I have to say this is an astounding movie to me. Not simply because it looks far better than a $7000 movie has any right to look (even if a distributor spent a hundred times that to "clean it up").
This movie takes the ultimate advantage of it's budget to present a time travel story that is, in a way that I find rather unnerving, the most "realistic" portrayal of time travel I have ever seen. The "non-acting" of the actors, the shaky (yet sometimes quite sophisticated) use of the camera, the odd way the story plays out as semi-coherent...this film plays out as if it were actually made by it's protagonist (which, of course, it was). But what we discover by learning the story through "Aaron" is that the final result of time travel is, quite simply, madness.
I had such a feeling of dread as this film unfolded. From the moment we see Aaron and Abe first watch the "other" Abe at the U-Haul facility, the full ramifications of what time travel really could lead to started to crystallize. It's not just the idea that God-like powers have been placed in the hands of flawed human beings...it's the concept that flawed human beings are continually pulled like magnets toward the temptation to trap themselves inside a nightmarish existence, for the most "logical" of reasons. Not only that, but the insidious way the ripple effect of tampering with reality through time travel spread and spread meant that, ultimately, no one would be safe from such a disastrous invention. To me, somehow the most terrifying moment of this film is when the wife talks about getting an exterminator to take care of the "sound in the attic." As soon as I realized what that sound was, it shook me.
I will be thinking about this "imperfect" film for some time to come.
This movie takes the ultimate advantage of it's budget to present a time travel story that is, in a way that I find rather unnerving, the most "realistic" portrayal of time travel I have ever seen. The "non-acting" of the actors, the shaky (yet sometimes quite sophisticated) use of the camera, the odd way the story plays out as semi-coherent...this film plays out as if it were actually made by it's protagonist (which, of course, it was). But what we discover by learning the story through "Aaron" is that the final result of time travel is, quite simply, madness.
I had such a feeling of dread as this film unfolded. From the moment we see Aaron and Abe first watch the "other" Abe at the U-Haul facility, the full ramifications of what time travel really could lead to started to crystallize. It's not just the idea that God-like powers have been placed in the hands of flawed human beings...it's the concept that flawed human beings are continually pulled like magnets toward the temptation to trap themselves inside a nightmarish existence, for the most "logical" of reasons. Not only that, but the insidious way the ripple effect of tampering with reality through time travel spread and spread meant that, ultimately, no one would be safe from such a disastrous invention. To me, somehow the most terrifying moment of this film is when the wife talks about getting an exterminator to take care of the "sound in the attic." As soon as I realized what that sound was, it shook me.
I will be thinking about this "imperfect" film for some time to come.