Hostile Dimensions

While trying to uncover the truth about a graffiti artist who disappeared, two documentary filmmakers discover a door that allows them to travel to alternate dimensions, only to find nightmarish worlds waiting on the other side.

Hostile Dimensions is a very low budget POV sci-fi/horror film.

A POV (or Point of View) film is what a film is called when the camera is being operated by one of the characters in the movie. It’s a cheap way of making movies, as well as a cheap way of heightening the tension by aggressively controlling what exactly the audience gets to see, when and how. Sometimes these films pretend to be documentaries, or "mockumentaries" like What We Do In The Shadows, This Is Spinal Tap, Borat, Troll Hunter, or Lunopolis. It's a popular way to make sit-coms too, like The Office or Modern Family. Sometimes, they can be a "last broadcast" kind of thing, like Grave Encounters, Rec, The Wicksboro Incident, or Late Night With The Devil. Often times they're known as “Found Footage” films, and in that case, the main idea is that someone has discovered the footage somewhere, and it's now being watched, presumably after the people who originally filmed it are long dead, usually as a direct result of whatever is that's on the footage, like Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity, Cloverfield, or Exhibit 8. And those are only a few of the many, many examples. There's a ton of POV movies.

But just a word of warning… Never watch Megan is Missing.

Trust me.

Anyway, much like zombie films, POV films are mostly popular to make because they’re generally just cheaper to make. A big chunk of your cast can also double as your crew, and you don't have to hide that fact. You can askew the more tradtional lighting set-ups, which are more expensive, and keep it more natural, and the story allows this. There's generally less shot set-up too, as it's often supposed to be more of an "organic" situation, which is helpful if you're a guerilla production where you might need to get in, shot your scenes, and then get out of locations quickly.

But there are rules to making a Good Genre POV Film:

1. Never forget that the camera is a character.
2. Have a good reason for the characters to be filming in the first place.
3. Have a better reason for them to keep filming once the shit hits the fan.
4. Acknowledge that it is inevitable that there will be a point in the story where it will no longer make any sense at all for the characters to continue filming, and that is when your film must end.

The comedies are all pretty exempt from these rules, but the sci-fi/horror ones? They live and die by them, and the fact is, most POV films fail horribly at one, or usually all, of these rules. That fact, plus the general low budget quality you often find in POV films, is why it's an unreliable genre.

Because that's the rub when it comes to POV sci-fi/horror films. While it's a relatively cheap and easy genre for any filmmaker to do–After all, even the most amatuer and untalented of filmmakers only needs a couple of friends, a camera, and the motivation to tromp out into the woods for a couple of afternoons–but as most of them eventually find out, it is also a deceptively simple genre to do right. Even the greats stumble when they wade into the genre, especially when it comes to the first rule. George Romero's terrible late-career zombie POV film, Diary of the Dead, is a good example of how a film can often forget that the camera is also a character in the film, and usually for no other reason than a few bad jump-scares.

As for the second rule, so many of these POV films start out at a party of some kind, so one of the characters films the event. "It's Mom and Dad's Anniversary! What are you doing? Where'd you find that camera? I found it in an old box!" This is a reasonable excuse for a character to be filming, sure, but it's been used so often at this point, it's become a shitty and obvious cliche of the genre, which now only highlights the film's false reality, which means that it has become a bad reason for the characters to be filming in the first place. Surprisingly, very few of these films use the idea of a news crew being on location for a story. They always opt for party instead. I've never understood why, because really, a news crew is a pretty good reason for Rule #3.

For example, Cloverfield is a POV film that starts out at a party of some kind, and one random character picks up a camera to film the festivites. That character then films the events of the whole movie. And in a movie that is about a giant monster attacking New York City, perhaps the single most unbelievable part of the film is that this dude-bro would lug a camera all over once the shit hits the fan during... again... a giant monster attack. "The World needs to know" is just not a believable reason from a person who questions how to use a camera at the beginning of the film to still be filming as buildings collapse around them, crowds almost trample them, and little spider monsters chase them, BUT... it would be somewhat more understandable coming from a news crew.

"But he needed the low light setting in the dark subway!" Fuck you.

As for the last rule?

Well, that one gets pretty much every genre POV films. The good ones realize that at a certain point in these sci-fi/horror films, even reporters and documentarians would care more about their lives than "the story." And if they drop their camera when a monster is chasing them... they won't turn around and go back for it. It's just not believable. The storyteller in you may not like this fact, but the undeniable truth in this genre is that sometimes, your story has to end with an abrupt cut and a fade to black, and if you ignore that fact, I promise you, your audience will be to tell, and you'll just be a hack who made a shitty and cheap-looking horror film.

But all that having been said, when it comes to all of the usual foibles and failures of the POV genre, Hostile Dimensions is a better than your average example, and a little more clever in the way it approaches its use of POV filming, so that's good.

Set in Scotland, Hostile Dimensions is told in nine chapters and an epilogue, all starting with two documentarians who decide to look into the incredibly strange on-camera disappearance of a graffitit artist, who was filmed walking through a free-standing door in the middle of an abandoned building...

And then vanishing.

The film calls theses free-standing doors "Wolf Doors."

As far as I can tell, this is a term that originates with this movie, but the urban legend of free-standing doors is still a fairly common one. Wolf Doors may have grown out of stories of Fae Doors, which, according to legend, are gifts of dubious intent from fairies to humans, which allow humans acces to the Fae Realm, where they usually then find themselves trapped, and so the idea seems to be that should you go exploring in abandoned sites, you may come across a free-standing door that will open to another place. It should be mentioned here that this whole idea seems to mostly be contained to creepypasta sites. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, or a way to say that it's not a "real" legend, because the internet is simply a faster way of spreading the kinds of stories that were once only shared around the fire, in fact, such widespread access could conceivably just be the modern way of creating a Tulpa, but whatever, my point is... take it all with a grain of salt.

It is, after all, just a story... right?

Anyway, the general idea is that stand-alone doors, much like stairs in the woods, are like the modern day versions of lonely henges or fairy rings, they are regarded as wild and dangerously unpredictable things that are best avoided. In a nutshell... If you see one. Don’t touch it. Walk away.

Everyone knows this.

So, when the documentarians find this free-standing door that the graffiti artist disappeared into... they decide to take the door home.

The plan is a simple one. Open the door. Look for the graffiti artist. And film it, of course. What could possibly go wrong?

Within the door, they find a plethora of alternate universes waiting. There's a universe that is an exact copy, except their mom is still alive. There's a universe of rubble, where hungry things scuttle in the ruins. In another, a Shiztsu claims to be god. In yet another universe, there's an empty Chuck E Cheese type of restaurant, and they follow signs there, written in Guragigna, that say “free hugs” and lead to a panda mascot, which turns out to be a demon with massive spider legs coming out of its back.

They barely escape.

In another universe, there are golden giants who slowly hunt through the ruins of civilization for errant humans. In another world, they find themselves in a forest of pyramids, where humpback whales slowly fly by. In another, there's a jungle with yellow balloons, and a yellow-skinned demon hunting them. In another, red-eyed shadows chase them through the seemingly endless passageways of an old church, while air raid sirens wail outside.

And yet, they just keep trying.

They also film the door when they’re all asleep each night–in the same apartment as this unsecured dimensional portal that has already proven to be dangerous–and sometimes... something thumps the door from the other side.

Finally, one night, the door opens on it's own, and something slips through into their world from the other side.

It’s the missing graffiti artist, and she has had a bad time. Her making it back home leads them to discovering that the guy who they thought was her boyfriend is actually an incel weirdo piece of shit Joe Rogan fan, who is apparently responsible for making the door in the first place. It turns out that he's a disciple of the golden giants, who told him to place these doors all over the world, in order to trap the unwary, so they can be used as sacrifices... I think.

That part was a little unclear. 

In a nod to Stephen King's Dark Tower series, they chase the incel through the door, and end up on a beach full of free-standing doors. From there, they tumble through a series of worlds, from strange street fairs, rooms of yellow balloons, to places where they slog through rivers of blood, or stumble through wars against aliens, or worlds where foxes are the hunters and humans are the prey (all of which is still clearly located in Scotland, it is a low budget film, after all), until they finally run the incel straight into the free hugs panda mascot spider demon, which eats him, and as a result, destroys the doors for some reason.

Finally, after some awkward and unearned emotional catharsis, it's all over. Everyone is safe. Except the incel, who is deservedly dead. Why the incel was able to make doors in the first place, why they can make doors, or who made the doors on the beach, really the question of how the whole thing got started at all, is a little unclear. Unfortunately, shit really gets real loosey-goosey at the end of the film, at least, narrative-wise.

In the end, the characters all kneel before the Shiztsu dog god, who promises to bring them a better world.

Usually with these cheap POV genre films, their downfall is that they fuck up the Rules to a Good POV film, or they just over-reach their general ability because of their shoestring budget, but that really isn't Hostile Dimensions' problem.

Not really.

Hostile Dimension's main problems are all editing and pacing issues. Like the way they cut out the part when the characters decide to bring the door home... which is something I really would have appreciated seeing the characters try to justify. But then, maybe that's why they cut it out of the film, right? It's just such an astonishly stupid decision, there was no way they could make it seem believable.

Because, even if you don't believe that what you saw really happened, which is totally reasonable, why would anyone immediately believe that old door was a portal to alternate dimensions? But even then, why would they bring that thing into their house? At worst, it’s extremely dangerous, and has literally an infinite amount of monsters on the other side of it waiting to kill you. At best, it’s nothing but moldy garbage that you found inside a junkie squat. It probably has bugs!

But anyway...

In addition to its pacing and editing issue, as well as the usual issues with the general subpar acting ability one runs into whenever you're watching smaller film projects that rely on friends, and some desperately unemployed actors, who are all willing to devote their time and energy for very little potential gain, overall, it's the general motivations of the characters that undercuts things the most.

Why are they doing this is a real good question. And obviously, the answer is... because there wouldn't be a story otherwise. But that's the problem, right? I get it, sometimes, the characters just have to do shit, because you're telling a story, but this one just needed a better all around reason for why the documentarians kept doing what they were doing, instead of say... chaining up the thing with cinder blocks and throwing it in a lake.

Also, while the jumps in logic that the characters occasionally make do make a kind of sense (mostly because they’re grounded in commonly accepted tropes), how and why they make these leaps is pretty unearned. Like, it makes sense that someone would do what they do here, or that a thing might work in the particular way it does, in this story, but that's because it's a Multiversal Portal Story, and that's just how shit works in these kinds of stories.

But if this is actually taking place in the "real" world, and someone were to pull some of these ideas out of their ass, and then present them to you as if they were serious and reasonable, you'd naturally assume that that person was stupid, crazy, or both. And it would be fair to do so, because it's all so unfounded and seemingly out of left field.

In your basic zombie movie, it's fair for the chracters to not understand how anything works at first, and as a result, for them to make what might seem to be (to us the audience) as some pretty dumb decisions. It's the first day, y'see, and this whole zombie problem is brand new. But then the characters see someone get bitten, and that person then dies due to the bite, either due to the blood loss or the very quickly moving infection. Then, a few moments later, that same dead person gets back up as a zombie and attacks them, and when the characters try to shoot or stab this person, it just keeps coming... until they shoot or stab it in the head, and at that point, the zombie finally falls, completely dead.

Now, they know the Rules.

This is the script's main problem in Hostile Dimensions, it doesn't allow the characters to really discover a lot of the answer themselves. They more just kind of muse it out loud, try it, and it turns out they're right. That's not good.

Still, I liked it. It's fun. It has some wit and good ideas, and for obviously only having it a budget of three dollars and forty-two cents, it's pretty well-made. Yes, the climax is a bit of a mess, but still, this is a good time, and an overall impressive little romp through the Multiverse.

Not bad. Not great, of course, but definitely not bad.