Welcome back to Movie Recaps. Today I will show you an action,
sci-fi film from 2015, titled Parallels. Spoilers ahead! Watch out and take care.
One night in a house in the suburbs, Alex Carver is putting together an emergency bag while three
dangerously looking men park in front of his home and call out his name. Among all the essentials,
Alex includes a strangely shaped package wrapped in newspaper. The next day,
MMA fighter Ronan Carver is losing yet another match. After going through a doctor's check-up,
his couch scolds him for not caring about winning, choosing back-alley matches, and living out of a
bag. Once the couch has paid him and left, Ronan picks up his phone and finds a message from his
dad, saying he needs to come home immediately and enter "the building" on Sunday at 6:19 pm exactly.
His voice sounds rather robotic, and on top of all that, Alex and Ronan hadn't spoken in two years,
so this is all very weird. But Ronan decides to go home anyway, especially after his dad
wouldn't return his calls. He enters his childhood home using his old keys but doesn't find his dad
there - he does find, however, his sister and fresh college student Beatrix, who tells him
their dad moved out a couple of months ago and she hasn't seen him much since their mom died.
The siblings realized they both received the same message from Alex and agreed it was very strange,
so together they search the rest of the house for him. While looking inside the garage,
they're approached by their neighbor Harry, who is in love with Beatrix and works as a public
defender. He tells them he's seen Alex around but never interacted with him, he also mentions
the men that were yelling in front of his house last night. When they open the trunk, they find
Alex's emergency bag, which he always had ready when he needed to get out of town in a hurry.
He's always traveled around for work, and his kids didn't get to see him a lot. Inside the bag,
they find various survival objects like a knife and a flashlight, but most importantly,
the package wrapped in newspaper. Inside there's a strange black sphere that beeps and lights up when
Ronan presses a button, and the newspaper that it came in has an interesting headline as well,
saying Clinton was assassinated and Gore took the oath of office. Harry advises the siblings to go
to the police and introduces them to his friend Captain Stone, who sadly can't do much to help
because there's no evidence of wrongdoing. After promising he'll keep an eye out for their dad,
he directs them to the building Alex described and tells them that it is abandoned. Ronan,
Beatrix, and Harry enter the building to find it empty, just like Alex said. Ronan finds a paper
bag with the brand "Dragon Burger", which doesn't exist in this city, and Harry tries the elevator,
but it doesn't work. The walls are covered with graffiti that talk about different kinds of Earth:
one where the Twin Towers fell on a different day, one where all babies are born as twins, and so on.
Suddenly, an alarm starts ringing as lights flash around them, so the group rushes out of the
building in fear. What they find outside is quite a shock: the city has been devastated by a bomb,
except for the building, which remains the same. It couldn't have happened just now, because they
would've heard it and, besides, the plants have grown over the rubble, indicating the nuking
is old. While freaking out, they see two people walking by, so Beatrix tries to ask them for help,
but they only get threatened with a gun and told to stay back. At that moment, a roving
patrol shows up in a truck and opens fire on the strangers, so the trio runs back into the building
for safety where the men don't dare follow them. They start climbing the stairs, only to find them
blocked after the seventh floor, so they enter a room instead. Harry comes up with a theory
that says the writings on the walls are real and this building can take them to alternative
versions of Earth, this is confirmed by a fourth person suddenly appearing in the room: Polly,
who proceeds to tell them everything she knows while using some slang they aren't familiar with.
The building is pretty big, and it has different ins and outs. It jumps every thirty-six hours,
and if you leave it, you have to make sure you'll be back for the jump or you'd be abandoned in
some random universe forever. Nobody knows how many Earths are out there, but some people think
every possible option exists. Polly is from one of these many Earths and has been jumping around
for a long time, so her advice when it comes to a hostile world like this one is to stay hidden
in order not to die. The group decides to sleep to pass the time, but they are ambushed by an
armed patrol led by Tinker, who takes them on a truck to meet the boss of their local settlement.
When they are entering the building, Harry sees his mom but doesn't manage to make contact with
her. The settlement leader turns out to be an alternate version of Captain Stone,
who tells them they avoid the building because it's a dangerous place. Polly takes charge and
convinces him that they are merely confused travelers, but their cover blows up when Harry
accidentally calls Stone by his name. Tinker cuts in to accuse them of being dangerous,
just like the guy that came out of there last time and brought the nuke that blew up the city,
so after the group fails to answer some basic questions about the world they're in,
Stone allows Tinker to interrogate them. Harry and Polly are locked in a cage while the siblings are
taken to a different room and handcuffed, Beatrix to a chair and Ronan to a pipe.
Furious, Ronan starts yelling and shaking his body to try to break the pipe, so Beatrix brings
up their mother as a way for him to stop. She asks Ronan why he left after their mom died,
and he replies he did to protect her from himself. Beatrix starts scolding him for having left
her to take care of their dad alone, but their conversation is interrupted by Tinker's arrival.
Beatrix tries to befriend Tinker to make him lower his defenses, but he sees right through her.
However, he stills answers her questions. He's the man in charge of making and repairing things,
he also does a bit of surgery every now and then, but his real love is electronics. He also tells
her about the nuke that blew up New York City and killed his wife and daughter, plus the fact he's
created a nuke of his own. Desperate to find the person responsible for the bomb, Tinker shows them
the recording from the security camera in front of the building, and Beatrix recognizes it's Alex.
Seeing as they may know something, Tinker starts his interrogation by using a gun he's modified to
adapt to any bullet. If Beatrix doesn't answer his questions, he'll shoot Ronan. But his questions
are all about her dad or the building, and she doesn't know any of their secrets, so Tinker
goes to put the gun directly on Ronan's chin. Beatrix takes the chance to distract him by saying
she'll talk, so when Tinker turns around, Ronan uses an MMA move to knock him off. Afterward,
he breaks the pipe and steals Tinker's keys to uncuff himself and his sister while Tinker wakes
up to active his bomb. Ronan knocks him out again with a punch, then the two of them leave the room,
taking Tinker's gun with them. Meanwhile, at the cage, Polly is coming onto Harry.
He doesn't know if taking her seriously or not, but their talk is interrupted when the siblings
arrive to rescue them. The group steals the patrol's car after knocking out its caretaker
and they leave the area while Stone and his men find out Tinker has activated the bomb. He asks
them not to follow them because he'll be using the bomb to blow up the building, and he takes
Stone's truck to take the nuke there. The stolen car runs out of gas before they can make it back,
so Ronan and the others run the last stretch of the road as Tinker catches up with them.
The group rushes inside and waits for the building to jump, but seeing as the bomb is
about to go off, Ronan apologizes to Beatrix for everything. When the nuke finally explodes, the
building makes its jump at the same time, safely taking them to a new alternate Earth. As Ronan,
Beatrix and Harry wake up from the jump, Polly appears from a side corridor with her hair done
differently and tells them there's no way to return to their world as she takes them outside
to find a more technologically-advanced version of their Earth. It's not the future as Ronan thinks
because the building can't time-travel, it's the exact same day just in another reality. The group
decides to split up to look for clues about Alex, Ronan goes with Polly and Beatrix leaves with
Harry. Unaware to them, Tinker has also come, and he leaves the building right after they're gone.
Beatrix and Harry stop by an electronics store when Harry sees an extremely advanced
cellphone and decides to buy it to resell it in their world to some big-name company.
The shop doesn't take his credit card, though, the clerk asks for "bio" and makes him scan his hand.
Surprisingly, it does work, and this Earth's version of Harry appears on the screen.
He takes the chance to look at his address, which is only five blocks from the shop, before leaving
with the phone. A second later, Tinker arrives to purchase all of the store's electronics,
which he manages to do through the hand scan because this reality's Tinker is very wealthy.
He stays in the shop and takes over the back room so he can work on building
something with everything he's bought. On their way to Ronan's childhood home,
Polly needs a reminder of all their names and Ronan's connection to Beatrix. They stop
by a food truck that sells something called "crombies", and while waiting for their food,
Ronan tells Polly how he doesn't fit in with his family because they're all smart but he's just a
jock. When he tries to pay the same way Harry did, it doesn't work because he isn't in the system,
which means the Ronan of this world doesn't exist or is dead. They both leave before someone could
call the police. Meanwhile, Beatrix and Harry make it to the other Harry's apartment, which is very
fancy and expensive because this Harry is a very successful lawyer for an important corporation.
Beatrix tries to use the laptop but she needs a password, so Harry tells her his own in case they
match: it's beatrix928, which is her name and her birthday. It does work, and Beatrix searches for
information about her dad: it turns out that in this reality, Alex died three months ago while
working at the building. The article mentions her mom, who also died, and Beatrix herself, but there
are no mentions of Ronan. Harry gets a surprise as well when he reads some e-mails on the other
Harry's tablet and finds out he's been suppressing evidence of deaths caused by the corporations his
other self works for. He considers the idea of sending these e-mails to the news to expose him,
but at that moment, the lights and machines in the apartment start malfunctioning: it's Tinker, who
is trying out his machine and causing the whole city's electric system to fail. Beatrix decides
it's time to leave, but Harry stays behind to send those e-mails, although he can't bring himself to
do it. However, he changes his mind when this world's Beatrix shows up and reveals they're
married, inspiring him to do the right thing. After sending the information, he leaves as well.
Ronan and Polly reach his childhood home and get inside thanks to Ronan's old keys matching this
house as well. There's nobody home, so while having a snack, Ronan shows Polly the strange
sphere his dad left him. Polly explains that kind of technology can only come from the Core World,
which is the reality where the building was built but nobody has ever visited.
Ronan wonders how his dad obtained it and uses the slang Polly used earlier, but this time, she
doesn't recognize it. They check out Ronan's room, which obviously doesn't have his things because he
doesn't exist here, and Polly calls it "parallel universe deja vu". After she messes with him,
Ronan confesses what happened with his mom. He used to have a bad temper,
and this one time when they were driving home, a truck ran them off the road.
Furious, Ronan left the car and dragged the other driver through the truck window to wail at him,
so when his mom tried to come closer to stop him from killing the driver, she was hit by a
car. Crying, Ronan admits he blames himself for her death and that's why he left his sister,
who had to postpone her college plans because of it. When Polly tells him to get used to how
different yet similar the world can be, Ronan gets an idea and goes to the garage to check
inside the car trunk, his hunch is proven right when he finds his dad's emergency bag. This time,
however, the newspaper doesn't have anything inside except a message telling Ronan to get out.
At that moment, a car parks outside and the three armed men that were looking for Alex the previous
day start calling for him now as well. They even enter the house, but because they split, Ronan
sneaks behind two of them and knocks them out. The third one is brought down by Polly, who uses some
kind of taser that she found in another reality. Polly doesn't know who these guys are, but she's
seen them around in other worlds and knows they're dangerous, so they need to leave immediately.
After seeing the other Harry being harassed by reporters on the big street screens, they enter
the building and find Tinker is already there with his new machine. He explains he survived the nuke
because he hid inside the building, and now he's here to ring the bell. There's no way the creator
of the building has left such a powerful thing alone, so he suspects this person must be on one
of the blocked floors. Tinker uses his machine to hack into the building's system and give it
some electric shocks, making it shake until Harry and Beatrix show up and she points his gun at his
head. Ronan convinces her to let him finish since this could bring him answers, and Tinker continues
to increase the shocks until the elevator door rings. The person that comes out of it surprises
everyone: it's Alex, who tells Tinker he's the first person to even connect to the building
like this and that he should take the elevator if he wants answers for why his Earth was nuked.
After Tinker leaves, Alex comes closer to reunite with his children as Polly backs away from him.
Alex explains he's always tried to shield them away from the building and that he's been
traveling for a long time. He and their mother don't come from the Earth Ronan and Beatrix grew
up in, they just went there when they decided to stop traveling in order to protect their kids.
He also tells them not all of their mother is dead, so they should find her and give her the
sphere he left Ronan because she's the only one that knows how to get to the Core World.
This is important because the person who created the building is gone and nobody is running it
now - the upper floors are empty. Tinker's machine is the key to starting their search,
it'll help them find their mom. Speaking of Tinker, he is coming back to them,
but as soon as the door opens and he calls Alex a liar, Alex takes the gun from Beatrix and shoots
him before leaving. Beatrix intends to follow him but the lights of the building start flickering,
announcing a jump. The group rushes to Tinker's machine and looks at the screen,
which is currently displaying thousands of lines that represent possibilities.
Ronan chooses one at random and the building jumps, so he, Beatrix, and Harry go outside
to see what kind of Earth they're at now. Polly stays behind to meet with two other
Pollys that have been hiding in the building all along, and they play rock-paper-scissors
to see who will go with the group next, even exchanging their jackets to keep up the ruse.