The past few years have seen a boom of low-budget science fiction films hitting streaming services and receiving critical and audience acclaim, but for every success there are always others that don’t quite come together as well as expected. Showing now at Salem Horror Fest, Benjamin Ross Hayden’s Parallel Minds unfortunately falls into the latter category despite being chocked full of great ideas.
The movie opens with a flashback to the childhood of one of our main characters, Margo (Tommie-Amber Pirie), the day her grandmother was murdered in front of her. We follow her through a day of work at the technology firm Red-Eye where she and another scientist are developing a contact lens that can replicate the memories of its wearers, powered by a rogue artificial intelligence named URM. When the project’s leader is murdered, the gumshoe detective Thomas Elliot (Greg Bryk) is called in to investigate. The two chase down the truth with the help of an underground hacker, and hunt down the dangerous AI; all the while confronted by their worst memories.
While the plot of Parallel Minds sounds good on paper, frustratingly, the disparate pieces that constitute the film never come together. WIth URM’s ability to manipulate memories and the backstory we’re given for our protagonists, each of their conflicts should have pushed their individual growth in the face of the threat they face. Thomas is haunted by guilt for a murder he committed in the line of duty, and confronted at gunpoint by the victim’s father. When the AI learns this, it aims to use this against him by murdering the father before the detective can be forgiven. Unfortunately, that all comes a little late; with the father accepting it was an accident moments after the confrontation.
In Margo’s case it’s the death of her friend, the contact project’s lead developer, and she struggles with the harsh reality of her world and the spiritualism she was taught by her grandmother. Instead of delving deeper into that conflict, the film largely ignores her background until the very end where she performs a quick ritual and can now move things with her mind.
What’s lacking in plot coherence and character development is made up for with solid technical work and acting. The cinematography references the early 2000s by tinting scenes with a blue filter, without making it distracting, and set pieces like the hacker’s laboratory and URM’s lair have distinctive styles that provide emphasis on the personalities of their characters. The film nails the near-future aesthetic by amplifying the contemporary spaces they had with small digital effects and convincingly telling you what they can’t show. Despite my misgivings with the script, the acting itself is solid. Each actor truly feels at home in their role, bringing out the best versions of these characters that they possibly can; although I still don’t know why the hacker needed three keyboards.
Parallel Minds has so much great work put into it that is unfortunately squandered by having to wrap up all of the interesting narrative threads in a feature-film runtime. If it was repackaged into a TV series, it would easily last a few seasons; but as a movie, I can only recommend it if you’re willing to look past what’s presented to you and see the potential the story holds.
