Of all the
paradoxes time-travel stories offer, the most vexing may be that they're
awfully predictable in their unpredictability. As soon as the audience figures
out that Nacho Vigalondo's Timecrimes is
going to be about a man revisiting moments we've just witnessed, the natural
response is to start scanning the frame, trying to figure out which details are
significant. And in a movie as tautly constructed as this one, the answer is
clear: Everything is significant. Which makes the ways in which everything
connects all too easy to figure out.
Yet while it
isn't that hard to stay a step or two ahead of Timecrimes, the movie is still a nifty little genre piece, an
old-fashioned science-fiction mind-game with a healthy dollop of "Oh, the
irony." Vigalondo throws in a few good twists, some of which are genuinely
unpredictable, and though the film as a whole could be funnier and scarier, it
couldn't be much zippier. Because Vigalondo holds tight on Elejalde as he makes
one bad decision after another, Timecrimes isn't just fun to puzzle through, it also asks the audience to
consider whether we really want
to look closely at the person we used to be, even just earlier in the day.
Vigalondo builds carefully—maybe too carefully—to a socko ending, and a final line that suggests the
crushing weight of foreknowledge.
Keep scrolling for more great stories from The A.V. Club.