The Sheol Express (2011) User Reviews

Ticket to Ride

[ralphv1 · 8/10 · 4 October 2018]

An odd little film, not very long, only about a half-hour, but infused with mystery, with questions about life, death, faith and destiny. Most of the questions posed are understated, bringing a depth to the film that might have been lacking had the filmmaker chosen to take a more didactic or polemic approach.

The few glimpses afforded us of the Underworld are evocative and visually stunning. Most of the film is set aboard a sumptuously decadent train hurtling through Sheol (Hades) towards an uncertain destination, the windows boarded over so the travelers never really know what they're getting themselves into.

After boarding the train, our weary protagonist encounters two forces, one encouraging him to ride to the End of the Line where he will find a cessation to his wandering, the other advising him to disembark at the penultimate station to find a land that sounds too good to be true.

The film is a study in faith, not so much faith in others or in what others tell us, but faith in ourselves, in our own ability to discern the truth in a world (even an Underworld) where truth is elusive, where people are rarely what they seem to be. Not a film for those who need to be told the truth, but certainly a film for those who search for it.

A short film, worth your time.

[cheathamg · 8/10 · 11 April 2019]

A short, student film but nonetheless of very high quality. The actors are professionals and do a good job. The technical aspects are extremely good, especially when they were done at bargain rates. The writing, and this is the crux of the matter, is well thought out and was obviously hoped to be meaningful. Meaningfulness in this case has led the writers down the path of symbolism, metaphor and mysticism. There's nothing wrong with that. Some of very good movies have gone there but it is dangerous. It's easy to fall into claptrap. For all its trappings of foreboding, the film ends on a note of hope, as symbolized by a small flower. I've always liked short films. They have so little time to get the point across. They take a lot of skill to do right. Back in the early days of TV there were short films all over the place. There was not much original programming and time to fill. I guess that's where I developed a taste for them. This film had much the same feel as those. Sheol, by the way, is the name of the afterlife in Hebrew mythology. It was a place to which all souls went after death, regardless of whether or not you had been a good person. It was not a place of punishment but neither was it a place of reward. Still, it was better than the Babylonian afterlife. That was an infinite building consisting of corridors and room filled with nothing. Souls were transformed into large, ungainly, flightless birds that wandered from room to room forever. There were no beds or chairs to rest in. There was nothing to see but dust and nothing to eat but clay.