I don’t know how I was clued in on this film but somehow I must have read its description…

After finding their scientist neighbor dead in a storage room, friends Callie, Finn and Jasper come across a strange machine in the man’s apartment — and soon discover that the device can produce pictures of events 24 hours before they happen.

…and decided to put Time Lapse on my Netflix que and got it the other day.  I watched it and…

The movie was pretty damn good…with a couple of quibbles I’ll get into in a moment.  But first, the theatrical trailer:

So between the description and this trailer you should have a pretty clear idea of what this film is about: A group of three young friends investigate the possible disappearance of their neighbor and discover he’s dead.  More importantly, they discover he created a camera which takes a picture out of his window and at their apartment.  Each photograph taken depicts what will happen 24 hours later.

Now, I love time travel stories, though the biggest problem with them is they often unravel if you think too hard about what’s going on in them.  Add to that the idea of paradoxes and possible history changes and, well, you can rightly spin your brain into a pretzel.

And yet, I still love time travel stories, particularly if they present a fascinating twist on the subject matter.

In the case of Time Lapse, the characters don’t travel in time, per se, but have access to information from the future and this, in a devious way, winds up very much affecting their present.

I have to give great props to Bradley Cooper and Bp Cooper, the film’s co-writers and director, who have obviously spent many hours thinking up the movie’s twisty plot and delivered a work that despite its very intricate nature (which, to be fair, had a couple of minor misfires) holds up and delivers, especially in the climax.

Having said that, I did have some issues with the film which kept me from fully embracing it despite its for the most part solid story.

To begin, the acting in the film was at times…not quite what I was hoping.  I don’t want to point fingers at anyone in particular (after all, a good director should be able to encourage good acting and vice versa), but suffice to say there were times when the actors didn’t convince me they would do what they were shown to have done.  While the movie is effectively a time travel feature, it is also very much a film in the vein of such works as The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, where a group of friends are undone by temptation.

The thing is, you have to believe the characters and their deterioration.  They have to be real people to you, and at times I couldn’t help but think of them only as characters.  This goes for some of the external characters as well.  In the hands of others, I can easily see the menace and the succumbing to temptation handled in a much stronger, much more immediate way, but in this film, unfortunately, my breath is never quite as taken away as the film’s makers hoped it would be.

Having said all that, I’m going to make an abrupt 180 degree turn and applaud the movie’s makers and actors for pushing themselves and trying hard to create something unique and interesting versus so many features out there that go for the lowest common denominator and deliver subpar entertainment.

While Time Lapse may not be a perfect film, it is ambitious despite its low budget and presents a twisty turny plot that I can’t help but admire, even if the execution leaves a bit to be desired.

So, even with these quibbles, I recommend Time Lapse to anyone interested in a time travel movie that pushes the limits of this genre in interesting directions.  While not a perfect work, you have to give the makers of this film credit for trying hard to deliver something unique and very interesting.