On the verge of the release of Red Eye 2, a contact lens that can record data and resurface the buried memories of its wearer, a researcher named Margo finds the lead programmer has been murdered. That leads her to Thomas, a detective who has his own past to deal with, all to find out exactly what’s going on.

In his second full-length film, Benjamin Ross Hayden is really trying to tie so many things into one movie: a software company that has all the worst parts of the social media companies that we deal with every day; a detective with an abusive past and a stalker following him; a cool punk hacker named Jade; the monster that looks way cool on the poster.

This really reminded me of a 1990s cyberpunk movie — and I love those movies like three-legged dogs, so you may not — but even I have limits as to how much narrative incoherence I can deal with. This movie looks gorgeous, however, all cool blues and future gleam. And I think there’s a great movie inside here. It just needs to not have so many layers.

I saw Parallel Minds as part of Salem Horror Fest, where you can watch several shorts and features with their virtual pass now until the end of October. This movie is also on Tubi.