In the Dark Reviews

It's a rare treat for me to be able to review the work of a hyper-local filmmaker, at the very least because they tend to be savvy enough to take advantage of the natural landscapes we share here in the Northwest.

When Bainbridge Island-based Rachel Noll James wrote, directed, co-produced and starred in "Ingress," she made it practically in her backyard, but the meditative sci-fi film has more than pleasant settings to recommend it.

That being said, cinematographer Dan Clarke deserves recognition for capturing the woodlands, coastline and some of the quaint community buildings of Bainbridge Island with visuals that look like they cost millions of more dollars than Noll James actually had to spend.

But what I find most notable about "Ingress" is I can't recall any other storytelling treatment of alternate timelines that so explicitly treats parallel universe-jumping as akin to the emotional experience of coping with chronic mental health problems. Yes, no shortage of sci-fi stories confront their protagonists with other characters' accusations that they're "crazy," but "Ingress" depicts its reality-sliding characters as feeling overwhelmed by the disorienting shifts in their own histories, in much the same way that those prone to anxieties might struggle to recover from panic attacks.

Riley (played by Noll James herself) and Daniel (played by Christopher Clark) deal differently with their divergences from consensus reality, but "Ingress" makes it easy to empathize with them both, in spite of their unorthodox predicaments.

After losing her parents when she was a kid, Riley recently lost her funny, friendly husband Toby (played by Johnny Ferro). She started going back to her job, but her daily routine includes moments when the familiar smell of one of Toby's keepsakes, or the mild stress of mundane social interactions, requires her to take some time-outs for herself.

Meanwhile, Daniel has embraced multiversal theory from an almost spiritual standpoint, using his connection to a broader consciousness calling itself "Lucas" (voiced by Tim DeKay) to try and help troubled people improve their personal lives.

It's hard not to be reminded of fellow Washingtonian J.Z. Knight, who's claimed for decades that she channels a spiritual entity known as "Ramtha." Ingress" ensures that we understand Daniel is no mere charlatan, by having him be his own biggest skeptic. We see him using a Google-clone search engine to look up his own name online, with the search term "fraud."

Daniel desperately doesn't want to be selling his faithful readers a bill of goods, but the nagging self-doubt instilled by the bullying he endured during his younger years makes him overjoyed to encounter Riley, whose traumas would seem to validate his admittedly metaphysical claims.

As an actress, Noll James bears more than a passing resemblance to a much younger Jane Alexander, with a face whose gentle lines are perfectly etched to convey quiet, sustained grief.

Clark plays Daniel with an appropriate measure of barely suppressed over-eagerness, as befits a character who so reflexively anticipates people casting aspersions upon his sanity that he's just itching to prove how rational he is, even if only by admitting he knows how nuts he sounds.

And Ferro maximizes the limited time he has onscreen, to help "Ingress" invest its message with a tangible authenticity, that even some parts of our lives which once gave us genuine joy still eventually need to be surrendered, to achieve greater growth.

Although "Ingress" is an entirely peaceful film, it nonetheless reminds me of a key scene in Adrian Lyne's "Jacob's Ladder" from 1990, when Danny Aiello tells Tim Robbins that the only parts of people that burn in hell are their attachments to the lives they once led, so if they surrender their fears of loss, then they'll see that what they thought were devils, tearing their lives away, are instead angels, freeing them from their fetters.

That ain't a bad message at all, and "Ingress" tells it well.

"Ingress" is playing at the Balcony Theatre in Suite 401A at 211 Taylor St. in Port Townsend at 7 p.m. on Friday, May 10.

Tickets are available at http://www.ptfilm.org.

Author Bio

Kirk Boxleitner, Reporter

Shelton-Mason County Journal & Belfair Herald
[email protected]