Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) "The Rift" is an English-language movie from 3 years ago written and directed by rising Swiss star Robert Kouba. He wasn't even 20 when he made these 25-minutes, but this was far from being his first directorial effort as a short film director. He kept making films in the following years and soon his first full feature movie is about to come out. All in all, especially taking his age into account, he did an okay job here. However, I felt that it dragged occasionally despite being a short film. There is nothing really in here that hasn't been done already in terms of mystery, science-fiction or alien films and I wish this could have been a bit more innovative, a bit more creative. The writing and acting could not really convince me either. I'd only really recommend it to fans of the genre.

ruth beckey wow,this little movie....my main thing I want to say..i wish it could have kept going... I understand the budget reasons...but that movie was a winner. you don't get many fantasy horror movies much anymore..and they are my favourite....few and far between...because I think audiences demand reality and answers to every question about the plot...about why6 this and that happened ...but with fantasy horror or sci-fi..it relies on imagination.....it needs to be able to grab the audience into the world the makers wanted you to see....I don't think it was like Stephen kings the mist....but the film is much shorter than the mist also...it had so much potential to me..... still its also a good short film......more monster movies please!!!!!!!!!!

Alex Vojacek Oh man, why so short !This movie is incredible. Believe me, you can forgive some of the performances, you can forgive little nuances and then you can enjoy an incredible well directed end of the world.The rift tells a story about a young guy helping a "scientist" scan anomalies in the satellite system.The first few minutes are very well spend introducing the characters, no more than it is needed and then the catastrophe.The scenery is very good, the special effects are incredible considering the budget and the way the movie is handled is incredible for such a short movie.Only 25 minutes of your life you WILL remember, yes we all had seen this before but, somehow this is worth watching it.Although the movie ends in the mother of all cliffhangers you will appreciate what it's been done here, wish more movies were built like this.No 1 hour 30 minutes of cheesy dialog, just 25 minutes of focused end of the world, yeah baby!Go see it, you wont regret it although you will want Rift 2.

Hole_In_The_Bucket 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.