2018 / 104m - Canada
Sci-fi, Thriller
3.0*/5.0*
Parallel poster

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January 08, 2021

3.0*/5.0*

Isaac Ezban has been making a name for himself directing mysterious sci-fi films with loopy narratives. Parallel is his first English-language film, but it's a step down from the films he made in Mexico. It's also one of his most obvious films, where the mystery is fully revealed in the first third of the film.

A group of friends/team of app developers discover a hidden room in their apartment. There they find a mirror that transports them to parallel universes. It doesn't take them long to figure out ways to game this setup and to better their lives with it, but after a short period of elated happiness, they begin to distrust each other.

The parallel universes sound like they could provide a nice twist on the good old time travel stories, but in reality it doesn't change a lot. I also wasn't that impressed with the heist-like structure of the story, which adds to the predictability of the film. Performances are decent and there's still some fun to be had here, but I was hoping Ezban would be taking some steps forward, not backward.