Parallel Minds (2020)

(On Cable TV, November 2020) There is an intriguing mixture of indigenous spirituality and high-tech futurism at the heart of Parallel Minds that gives it a special status as a Canadian science-fiction film. Unfortunately, there isn’t much more to the film. Going in half a dozen directions without much connective tissue, it’s about runaway artificial intelligence, transhumanism, a dystopian company, and Metis prophecy. It’s triggered by what is either a murder or a suicide, leading a police detective to take up the case. And yet, despite this promising collection of elements and decent production values, Parallel Minds struggles to keep our attention. The script is messy and not in a good way, as it can’t seem to create a single compelling narrative to hold all of that together. It’s alternatively dull, twee, inscrutable and lazy in its use of genre elements. It’s the kind of film where an elliptical, deliberately mysterious style eventually reveals itself to be incompetent rather than keeping mysteries in reserve. Despite rooting for the film for many reasons (it’s Canadian, it’s low-budget, it’s Science Fiction, it’s about Metis issues), it simply can’t make fire out of the cordwood of promising elements at its disposal. I still think it’s worth a casual look—there’s been a few Canadian science-fiction movies bringing in indigenous issues, and this is one of the best of them—but you will have to be very generous in order to like the result.