This week on Multiverse/Time Travel Headache Theater is Parallel (now streaming on Paramount+), a low-budget, high-concept sci-fi outing produced and co-written by two of its stars, brothers Aldis Hodge (One Night in Miami…) and Edwin Hodge (The Purge films), who adapted the 2019 Chinese film Parallel Forest. The third player here is Danielle Deadwyler of Till and The Harder They Fall fame, and that’s it for the cast – the size of which, as well as the isolated-in-the-woods setting, gives us real COVID-era project vibes. But a sci-fi outing doesn’t need to hop the globe or bury us with visual effects in order to be effective – a good idea goes a long way in the genre. But whether Parallel’s core idea has the legs to carry us very far is the question.
The Gist: The fog rolling through this deep green wood is rather ominous, isn’t it? It cloaks a very large and spacious home isolated deep in the forest, a retreat for someone who has way more money than you or I. And then BANG, a bird slams headlong into one of the house’s many, many windows. It’s dead, a victim of what, exactly? Misperception? The lousy luck of being an animal that isn’t smart enough to differentiate glass from open air? It adds to the somber air around this place, where married couple Vanessa (Deadwyler) and Alex (Aldis Hodge) are staying with his brother Martel (Edwin Hodge). It’s awkwardly quiet. Vanessa walks through the house, and walks, and walks some more. Again: big house.
There’s tension in the air. Martel mentions the name Hobie and Vanessa gets angry. She asked that that name not be uttered around her. She needs to go out for a walk in the woods. See some trees. Get some fresh air. Alex makes sure she has a rifle over her shoulder, just in case. There are bears out there. Before we get to what happens out there that’s scarier than a bear, you’re probably wondering who Hobie is. Well, he’s Alex and Vanessa’s son. He died in a car accident. It was her fault. Grief, guilt, loss, blame. It’s all stuff that can’t be fixed, and just has to be lived through. Marital tension. Therapy. Medication. A year has passed, but the acclimation period is understandably long.
Vanessa hikes out and back toward the house when suddenly, a shot rings out. And another. It clips the tree she hides behind. She scopes up her rifle and sees the shooter: Herself. Dead ringer. Wide-eyed and terrified. She fires back then hustles home. When asked why she’s so riled, she lies: “I saw a bear.” Is she having a psychotic break? This surely isn’t helping her deep depression. At dinner that night, Martel, a physicist, helps nothing by giving a whole “control is an illusion” speech. I mean, it seeds the movie’s thematic garden, but Vanessa needs a dose of existentialism like she needs another version of herself wandering through this reality. You might not go back out to the woods, but for the sake of the movie, Vanessa does, and she gets lost, passing through what seems to be the same Tree Portal multiple times. CURIOUS. She sits down, and suddenly, someone else comes down the path. “Who’s there?” she shouts. Hopefully someone who can explain this shit, I replied to the TV. And it is: It’s Alex. Not her Alex, but a different Alex. The plot thicks!
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Yes, this is another multiverse movie. So take your pick of who-knows-how-many Marvel movies, or Everything Everywhere All at Once, and mix it with some Groundhog Dayish headtrippery and the low-key contemplative sci-fi dopplengangerisms of Swan Song.
Performance Worth Watching: Aldis Hodge and Deadwyler give enough oomph to their characters to make them believable as they work through their grief. It makes you wish for a beefier dramatic project to come along and really give them something to sink their teeth into.
Memorable Dialogue: “I know this doesn’t make any sense, but trust me,” says Doppelganger Alex, in what’s essentially I Know This Doesn’t Make Any Sense, But Trust Me: The Movie.
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: Parallel is low enough of budget, you might call it A Hell of a Lot Less Than Everything Everywhere All at Once, or maybe Just a Little Bit Right Here in Two Locations. To be “fair,” those locations are actually multiple locations on multiple timelines, but they all look the same. Which can be disorienting – although that’s very much the point, since this story is, for the most part, told from Vanessa’s point of view. See, the Tree Portal allows one to enter multiple parallel worlds, and how it works is, the same clearing in the forest is shot from different angles. Reality is splintered into lord-knows-how-many shards. Infinite, one assumes. And perhaps there’s a reason Alt Vanessa No. 1 was trying to put enough bullets in Regular Vanessa to make her stop breathing in this or any universe.
I’ll reveal no more, partly because further scrutiny of the concept – or any of its ilk, of which there are many, so many – makes my brain feel like it’s being dribbled like a basketball. Inevitably, these things show their holes until carrying narrative water becomes impossible, so kudos to the Hodges, their co-writer Jonathan Keasey and director Kourosh Ahari for understanding the shelf life of a full water balloon, and keeping the film at a brisk 88 minutes. It’s an understated slow-burn thinker of a headtrip that doesn’t exist for its own sake – the concept emerges from the self-torture one feels when one makes a grievous mistake and wishes one could rewind and fix it. That is of course impossible, hence how Parallel becomes a thought experiment of sorts, albeit a noticeably humorless one, cloaked in maudlin despair and layered with melodrama. It’s sad, and mostly functional, and depressing, and a little bit hopeful.
Some will find the film tedious, others philosophically poignant and possibly fascinating. That its core idea remains intact is a testament to its focus; such is its minimalist tenor. It starts out with very little and does not quite a lot with it, but that’s much more than nothing. And if that sentence makes you feel like you’re being spun around until you’re dizzy, well, then you know what it’s like to be Vanessa wandering the Woods Where Time and Space Have No Meaning.
Our Call: Parallel ultimately works, but just barely. So STREAM IT, but make sure to keep your expectations earthbound.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.