You won't be disappointed!

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Spoiler Alert! Main character can't stop staring! Stares at the wall,stares in the distance and stares into the camera. He's a little stare bear. The production was amateurish,the music from 70's cop shows and the plot borrowed from Stephen King's "The Mist."To the good side the production values are decent,(better than SyFy)and everyone seems to be trying hard. Obviously the producer is looking for funding to extend this short film and if he changed some of the actors,(STARE!)and tidied it up a bit it could make a decent series. A good effort if it's coming out of a film school. I applaud them for what they got done for $20,000.This is the first time I have seen Robert Kouba's work as a director and I am impressed at what he achieved for so little money.All in all it won't hurt your eyes to watch it.

I am judging this based on almost 24 minutes compared to 24 minutes of any other science fiction film. Well, I was tempted to give in 8 stars, but a short film cannot stand a few minutes of sub par acting as it might be excused in a longer film as long as it was made up for. The lead actor in this movie had some very good moments at the end, but earlier in the film his timing is off and his expressions don't quite communicate enough for a lead. Supporting cast was all fine. The look of the film is great and so is the pace. I think that sometimes there is a real need for some background noise or a soundtrack of some sort, if not music to help the scenes flow better (let's face it, the script can't compete with Sex, Lies and Videotape which has no background music). Nevertheless, I found myself more entertained in 24 minutes that I am for that period of time in most films of the science fiction/horror genre. The special effects were good and mostly believable. Above all, I found myself hoping this team gets a shot at making a feature length 3d film. I would definitely go see it (I typically like to see anything that has many low light scenes on the big screen). The movie inspired me to write my one and only review!

First things first. I usually like to start with the positive aspects of a film and the biggest thing this film has going for it are the visuals. It has a very consistent color palette throughout, giving it a clean, professional look that is very hard to achieve with such a small budget. With updates to computer software technology and hardware allowing for lower prices, it really isn't difficult to put this technology in the hands of Joe Q. Public but with that being said, it still requires some skill and an eye for detail to keep consistency throughout. The CGI is fairly well done, opting for the "less-is-more" approach which helps to lend an ominous air to the overall production. The music is also decently done, but a generic suspense film score.Now for the not so good points. The pacing of this film is done in such a way that the skill of acting is severely lacking. The line delivery is very stunted and slowed down, as though there was an overall feeling that the dialogue wouldn't be heard unless they... speak... very... slowly (the news broadcast is one example that comes to mind). By doing this, there's just no energy or believability to anyone's performance. For a better idea of how this can be overcome, especially on such a low budget, I recommend watching Shane Carruth's "Primer". He opted for more naturalistic speech. This allowed the actors to come across as more authentic. The Rift also incorporates way too many lingering closeups of the actor's faces. M. Night Shyamalan also does this a LOT in his movies and it really detracts from his story-telling overall. In the Rift, it just highlights the inadequacy of the depth of the acting and serves to give an overall slowness to the film's story arc.As for the script, there's just too much oddness that makes no sense. For example, the DARPA 'assassin' is this left-field character who doesn't really add anything overall and feels like it was shoe-horned in. Also, the fact that those who collected information about these 'anomalies' mysteriously disappeared also makes no sense. It implies there is a government conspiracy to end the world with monsters from another dimension. Why? What gain could there possibly be?The overall concept of R.A.D.A.R. anomalies being a cause for alarm is also a hard idea to swallow. Another idea that feels like it was thrown in to attempt to create artificial tension. A deeper history of how and what these R.A.D.A.R. anomalies have done in the past would have helped a viewer understand why they would concern the main character as much as they did before all hell started to break loose.Overall, this film is okay for a short. Visually, it's quite good, but that's really about it. Acting is sub-par and the story is thread-bare, containing an odd mesh of ideas that don't really coalesce into a cohesive and logical whole. It's quite possible that with a bit more experience/seasoning and a better grasp of plotting, we might be seeing Robert Kouba churn out some good sci-fi popcorn fare in the future. This film short is more of a meretricious effort.

I was also given a chance to see this movie in advance and I have to say I'm impressed. It's a good story with a pretty difficult subject to make it look believable, but Robert and his team have done a great job at it. The cinematography is very fluid and easy to the eye, grading and vfx are also very well executed. Everything is done with good professional touch so you can't really notice that it had a pretty small budget, not a Hollywood product by any means. This is a difficult genre to produce a scenes that are not too tacky and "cheap", this being said, The Rift is a positive surprise. I believed every second of it!To sum it up, I'd say it is a film you definitely should watch. The visual effects are well blended to the footage and the acting is good. When I first watched it I felt that I would want to see more, which is a good thing!