Parallel (VII) (2016) User Reviews

Shoot the editor

[emathers-1 · 6/10 · 13 October 2018]

As was mentioned, not a bad story, decent acting. BUT! how could the director allow such horrible production values to slip through? Was no one paying attention? The dialog and other soundtrack was an abomination - the audio levels were all over the map, even in the same scene - sometimes acceptable, other times so low as to be unintelligible. This wasn't just annoying, it made the film virtually unwatchable. This could still be fixed in post - why hasn't it been done? Shame. With a good soundtrack this would be a solid thriller.

Fresh, and intriguing

[rodwhitt · 7/10 · 21 February 2018]

This review will be a little different, as Alexander Cooper, this film's producer, reached out to me personally and asked me to review this film. It is a great honor, and I hope he takes my review's "negatives" as constructive criticism. And its "positives" as reassurance and motivations his future work.

I will start by getting the "negatives" out of the way first. I really only have 2 gripes with this film. The sound was very poor at times. It was very inconsistent with loudness and muffled sound. This was not as much of a problem until the second and third acts of the film, where it became very noticeable and hard to ignore. My biggest gripe with the sound was when there was music in the film that was setting the tone and build up of scenes. The music was wonderful and well placed, but it muffled out the dialog tremendously, to the point where it was difficult to hear the characters' lines when they were very important to the tone of the scene. My second gripe is minor. There were only a couple (2 to be exact) of scenes where dialog was far too long and it really dragged out the scenes. I was already invested in the scenes and think the overall selling of the scenes could have been done with about a third of the dialog.

Those downsides to the film out of the way, this piece has a lot going for it. I found the overall concept of the film extremely fresh and interesting. The third act hit me with many unexpected outcomes I did not see coming from a mile away. This screenplay, especially the third act, was clever and unpredictable in the best of ways. My favorite and most surprising piece to this film was the directing and editing. Major props to this part of the crew!! With independent films, I always fear an over-usage of camera pans, with a serious lack of multiple takes from close ups to wide shots. I found this movie's directing and editing from shot to shot and take to take was executed with tremendous fashion. I couldn't have asked for a better job, honestly.

I strongly appreciate and respect independent filmmaking, as I would love someday to be involved in these types of projects. I found Parallel to be a very interesting, well directed, and wonderfully edited independent film. It is one that I will not forget my first viewing of on Amazon Prime. If you enjoy independent film, Alexander Cooper's Parallel is one you will certainly enjoy.

-Baby23

You don't ever want to meet your Parallel

[jayespc · 7/10 · 18 September 2017]

Sound issues aside, I liked this movie. It was a well acted, entertaining way to question ourselves on whether or not we would want to meet our doppelgangers from a parallel universe. The two main characters meet at a party and fall in love, they than have a chance meeting with a medium who can show them their parallel selves that are living simultaneously in the multiverse. I think we have all, at least once in our lives have questioned if our lives would be better on the "other side". A string theory from quantum mechanics that explores the query that if we come to a crossroads in our life and we go right, what would have happened if we had gone left? This film addresses this theme beautifully in an erotic manner by showing that our "alternative" selves may go to extremes we never would have chosen. A very dark way of showing that the grass is not always greener it may even be black and dire. This film was also a semi-finalist at the Los Angeles Cinefest.

Good story indie film

[stonej666 · 5/10 · 5 January 2019]

This is an independent made film in the UK. The quality is what you would expect, not great due to budget and certainly done well enough to deliver a finished feature. Sound is up and down in places but nothing that spoils the film. I think is was a very good and original story and does well to keep the viewer interested till the end. Acting was solid throughout. No offense is intended but this story given a more professional script and production could be a hit in the right hands.

Nice idea, shame about the execution

[Leofwine_draca · 2/10 · 6 February 2018]

PARALLEL is another film with a single good idea behind it that gets spoilt by extremely horrible execution. For the most part it plays out as a slow-moving romance, but there's a sci-fi twist in store in the form of a parallel reality which crosses over into our own. Sadly, any interest in the theoretical aspects of the movie is negated by the long-winded nature of the narrative, the indifferent performances, the overwhelming sensation of boredom hanging over the whole thing.

Poor at everything

[a-kastenas · 4/10 · 24 October 2019]

Hi. I tried watching this movie, and could not force myself to see more than 10 minutes of it.

Acting is poor, camera angles do not make sense and the whole movie is a Frankenstein of Erotic, Mystery and Drama genres. It jus does not work.

Starting from stupid dialogues that do not make any sense, continuing with focus on unnecessary details and finally ending with with an overall poor impression.

I skipped forward thinking it would get better but it does not.

Only later it hit me that I made a mistake because I was looking for a 2018 movie with a same title.

This movie is boring and compares to watching a paint dry. Same level of entertainment of depthness and likely lower level of satisfaction.

I just cannot express how disappointing it is. The actors are trying to do ok job, but everything just feels so fake, so unnecessary slow at times. It is also funny to note that the actors seem beautiful yet do look like imperfect copies of other famous actors.

Watching it won't kill you, but won't provide you with any positive emotions whatsoever either.

Intriguing concept!

[HunterGeoghegan · 6/10 · 11 May 2022]

Parallel is a small budget indie movie directed by Alexander Cooper. This film takes on an original idea of what if there was an alternate/opposite version of yourself in a "Parallel" universe. These parallel versions of yourself would lead a darker, more perverse life than one a typical person lives. I really enjoyed this concept and I think for the budget the film was under it displayed it quite well. It was intrigued and thought provoking and was well written with some interesting twists, especially at the end. As this is a small indie film, I want to focus on more constructive criticism, that the creator can take and use to improve future projects. There's a few things that I felt could have been improved upon. One being the sound production. During close-up scenes The volume was just fine; however in scenes where the characters are a bit further away it was often difficult to make out what the characters are saying. Another sound production issue I had for the movie was with the music. Often times music is used in order to create suspense or to bring out some other emotion, with this movie it was used more as a background sound within the scene, which can be fine when the music isn't grounding out the characters voices. I think that this movie could have profited from having a more intentional music sound design that adds more to the story being told. My second piece of criticism is some of the choreography. There were a few action sequences that felt fake and took away from the realism that if you were wants to feel it. Some of that again has to do with sound design and some of it have to do with camera angle. The punches felt and looked like they didn't hit. In regards to the story, I feel like a lot of the parallel story was focused on sexual desires, while I understand that this movie was supposed to be "erotic" it often felt a bit forced and maybe out of place. There are many more morally incorrect things that many people would do outside of peoples sexual nature and I wish that was explored more in the film. Outside of these things, for the budget, what film was well done and enjoyable. I think that if the director has a bigger budget and team and take what he's learned from this film he could put something genuinely impressive together.