Primer (2004)

The sound is awful, the flawed story is a pain in the a** to follow, the main characters are not relatable, the side characters are nearly irrelevant and act weird and all the potential to build up some tension and thrill is not made use of. Yeah, you could call this "unconventional", but it is more unconventional in the sense that an art teacher would use to describe a flawed picture without wanting to hurt someone. But I would love to see this movie again with the Mystere Science Theater 3000 guys riffing the hell out of this one! Such a modern "cheesy movie" gem! It takes itself serious enough and is just a unique, weird movie experience with the lack of a good riff. Please make it happen!

Pay no attention to the bad reviews they can't appreciate the uniqueness of this and for some reason I can't understand they expect this first time director and crew who mostly all have no experience to produce a big budget Hollywood production. Oh well their loss.. But let me explain why this movie is so good.First off Primer does not throw its plot in your face. You are essentially an outsider getting bits and pieces of information along the way just like the main characters.There is some technical jargon throughout the film that you don't really need to understand.. The only thing that you really need to understand is literally drawn out for you. The rest is fairly easy to infer from context. This film is directed by an engineer and this take on a time travel movie takes something that most time travel movies just kind of do whatever and don't explain the way it works. (think Flux capacitor was the only thing that back to the future said and you were just supposed to take it and run with it) primer doesn't do that. It actually gives you an explanation of why time travel in the movie works.. And it's so good that I bet some real engineers have messed with it after seeing this. That in itself is worth watching the movie.. Its brilliant. Because of the way the time travel works in this movie also helps develop the movie and the story falls into place. You as the viewer receive information at the same pace as the characters in the film and you understand things (or don't understand things) at the same rate they do. This is a very realistic movie and I could see real engineers handling this the exact same way as the main characters.Since this is a first time director you are not going to see a lot of fancy shot and there is no cgi or special effects. And it gives it a very nice overall feel of watching a documentary about the discovery of time travel but with better camera work than a documentary. Most of the lighting is all natural. There are no sets. The night scenes are night with enough lighting to see what you need but not so much that you are like "why are their two moons?"Primer is a journey into discovery. You get to enjoy the discovery with the characters and follow them through what unfolds. You will have some questions at the end but not much. There are guides out there that go into a lot of detail to really over explain the time line of the movie but you don't need it. Some information you might be looking for simply isn't in the film at all.. But if the information you are looking for wasn't known by the main characters.. You won't know it either (unless you are bold enough to watch with commentary... I never watch a movie with commentary.. Ever.. And I watched both director and crew commentary on this because I thoroughly enjoyed this movie way more than I thought I would.)Watch this movie.. Pay attention.. Listen.. And enjoy one of the best movies I have ever seen.

The basic premise of Primer has the potential to be exceptional, as I admire and respect sci-fi movies based on actual science. I actually viewed this movie a second time, not realizing I had seen it quite some time ago. My reaction both times: it sucked the joy out of watching this movie both times.The problem, IMHO, is the writing. Again, the basic story line is sound, but the writers fill the script with techno-babble and hip entrepreneur-speak designed to add credibility to overly highbrow dialogue, and so came across as pretentious and superficial. I consider myself to be reasonably intelligent, as I was raised in the education system of the Kennedy Cold War era, with its emphasis on math and science, but I could not honestly discern whether the science portrayed was accurate or even real. Here, the writers drop the ball in failing to make a connection that an ordinary viewer would understand. As they dumped more and more scientific terms and processes into the film, I began to care about the characters less and less. Then there's the plot. I'm not sure why the two lesser characters of the original foursome were included, as they didn't move the story along and were completely incidental to the film. It this way, they were merely red herrings. Also, what's with the guy with the shotgun showing up to the party? I couldn't understand why that plot device was introduced, other than the writers deciding they needed to add dramatic effect to a movie dry with scientific lingo. I believe part of the problem is the limited budget this movie must have had. Imagine what this movie could have been in the hands of a James Cameron, Ridley Scott or David Cronenberg. Here's hoping that a big budget remake is a seed in one of their minds.

Let me preface this review by saying this film is not for everyone. This indie is frustrating and difficult to follow. And intentionally so. Shane Carruth set out to take a basic sci-fi concept and obfuscate it in nearly every aspect, but did so in order to ground it as much as possible. He complicated to simplify. The result was so aggravatingly ingenious, I felt slapped in the face. But that good slap that you think you want more of. The budget was $7,000, and that's all this man needed to play head games with me. There are some neat technical achievements here, but the central themes of Primer and the way they were impressively executed are what have my applause. 7/10 — watching Primer.