Rent Synchronicity (2015)

Boring lo-budget sci-fi - Synchronicity review by Alphaville

Lo-budget sci-fi tends to disintegrate into screeds of exposition and that’s what happens here. Time travel should throw up some interesting ideas and paradoxes but none are explored. When a second version of our protagonist comes through a wormhole into this universe, all the film does is have them avoid each other. Presumably it was cheaper to film without the special effects this would entail.

Repeating scenes from a different viewpoint is an interesting idea that can add layers of meaning (see 1989’s Millennium, for example). Here the conceit merely bores. There’s also a subplot romance with a mysterious and poorly written female character that strains credulity and patience.

Most of the inaction takes place in a claustrophobic lab, where our hero and his buddies constantly fiddle with the machinery. The wormhole turns out to be a bright light. Who’d have thought? The nonsensical plot grinds to a standstill and isn’t worth the effort of trying to understand. Don’t expect any excitement, either visually or intellectually. This is a dialogue-heavy film that would have looked laboured even in the original Star Trek series.