There are times when you are endlessly browsing through Netflix when you come across titles which don’t ring any bells. Parallels is one of those, where I didn’t know the actors either. What I thought was interesting though was the science fiction element of the film (or series, but more on that later) which is all part of the title: Parallel worlds.
Ronan Carver (Mark Hapka) is a fighter who receives a mysterious call from his father who he hasn’t seen in years. He has to come home, but once there he sees no one. Then his sister Beatrix (Jessica Rothe) and a neighbourhood friend appear and together they decide to start looking for their father. Eventually this leads them to a very mysterious building and from the moment they enter it inexplicable events start happening.
Within in a short period Parallels succeeds to pull you into its world and immediately starts bringing forward a lot of questions without (immediately) giving answers. It kind of reminded of Lost in that way. Just like in that show though not all questions are answered. The fact that Parallels is marketed as a movie feels strange after watching it. The reason for that is that it doesn’t tie all the loose ends together at the end. Some other sites describe it as a pilot of a series, but not much is to be found on that. So this means we’ll have to wait and sees if this indeed will be turned into a series or that subsequent movies will be made.
I really like Parallels and am enthusiastic about it. The concept behind the film has a lot of promise and while watching this I was hoping it would be longer than 90 minutes and explored even more. It is a movie which looks very good and really sells its world. The characters could have more depth to them and not every actor convinces, but that is made up by the intriguing mystery the movie is about. If you only watch movies without leaving any open ends than this is not the movie for you. If you like science fiction and mystery though than this is a recommendation as long as you keep in mind that it will leave you with quite a lot of unanswered questions. And currently it is unclear if they will ever answered.
