Review: THE WORLD OVER (2018)

Cass (Tess Granfield), a pregnant woman finds a strange key in her apartment. A strange key that opens a hidden doorway an alternate version of the apartment she shares with her husband(Brett Keating). When he goes to check it out and doesn’t return she is forced to go and look for him.

Recently premiering at the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival THE WORLD OVER is a seventeen-minute short that does a great job of creating a constant sense of dread and tension. From the start, you know this isn’t going to go well and the film pulls you along to see just what will happen. What does happen is intriguing and fairly original.

While parallel worlds and universes are a common plot in literature and, of course, comics they’re not so common in movies. STAR TREK’s “MIRROR MIRROR” episode and the Jet Li (ROMEO MUST DIE, THE EXPENDABLES) film THE ONE  come to mind as well as ANOTHER EARTH. And that’s about it. Admittedly Jet Li kicking cross-dimensional ass is a bit more my style, but THE WORLD OVER’s much more human concerns are quite compelling in their own way.

Writer/director Heath C. Michaels gets great performances from Granfield and Keating who have to play multiple versions of their characters, not an easy thing to do. He also manages to tell a complete story in seventeen minutes, but one that still leaves you wanting to see more. This may explain why he and his wife, producer Heather Michaels, (they previously collaborated on the feature YEARDLEY) were at Fantasia’s Frontières Genre Co-Production Market. I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing THE WORLD OVER expanded to a feature.

You can keep posted on future showings of THE WORLD OVER at the film’s website and its Facebook page. There is also a trailer on the website.