Rating: NR | Runtime: 83 minutes
Release Date: July 25th, 2025 (USA)
Studio: Dark Star Pictures
Director(s): Calvin Lee Reeder
Writer(s): Calvin Lee Reeder

We get to write the best parts.

Sam (Johnny Whitworth) is a quantum physicist experimenting with the potential of interdimensional transportation via a device he calls The A-Frame. Through the course of his research and its application, he found the cheapest test subject at his disposal was cancer-ridden mice bred specifically for science. We don’t know how many were sacrificed in pursuit of this endeavor—just that the ones who did make it through no longer had the disease. So, Sam found himself with the perfect pitch to recruit prospective human subjects: a cure for cancer.

It’s an ingenious science fiction premise that places both its characters and the audience into a state of false security. Writer/director Calvin Lee Reeder supplies a miracle application with which to further dissect its unknowable process. Like a magic trick, we find ourselves focusing on questioning the validity of the former while forgetting there’s zero proof of the latter. We take that part on faith because the rats came back and that faith is bolstered because Donna (Dana Namerode) receives a clean scan after volunteering to put her hand inside the machine.

What do we know about Sam, though? Yes, he’s a charismatic loner who hacks into confidential clinic databases to stalk potential test subjects, but he’s offering the impossible with full transparency as far as admitting even he doesn’t yet know how. So, like Donna, we look past the creepiness. What’s a bit of “strange” if the outcome is prolonged life? He’s still operating in the shadows, though. And nothing he’s doing is necessarily legal. He makes sure Donna knows to tell her doctors nothing about him if the experiment did work and he gains a built-in spokesperson for recruitment as a result.

He’s an intriguing character because of how devoted he is to his science. The cancer angle truly is just a marketing ploy since he must prove the invention’s viability under its original intent before ever pursuing its perceived health benefits. That means scaling up and documentation. The prototype was a self-contained unit serving as both entrance and exit. To prove the mice and Donna’s hand actually traveled across the multiverse (while somehow leaving their cancer behind), demands sending a test subject between two units. Just like Mike Teavee.

That’s where stage 5 cancer patients Rishi (Nik Dodani) and Linda (Laketa Caston) come in. It’s also where Sam’s creepiness factor begins to show signs of full-blown psychopathy. Donna is the key to both since she becomes the face of the process. She’s not just a salesperson … she’s also a client. As such, the others place their trust in her. Not Sam. He gets to take a backseat and let her do all the heavy lifting because he knows what we refuse to admit: that maybe Donna was a fluke. That distance also insulates everyone from a core truth: entering Sam’s office means relinquishing their humanity. They’re merely supplies to him.

So, Sam and the A-Frame itself become intentionally ancillary to the whole. Because Reeder’s film isn’t about the science. It’s about the journey Donna takes to accept her fate. Sam represents false hope via easy answers devoid of scrutiny. Linda, leader of a cancer support group, provides the counterpoint of advocating for an understanding of one’s reality to realize it’s always more constructive to think about the time you have rather than the time you want. She preaches living fully with the potential to endure. He’s advocating risking everything for the potential to end up with less … if anything at all.

That we learn this lesson via pretty gnarly genre gore is the cherry on top. Reeder flirts with cosmic horror as far as Sam not wanting “anything else coming back” beyond his atomized subjects, but the graphic results of attempts-gone-wrong are mostly nightmarish sci-fi uncertainty. That’s fine because its less about that terror and more about how Donna reacts to it. Because Sam is unchanging (Whitworth’s performance merely allows our perception of his eccentricity to change). Only Donna has the room to evolve through her experiences with him. Unfortunately, that evolution needs its fair share of tragic test subjects too.

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Johnny Whitworth in THE A-FRAME; courtesy of Dark Star Pictures.