Review: Hostile Dimensions

I thought I'd do something different today; a movie review. I hyped myself up for Hostile Dimensions. Found footage films are a dirty pleasure of mine and the concept of the film was interesting. Despite the obvious indie film vibe the film gave off, I still held hope for this film.

I was wrong.

This film is awful.

It never manages to go deep enough to shake off the amateur feel in it. The story follows a film maker and her friend as they try to locate a missing girl who fell into another dimension via a door. Specifically, a door unattached. A threshold and a door without a wall. The pair team up with a professor, who looks younger than them, who explains that this is a wolf door, a portal to alternate dimensions. At no point  does the film establish our protagonists to the missing girl. Why do they care that a radom girl went midsing? What is their connection? It doesn't matter as the missing girl somehow finds her way out without their help. But that's the least of the story's problems. Our protagonist record themselves keeping next to the door to record anything that happens when they aren't awake. I thought this would be a good opportunity to have the door open slightly or build tension with a creature poking it's head out. None of these things happen and instead the previously mentioned missing girl leaps out of the door with no explanation of where she's been and a barebone explanation of what she saw. Missing girl's testimony leaves much to desire. What's on telhe other side? Monsters. That's it just "monsters." The story is broken down into chapters that do nothing to divide the story. Normally this is done ro build anticipation for the audience but this feels like a clumsy way to break up the events. Chapters can make a story feel as a period at the end of a scene, this feels like a bookmark in-between. Perhaps worst is the Antagonist who spy's on our protagonists in the beginning. Why he does this or how ge knows where they live isn't explained. His problem? He doesn't fit in and wants to create these giant wolf doors to swallow up our world. In one scene he somehow tasers everyone and pulls our main protagonist into the door, possibly to sacrifice her to the doorway or for some dark purpose. Our heroes, of course, brave through multiple doors ways and find an alternate version of their friend whom they decide to not save because she doesn't belong in their dimension. You'd think that someone would explain these rules to the audience bit that part is skipped over for our second protagonist to talk to the missing girl about wokeness and wanting to change the world but being frustrated at her inability to do so. To change what? The climate? Politics? Her motivations are so vague that I couldn't tell you what she wanted. Finally, there's the effects which are hilarious. The opening has them visiting an indoor playground only to be chased by a tentacles panda who wants hugs. Very reminiscent of Five Nights at Freddy's. An obvious man in a bear costume but everything seems to go downhill with gifs of whales flying in the sky and my favorite, a man in a fox head costume hunting humans with a rifle. The costumes and cg are so bad I had to laugh. Usually, a smart film maker would shoot around these issues to build a believable world. This movie seems to want to show off the bad effects to enhance your disappointment. Finally l, I have to mention the vagueness of the film. At one point one character asks the professor if they could find a door to Hell. The professor says that's this dimension. And this seems to be a theme throughout. This whiny, pissy, "feel bad for me" theme that never exains why this world is bad. What is their problem with this world? It could be anything from nuclear waste disposal to the death of loved ones to man spreading on the bus. To further salt the wound, the protagonist decides to search for a dimension where she belongs. Our other characters decide to stay and use their wolf door to speak to a wise being, disguised as a dog, to figure out to save their dimension. Again I ask what is their issue with this dimension?

The only positive I can say is the costume design which has our protagonists wear red and blue and our antagonist, yellow. This is one of the things that attracted me to the movie as I thought it could be a learning opportunity on using colors. That's probably the biggest disappointment, I learned more of what not to do than what works. And that's a bad sign when you end a movie thinking of ways to improve it rather than why you enjoyed it. The bad design, poorly shot scenes, and sudden vague wokeness message throw everything into disarray. It's like a hyper focus documentary on what makes a found footage film bad. 

Obviously , I don't recommend this film and I hope it becomes another brick in the found footage dump. It makes me want to find a wolf door and toss all copies of this film into oblivion.