“I don’t know if I’ll ever make another film that has had such an impact on people,” Luke Burnett says of his short film “The Crossing Over Express.”
“I still get messages once a week. I get three-paragraph messages from people who have lost someone close to them, people who have had a cathartic experience watching this work. It was heavy, but that’s what we all dream of as artists. You can’t ask for more than that.”
Back in 2022, Burnett, a Los Angeles-based actor and writer known for Faith Based, a satire of the Christian film industry in 2020, received an unexpected message with a link to a video of his late mother, who died when he was 17 years old. In it, she said how proud she was of him and that she wondered what would become of him.
Stunned by the idea of what he would do if he could have one last conversation with his loved one, Barnett teamed up with longtime creative collaborator Tanner Thomason to create a short film based on the idea.
“The Crossing Over Express” was filmed in 2024 with a group of friends over a single day at almost no cost and became a viral hit. In the film, Burnett (also making his directorial debut) plays a man who visits a traveling “doctor” who can revive the dead from the back of a truck — but only for two minutes — to talk to his deceased mother.
After being posted on the Short of the Week website and X in September 2024, it garnered 500,000 views in the first 72 hours (and approaching 2 million a month later), garnering widespread recognition and attention, which Barnett said “got popular.” At the time, Variety magazine was among the magazines that covered this viral movie.
Less than two years later, “The Crossing Over Express” may still be touching people’s hearts. But the 10-minute short also ignited Burnett’s own career. As he claims, “This has had a far greater impact than anything I’ve done in over 10 years of traditional industry work.”
Earlier this year, he was cast in a recurring role as an FBI special agent in the new season 4 of AMC’s hit psychological thriller series Dark Winds, making his first appearance on high-end television. And that’s a job he says he owes directly to “The Crossing Over Express.”
Among those who came forward to praise the short was “Dark Winds” executive producer Max Hurwitz. “He told me he liked it and that he was very inspired by it and that my performance was great, but I didn’t think much of it,” Barnett says. “And then, five months later, my agent received an email from a casting director that said, ‘The producers of ‘Dark Winds’ would like you to record this role for Season 4.'” Two weeks later, he was filming in Santa Fe.
Burnett notes that his character in Tony Hillerman’s original story is described as having a “bushy mustache” similar to his own, which “probably doesn’t hurt,” but that’s all because Hurwitz remembered him from “The Crossing Over Express.”
“If I hadn’t made that short film, I never would have been noticed by them,” he says.
“Dark Winds” marks the start of Burnett’s busiest year yet. After two months of filming in Santa Fe, he filmed an episode of Peacock’s new comedy-drama series “The Burbs,” following a recurring role in season five of Apple TV’s sci-fi “For All Mankind” (he had already joined season four as a Mars-based spacesuit logistics officer). But there are many more to come, many of which link directly to “The Crossing Over Express.”
“I’d like to shoot two films in quick succession if possible, and both with directors I’ve admired for a long time,” he says. “Both were scenarios where the director saw the short story and basically offered me the role. And that had never happened to me before.”
In one instance, Burnett said he received a message from a writer who was praising “The Crossing Over Express” in a group chat with a director. Shortly thereafter, a composer emailed to say that the same director had brought up his name and his love for the short.
“And three weeks later, I got a straight offer to basically play a strong supporting role in his next movie,” he says.
Luke Burnett in Dark Winds. Credit AMC/Michael Moriatis
Burnett’s work as an actor may have exploded, but there’s also a lot going on behind the camera — and that’s largely helped by short stories.
Another person who contacted Burnett after “The Crossing Over Express” claims on the horror site Fangoria that he invited Burnett to a meeting where he was asked, “Basically, would you like to do another short with us?”
Currently in post-production and coming out on the new Fangoria Studios label, the creature horror short “Goodbye, Monster” is directed by and stars Burnett and is based on an idea he has been thinking about for some time. The film, about a 12-year-old boy who receives a final visit from the monster living under his bed, has also been successful in attracting a high-level creative team, which he says was discovered primarily through the short story. This includes Bear McCleary (Outlander) who wrote the score, Jeff King (Star Wars: The Bad Batch) of Skywalker Sound who did the sound design, and Patton Oswalt who lent his voice.
“These people wouldn’t know who I was and wouldn’t have written my short stories if it wasn’t for The Crossing Over Express,” he says.
There were other sparks of more handmade creativity. Last year, Luke wrote and performed Ovation, a hilarious short that satirizes the growing obsession with standing ovations at major film festivals. Norm Kroll (recent feature film Teacher’s Directed by Burnett (who first met Burnett after casting him in “Pet”) and inspired by watching Joaquin Phoenix look extremely uncomfortable at the ovation for his film “Eddington” at Cannes in early 2025, the film runs the gamut of emotions as Burnett’s suit-clad star rises from his seat and is greeted with rapturous applause, during nearly five minutes of near-constant cheering and cheering.
Like “The Crossing Over Express,” “Ovation” was made for almost nothing ($50 in this case) by two crew members (Kroll and cinematographer Andy Chin) and a few of the actor’s friends. It may not have been as successful as the mainstream, but it has certainly attracted a significant number of industry fans thanks to its sharp subject matter.
Burnett and Kroll are currently working together on a short series called Fatherhood, a micro-drama about parenting from a father’s perspective that he describes as “Bluey meets Louie,” which he shoots in his spare time.
And then there’s the “The Crossing Over Express” feature. This, predictably, became a topic of discussion almost instantly after the short caught fire. Barnett and Thomason, who were “completely caught off guard” by the success, were unprepared for the influx of attention. Rather than jump into something, they decided to take a moment and “not force this idea.” But now, after many back-and-forths, adaptations are starting to take shape.
“Ultimately, this is still a grounded supernatural drama about grief and the longing to connect with someone you’ve lost,” Burnett says. “We’ve expanded this film in a way that we think will be a bigger, more commercial film, but still have a Field of Dreams and Edward Scissorhands feel to it.” Further details, including production company and cast, will be revealed soon.
For Barnett, looking to keep this momentum going, the extremely positive message from his experience with “The Crossing Over Express” is in line with the spate of online creators currently upending the industry, including Markiplier, Curry Barker and Kane Parsons.
“It definitely made me a big believer in trying to control myself,” he says. “The difficult thing about this industry, and I think so too, is that no one wants to take risks on anything. As an actor, you pretty much have to make sure you can do it before you pay them to do it. You’re like, ‘Oh, I’ve seen this person do well in other people’s work, so they can do well in mine.’ And for me, it took a need for me to make something that they were willing to take a risk on.”
