Parallel Lives, or Ingress as it’s known by its original title, is a 2023 science fiction and drama film—an independent, low-budget production, so to speak—that offers two hours of mind-bending twists and confusion. Although it’s a science fiction film, you won’t find any jaw-dropping special effects that will make you go “wow”—and if you enjoy films in this genre for those effects, you might be disappointed. Obviously, it does have sci-fi elements because they’re necessary for the story’s development, since the protagonist moves between parallel worlds or different time periods, but they aren’t extraordinary.

Review

A woman feels constantly confused and seeks answers to unexplained events in her life. She goes to therapy with her psychologist in an effort to lead a somewhat normal life, but she doesn’t feel understood. She grapples with a past event that scarred her forever, while trying to get her husband back—a husband she lost during one of her parallel journeys.

One day, as a teenager, Riley (Rachel Noll James) left home and sensed subtle changes in the atmosphere; when she returned, she was in a different era—her house was different, and her parents had passed away. Time has passed; she is now an adult and doesn’t understand what happened to her. She is a lonely woman, once again going through another traumatic event—feeling as though she has lost her husband to murder. She doesn’t know how things unfolded, but she still loves him. The thing is, in that reality, she never got married, and her husband doesn’t exist—this happened in another timeline.

It was like grieving for something that hadn’t happened. I felt suffocated as I watched the protagonist shut herself away in her pain and only confide in her psychologist, who didn’t really believe her. It must be horrible to go through an experience like that. 😁 Let’s get back to the movie.

Riley is also exhausted from suffering; she doesn’t know if she’ll ever see her husband again in that other reality, but she wishes with all her heart to be with him before he dies so she can warn him about what’s happening—at least in part—and at this point, the suspense was so intense that it was driving me crazy with anxiety.

The thing is, she meets a writer who describes situations like the ones she’s experiencing in his books, and she decides to tell him about it. A relationship so intimate develops between them that they become a couple and start falling in love. It’s at this point that Riley doesn’t know what to do; she begins living parallel lives with two men—her former husband before he died and her current one—and finds herself in a romantic and moral dilemma.

Throughout most of the movie, we see her shifting from one life to the other; as she spends more time in one, the other fades away. The point is that she has to decide which life fulfills her more and which one to choose. It’s not an easy decision, but it’s the only way out.

In conclusion, I think it leans heavily toward the romance genre, and I don’t understand why it isn’t classified as such. It’s a somewhat slow-paced film that keeps the viewer engaged by incorporating moments of psychological tension, passion, and drama. It’s a good movie—I didn’t lose track of the story despite the parallel timelines—and I’ll admit I’m a fan of films that deal with time and parallel lives. If you like romance, time-travel themes, and characters with inner conflicts, this movie is for you.