Joe (Nicolas Cage) is a truck driver down on his luck. He drinks and smokes pot. His wife and daughter passed in a house fire. He runs into Julie (Franka Potente) who has the ability to die and see dead spirits. Her daughter Billie (Penelope Mitchell) dies in the hospital and Julie dies to bring her back. Instead of bringing back Billie, she gets Mary, Joe's wife.

Yes, the film goes there and then goes nowhere. Joe has sex with Julie and then her daughter who is his wife. At this point, the scriptwriter died. Rather than create an exciting revenge film, going after some unknown killer we didn't know existed, we have a stupid farce.

I thought this was going to a cross between "Pay the Ghost" and "Ghost Ride." Instead, it was Lolita with a twist.

Guide: F-word, sex, brief nudity.

I stumbled upon the 2018 fantasy thriller by random chance in 2021. And since it was a movie that I hadn't already seen, and the fact that my wife is a fan of Nicolas Cage - for God knows what reason - I ended up sitting down to watch "Between Worlds".

And I found myself to be between words. This movie was just strange, even for a Nicolas Cage movie. Sure, some of the concepts of the storyline was interesting, but the movie was just painfully awkward to sit through, especially with the thing going on between Joe (played by Nicolas Cage) and Billie (played by Penelope Mitchell).

The story told in "Between Worlds" was somewhat of a stretch. Sure, there were the whole thing with a spirit coming back to inhabit a different body which was interesting, but most of the rest of the storyline sort of fell short of being entertaining.

The acting performances in the movie were adequate, at least the ones put on by Franka Potente and Penelope Mitchell. "Between World" does not rank among any of the top performances put on by Nicolas Cage, no, in fact it was cringeworthy to watch him stumble through this movie.

"Between Worlds" is a movie that came and went without leaving much of any lasting impression, and while having sat through the entire movie, I can honestly say that this is not a movie that I will be returning to watch a second time. Just another run-of-the-mill notch in the belt in the acting performance of Mr. Nicolas Cage.

My rating of writer and director Maria Pulera's 2018 movie "Between Worlds" lands on a generous less than mediocre four out of ten stars.

"Between Worlds" is yet another crazy Nicholas Cage movie in which he pulls out all the stops on his deliberate overacting, and manages to score some points.

This has something to do with a mother played by Franka Potente who can briefly visit and alter things in the afterlife while being strangled (!). Cage plays a substance-abusing trucker grieving the tragic loss of his family. He stumbles upon Potente while she's being choked by a bruiser in order to "save" her comatose daughter. Cage "rescues" her only to become part of her life, and ends up asked to choke her himself. He begins a torrid affair with her and moves in with her and the daughter when the young woman comes home from the hospital. Since he's just had his truck seized by bill collectors, this couldn't come at a better time. But alas - the daughter has somehow become possessed by the spirit of Cage's dead wife! And also wants to sleep with him!

If this sounds ridiculous, be assured that it is. And it gets even more so. But the cast and especially Cage play it in a rough, gutteral working class way that makes it interesting. All the way to the explosion of stupid violence and melodrama that is the ending. And somewhere in all this there's a message about how one should not mess around with the supernatural.

If this were played straight with middle class or higher characters it would be just another dullish ghost movie. But since it is played manic with working poor ones, it remains watchable and different. Sort of like if Charles Bukowski wrote a ghost movie. It's terrible with its totally out-of-control ending, but, intentionally or not, is a funny watch a good deal of the way through.

One reviewer here makes fun of Potente's "on and off" German accent as if he thinks she's trying to hide it. But her German nationality is mentioned during the film's dialogue, and the reviewer obviously wasn't paying attention. As a German acting in a nutty movie made in Spain that is portraying a setting in the American South, she does a good job.

This is viewable on Netflix and is recommended for viewers looking for something flawed but somewhat creative in its own strange, perhaps accidental way.