Parallel

Year: 2018

Actors: Carmel Amit, Shannon Chan-Kent, Michael Kopsa, Kathleen Quinlan

Duration: 104 min

In Seattle, Devin (Aml Ameen) is sharing a spooky house with fellow app designers Noel, Leena and Josh (Martin Wallstrom, Georgia King and Mark O'Brien). One day they discover a secret part of the house with a mirror portal into parallel realities that are all slightly different. So they start exploring, spying on other versions of themselves while mapping inter-connections. They also use it to finish their app and make a pile of cash. A bit too late, they read the journal by Marissa (Kathleen Quinlan), who used the portal to find a world in which her husband wasn't dead.It's cool that the main differences between universes is in the arts, which extends to nifty technological innovations. Noel and Leena exploit this to their own advantage, while Josh uses the portal to get girls. Meanwhile, Devin quest is more personal, seeking a time line where his father (David Harewood) hasn't killed himself. And it quickly becomes clear that they're playing with fire. Director Isaac Ezban shifts lighting and deploys dizzying camera angles to signpost where they are. Still, the characters and their plot threads become tangled in knots as they mess with reality.The four central characters take distinct approaches to this phenomenon. Ameen gives the nervous Devin a likable intensity. Wallstrom finds sharp edges in the ruthlessly ambitious Noel. King makes the designer Leena intriguingly observant as she spins this into artistic success. O'Brien's Josh is more laid back, seeking more immediate thrills. Each of them gets to mine for darker emotional layers that make them increasingly likable, even when they do something terrible. Each of the four takes a distinct journey that leads to his or her own god complex. While the premise is complex, the movie itself is fairly simplistic, falling back on interpersonal melodrama rather than thematic depth. Trying to keep things straight is enjoyable, although it's perhaps a better idea to stop straining and just go with the flow. And things do get deliciously messy, leading to the kind of marvelously grisly climax that could make this a cult classic. There's even a corny coda to cement the deal.

Genre: Drama   Mystery   Sci-Fi   Thriller