Diverge

James Morrison's sci-fi drama "Diverge" follows in the footsteps of ambitious low-budget genre films like "Pi" and "Upstream Color" with its mix of high-concept tropes (a viral pandemic; time travel; parallel universes), low-key presentation, and narrative ambitions.

Chris (Ivan Sandomire) and his wife Anna (Erin Cunningham) have ventured far away from the smoldering ruins of New York City. They're fleeing a disease that has already killed countless people -- a sickness that began in cattle and then spread to humans before overtaking the entire globe. They live in a makeshift tent surrounded by miles of snow and ice; they can only hope they are safe.

But then a stranger (Jamie Jackson) comes upon their encampment. He has a cryptic offer for Chris, and only Chris: Return with him a place of safety, where there's food and a chance for survival, but leave Anna -- who is showing signs of infection -- behind. Chris will have none of it, but the stranger doesn't simply give up. A few days later, to his astonishment, Chris finds himself waking up in civilization as it used to be. He's gone back into the past, and there's no explanation for how he got there... just a gash in his leg where a mysterious implant throbs painfully with blue light from time to time.

"Diverge" makes virtue of its budgetary limitations, turning a lack of huge production values into a virtue by letting the audience piece the story together and fill in the blanks even as Chris figures it all out. The clean narrative directness of the film suits the production style well; Morrison doesn't beat us over the head with exposition or technobabble. He knows we're familiar with these concepts and he trusts us to run with them.

That leaves Morrison, who writes as well as directs, to focus on the deeper storytelling. There's a conflict with Chris' boss at the university research facility where he's growing a mysterious blue, flowering herb; there's a star-crossed (or is that time-crossed?) romantic yearning for the wife who Chris can no longer have, even though she's right there; and there's the imaginative concept, explained deftly in a brief exchange, that this is not simply a matter of time travel. Past and future iterations of different people can interact without creating paradoxes because the very presence of time travelers in the pre-pandemic world creates a whole new reality where the future is not yet determined.

There's also a sinister plot afoot: In a nod to a classic sci-fi franchise, the corrupt Tyrell pharmaceuticals company seeks to manipulate the past version of Chris even as his future version watches and prepares to take action that will prevent the pandemic from ever occurring.

To do this, Chris needs help -- and who should he turn to but the stranger who seems to be behind his trip through time, a physicist named Dmitri Tarkov? The tables are turned when Chris finds himself trying to convince the skeptical Tarkov of a story in which Tarkov's own future self sends Chris to the past, but then the film leaps into audaciously fresh territory where shocks and revelations await.

Eerie, inscrutable, cool, and polished, this is the work of a writer-director who's confident with his material and ready for bigger budgets.