MOLLY (Elizabeth Tabish) sidles up to a bar. She’s on a dare from friends there to fix a date with Kevin (Kristoffer Polaha) who’s drinking alone. The future looks promising for them. So begins The Shift (Cert. 12A). Just after that, we get this first of several texts from the Book of Job: “But strike his flesh and bones and he will surely curse you.”
When Kevin is subsequently stripped of all the happiness that marriage, family, and a good job bring, we are about to witness his experiences living in one of the multiverse’s parallel worlds. The film here on plays like a dystopian variant of It’s a Wonderful Life. Instead of the Angel Clarence rescuing George Bailey, a devilish character, The Benefactor, informs his client that there are myriad realities to inhabit and Kevins that he could be. With the flick of his Fitbit-like watch, he can shift people to alternative existences.
Neal McDonough, the go-to actor for similar villains in Marvel films, wants him for his chaos-creating projects. Kevin drives away the devil through prayer, but at a cost; for he is condemned to labour in a demi-world of misery and oppression. Scripture and God-talk are illegal. Our contemporary Job figure endures many temptations to renounce his faith, but doggedly does what he can to kindle a little hope in hopeless hell. The film’s multiverse may be littered with concepts from sci-fi, but they are hardly light years away from the Church of the Latter-day Saints’ cosmological beliefs. This is hardly surprising, as the film was produced by the Utah-based Angel Studios with its Mormon leadership. They endeavour to make films with “wholesome content”. Thus, one of The Benefactor’s first evil deeds is the dastardly replacement of Kevin’s abstemious glass of water with a beer.
The writer-director Brock Heasley portrays a world that is mostly devoid of human goodness and where only the righteous can be saved. The picture’s take on the biblical Job is somewhat out of kilter. It substitutes the allegorical tone of one of civilisation’s most profound meditations on suffering with a fundamentalist view of a God who randomly settles on Kevin to strengthen his faith. The Book of Job asks why bad things happen to good people. This film assures us that it’s all part of the divine plan.
Previous angel features such as The Chosen (Arts, 15 November 2022) give relatable backstories to biblical characters: the personable Tabish (under-used this time) played Mary Magdalene then. On this occasion, modernising an Old Testament story results in losing much relevance to present life under a welter of special effects.
That we could all be different people if other worlds and other possibilities became available to us is a well-worn theme in movies. Less explored is why some people suffer. Mishap after mishap rains down on Larry Gopnik in Joel and Ethan Coen’s A Serious Man (2009). The film, like the book, ends with a whirlwind, and Larry, a maths professor, asserts: “The uncertainty principle proves we can’t ever really know what’s going on.” That is left to God, whereas The Shift thinks that it also knows.