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
