Plurality review – gruesome but simple-minded multiple-identity thriller

This Taiwanese sci-fi about an investigation in which the suspects' minds are injected into a host body starts promisingly, but quickly ditches any complexity

Dabbling in a myriad of already weary tropes first pioneered by The Matrix trilogy, this Taiwanese sci-fi crime thriller Plurality could have put a fresh twist on big-budget Hollywood efforts, but falls flat on both the production design and the narrative front.

The young son of a city councillor is the latest victim in a string of kidnappings targeting children with disabilities or facial disfigurements, and the police become convinced that the perpetrator is one of the five passengers who have died in a mysterious bus crash. Thanks to a new technology, they are able to use the vegetative body of a criminal on death row into which to inject the brain fluids of the suspects. (These include a shady businessman, a spoiled dropout, a reticent college student, a father estranged from his daughter, and the bus driver.) As the police try to extract information from these evasive subjects, the more gruelling the interrogation becomes, the more violently the five identities wrestle for control of their corporeal host, which leads to explosive revelations and bloodshed.