Minor Premise has the knotty intelligence of a Christopher Nolan film and the mind-blowing intensity of an M. Night Shyamalan thriller. The clever science-fiction film centers on Ethan Kochar (Sathya Sridharan), a neuroscientist whose father, Paul (Nikolas Kontomanolis), recently passed away. Ethan is left in the shadow of his legacy, struggling to continue his father's great work: a machine that studies the connections between memories and emotions. He obsessively searches for the correct equation that will allow him to control human consciousness by isolating sections of the brain.
When he finds the equation in one of his father's old journals, he (drunkenly) performs an experiment on himself, resulting in blackouts that feel different than the ones after his previous experiments. Ethan soon discovers that he has splintered his consciousness into 10 fragments guided by a particular emotion such as libido, euphoria, and anger. Each emotion is in control of his mind and body for six minutes every hour.
He recruits his colleague and ex-girlfriend Alli (Paton Ashbrook) to help him out of this cognitive maze and keep this dangerous development under wraps from his father's mourning research partner, Malcolm (Dana Ashbrook). Both Ashbrooks (Dana is Paton's uncle) deliver strong, grounded performances in their struggle to aid the mad scientist.
First-time director Eric Schultz conveys the inner workings of Ethan's fragile mental state with eye-popping psychedelic images. The rest of the film is quite drab, with dark, muted colors, but this lack of pleasing aesthetic matches Ethan's sorrow and the dark labyrinth of his disoriented mind. Thomas Torrey and Schultz's script is dense and full of highbrow theoretical concepts, but never dull or too bewildering. Neuroscientist and biotech scientist Justin Moretto also contributes to the script, adding a weighty realism to Ethan's research.
The highlight of Minor Premise is Sridharan. He portrays Ethan's unraveling with intense veracity, allowing the audience to feel his palpable terror when his mind turns against him. Befuddled and drenched in sweat, his unhinged performance recalls Jeff Goldblum in The Fly. Sridharan does a masterful job differentiating between the various fragments of Ethan's mind while also authentically portraying a flawed, grief-stricken young man and smart scientist.
Schultz's film has a unique premise, one that may even require an extra viewing to fully grasp the main character's intricate emotional journey. Anchored by a superb lead performance from Sridharan, Minor Premise is a trippy, white-knuckle sci-fi that touches on grief and memory with a poignant melancholy.