My favorite Neil Simon play is probably “God’s Favorite,” a broad comic riff on a man tested by God…and an obnoxious family. It’s based on the Biblical “Book of Job.”

“The Shift” is a big screen sci-fi spin on that same source material, even more “loosely based” on The Book of Job. Here the faithful man (Krisoffer Polaha of lots of Christmas TV movies) isn’t all that faithful and is tested by Satan, not God, and not Satan bickering with the Almighty over punishing this most faithful servant to see how much he’d take before renouncing or at least rethinking his devout faith.

That’s the theology of writer-director Brock Heasley’s debut feature. The science fiction is a “Looper,” “Jumper” variation, with “the multiverse” referenced and multiverse style “shifting” of our hero from one “life’s choices” timeline to another, struggling to find the version of the wife (Eliabeth Tabish) he left behind or who left him who might take him back. Or even remember him.

It’s tricky and ambitious for a debut feature, and while there’s no shame is your grasp exceeding your reach, this “multiverse” faith-based film comes off as ponderous, glum and muddled. Much more accomplished directors have trouble keeping all the “timeline” nonsense straight and keeping the story compelling, and Heasley just doesn’t.

There’s all this exposition, trying to “explain” how this all happened and happens, weighing down the narrative. The “shifting” and “Deviators” and Vica Vision cinemas where characters glimpse at multiverses that might have alternate versions of themselves are practically sleep-inducing.

But Heasley scored the minute he got veteran heavy Neal McDonaugh to sign on the dotted line. The “Minority Report,” “Proud Mary” and “Yellowstone” alumnus brings the evil as “The Benefactor,” a Luciferish figure who torments our hero, Kevin, and wants recognition for being God’s equal in every way, and at every point.

The story opens with a downbeat “meet cute” in a bar. Kevin’s been sober for years, and losing his job in the Bear Stearns Bush Era economic collapse has him about to ditch his AA coin and sip a beer. Molly (Tabish) comes up, “on a dare” and flirts.

The scene has a montage or two of them thinking ahead, through the life they’ll have together, her pregnancy, etc. But it’s not sweet, well-written or romantically-played.

Next thing we know, they’re married, Kevin’s about to lose another job and then he’s in a car wreck. The last guy you want to see as you awaken out of the fog in a city that’s seemingly been emptied of people is the Face of Satan — aka, our “Benefactor,” McDonaugh.

The people? “They didn’t go anywhere. You did.”

“I’m here to help you, offer you a job.”

The Benefactor needs a “shifter,” for reasons that aren’t terribly clear. The Benefactor manipulates lives and folks in various timelines, sewing “chaos” with all this jumping people about, disrupting their happiness and overwhelming their faith via the multiverse.

Yes. As we all suspected. Satan is ALL about the multiverses.

It’s a somewhat cumbersome, comic book way of explaining in “The Devil Did It” terms how “I don’t know who you are anymore” happens in a relationship.

Kevin fends Old “Benefactor” Scratch off with a prayer, and next thing we know, he’s in a hellscape of a future city, going under another name, “infamous” for the “illegal” prayer he used to save his skin, typing away his memories of banned “scriptures” and befriending an ally named Gabriel (Sean Astin).

Posters of The Benefactor bill him as the Guy in Charge, “Unseen. Ever Present.”

And when that Benefactor comes back, he expects to find and finally corrupt Kevin, who only wants to get back to his wife, his life and maybe even bring back the little boy they lost through, they figure, Satanic intervention.

The messaging isn’t bad. That current Christian trope “I’m more than the worst thing I’ve done,” and Kevin’s political recognition is that if he chooses to side with The Benefactor “that’s the last choice I get to make” is of the moment.

A veiled reference to voting for someone who’s admitted he’s at waging “an all-out war on with democracy?” The Anti-Christ taking over a political party?

But even breaking sections of the film up with quotes from The Book of Job doesn’t make the analogy clearer, and does nothing for the clutter and muddiness of the dystopian narrative.

The picture comes to life only in the scenes where McDonaugh shows up and raises the stakes. Most of the rest of the cast, aside from Astin, are veteran bit players — not bad actors, but a little lacking in charisma and on screen spark.

Polaha, our lead, doesn’t embarass himself but doesn’t make Kevin a compelling enough figure to let him carry the movie. His most personable and likable scene is the one after the credits where he, in the Angel Studios tradition, urges patrons to practice “kindness” this holiday season, and to do that by buying more tickets to this movie for friends and loved ones.

That worked with “Sound of Freedom.” Let’s hope that doesn’t blow up in their faces the way that “true story” did.

Rating: PG-13 for violence and thematic elements.

Cast: Kristoffer Polaha, Neal McDonaugh, Elizabeth Tabish, Jason Marsden and Sean Astin

Credits: Scripted and directed by Brock Heasley. An Angel Studios release.

Running time: 1:55