SHIFTER

Directed by: Jacob Leighton Burns

Starring: Nicole Fancher, Ashley Mandanas, Jamie Brewster |

Theresa Chaney is a gifted young woman who has invented her own time machine in a barn. Giving in to temptation, she uses the device on herself, teleporting herself back in time by two hours. Initially pleased with her success, she soon starts to encounter some terrifying side effects…

Shifter is a very slow burn of a film and will frustrate anyone looking for more trashy thrills, but if you want a time travel movie with a measured approach and horrific central idea, then Shifter should be right up your alley.

Nichole Fancher is very good as Theresa, a young woman who is very insular. She doesn't have any friends at work or in her private life, although she has made a few awkward attempts to meet people. She winds up on a date with an old acquaintance but it becomes apparent that he's a complete ass (spends all his time staring at his phone).

In her barn is her time machine. Unlike The Fly's snazzy transporter pods, this looks like it was built from welded oil drums and hooked up to a laptop. We don't need to know how it works, just that it does.  When Theresa decides to use the machine to exact some petty revenge on her asshole date, she's careful to ensure that her former self doesn't see her or bump into her. And once her former self has caught up and transported through the machine, everything should be normal, right?

Our first clue that everything isn't normal is the fact that her cat, whom she'd sent through first as a test run, isn't eating her food (I'm pretty sure that there are two versions of the cat at one point too).  Soon Theresa is suffering searing stomach pains and throwing up at work. The film is intercut with close-up scenes of red, wet, sinewy tissue being slowly torn apart, to illustrate what is happening to Theresa. Even though they show nothing in particular, these moments feel deeply disturbing.

Then she watches in horror as her cat phases out of existence, only to return a few minutes later. Its not long before the same thing happens to her, her body forming deep tissue fissures which disintegrate her whole body, returning a few hours later.

The special fx here are serviceable, and remind me of how just about every horror movie used to have something similar - CGI black smoke or black veins taking over the skin. However Nichole Fancher is able to sell the pain of the experience  very well and the way the audience has been primed already with the short clips of ripping sinew accentuate the scenes of her disintegrating. We also get some interesting prosthetic work to show how the constant “shifting” in time is affecting her physically.

There is a lot of pathos built into the script. Theresa's unwilling time jumps force her to confront different aspects and moments of her life, including a visit to her deceased father and reliving certain painful moments as an outsider inwards. Her disintegrations tend to happen at the very worst moment, as well - just as she's culminating her awkward relationship with a young woman she met at the library for example.

THE VERDICT

SHIFTER has a very indie feel to it and it does take its time telling its story but once Theresa uses the time machine the film is very engaging with its central idea. It takes time travel theory reasonably seriously without getting technical and we can follow the various loops that occur. Everything works to deliver an elegiac drama which happens to be about time travel.

7 out of 10  (MikeOutWest)