"Minor Premise" is intended as an eerie, twisted science-fiction thriller that's like a roller coaster ride through the mind. But instead it's murky and flat, a slow-moving turgid wade through the bog.
Ethan (Sathya Sridharan) is young, brilliant but deeply off-putting scientist who seems disinterested in teaching classes, interacting with colleagues or really anything productive. Mostly he sits in his dank basement laboratory, swilling astonishing amounts of alcohol while working on a highly experimental project that built on work his father, a fellow scientist, pioneered before passing away from a terrible illness.
The elder man created the R9, a device actually capable of reading and recording memories, which play as sort of shaky-cam short films. Ethan is resentful of Malcolm (Dana Ashbrook), an older and more seasoned scientist who's good at pressing the flesh and arranging funding, for hogging too much of the spotlight. Meanwhile, he's working on the R10, a quantum leap that will actually allow for the changing of brain functions -- so it could help an addict kick their habit, for instance.
Ethan has been experiencing increasing blackouts, the result of constant experimenting upon the only present and willing subject: himself. He'll wake up with a bloody nose and smashed furniture, minutes or even an hour lost to consciousness. Of course, it doesn't help his reputation with other university types -- always showing up everywhere, with dark stains under his eyes and slurring his words from all the booze.
He gets help from Alli (Paton Ashbrook), another colleague and former lover, who's disturbed by Ethan's unstable behavior but wants to help. The rest of the movie plays out as one long piece in that basement, with Malcolm dropping by to complain about more missed meetings and getting roped into the proceedings, so to speak.
What Ethan experiences as blackouts and flash-forwards and -backwards in time turns out to be unwitting separating his consciousness into nine "segments" -- and if you're thinking this is about to turn into another silly split personality story, then you've obviously got more brainpower than Ethan.
Eric Schultz directed, co-writing the screenplay with Justin Moretto and Thomas Torrey, based on a short film version they did of the same material. It's not a terrible feature film debut, but there's just not enough story material to keep things flowing. The movie quickly devolves into repetitive scenes of Ethan and Alli making a new and disturbing discovery about what the machine is doing to Ethan's brain.
Some personality segments are intellectual and benevolent, others... not so much. So Alli goes from partner to victim to accomplice and back again.
Even for a low-budget indie, the special effects are rather unspecial, with cutaways to microscopic biological film stock for the seizures. As for the R10, it basically looks like a huge colander somebody glammed out with various wires and bits culled from the hardware store discount bin.
"Minor Premise" has the nugget of a decent idea in there somewhere, but falls back on hackneyed story elements and tired characterizations.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yA0wua85kUI[/embed]