The Crossing Over Express Trailer Teases Short of the Week on YouTube [Exclusive]

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The rise of the internet has brought with it a new age of innovative amateur filmmakers who have found success uploading their work online through sites like YouTube. For aspiring auteurs looking to get as many eyes on their work as possible, one popular channel on the Google-owned video-sharing platform has sought to give this new generation a big stage to grab attention and ultimately help these creators break into the industry — Short of the Week. All genres are represented on the channel and its website with a mix of buzzy titles coming off of festival runs and standout submissions, with a network of over 30,000 filmmakers and over 2,000 shared short films from over 50 countries. Collider is excited to share its next release, The Crossing Over Express, from Luke Barnett and Tanner Thomason, which is now available to watch online.

The Crossing Over Express comes to Short of the Week hot off a run on the festival circuit that included stops at Panic Fest, Chattanooga, Portland, Popcorn Frights, and Phoenix, among others. It's an emotional fantasy drama following a man who's forever changed by the visit of a traveling doctor and her strange truck. She runs a business out of the back of her ominous vehicle claiming to raise the dead for a cost, a proposal that catches the eye of the man after losing his mother. Shot by a skeleton crew across a single day, it mixes darkly comedic elements with a deeply emotional core that begs the question "What would you say to a loved one who's gone if all you had was two minutes?"

Barnett, known for producing the Angus Cloud-led thriller Your Lucky Day and appearing in For All Mankind, takes on the lead role in the short in addition to directing. He's joined by Emmy-nominated Glee alum Dot-Marie Jones as the mysterious doctor and Jury Duty's Ron Song as her apple-eating assistant. Both Barnett and Thomason have been creating together for some time, with their best-known collaborations coming under Will Ferrell's Funny or Die and as writers and co-stars in the Christian filmmaking satire Faith Based from director Vincent Masciale with Jason Alexander, Margaret Cho, and the late great Lance Reddick. Their future continues to look bright too, with Thomason currently co-hosting Dish Nation and Barnett recently wrapping filming on Teacher's Pet with Resident Alien's Sara Tomko and horror icon Barbara Crampton.

Barnett Pulled From Personal Tragedy for 'The Crossing Over Express'

Joining the directors on The Crossing Over Express are producers Courtney Petrakis and Natalie Masciale and executive producer Jason Bunn. While the themes of loss are made to apply to anyone who has experienced the death of a loved one, the idea was specifically born out of personal tragedy for Barnett. In an official statement, he recounted an experience he had a couple of years back on his birthday that left him contemplating what he would've said to his mother if he had another chance:

"My mom passed away when I was 17. I only have a handful of pictures and zero videos of her. A couple years ago, on my birthday, I got a text from a number I didn’t recognize. It simply said 'happy birthday' and had a YouTube link. I clicked it and my heart stopped. It was my mom. I had to pull over immediately. She was telling me how proud she was of me and how she wondered what I’d become. Maybe a policeman, a preacher, or even a clown. I couldn’t believe it. Well, it turns out the random phone number was my friend Jon’s dad, who had found this video on an old VHS tape they made before a 1999 school event. I was 16. This experience got me thinking...what if we could have one last conversation with someone we lost? I called my writing partner Tanner the next day. This short film, in a way, is that conversation."

The personal nature of the story hit hard for Thomason given his bond with his creative partner, though he again emphasized the universality of loss and the pain of tragedy. The Crossing Over Express, he says, is all about recreating that familiar and very real feeling in an unfamiliar, untrustworthy place where there's just as high a chance that the life-changing experience promised could just be the product of a snake oil salesman.

"There is a point in adulthood where you can not help but to become familiar with loss and the feeling of giving anything for one more phone call, or hug, or just to see the face of someone you loved so much. It's universal and the idea of a character going through the rush of emotions such an experience would cause is extremely compelling; even more so when it's inspired by a real moment experienced by one of your closest friends and creative partners. To get to explore that feeling, delivered from a setting/ supporting character(s) that does not project trust or normalcy but instead presents a window into a kind of hidden truth is the sort of creative challenge that you usually just hear about, much less get to build."

The Crossing Over Express is available to watch now on YouTube through the Short of the Week channel. Check out the trailer in the player above and the poster below.