The Plot
Hector (Karra Elejalde) is an average, middle-aged man who finds himself in a more than average situation when he moves into a secluded country home with his wife Clara (Candela Fernadez). Sitting in a lawn chair in his back yard and peering into the neighboring woods like average, middle-aged peeping toms are apt to do, he hits the jackpot when he sees an attractive young lady suddenly doff her top.
Intrigued, he journeys into the woods to see if she needs, um, "help," but he ends up being attacked by a masked man wielding a sharp pair of scissors. Hector manages to escape and runs for safety in a nearby laboratory, where he meets a lab plebe (writer/director Nacho Vigalondo) who suggests he hide in a Jacuzzi-like device. Somehow, this makes sense to Hector, and he enters the small pool, but before he knows it, he wakes up about an hour in the past.
The lab worker is there, but he doesn't remember meeting Hector, since it hasn't happened yet. The device, it turns out, is a time machine, and at this point in its development, it can only send someone backwards -- and only, it seems, about an hour.
The two men realize that something must be done about the two Hectors now running around, not to mention the small situation with the masked killer. The more they try to fix things, however, the more things spin out of control -- as is the nature of time travel. Hector begins to suspect the lab worker's motives and wonders if the first time he went through the time machine was really the first time.
The End Product
Timecrimes is a great popcorn thriller, more in line with 2004's The Butterfly Effect than the austere, scientifically precise time travel drama Primer from the same year. There are some jumps in logic the occasional "time travel fudging" of events that will test your chicken-and-egg reasoning skills, but it's such a fun ride, you don't care if you're left scratching your head a bit at the end.
The movie deals with the nitty-gritty of what really would happen if you traveled back in time and encountered yourself. Surely, the two of you couldn't co-exist with the same life, so what would you do? Whose existence takes priority? Timecrimes goes to dark places in this scenario, but it never gets depressing or even as horrific as its potential (for better or worse). It's a "puzzle movie" full of foreshadowing, clues and twists that keep the audience involved and no doubt chattering at the screen -- even after the final credits roll.
Despite the confusion and complexities of multiple storylines in multiple times, the film is very shoestring in nature with a small cast and a limited range of settings. The primal simplicity combined with the clever, twisty plot, give Timecrimes a certain Hitchcockian feel -- one that doesn't let up until the end.
It's hard to like the pig-headed, inept, mildly pervy Hector, but you end up intrigued by his journey nonetheless and are drawn into the humanity of the situation, despite the outrageous plot.
The Skinny
- Acting: B (Strong all around, although admittedly a foreign language can cover up deficiencies.)
- Direction: B+ (Swiftly paced, adeptly delivering moments of horror, drama, romance, action and comedy.)
- Script: A- (There are moments to question, but it's still an overall clever story that puts a unique spin on the time travel concept and the problems it incurs.)
- Gore/Effects: B- (Little need for gore, although there are plenty of thrills.)
- Overall: B+ (An exhilarating, multilayered journey that should stand as one of high points of Spanish horror/suspense.)
Timecrimes is directed Nacho Vigalondo and is rated R for nudity and language. Release date: December 5, 2008 (limited).
