. I’m glad to be in this universe and see this scrappy little film, warts and all. Though I wonder, if Hughes and his cast and crew got their hands on a serious budget, would the quality of their work decline? I hope not. Filmmaking like this is too singular, and in another world, they’re swallowed up and forced to make franchise fodder. Let’s hope that world isn’t this one.

*Not unlike the existence of God.

**1998’s Run Lola Run utilizes the concept of alternate realities created by decisions brilliantly. On the other hand, if you want a film showing the insane potential of multiverses, you can’t go wrong with Everything Everywhere All At Once, or as we refer to it in this household, The Everything Bagel Movie.

Tim Brennan Movie Critic

Tim has been alarmingly enthusiastic about movies ever since childhood. He grew up in Boulder and, foolishly, left Colorado to study Communications in Washington State. Making matters worse, he moved to Connecticut after meeting his too-good-for-him wife. Drawn by the Rockies and a mild climate, he triumphantly returned and settled down back in Boulder County. He's written numerous screenplays, loves hiking, and embarrassed himself in front of Samuel L. Jackson. True story.