"Infinite worlds. Endless choices. One way out."
The Shift is a modern-day retelling of Job which follows Kevin Garner (Kristoffer Polaha, Wonder Woman 1984) as he embarks on a journey across worlds and dimensions to reunite with Molly (Elizabeth Tabish, The Chosen), his true love. The narrative unfolds as a dystopian drama and sci-fi thriller, where a mysterious adversary, The Benefactor (Neal McDonough, Arrow), disrupts Kevin's reality.
Faced with infinite worlds and impossible choices, Kevin must navigate through an alternate reality, resisting The Benefactor's tempting offer of wealth and power. As survival hangs in the balance, Kevin fights to return to the familiar world he cherishes and the woman he loves.
Along the way, he meets Gabriel (Sean Astin, The Lord of the Rings), a rare ally in the post-apocalyptic landscape the protagonist finds himself trapped in. The movie, produced by Angel Studios, uses faith as its backbone but is also a compelling sci-fi tale that, most impressively, does something new with the Multiverse at a time when the concept is all too familiar to us.
Earlier this week, we caught up with Sean and Kristoffer to discuss their work in The Shift ahead of its release in theaters this weekend. Along the way, we learned more about why they enjoyed taking a deep dive into the Multiverse, their dynamic on set, and the fact this movie feels every bit as significant in scale as a big budget blockbuster.
You can watch our full conversation with Sean and Kristoffer in the player below.
Sean, you’re an icon in the world of fantasy and sci-fi after projects like Lord of the Rings and Stranger Things, so when a smaller yet still very ambitious movie like this heads your way, what as an actor are you looking for in a character like Gabriel?
Sean: Well, it’s really the ideas. I love the Multiverse. I’m at a point now where I don’t jump out of the car when someone starts describing the Multiverse to me. There were many years where I couldn’t understand and I couldn’t keep up. The idea that Gabriel, at a certain point in the movie, be manifested in the Multiverse in a visual way was really pretty exciting. Also, you understand the world of this film. I don’t think it’s a small film. I appreciate what you said, but it is, to me, huge in size, visual-wise. If you go and see this in a movie theater, it fills up the whole frame. You watch this guy right here, in the first frames of the movie…I shouldn’t give away what it is, but there’s a great entrance for the character. You realise, ‘Oh, this is like Dune or something.’ You think about Dune and it’s just this wide open space and that’s how this movie starts, in a wide-open setting that’s identified as a world and not necessarily this world.
And Kristoffer, I loved seeing you play this normal guy who gets thrown into a crazy, post-apocalyptic setting, but how did you find balancing The Shift’s heightened sci-fi with a man who, has his faith, and ultimately wants to get back to the woman he loves?
Kristoffer: The story was so well-written and crafted by Brock. He also directed the picture. When you’re an actor, your job is to track with the story and it was a 25-day shoot. My character, Kevin, was there for 25 days. It really went sort of week by week and, as different actors came in, they set the tone. When Sean showed up, it really was all of a sudden Gabriel’s world and it changed the energy of the set. It changed the patina, and it was really about Kevin reacting truthfully in the situation every given minute. It was far too much to handle as one piece, so you take it scene by scene and you just live in the moment as an actor. It was a real joy and an absolute treat for me to get to play Kevin. I’m so humbled and honoured.
Without getting into spoilers, the nature of the Multiverse means you both get to explore multiple facets of your respective characters; what about that proved to be most fun for you both?
Sean: Well, for me, getting to come in and see Kristoffer, it was clear to see living in the space of this world, the laden quality of it was apparent. It was apparent that he was living that moment. At the end of the day, you say goodnight and you’re like, ‘Oof, this dude!’ [Laughs] The element of Gabriel’s character, which I’ve done in other movies and I feel comfortable with, is just the companion and friend who says, ‘Hey, can I offer you some energy or some fun?’ In a weird way, Gabriel finds a moment of purpose where he’s taking Kevin’s ideas, testimony, or Revelations, if you will, that he’s able to put down in writing and brings them to other people and then come back and says, ‘Hey man, this is helping people.’ That level of nurturing…but then I go in another direction and that was what I really wanted to see on screen for me personally. It was my relationship with the Multiverse and it turned out exactly how I hoped it would.
Kristoffer: Dude, this guy brings…we had the world premiere two nights ago and a movie is energy, right? From the opening shot, like you were saying, you see this wide-open vista of a world that looks like ours but isn’t ours. You can feel the audience lock in. Sean’s character shows up and he brought humour which was an unexpected element. The way he delivered certain lines that were so deadpan…it’s really brilliant stuff and it levels up the film in ways that, like you said, it could be comparatively small. When you say a small film, technically, we’re what we’re talking about is the budget. A film like Dune has a $250 million budget. Wonder Woman 1984 was $300 million. We had a $7 million budget and it was all crowdfunded. It was people saying, ‘We believe in this project and we want to see it come to life.’ Then, you get guys like Sean and Neal, and they bring decades of experience and excellence to the table and it just lifted it. All of a sudden, it was like the project had wings. Gosh, it was just a joy, man.
Sean: To me, it’s about confidence and a filmmaker’s confidence to let a shot that’s framed for a big screen be. When you realise that that patience draws an audience in, you’re honouring their imagination. You get these big ideas about how every choice you make can send you to a different place in your life, and the idea of this movie is, ‘What if there were a million different versions of your life that tracked with different decisions you made?’ Also, $7 million goes a lot farther than it used to. You have these background actors and these sets on location in Birmingham, Alabama that were really something. The mill we were working in had a lot of dark, interesting, and inspiring history. If you just look around as an actor at where you are and go, ‘Wow,’ you take the energy in and then you do your thing.
Sean, there are a lot of layers to Gabriel but we don’t get a tonne of time for backstory. Is that something you give much thought to or do you like having a little bit of ambiguity to free up what you do with your performance?
Sean: I showed up and my mission was to just give Brock whatever he wanted. ‘Brock, explain this world to me; I’ve read the script three times and I really don’t understand it. Can you please explain it?’ He starts describing it and I’m like, ‘Oh, the audience is gonna think that’s really cool. Let’s go do that!’ Gabriel is a Biblical name and this is a film that leans heavily on faith and Biblical allusions. To me, there was no way to import that. I just had to go in there and relate to another human being. In a weird way, having a tabula rasa is sort of the point. He keeps coming and meeting all these different people of his journey and here’s another one and we start wondering if it’s an empty vessel and what’s happening. He’s eating all the time. Why am I eating all the time? It’s temporal! You don’t need a lot of backstory to eat a sandwich so long as you really care about the thing you’re eating while you eat it! I’ll look up every now and again, and look at Kevin and he’s almost as interesting as the sandwich [Laughs].
Kristoffer: [Laughs] He’s almost as real as the sandwich! I think we shared a sandwich and I’m thinking, ‘I’m eating after Sean Astin…’
Sean: I’m almost sharing with you [Laughs].
Gabriel and Kevin are an unlikely duo in some ways, but how much freedom were you both given on set to play with that dynamic and maybe throw some improvisation into their conversations?
Sean: It was comfortable, but I don’t know if we were riffing.
Kristoffer: We weren’t riffing, but definitely, what you brought specifically to [the motel scene] is you wrinkled the page a little bit and had fun with it. It wasn’t like we went way off.
Sean: It was Neal. Neal sort of infantilises Gabriel and it seemed like a villain twist so I didn’t get it, but I realised, ‘Oh, I’m not supposed to suddenly be different. I’m different because he’s making me that way right now.’ You want to honour what’s happening in front of you…I’m like I betray Kris a little bit, but it’s not a full betrayal [Laughs].
Kristoffer: It’s really brilliant. It’s such a surprising dynamic and is just wonderful.
The Shift arrives in theaters on December 1, 2023.