Strangely for a Christian drama, The Shift is almost blasphemous. I don’t mind the faith-based thing on those rare occasions when it’s done well, and I would welcome the heresy if it were deliberate. What I do have a problem with, not as a believer (which I’m not) but as a (re)viewer, is the disparity between the filmmaker’s intent and its execution, because that leads to poor storytelling.
Sure enough, director Brock Heasley’s script is both contrived and convoluted (including a lot of narration, which is always flaccid, sloppy writing). Right off the bat we get a meet cute that feels, to say the least, forced (more so, that is, than these things usually do).
Kevin Garner (Kristoffer Polaha) is sitting at a bar, despondently watching the news of the Bear Stearns collapse on TV, and twiddling a sobriety coin; specifically, a bronze chip. As a means of conveying backstory, this is clever, subtle, concise, efficient, effective, economical — in short, the opposite of me trying to describe it. Heasley achieves a healthy balance of showing and telling, painting an entire picture with just a couple of brush strokes.
But then Molly (Elizabeth Tabish) approaches Kevin — on a “dare” of all possible reasons, even though we’re dealing with sophisticated-looking people over 30 years of age. In the span of the ensuing brief conversation not only do they lay out their short-term future life together, but Kevin decides A) to go back to church and B) to stay on the wagon, and all for this random broad whom he just met. I can only wonder what would have happened if he’d been approached by a dumb, ugly guy instead.
Cut to years later, the now married Kevin and Molly have grown apart after losing their son. One day, on his way home from work, Kevin ends up in a car crash. How exactly he gets T-boned while ostensibly stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic, I’m not too sure; then again, shit’s about to get unreal.
Kevin is apparently rescued by the Benefactor (Neal McDonough), who will turn out to be a figure akin to the Beast(s) of Revelation but with the cranial capacity of a beast of burden.
The Benefactor gets his kicks by “shifting” people “from one reality to the next;” sometimes swapping them “with their doppelganger from another earth,” other times simply doing this movie’s equivalent of wishing them into a cornfield.
The Benefactor claims that he wants to cause chaos, but the whole thing pretty much comes down to a private joke that only he gets. For example, the Benefactor tells Kevin that he has shifted more than Molly once — so seamlessly indeed that Kevin never even suspected that all wasn’t as it should have been. To put it in perspective, the Benefactor contends that Kevin is “being hampered by a combative spouse;” if so, why didn’t he swap her for a less combative Molly?
The Benefactor complains that “It’s a big job” (more like a colossally time-wasting hobby, but whatever), and he can’t do it all by himself; “In every other world I have Shifters in strategic positions to do the work I would do if I were there.” The Benefactor employs “All the other Kevins” as shifters, and now he wants to recruit this Kevin.
Our hero declines and is thenceforth known as “the Kevin Who Refused.” No, really; that’s what they call him. As unintentionally hilarious as that is (if the film had an active sense of humor, the protagonist would refer to himself as ‘the Kevinest Kevin’), it’s also very confusing — as is the notion that the Benefactor’s “primary purpose” when he visits his (for lack of a better term) home base reality is “the staging of a Kevin Recruitment.”
All of that makes it sound like only Kevins can be shifters. Since that’s not the case at all, the question is, what makes Kevin so special? And the answer is, not a fucking thing.
According to the Benefactor, “For every choice you make, there are countless other realities, where you make a different choice. Choice breeds infinite possibilities. Choice breeds realities.”
What the Benefactor is suggesting is an unnecessary plurality; a clear violation of the law of parsimony, which states that entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity. One reality suffices; there’s no need for more.
Now, I know that The Shift is a work of fiction in general and a fantasy (or science fiction, if you want to use the label loosely) in particular; as such, anything and everything can happen. There’s no reason there can’t be “countless other realities,” but there is a powerful reason why there shouldn’t be.
At one point, a supporting character say, “I always thought miracles were rare things.” Heasley wrote that line, and yet he can’t see that rareness is compelling and multiplicity is pedestrian. If there are “a thousand versions of [Kevin] in a thousand different worlds,” then that means that Kevins are literally a dime a dozen; who cares what they do or what happens to them?
Similarly, when possibilities are “infinite,” choices are meaningless. Remember in Last Crusade when the Grail Knight says of Walter Donovan that “he chose poorly”? That scene would be drained of all urgency if suddenly there were “countless realities” wherein the character can choose wisely.
To put it in a language that Heasley can understand, take the Book of Job — which The Shift is rather fond of. Don’t you think that story would lose its impact if there were multiple Jobs all undergoing different experiences? Why bother empathizing with a suffering Job when I can just skip to another one who’s never not living the life of Riley?
And since we’re getting theological, what about Jesus? He’s the Redeemer of all Mankind (and, presumably, doppelganger-kind); surely there are as many Messiahs as there are realities. But doesn’t the Bible — which the screenplay also puts quite a bit of stock in — say, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life”?
By the same token, if there are infinite Christs, there must be infinite Gods as well; thus, the movie inadvertently goes against Christianity’s basic tenet of monotheism.
All things considered, it’s possible that Heasley isn’t truly committed to the whole (and I quote) “multiverse” thing and went with it solely as an ill-advised concession to the mainstream; a way to make the film’s message more palatable to a younger audience.
Either way it doesn’t matter for the outcome remains the same: a movie set in an environment where decisions aren’t decisive, actions are inconsequential, and it’s easy to make a sacrifice because nothing is ever at stake.
PS. The Shift features a “special” mid-credits message delivered by Polaha. In it, he shares that he was drawn to the film “because it’s a story that inspires you to do something.” Of course, if that were true, he wouldn’t have to tell us, would he? We’d just be equally inspired.
You know you’re in trouble when a director feels like he has to go, so to speak, into overtime just to make sure that we understood what he was trying to accomplish; either Heasley didn’t trust his own narrative ability, or he had little confidence in our comprehension skills.