TIME LAPSE (2014)

Studio:       XLrator Media
Director:    Bradley King
Writer:       Bradley King, B.P. Cooper
Producer:  B.P. Cooper, Rick Montgomery
Stars:     Danielle Panabaker, Matt O’Leary, George Finn, Amin Joseph, Jason Spisak, Sharon Maughan, David Figlioli, Judith Drake

Review Score:

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Summary:

Three roommates discover a camera that can take photos of the future, and become caught in a spiral of ensuring that their timeline is never altered.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Struggling painter Finn works as the resident building manager at a Los Angeles apartment complex. He shares a room with his aspiring writer girlfriend Callie and their friend Finn.

Concerned that their neighbor Mr. Bezzerides has not been seen recently and his deliveries are piling up, Callie enters the eccentric scientist’s apartment and discovers a large experimental camera pointed at their living room window. She, Finn, and Jasper come to discover that Bezzerides’ invention is capable of taking pictures depicting what will happen 24 hours in the future every day at 8pm. These pictures line the walls of Bezzerides’ apartment, although several are missing in the sequence, and they are unable to determine why there is a separate series of daytime photographs.

Callie reads Bezzerides’ journal while Finn finds the man’s oddly disfigured corpse inside a locked storage room. The group collectively concludes that trying to alter the future shown in the photograph results in a horrible death.

Jasper convinces his roommates to use the camera for predicting race results and getting rich. Finn is in favor of the plan because he can work past his artist’s block by seeing his paintings before creating them. The windfall of cash arouses the suspicions of Jasper’s bookie Ivan, who learns about the camera and forces himself in on the action. Increasingly paranoid about the harm threatened by Ivan, Jasper kills both Ivan and his enforcer Marcus.

Images depicting an affair between Jasper and Callie drive a wedge between the group. However, they continue recreating exactly what the pictures show so as to not alter the timeline.

Looking for Bezzerides, his associate Dr. Heidecker arrives and confronts Finn and Jasper at gunpoint about the machine. Upon seeing Bezzerides’ corpse, Heidecker points out that he died from gas exposure while reaching for a coil, not from an imaginary timeline discrepancy. Becoming more consumed by paranoia and greed, Jasper ends up shooting Dr. Heidecker.

Finn decides to leave and to take Callie with him. Afraid that Finn’s refusal to participate in recreating the pictures will still spell doom, Jasper holds Finn captive. Finn escapes and threatens to destroy the camera. A fight breaks out between the two men. Before Jasper can murder Finn, Callie kills Jasper.

Callie reveals that the camera also produces an image every day at 8am. Keeping that information to herself, Callie had been using the daytime photos to send herself messages that allowed her to manipulate the nighttime photographs partly to cover up an affair she had with Jasper, but also to manipulate Finn into being creative again and reigniting their romance. Callie tries convincing Finn that they can change what just happened by giving herself a warning the next morning.

When Finn refuses to go along with her plan, Callie shoots him with the intention of changing the events through the next message to herself. After taping a message to the window, former premises security guard Big Joe, now a police officer, arrives at the scene and takes Callie into custody. While leading Callie away from the apartment, the paper falls from the window. Callie attempts to run back into the apartment and replace it, but Big Joe restrains her.

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Review:

With newspapers piling up on the doorstep, and the occupant not seen in days, building manager Finn enters the apartment across the courtyard with his girlfriend Callie and their buddy Jasper.  What they discover is that their missing neighbor Mr. Bezzerides might have been more than just an eccentric scientist.  He might have been a Peeping Tom.  Bolted to the floor and pointed directly at their own living room window is an automobile-sized experimental camera.  And lining the walls are hundreds of Polaroid photographs depicting the trio on the couch going about their average, everyday lives.

The three friends/roommates come to learn that the camera is somehow capable of taking pictures from 24 hours in the future.  Jasper sees dollar signs and immediately uses the machine to their advantage by pulling the next day’s horseracing results ahead of time.  But after finding Mr. Bezzerides’ journal, and his strangely deformed corpse in the storage room, they realize that Fate has a way of choking the life from those who deviate from destiny.  After an infuriated bookie comes sniffing about, the threesome soon finds themselves caught in a snowballing trap of ensuring that their lives always meet back exactly where the camera predicts, no matter what.

It may be a familiar springboard for a story, but it is what “Time Lapse” does with the telling that truly matters.  Make a space on your shelf right between “Timecrimes” (review here) and “Primer.”  “Time Lapse” is a devilishly conceived and expertly executed suspense thriller that takes an unbelievable time paradox premise, and makes it palatable by playing out everything after in completely believable fashion.

“Time Lapse” is an endlessly spiraling head-spinner, but the brilliance in its structure is that for all the turns it takes, the twists never steal the spotlight from convincing characters and their spellbinding story.  You may be able to guess parts of the ultimate outcome, but envisioning all of the puzzle pieces ahead of time is virtually impossible.

None of the story beats exist to prove how clever the screenwriters are, or to deliberately outsmart the audience.  Everything is played in service to the story.  When people discuss “The Usual Suspects,” the true identity of Keyser Soze is the chief talking point.  “The Crying Game” can be reductively described as “the woman is really a man” or “The Sixth Sense” as “Bruce Willis is actually a ghost.”  “Time Lapse” is every bit as much of a shocker, but it is not a film that anyone will describe by its final reveal and ending.  This is a movie about the complete experience.

Bezzerides’ camera is a whirligig apparatus of ridiculous proportions.  Built from buzzes, bulbs, and bulky metal parts, the contraption looks like something likely to give you tetanus if touched in the wrong place.  Devoid of LED readouts and digital beeps, the retro look of analog components and Polaroid printouts amplifies an otherworldly “Twilight Zone” vibe, appropriately so.

Each hum of the machine comes with increased anticipation of what the next photograph is about to reveal.  And not because the image is the punchline, but because it is the setup for what is certain to be the next suspenseful vignette.  “Time Lapse” literally tells you what will happen next, but the thrill is in discovering exactly how everyone comes to that point and what it actually means.

For those interested in subtext beyond its high entertainment value, “Time Lapse” doubles as a compelling metaphor about becoming slaves to an idea in pursuit of a life you think you are supposed to have.  The main actors mesh incredibly well with their roles and with each other.  Connecting to each one of them concurrently makes the film highly relatable as a paranoia parable about behavior corrupted by misguided notions and ideals.

SPOILER

If I have one complaint, it is that “Time Lapse” should have ended right after the final sheet of paper falls from the window.  I grinned instantly and my mind immediately imagined Callie in the police interrogation room the following day, racking her brain to figure out why her present hadn’t changed.  Some ambiguity about the conclusion would have kept the timeline possibilities swirling in audience imaginations, although those in favor of finality will have their firm resolution.

END SPOILER

“Time Lapse” satisfies on every level.  As a character-driven drama.  As a sci-fi social allegory.  And as a smartly-scripted, deftly-delivered piece of mindbending entertainment.  Never was there a single second when I wasn’t completely enrapt by the story, the actors, and every individual event transpiring onscreen.  “Time Lapse” is high concept fun that leads the pack as the best suspense thriller of the year.

Review Score:  95

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