Nature
abhors a vacuum and so does the spirit world. A tough single mom tries to use her
John Edward-Crossing Over-style
powers to save her daughter, but her body is left vacant far too long in Maria
Pulera’s Between Worlds (trailer here), which opens this
Friday in New York.
Poor
Joe Majors thinks he is a good Samaritan when he saves Julie from strangulation
in a truck stop bathroom, but she is rather annoyed by his intervention. However,
she starts to appreciate him when he drives her to the hospital and keeps her
company while she waits for her teen daughter Billie to recover consciousness.
It turns out Julie can visit the spirit realm, or whatever the heck, while in
the throes of a near death experience. She was trying to guide Billie back to
her body, but she will need another throttling from Majors when Billie takes another
turn for the worse.
Julie
is grateful to the down-on-his-luck trucker and they have good chemistry, so he
more or less moves in on Billie’s first day home. It is a good arrangement for Majors,
but he is freaked out by Billie, who seems convinced she and Majors share some
long intimate history together. In fact, she is alarmingly forward with him, but
maybe it isn’t so creepy, since she is possessed by the spirit of his late
wife. No, it is definitely still creepy, in an especially sleazy kind of way.
Forget
about the supernatural and sexual content here. The real attraction here is a
massive Nic Cage nostril-flaring freak-out. Think Mandy crossed with Wicker Man,
raised to the power of ten. There is even a little sad-eyed Hubert McDunnough
from Raising Arizona thrown in for
good measure.
Franka
Potente (from Run Lola Run) is
surprisingly down-to-earth and engaging as Mother Julie, but Penelope Mitchell
is uncomfortably Lolita-ish as Billie. Seriously, it is just wrong. Having Nic
Cage doing his thing as Majors just adds to the awkwardness. There simply are
no words to adequately describe the ickiness of Majors’ make-out sessions with
Billie (or rather his wife, in Billie’s body). Honestly, it will also make you
rather queasy to watch his sex scenes with her mom as well.
Let’s
face it, you should just fast-forward to the Cage meltdown (which is what
everyone wants to see in the first place), or forget this film entirely. He
implodes with a bang, but as a work of cinema, Between Worlds is no Mandy.
For Nic Cage, the adventure continues, but halfway serious horror fans can
safely skip Between Worlds when it
opens this Friday (12/21) in New York, at the Cinema Village.
