Next: #2 Dark City (Previous: The Honorable Mentions)
There are few sci-fi films that are smarter, stealthier or more awesome in their implications than Primer. Made on the cheap, for around $7,000, the good news was that Shane Carruth’s low-tech time travel thriller went on to make a return on investment of nearly 6,000 percent. The bad news: That only stacked up to around $425,000. (Big news: Interviews with director Shane Carruth, and other ‘underrated’ filmmakers, will be published on Techland Jan. 18)
Chump change by Hollywood standards.
Primer spells almost nothing out for the viewer. It drops us into the middle of the garage used by four amateur engineers who are trying to develop the next great patent, and then watches as two of the quartet develop a small box that that can send objects back and forth through time – and then a larger unit that can transport a person into the past.
Day trades are made, knowing when the mutual funds will peak during the day. Copies of characters start running around town, as we lost sight of who is the original and who is the replica. Friendships are tested when we realize that a second time traveling device may have been built by a copy of a copy.
It’s trippy stuff that works on a personal, philosophical and scientific level – a thriller’s that’s less about life or death than the slow unraveling of an alternate reality that violates all the conventional rules of time or space. For those who prefer the sci of the sci-fi equation, you won’t find a movie much better than this…If you’ve never seen Primer before, I envy your first trip down the rabbit hole. If you yourself need a primer on the physics of Primer, check out this video we put together about the fundamentals of time travel:
Next: #2 Dark City
More at Techland: The 10 Greatest Games for the Apple II
