'Falling Water' Too Disjointed to Compel Viewers

“Do you ever think your dreams are trying to tell you something?” the narrator asks in the opening sequence of “Falling Water,” USA’s newest sci-fi drama series. “What if our dreams are like tiles in a grand mosaic that we’re all dreaming together? And what if a person, that one right person, could wander out of their dream and into yours? What if that person is you?”

“Falling Water,” directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (“Intacto,” “28 Weeks Later”), tells the story of three strangers who slowly realize that their dreams are connected in the same universe. Lizzie Brocheré is Tess, a mousy, pouty woman who makes a living as a trend-spotter and whose dreams revolve around a nonexistent son. Taka (Will Yun Lee) is a quiet police officer, tasked with the care of an unresponsive woman, who is presumably his wife. His dreams vary from encountering a faceless woman in the middle of a suburban street to watching his younger self chase his mother to no avail. And in the least accessible narrative, Burton (David Ajala, “The Dark Knight”) spends his days as a head of security and his nights dreaming about the Woman in Red (Anna Wood), an old flame. Creepily monitoring the progress of the whole storyline is Bill (Zak Orth, “Wet Hot American Summer”), a businessman of some kind who offers Tess a chance to learn more about her son. Though Fresnadillo offers viewers enough clues to piece together parts of the story, he does so in a way that facilitates confusion rather than curiosity.

“Falling Water” falls prey to the standard pitfalls of dream-related narratives. Its jarring, fragmented storytelling is perpetually a little too disjointed. Viewers find themselves immersed in the constant, perplexed internal monologue: Was this scene all a dream? What about that scene? And what about that one?

Its mediocre cinematography meets standard TV criteria but does not impress in any extraordinary way. With gratuitous close-up shots of an eye slowly opening and a series of obvious falling water motifs (symbolism!), its film-editing techniques fall short of subtlety. The storytelling relies a little too heavily on voiceover—the weakest tool in the filmmaker’s box.

Casting, featuring female, black, and Asian protagonists, is commendably diverse; however, acting is unfortunately lackluster. Playing Burton, Ajala stiffly goes through the motions of acting in a lilting British accent. Lee, as Taka, is half as exciting as his character needs to be, managing to always look half-asleep. Orth’s excited delivery of the line “Imagine absolute connectivity! No wires, no wi-fi, no servers, no routers, just pure communication, cerebral cortex to cerebral cortex!” evokes impressions of a mad scientist, but in only a mildly interesting way. Only Brocheré, with permanently furrowed eyebrows and a leather jacket, offers someone for viewers to root for, demonstrating the widest emotional range of the three main characters.

With a slow beginning (the first action scene occurs after 22 minutes), “Falling Water” hesitates to deliver any story worth watching. “Falling Water” is the kind of show you know you have to see more of for it to make sense, but the show lacks enough compelling components to motivate watching further. Though it’s probably not the next “Stranger Things”-level sensation, it has the potential to attract a small but dedicated cultish following. The rest of us, however, will likely sleep through the rest of the season.