Time Travel discussion

This was my second time travel film of a double bill cinema release in UK in the last week.  Predestination was the other film which I wrote about in the other thread.  Like Predestination, this came to UK several months after the states so have you seen it yet.  I know Cheryl has and she seems very disappointed with it.

I was eagerly awaiting this because it crosses two genres I love, found footage and of course time travel.

So far we have had this sub genre fused with supernatural (Blair Witch, The Last Exorcism etc), horror (VHS), monster movie (Cloverfield), Trolls (troll hunter), superheroes (Chronicles), buddy cop movie (End of Watch), space travel (Europa Report), all of which I have enjoyed. And now best of all, time travel to add to that mashup list...well actually not quite, there was a really good low budget drama called Lunopolis that had a hint of it (which was also a pretty good film that I wrote about in another thread).

I know many people hate shaky cam movies and its understandable.  In fact a little warning, the shaky cam is admittedly quite nauseating more times than it should be...however, its mostly relative smooth elsewhere to capture the key moments with a lot of "cheating" camerawork to maintain the narrative flow but that is generally part and parcel of the "attempted authenticity" for this type of genre. And I do personally love that despite the narrative convenience to cheat.


The build up in this movie was very enjoyable, introducing us to a bunch of college students stumbling upon the invention of time travel. I was having a lot of fun with the small touches of character signatures, their insecurities, and their naive progression with their new toy...until it came to a point that this "build up" phase was outstaying its welcome and frustratingly taking too long in getting to the second act with some tedious fooling around and arrogant quotes of classic time travel movies from the characters.

Then when the second act comes, flipping hell, it completely falls over itself in the time travel mechanics. No thought has gone into making it logical whatsoever. Fine, then at least entertain me. But sadly that energy of the build up act dissipates somewhat in this middle act. Thankfully, there is an anchoring character drive in the narrative that kept me just about engaged and when it reaches the third and final act, the film picks up a pace of frantic urgency, so much so that despite the absolute shambles of the time travel mechanics I was sucked in and entertained once again.

By the film's end, I felt I had an overall fun albeit unintelligent time thanks to a pretty good recovery in the third act.

It's just such a shame that the whole time travel mechanics is so illogical and too much time spent on tedious tomfoolery...but at least they actually kept the illogical consistent if that makes any bloody sense.

I have a feeling most of you guys will not dig this, especially if you are not keen on shaky cam. I am a film goer that enjoy the positives and there was a lot to enjoy for me. But the logic and tedious tomfoolery did diminish that fun so I will give the film a personal rating of

6.5

I saw the movie last night on Amazon Prime, and enjoyed it. My review http://paullevinson.blogspot.com/2017...