Junkie Heaven (Short)
“Junkie Heaven” is a far more interesting short than that title sounds. It deals with morality, the supernatural and redemption in an intriguing and engaging way. Writer Lee Kolinsky and director Steve Sage Goldberg are telling a story of good vs. evil, but the battle feels more like it’s within the main character’s soul rather than a particular outward one, like what takes place near the end.
Doyle Burkett (Joseph A. Halsey) is a former soldier who did two tours in Iraq. After a friendly fire incident where he killed two people, though, he was out, and developed a case of PTSD. Now, he’s a heroin addict, and is laying near death with a young woman. He gets up in the middle of the night, looks in the mirror, and a sharply-dressed man named Alexander (Sal Rendino) appears before him. It turns out, he is about to die, and Alex is here to lead him through the afterlife…if he’ll return to his mortal body, and retrieve a knife from a criminal and dealer for Alex. He does so, but the payoff isn’t quite what he expected.
As I said, and as I’m sure you noticed by the above description above, Kolinsky and Goldberg do touch on the issues and themes I mentioned earlier, and the structure of the film, having it be as a choice Doyle has to make before he dies, makes the film defy any genre you can think of. It can be scary, but it’s not horror. It can be exciting, but it’s not action driven. It can be otherworldly, but it’s not pinned down to the supernatural. “Junkie Heaven” has a lot of elements in play, but none that defines it above others. In the end, it’s simply a story about a man at a pivotal moment of his life, where the choice he makes will take him on one path or another. It’s not a simple story, though, and that’s what I value above all else with this movie. There’s no easy choice for Doyle, and no pat resolution to his journey. By the end, you could almost say his journey is getting ready to begin again. I can live with that.
