- Title: Parallels – Hard Awakening
- IMDb: link
The French teen sci-fi series makes its way to Disney+. The opening episode, “Hard Awakening,” introduces us to four teens hanging out one night in some kind of abandoned bunker (which still has electricity) in the middle of the forest. The best way to put it is “something weird happens” and Sam (Thomas Chomel) finds himself alone in the creepy bunker with a strange old man (Omar Mebrouk) who is actually the future version (but with only present memories) of his pal Bilal (Timoté Rigault) whose mother works at some kind of research facility (perhaps some kind of particle accelerator) which was running during the incident.
The solid, but far from gripping, opening sets the stage while still not revealing what has happened to the other two kids (Maxime Bergeron and Victoria Eber) who find themselves in a bunker but I’m guessing one in a slightly different timeline/reality. Of course, getting all the kids back home will likely be the primary thread of these various realities (whether or not the clueless adults ever understand what’s happening). One note about the series for those planning on watching it, I’d suggest watching it in French with English subtitles as the default English dubbed version may be one of the worst things I’ve ever seen.
