Review: Timecrimes

**** / *****

Héctor: "Who is the man in my house?
The Scientist; He's you.
Héctor: He's me?
The Scientist; Technically you're the same person. He's like your reflection. You're looking in the mirror. Only this mirror shows what you were doing
roughly about an hour ago.
Héctor: But that man is in my home!
The Scientist; And he'll leave, in the same way you did."

Fans of Shane Carruth's mind-bending Sundance-winner Primer, as well as time-travel enthusiasts/freaks in general, should be first in line to see Nacho Vigalondo's Timecrimes. This genre-jumping, expertly designed thriller, at first set up as a horror tale before moving into different unforeseeable directions, is less cryptic and pretentious than the aforementioned American indie, while still demanding attention be paid in order to wrap one's mind around its intricacies. In return is a craftily satisfying and wholly absorbing experience.

Héctor (played by the great and underrated Spanish actor Karra Elejalde) and Clara (Candela Fernández) are a happily married couple still fixing up the country home they have recently moved into. When Clara heads into town to run errands, Héctor's lawn chair relaxation in the back yard is cut short when, through his binoculars, he spots a naked woman in the woods staring back at him. Going to investigate, Héctor is accosted and stabbed by a psychopath with a head wrapped in stained bandages. He narrowly escapes to a nearby gated laboratory where a scientist (Vigalondo) closes him in a dome-like contraption. When Héctor reemerges, he discovers that he has gone back in time by about an hour and a half. Spotting a copy of himself - "Héctor 2," as the scientist labels him - still sitting in his yard in the lawn chair, Héctor is suddenly thrust into an unthinkable situation where he must evade his other self while making sure that the same events occur so that, once again, there will only be one of him in the world.

Films dealing with the time and space continuum - i.e. The Time Machine, the Back to the Future trilogy, Donnie Darko - are usually fascinating, but not always easy to pull off. As with any film involving time-travel, there are small details that don't quite hold up to scrutiny, but Timecrimes does a superb job in its attempt to fill in most of the holes. Shot on a low-budget and with only four characters, Vigalondo's impressive work is a study in minimalism even as the narrative is labyrinthine in the circuitous loop it finds itself within. While difficult to go into too many details - this is one film that the less a first-time viewer knows about it, the better - it should be said that there comes to be a third (and possibly fourth) version of Héctor all existing in the same 90-minute time frame. Running into each other, or making one false step, could spell a disastrous paradox.

Before the time-travel material enters the equation, Timecrimes has a thirty-minute first act that works deliciously as a trippy, scare-filled horror film. Héctor's run-in with the bandaged mystery man in the forest is nightmarish enough, but a sequence where he must make his way up a lighted path amidst the darkness, his only knowledge of where the killer is reliant on the information he receives from the scientist via a walkie-talkie, is utterly chilling in a grasp-the-armrest sort of way. The second and third acts are more technical than emotional, with the stakes raised and time wrapping back around on itself again and again, but no less gripping. The use of the Blondie song, "Picture This," during a few key moments exquisitely adds to the atmosphere.

The ending resolves Héctor's plight to a point while leaving a couple unanswered questions - like the matter of a dead body - hanging in the balance. Nevertheless, Timecrimes manages to be intellectual as well as never less than entertaining. The story is ingeniously mounted, too, and the tricky cinematography by Flavio Martínez Labiano is both dynamic and menacing. For all the geeks out there who believe in time-travel, Timecrimes is a great, thrilling little flick to be watched more than once.

Oh, and if you have the slightest interest in the film, please, do try to watch it before the Yank remake washes in your shore. And by the way, if you like it, get a glimpse of Vigalondo's great Oscar-nom short 7:35 in the Morning. It's great stuff, and I'm sure it's on YouTube, everything is.