Time Crimes (Nacho Vigalondo, 2007): Spain

Reviewed by Joel DeVries. Viewed at the AFI Film Festival, Archlight Hollywood.

As if life just wasn’t hectic enough. Imagine having to deal with the future and past versions of yourself, all trying to get rid of you at any cost. In the Sci-Fi thriller Time Crimes written and Directed by Nacho Vigalondo, a whole new world of time travel and deception is revealed gripping you at every twist and turn. I saw True Crimes at the Aclight Theater in Hollywood, California, and was really impressed with this solid and interesting film. Normally, a bad Sci-Fi movie ends up as a ridiculous storyline with so many holes that you don’t even know where to begin to criticize it. The opposite is true of this film, which takes a fairly simple plot and turns it into a mind blowing adventure with clever and unexpected twists.

Hector (Karra Elejalde) just moved into a new house in Spain with his wife Clara (Candela Fernandez). In the first scene we see him pull up to his house in his van; everything from the store has fallen out, leaving a trail down the street. We see that he is a pretty calm guy not phased by much. While sitting on the lawn with his binoculars, he sees a naked woman in the distance. He goes into the wood to check things out and finds her sitting motionless and naked on a rock. Not knowing what’s going on, he suddenly gets stabbed in the arm by a man with pink cloth wrapped around his head. He freaks out and just decides to run for it. He comes across an empty house and thinks it’s a good place to hide so he breaks the window and goes in. While trying to hide he finds a walkie talkie that connects to a man who’s in another building just outside. After explaining what is going o,n the man sees who Hector is running from on the security camera and tells Hector how to get to his building, but to do it as fast as he can because the crazy guy is approaching fast. Trying to escape for his life, he finally makes it into the building with the man, who is a scientist. With the crazy guy just outside the room and with no other plan, the scientist has him crawl into this tub of water in the middle of the room and closes it on him. When Hector wakes up he is in the future with his past self in his house and he has to figure out a way to make everything go back to normal.

Elejalde does a fantastic job as Hector and really transforms his character from the nice normal man at first to the desperate crazy guy willing to do anything to get his normal life back. He really gave his character depth and showed different levels of his character with every new twist in the plot.

The score by Chucky Namanera really stood out in the film with its sudden jumps and high pitched sounds. It created this great tension which built up every new discovery and had me at the edge of my seat most of the film.

This story was extremely solid and had very few if any holes. The concept was pretty simple but they really got creative and created an interactive movie where you are looking for the next clue that can possibly lead to the next advancement in the plot. This movie was extremely entertaining and very well done and I definitely recommend it to any of the Sci-Fi lovers out there.