A Son’s Adventure to Reconnect with his Deceased Mother
By Andy Hearn
The Crossing Over Express is a fictional short film in which Hank, a middle-aged man, tries to connect with his deceased mother using an off-brand psychic who runs the business out of a truck. Directors Luke Barnett and Tanner Thomason use sound to create horror and unease by exploring the deep-seated human longing to connect with loved ones who have passed. Barnett lost his mother at 17 and had few things to remember her by. One year, he received an unsettling message from a friend’s father on his birthday containing a video of his late mother. Watching this video made him imagine what a final conversation with his mom might have looked like.
The film shows Hank seeking out the psychic in an abandoned dirt lot. After paying her a bunch of cash, he enters the truck, having been instructed not to touch “the sheet,” which suddenly rises from the ground, suggesting a human figure underneath. A one-sided conversation ensues. Hank talks, and his mother listens. A radio can be seen in the background emitting static sound. Hank apologizes to his mother for things that he did while growing up, such as doing drugs in the treehouse (fill in another example). Hank becomes increasingly emotional. The psychic knocks (time’s up). Hanks says, “I love you,” and “It was great to hang.” The sheet collapses, and the psychic enters the truck. Session over.
The film appears like a spoof of the Spiritualist movement that started in the 1850s when people thought they could connect with the dead through the medium of sounds and frequencies. During these interactions, the dead did not speak but seemed to be listening. These one-sided interactions prove to be beneficial for the person who is alive. According to Codee Spinner, “Spiritualist methods of listening depended upon an understanding of earthly life and the afterlife as distinct, distant cosmological spheres that could be broached by vibrational frequencies creating either audible or inaudible sounds.”. Spiritualistic encounters prove therapeutic for people, as they can afford relationships that might not have ended on good terms. People commonly search for these interactions to create a newfound connection with the deceased. Thomas Edison was a prime example of this, as his creation of sound emitters allowed him to explore ways of connecting to the dead through the medium of sound. Edison may have just been trying to profit off the spiritualist movement, but they had an interesting take on the afterlife, according to the History Channel. Marc Hartzman references Edison’s belief in life units and how they move to a different place in the afterlife but still could be reached.
The directors of The Crossing Over Express combined the sheet with the radio to set up a medium for transmitting frequencies between the living and the dead. These frequencies are rendered as radio noise or “static,” which occurs alongside the clichéd underscoring for horror films, with eerie sounds cueing the viewer to the potential extraterrestrial connections and more harmonious music, lightening the mood. The tried and true mix of comedy and suspense relates to the psychic “doctor,” who is portrayed as competent and wacky. Smoking while talking to Hank and offering a beer to put him at ease, she seems to handle the procedure with irreverence. More interested in tracking treatment —repeatedly knocking on the truck door— than Hank’s transformative experience. While Hank is overwhelmed by emotion, she sings him a “Happy Birthday,” creating a moment of levity and dampening the underlying darkness.
While the sheet holds importance within the film regarding connection, the radio is the foundation. As the sheet rises, one of the paramount rules for Hank is that he cannot touch the sheet. The psychic and her assistant mention this multiple times in the film, and we, as viewers, never truly understand why. Within most interactions between the living and dead, there is an absence of physical touch that creates a border between the two and limits the intimacy of the actual interaction. Instead, we are greeted by the radio and the frequency it emits at the beginning and end of the interaction. The frequency in the film acts as the medium between the invisible connection and insights into thoughts of love and realness within Hank as he sees his “mother” rise under the sheet. Also, as we near the end of the interaction, we again see the influence of the static, and soon after, the sheet falls to the ground. As the sheet falls, Hank is filled with emotion and starts to cry, which is when the psychic returns with a humorous attitude. Finally, the interaction between Hank is amplified due to the lack of technology in the surrounding environment. In the truck, the only technological device is the radio, which only emits static frequencies and doesn’t show a solid signal while Hank is in there, which furthers the thoughts of a phantom spirit. The radio allows Hank to foster thoughts of truth and authenticity towards his interaction with the sheet that is potentially his mother, despite the suspect environment and operation of the psychic.
As the film progressed, we saw Hank and his mother interact one-sided, with the sheet and the radio acting as mediums. This can be connected to the spiritualist movement and Thomas Edison’s thoughts on life units. The psychic also offers a humorous, loose attitude to the experience, which helps downplay the emotions and significance of this experience for Hank. The connection between life and death will always be an intense debate within society, as people search for the concepts of love and connection. Still, this film offers a slight insight into sound’s potential theme and role as a medium of death communication.