Song of the day: “Gone” by Kanye West feat. Consequence and Cam’Ron
Timecrimes
Director: Nacho Vigalondo
Genre: Thriller/Suspense/Crime/Drama/Sci-Fi
Year: 2007
Time travel movies are often difficult to make, mostly due to the differing schools of thought regarding how time travel actually works. The fact that nobody has really time traveled makes it difficult to say any one movie gets it right. Consistency and a clear idea, however, do volumes in making time traveling movies work and this one is by far one of the better ones, without getting into the complexities that Primer got into. In other words, Timecrimes is an exciting, interesting film regarding time travel that does not require you to have a Ph. D. on quantum physics to understand it. In fact, the movie itself does a good job in explaining the theory they employ.
The set up is quite simple, a man, relaxing in his backyard begins to experience a series of odd events that lead him to seek help at the neighbor’s house, where he finds a series of instruments and machines that rise his suspicions at least temporarily before his concern for his safety takes the driver seat again, forcing him up the hill to a laboratory he had not realized existed at the top of the hill. There, a scientist offers to help him by hiding him in a tub…strangeness ensues!
In a thrilling, suspenseful manner, the Spanish bring us a movie that forgoes big budgets and special effects to give us instead a very believable, low budget film that is far more convincing than anything Hollywood has put out in terms of time travel. Throwing the audience for a loop in its script, which is carefully written and exquisitely supervised, we become witnesses of how a man becomes ensnared in a dangerous web of events that ends up with tremendous consequences.
Do not let the sci-fi tag deter you, there are not spaceships, no aliens, nothing crazy or hard to swallow, if you can merely accept the possibility of time travel, then you are set and with a reined in cast of only five and a simplistic setting, the structure of this film allows you to focus on what matters most, the story! I would say this is a must own if this genre is favored by you.
Rating: 
Comments: Quite a bit of violence and a handful of wince moments. No sexuality but there is some full frontal nudity in a couple of scenes. Spanish language, English subtitles.
