What’s It About
The film stars Danielle Deadwyler as a grief-stricken woman who mysteriously finds herself navigating between parallel spaces.
MOVIESinMO REVIEW
Vanessa and her husband Alex (Aldis Hodge) have suffered from the loss of their son, who died in a car accident when Vanessa was driving. In her desperation to find answers, Vanessa goes into the woods and stumbles upon a mysterious portal in the middle of the trees, taking her to different spaces where her life is slightly altered. While the plot of Parallel can get complicated if you think too deeply about it, Deadwyler, Aldis, and Edwin Hodge’s performances are truly Oscar-worthy. Throughout the film, the main focus remains on what we want to believe in Vanessa’s quest to return to her original timeline. The story begins with a tragic unspoken loss and quickly progresses into palpable foreboding. There’s always that feeling that something is very wrong with the eerie setting. It takes off when Vanessa decides to go on a deep hike alone into the woods, where she encounters (and is almost killed by) another version of herself. Vanessa is a sad wreck who transforms into a tightly wound spring. Her inner turmoil must be controlled to assess a puzzling situation with a clear head. Vanessa understands that her reality has changed. She’s inexplicably in a different but almost similar space than before. This means there has to be another Vanessa that also exists. But why would the doppelgänger try to kill her? The troubling answer makes Vanessa a master of her destiny. The film’s engaging performances anchor a complex script. Deadwyler and the Hodge brothers run an emotional gamut through their various incarnations. The characters look the same every time they meet, but their dialogue and the subtle adjustments in the performances keep the audience from getting too confused. However, Parallel doesn’t spoon-feed the narrative. Attention must be paid to the film, or you risk losing the thread. This is heady sci-fi with twists, defined by a great character and performance. The final moments of Parallel stand out because when we think there is a solution, the audience is instantly given something to think about. It lets us decide what it all means and where Vanessa is in the end, and that’s one of the most exciting parts of Parallel.
OUR RATING – A COMPLEX 7