There’s a moment in Ingress where time, memory, and grief fold in on themselves like paper—creased by love, torn by loss, and taped back together by sheer will. Writer-director-star Rachel Noll James doesn’t give us a sci-fi epic; she gives us a heartbreak. A meditation. A wound in the shape of a woman. And from that wound, we watch a story unfold that is both deeply personal and impossibly vast.
Ingress follows Riley, a woman once able to slip between parallel realities—a gift she abandoned after the tragic death of her husband. But grief has a gravity of its own, and when Riley discovers that somewhere in the multiverse her husband may still be alive, the pull becomes irresistible. To move through realities again, she must face her trauma, her guilt, and the pain she tried to bury in the past. What begins as a science fiction premise becomes something far more elemental: a journey through the raw terrain of the soul.
Noll James’s performance as Riley is the quiet core around which this emotional universe spins. There’s nothing flashy here—no overacted breakdowns or melodramatic monologues. Just small, sharp moments of truth. A glance held too long. A breath not taken. Her grief is intimate and subdued, making the stakes feel even more real.
What sets Ingress apart from so many multiverse tales is that it doesn’t use alternate realities for spectacle—it uses them for emotion. Each parallel life Riley glimpses is not a set piece, but a mirror. And what she sees in those mirrors—versions of her marriage, her identity, her regrets—forces her to confront the parts of herself that stayed broken long before her husband died.
“Riley, a woman once able to slip between parallel realities…”
Visually, the film moves like a dream. The cinematography bathes each reality in natural light and soft hues, lending a quiet continuity to the otherwise fractured narrative. Composer Michael Reola delivers a subtle, atmospheric score that doesn’t guide emotion so much as echo it—haunting, beautiful, and almost imperceptible, like a memory you’re not sure is real.
Some may find Ingress slow or even slight in its plotting. But to demand a faster pace or louder thrills is to miss the point. This is not about racing through worlds. It’s about why we’d want to. What are we running from? What are we desperate to change? And if we could, would we really be healed?
Ultimately, Ingress is less concerned with the science of the multiverse and more with its emotional implications. It asks: What if healing means facing the version of ourselves we fear most? And what if the miracle isn’t finding a universe where someone we lost is still alive—but rediscovering the strength to live on our own?
Ingress is a film that whispers through parallel worlds, finding truth not in the spectacle but in the spaces between. And if you let it in, it might just leave you changed.
"…less concerned with the science of the multiverse and more with its emotional implications."
