Director Eric Schultz’s ‘Minor Premise’ appropriately begins with the main character Ethan, played by Sathya Sridharan, giving a scientific lecture because in many ways, this movie feels like sitting in a graduate level physics course after getting lost on your way to Bio 101. That’s not to say the film is incomprehensible, it just may be helpful to hit pause and think things through every once and awhile.
Credit: Utopia‘Minor Premise’ follows Ethan after the death of his scientist father, upon his death the credit for Ethan’s work on their memory retrieval program was quickly removed. Alas, Ethan continues to work on the project alone and in doing so quickly spirals into a chaotic combination of hubris and booze that leads to Ethan prematurely testing the device on himself. The result is a stressful few minutes where he begins to black out more and more frequently until Ethan seems to only have 6 minutes of consciousness an hour.
After the arrival of fellow scientist, and former girlfriend, Alli (Paton Ashbrook), the duo pieces together that Ethan has split his mind into 10 sections based off traits, referred to as Intellect, Euphoria, Anxiety, etc., as well as the complete form of Ethan. Each gains control of the body for a total of 6 minutes until the next gains control. However, each section is deteriorating without another one to balance it out and the scientists are in a race against time and the mysterious 8th personality, whose trait they can’t seem to figure out, to put Ethan back together, and back together correctly, in time.
Credit: Utopia
The emotional beats hit fine and it’s nice to see a sci-fi set in a damp gross basement as opposed to a sterile lab, but the research the writers did on this topic, and they clearly did a lot, including one of the writers Justin Moretto who studied neuroscience and biotechnology, seems to have backfired into making ‘Minor Premise’ majorly dense. Sridharan gives a fine sweat drenched physical performance as his body degenerates, but his voice never seems to change from a cheery tone that feels off putting with the grit of the rest of the film.
Despite its puzzling nature, it’s hard to fault the writers for pretension as they do their best to keep the facts straight for the viewer and in fact, more scientifically minded watchers might find themselves right on track. The direction is solid and the production uses its small budget to full effect, so ‘Minor Premise’ manages to show plenty of potential outside of its one major flaw.
‘Minor Premise’ is in theaters, virtual cinemas, and Digital & On-Demand right now.
