“You know I hate horror movies,” says Joel to his screenwriter boyfriend of three years. Finding a deeper connection with someone else seems to be the least of Ryan’s (R.T. Lee) problems. If he has to be reminded that Joel loathes horror flicks, let alone compromise, Ryan should have left long ago. Enter Leo (Jonathon Roessler), a creepy college student and aspiring novelist who shares all things transit with the artsy Ryan. Drift does Sliding Doors, contemplating several different outcomes to its stingy love triangle. Director Quentin Lee does wonders with digital video, emphasizing the claustrophobic emotions of the film’s characters via his tight compositions. Ryan’s ethnicity is tangential to the plot, the character’s isolation wonderfully evoked by his profound if not seemingly impossible spiritual quotas. While Drift is considerably more genuine and earthy than the gimmicky Doors, it’s nonetheless burdened by its own authenticity. If director Lee is at all like his character Ryan he is entirely too much inside his head. While his cast may impressively engage their characters’ despair and desire, Lee’s yakety-yak screenplay feels entirely too much like a dissertation on love from a film student still haunted by his old beau. Lee’s dialogue calls too much attention to itself while Ryan and Leo’s free-floating love for horror films seems to suggest Drift could pull an Audition at any moment. With nothing seemingly at stake but convoluted bed-hopping, it’s a shame that Ryan and Leo’s fondness for serial killers never translates into spilt blood.
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