Genres: Sci-Fi
Director: Shane Carruth
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 77 min
Reviewer Ranking 7.5/10
Movie Review by: James Kasombo
For any physicists, time-travel aficionados, or sci-fi junkies, this movie is a treat. As for everyone else, if you choose to watch this film, be prepared for a mind-bending story that will definitely leave you confused. Despite its limited appeal, anyone would be impressed by this film’s $7,000 dollar budget – an amazing feat, considering it won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.
At the beginning, we are introduced to Aaron (Shane Carruth, writer-producer-director of Primer) and Abe (David Sullivan, Copley: An American Fairytale), two engineers who are running a small software business with their friends, using the profits to fund side science experiments. One such experiment is attempting to reduce the weight of objects, but once the true power of this machine is realized, Abe and Aaron decide to cut their friends out and keep the discovery between just the two of them. It turns out they have accidentally created a time machine. Next, they create one of these machines big enough to fit a human being, and the device is from here on referred to as “the box.” Abe and Aaron see this as a great opportunity to play the stock market, but as the film progresses, significant tangible and moral dilemmas occur.
This is when things start to get confusing, so much so that I wasn’t completely sure what had happened until reading a plot summary and referring to a diagram on Wikipedia that explains how the time-travel in this movie works. But don’t let this deter you; in fact, I highly recommend watching this movie with a blank slate, as it is much more fun and cerebral to attempt making sense of what is happening. Carruth himself has an extensive mathematical background; therefore, the film holds extremely true with real world physics. Because of this, one can easily forget that this is a science fiction movie, which is a complement to the execution of the writing, production, and direction.
Due to the budget, there isn’t much to say about the acting, score, and cinematography, except that it all does exactly what it needs to do in order to carry the story; nothing more, nothing less. Primer is a testament to the quality that low-budget movies can achieve, and that even modern day sci-fi movies don’t need gaudy special effects in order to be entertaining. Put this in your Netfilx queue, and procrastinate your homework just a bit longer (don’t worry; you’ll still be using your brain).
