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Primer, the directorial debut of Shane Carruth, lacks any narrative thread, but essentially is a story about four broke, thirtysomething engineers who create a mysterious box in their garage that defies scientific rationality and seems to give them inexplicable control over life. Two members of the group, Aaron (Shane Carruth) and Abe (David Sullivan), decide to probe what potential their creation might have: They explore the commercial possibilities of time-travel for a few hours each day, encounter dreadful mishaps in a Scooby Doo-esque fashion and finally, things end quite badly, with the audience, plot and characters...
Primer, the directorial debut of Shane Carruth, lacks any narrative thread, but essentially is a story about four broke, thirtysomething engineers who create a mysterious box in their garage that defies scientific rationality and seems to give them inexplicable control over life. Two members of the group, Aaron (Shane Carruth) and Abe (David Sullivan), decide to probe what potential their creation might have: They explore the commercial possibilities of time-travel for a few hours each day, encounter dreadful mishaps in a Scooby Doo-esque fashion and finally, things end quite badly, with the audience, plot and characters...
Both Carruth’s debut filmmaking skills and the pretentious nature of the film are reflected in his heavy-handed camera work: Carruth includes at least one shot per scene of the two protagonists standing in a room with a rectangular figure dividing them. Could it be that this box of weird science might ultimately divide the comrades...
...particularly amateurish scene, Carruth leaves a steady camera on a panorama of the garage, all four scientists toiling away within. As the garage door closes, it seems as if the scene is going to black out, but the audience is instead treated to a moment of over-indulgent symbolism as the camera zooms in to the garage door to show each scientist boxed into his own window. It seems is if the director wants to tell us that the happy band of science geeks are doomed from the start, but, one hopes, his terrible process of doing so will doom...
...Carruth proves anything with his film, it is that sci-fi movies dealing with the tenuous nature of the time-continuum need Christopher Lloyd. In addition to the Grand Prize, Robert Redford’s sad attempt at a cinema chateau also awarded the film a prize for the advancement of science and technology in film. If Primer deserves any prize, it is a Razzie award for the most nauseating and incomprehensible science fiction film ever created...