Timecrimes

A man and his wife have just moved to their new home in the countryside. As they're settling in, the man notices something peculiar off in the woods: a young girl stripping naked for no real reason. Intrigued, he goes to investigate, but soon finds himself pursued by a dangerous, masked man. He stumbles upon a strange laboratory and hides in a mysterious machine... which proceeds to send him back in time. Now the man must figure out how to keep the timeline flowing (without inadvertently destroying himself), all the while trying to solve a strange crime as it unfolds in front of him.

Movies concerning time travel are tricky things to do well. If you take the premise and handle it too simply, then the story will be riddled with plot holes. Get too complex with things, and you risk confusing everyone too much to the point where they don't like the movie (no, I haven't seen Primer yet. I'll see it soon, I promise). But every now and then, a film comes along that walks the line perfectly, that delivers an easy to understand story that intelligently uses the aspect of time travel. This, as it should go without saying at this point in this journal, is one of those movies.

Before I get to the time travel aspects, let me talk about the characters. The main one that you'll follow is the man, Hector. He's an average, middle-aged, over-weightish kind of guy (i.e. the last person you'd expect to be the main character in a movie), a nice enough fellow. He has an interesting bit of character development over the course of the movie, going from a bumbling everyman (who can't quite grasp the idea of time travel. It may seem annoying to the rest of us, but hey, you'd be confused too if you actually had to face it in real life) to a determined individual willing to do what it takes to survive. He's never evil or anything, and the movie even does a good job of justifying his actions, really making you emphasize with him even as more questionable events arise.

Moving onto the time travel aspects... well, it all fits. Each scene has little things that seem like nothing at first (you may not even notice them), but which fall into place perfectly as the story unfolds. It's one of those things where the plot moves along in a satisfying way, and if you're paying attention you'll be able to figure out what comes next before it happens. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as the revealing scenes are still handled in a tense, interesting manner. The movie also raises a few interesting questions concerning time travel, in regards to events happening because someone went back in time to cause them, and said event happening is what caused said person to go back in time in the first place. It's things that seem to just be, with no real beginning or ending, and it can be a real head-scratcher (in the good way) to ponder them.

This is a fairly low-budget foreign (Spanish, as a matter of fact) sci-fi film, but definitely one of the more interesting to come out in the past few years. It's tense, it's smart, and above all it's easy to follow and enjoyable to watch. Definitely something to look for if you're a fan of all things time travel.

Trailer: DO NOT WATCH THE TRAILER! It gives away far, far too much.