BETWEEN WORLDS (2018) **

Joe (Nicolas Cage) is an out of work trucker who stops a guy from choking Julie (Franka Potente) in a truck stop bathroom.  Turns out, Julie has clairvoyance whenever she’s being strangled, and the guy was only helping her.  She then gets Joe to choke her so she can guide the spirit of her comatose daughter Billie (Penelope Mitchell) back into its body.  Afterwards, Joe and Julie strike up a relationship and he sticks around the house to help nurse Billie back to health.  Things take a turn for the bizarre when the spirit of Joe’s devious dead wife possesses Billie and begins manipulating him with her new, sexy, tight, teenage bod. 

The first thing you notice about Between Worlds is that it looks very cheap.  There’s no ambiance or atmosphere whatsoever.  I don’t think they had a lighting budget as every scene looks flat and uninteresting.  

It also has a painfully simple premise.  To make matters worse, it takes forever for the predictable twist to occur.  If you took the scenario out of the redneck trucker world and moved it to suburbia, the film would look at home on The Lifetime Network.

I’m afraid there’s not much here to recommend other than Cage’s performance.  But what a performance it is.  His twitchy white trash character is a worthy addition to his oeuvre of oddballs  Forgive the spoilers, but I’m afraid you won’t watch Between Worlds unless you know there’s a scene where he bangs Potente’s hot teenage daughter while reading aloud from a book called “Memories by Nicolas Cage”.  It’s a random off the charts meta gonzo touch that puts a little WTF into an otherwise ordinary DOA DTV flick. 

If you needed another reason to watch it, Mitchell is just as good as any.  She excels at playing the sexy possessed daughter.  She’s reminiscent of Samara Weaving or Margot Robbie and uninhibitedly gets into her seductress role.

Sure, the plot of Between Worlds is predictable as all get out.  However, those random Cagey moments are anything but.  Sure, you can probably guess what happens at the end of the movie.  I’m 100% sure you won’t guess HOW.  I don’t want to spoil any more than I already have.  Let’s just say you might not listen to “Leader of the Pack” the same way again.

Is Between Worlds a good movie?  No.  Is it worth watching solely for Cage’s antics?  Mostly. 

AKA:  To Hell.