Category: movie

Apparently this is the season of low-budget time travel movies, because I get another one. This was a much better ride.

An asshole archaeologist goes caving alone except for his dog, trying to find some hippies who went missing 40 years ago. He passes thru a weird wet invisible wall and never returns.

So then his two students go looking for him. They pick up a random girlfriend, younger sister, and "Furby" who is (as they point out) like Chunk from the Goonies but not as heroic or competent. They rappel down thru the wet invisible wall.

The cave areas are mostly classic Dr Who quality warehouse floors with dust and plaster stalagmites, but the centerpiece tower chamber looks OK.

SPOILERS ahoy

They get many clues that something's wrong with time, even if they can't read the title, but don't put it together for a long time. The wet field is of course condensation at the time barrier. The "Furby cut the rope!" hypothesis is kept up much longer than is plausible, but they do eventually figure out why ropes break.

It's great that they all have gopros, so we can see the same scenes multiple times on tiny phone screens (or a projector but with no silver screen in a cave) in lieu of anyone talking it over. The mythology is finally explained in some detail, but it's after much too long of everyone saying "what is happening?!"

Finally the random encounters start. The cavemen are ridiculous, scampering on all fours. There ought to be generation after generation of invaders, instead of just cavemen, conquistadors, lone gunslinger, hippies, archaeologists, and spacemen.

There's some unexamined bits. What do the cavemen eat? Where do they get wood for fires, leather for clothes? Cannibalism and healing in the spring? Where does the Fountain come from? Why is it able to do this? No idea.

[Update: I just realized. This is set in Texas. Where the hell did they get cavemen? Native Americans got here only 15-20KYA, and they're the same Homo sapiens as everyone else, not these sorta-Neanderthal/Homo habilis looking grimy monkey men. There have never been non-Sapiens hominids in North America, Bigfoot claims aside.]

The final scenes are a bit neat and tidy, and really could've used a freaky post-Human Martian coming in to say something, but it did fine for a limited cast.

Minor point against it: The dog is never seen again, even though he should've been hanging around the truck when the students arrived. Maybe he survived, but probably the coyotes got him. I want a happy ending for the dog, too.

This is an interesting time for indie films, because even cheap cameras look good, so if you have a decent script and the special effects are just Photoshop on a few frames, you can make a professional film on a shoestring budget.

★★★½☆

So, a perfectly fine premise, well-acted, somewhat wrecked by the writers not thinking things thru at all. First hour I was fully on board, then nothing added up, and by the end I was annoyed. As with so many films, the color has been shat on with the orange/cyan filter, except where day-for-night scenes are grey filtered.

SPOILER land

There are two hypotheses about time travel. A is that everything forward and back has already happened, and if you vanish in the future it's because you already appeared in the past; you may be the cause of events but they can't be changed. This is the only rational argument, really. We know time is just part of space-time; each tick moves things "ahead" in the next frame.

B is that time travel rewrites the future; you kill a fascist and fascism vanishes and everyone's singing Kumbaya. But then there's no need for a time machine and assassin, so the fascist isn't killed and fascism spreads. Now you need a time machine again. This is madness.

The movie seems to be doing hypothesis A, but then ends as if hypothesis B happened. But only after decades of the original timeline.

Second, somewhat worse, is that the method of killing is preposterously convoluted. Why does the assassin need to inject targets now so someone in the future can push a button? She could just shoot them or give them a drug OD and not provide weird clues to make a cop go all Zodiac case on it for decades. I am disappointed the cop doesn't have a clue & string board in his car.

Third, completely nonsensical stuff about the Super Moon being a bridge between worlds or some shit. Absolute astrology-class woo nonsense.

Fourth, the idea that some newsletter about "real Americans" and a flag with 5 badly-placed stars is going to incite the Second Civil War, completely fails to understand our first Civil War, and the nature of populist movements. You'd have to kill millions to stop it.

Fifth, the idea that you'd use this to stop some bombings, no worse than what dozens of countries endure every day, including several at the hands of the US armed forces; rather than going back to stop Hitler, or Stalin, or Mao, or Pol Pot, or Nixon.

The writers previously worked together on Limitless, an equally vapid show about the "10% of your brain!" myth. I can't find their ages, but I'm pretty sure they're under 30, it has that earnest political certainty & lack of humor or irony. They've clearly never read a history book, especially none of the Presidential biographies they show.

★★☆☆☆ — definition of competent but unenjoyable.

Despite my contempt for the writing, I finished this off. I'm going straight to spoilers here; at least watch E1-3 cold.

So E4-E6 goes back to the I-Land, and there's a terribly-written argument of "you have to believe my incredible story!" "no you're a liar!" "waah, you bitch!" for half an hour or more; I barely exaggerate, it's a tale told by an idiot. Some light bondage but it's not very hot.

A couple claiming to be "Bonnie & Clyde" show up and deliver more preposterous threats and tell everyone remembering their past will make them sad. Then everyone splits up, has flashbacks, and yes they all suck IRL as well as on I-Land. The past is a land of crying people and shitty Instagram filters, and repeated scenes because they didn't film enough to pad the episode out. Now, serious SF moment here: I don't think any kind of memory suppression is plausible, the brain doesn't work like a database, something this targeted and reversible especially not, and it's completely contrary to the reformation attempt. So the main plot point technology is just nonsense fantasy.

Chase continues to be the only interesting character, so Cooper runs off after her to stay relevant and on-camera. We do eventually learn a whole sad backstory, except: It is implausible they would both be incarcerated together, both taken in the program, and hook up again despite memory wipe. It feels tacked on, or like Lost the soi-disant writers were just making up bullshit as they went along.

Taylor sails away to II-Land (second island, ha ha), which has the single dumbest plot element in the show; never drink free chicken soup! Bonnie & Clyde showing up to be shitty Rod Serlings is just salt in the wound. Said shitty plot element is never seen; is it another player or an NPC or just B&C?

Nothing at all is resolved, until KC and her bozo follower confront Chase & Cooper, violence ensues, B&C show up, and there's quite a good fight scene again. The fight choreography is quite good, someone competent was running that. But also here KC and her bozo just vanish when no longer relevant to the plot.

And finally in E7, back in "reality" more or less, Chase gets released because everyone believes a single thing Cooper says. Except we have to sit thru more of the Warden being an idiot, the doctor & academics being patronizing, everyone getting some kind of comeuppance which is very implausible; especially putting anyone new into the simulation.

The final twist about Chase isn't really shocking, since she didn't recognize any advanced tech in E3, it had to be some time ahead, but it's too far: A 50-year-old woman who's been in a sensory deprivation tank for 25 years cannot do the fighting we saw in E3.

The casual "Galveston is flooded" thing is cute, but a real post-Global Warming Galveston isn't going to be a temperature-habitable zone either.

They seem to think she's doomed, being discharged with pocket money & bus fare; that's stupid, she can go to any tabloid successor of Buzzfeed and make millions on the story, and any yellow rag journalist can write it better than these writers did.

The entire series is so terribly written it may as well have been improvised by the actors, except they did all the flashbacks, so it's actually scripted this badly. The same premise, if handled by a competent writer, director, and hiring more than one competent actor, and having more fight scenes, could've been much better.

★★½☆☆

10 very pretty people wake up with amnesia on a beach, on a deserted tropical island. As they wander, they find useful items for survival. If they go in the water… da-dum da-dum… They have some stupid interpersonal drama.

Then the very telegraphed "twist" happens; which given the staticky intro effect, and the unreal nature of many events, should be no surprise at all.

Up thru E2 it's a mediocre Lost with really terrible dialogue and deliberately no character development. Then E3 is the exposition ep, but the writing is even worse, with a fat moron not answering questions, then terrible caricatures of academics not answering questions. The only saving grace is one good action scene. But these supposed future police have no idea how to handle prisoners, they're like the idiot cops in Demolition Man trying to handle Wesley Snipes, but this isn't intended as dark comedy.

★★½☆☆ as of E3 out of 7 — If I hadn't seen Lost, The Cell, or Demolition Man, I'd think this was at least sort of creative. Probably some people will call out The Matrix, but that's a happier kind of prison.

The thing of casting only pretty people for the island and often ugly ones for outside is a shallow trick, and I find it kind of insulting.