User Reviews

As far as i can tell this is a movie about the unwarranted humiliation and murder, of beautiful Good Samaritan, by a nervous, horny, simpleton, because time travel makes you dumber. It is obvious from the very first scene, where Hector accidentally dumps all of his home and garden purchases from his car as he drives up the driveway, that he is not very bright. But on each consecutive trip into the time machine, and through his day, he becomes increasingly moronic, sadistic, and cruel. He repeats mistakes he's seen himself make and does nothing to fix any of the problems he has, or knows are coming. The first Hector (Hector 1) is forgivable for his blunders. He is simply lured into the woods by a beautiful naked woman, and then attacked and chased my a masked maniac man, who eventually frightens him enough to break into a building and then trap himself, by climbing into a large vat filled with milk. He's not showing us that too many brain cells are working, but at least his actions are plausibly understandable. It is his second journey through the evening, as Hector 2, where his mental capacities apparently begin to break down. Here he ignores the advice of the time machine operator/scientist by first calling his house and then stealing a car and leaving the compound to go… somewhere, (possibly to his house to make things worse) when he sees the nice girl he saw naked riding her bike. After a quick car accident, Hector 2 wraps his head in a bloody bandage, turning himself into the masked maniac man, and proceeds to degrade, and humiliate the pretty young girl he saw naked after she stops to help him and gives him some water. Hector 2 then stabs Hector 1 with some scissors he stole from the pretty girl he saw naked, and frightens him into running for his life setting the scene for his previous time travel. He then inexplicably breaks into his own house and accidentally murders a woman he thinks is his wife, which results in his having to go back in time again to correct his mistake. But it is Hector 3 who is the real idiot. Not only does he allow all the horrible things that he did the last time, and experienced the first time, to happen again, this time he knowingly lets the beautiful young girl he saw naked and was only trying to help, be humiliated and then killed in place of his wife. He also steals another car, breaks his fourth fence, and destroys the nice coffee table he'd bought for his wife earlier in the day, (while he's locked her in the shed). And this is the Hector that is allowed to live. With all that being said, I thought this was a very entertaining movie, particularly for those who enjoy screaming at the screen when the characters do things we know are stupid. And as far at time travel movies go, this film unquestionably picks fate over free will as it's driving point.

The first minutes of this film are a bit on the dreadful side, but don't walk out or you'll miss one of the most entertaining time travel stories ever!!! This one will leave you scratching your head as how the writer pulled it off with a very intelligent, resourceful, and quite clever script. He is aided by a marvelous job of editing which along with a tight direction moves the story forward, backward, sideways, and in any way that might be needed.

Our hero manages to find himself trapped in a time continuum that keeps deteriorating as he tries to find a solution to the original mess that started it all. The challenge is not how he struggles to tie the loose ends and come out of the mess he has apparently created. Messing with the time continuum always has dire consequences, and this film is a perfect example, but one thing that has always proved frustrating is being in the audience and just watching things unravel. The challenge in this film is becoming an active participant, as you try to figure out how the game is played.

Making things more complicated is the scientist who decides to take a jump and test equipment that has not been properly tested. His actions, along with the main character's, put an unexpected twist in the equation, and fixing things might just be a bit more difficult that anyone ever imagined.

What makes the film so spectacular is that everything is the movie is not the result of high tech, computer generated imagery, or dazzling special effects, or an overblown budget. The fact that the film doesn't even have the best actors give it a sense of reality that helps us become more sympathetic or repelled by the various "crimes" committed by the protagonist in order to fix his other "crimes".

I particularly enjoyed the fact that the film has only three settings, a dark woodsy hill, an empty complex, and a home that is being remodeled. This keeps us grounded and aware that anything is possible and has a chance of happening. Never, through the entire film I even doubted the clunky machine could even work. Great science fiction!!!

In order for the movie to happen the main character's IQ is ping-ponging between 50 and 200. Apart from that it's the best legit attempt I've seen at this concept. Even if the only one.

Oh my God the time traveler in this movie is an idiot! Do as the time machine guys says and DON'T GO ANYWHERE FOR ONE HOUR. But nope, he's gotta go meddle with the timeline and create multiple versions of himself and events.

I'm a sucker for time travel flicks, and for a very low budget Spanish import, it was fairly entertaining, but check out the much better "Predestination" instead if you haven't seen it.

Timecrimes is the type of film that relies purely on its concept, much in the same way as The Human Centipede. The problem with that is the concept becomes a crutch. This review will contain spoilers but unless you have seen the film, the spoilers will probably make little sense anyway.

The concept that I'm talking about is the idea of an illogical time travel paradox. To be more exact, a predestination paradox. A predestination paradox is when a time traveler is caught in a loop of events that "predestines" or "predates" them to travel back in time.

Hector 1 is caused to go back in time because of the actions of Hector 2. The only reason Hector 2 exists is because Hector 1 went back in time.

Similarly, Hector 3 exists only because of events Hector 3 puts in motion before Hector 2 even knows there is a Hector 3. It could be more accurate to say that Hector 2 decides to use the time machine to become Hector 3 once Hector 2 becomes aware that there is a Hector 3.

It's actually not as complicated as it sounds, and that is the entire plot of the movie summed up. Once the concept becomes apparent within the first 15 or 20 minutes of the film or so, the rest of the film plods along in a very predictable fashion. We know the destination of the character, because for him it has been predestined.

The problem is that watching Hector go through events, and then put events in motion again once he travels in time, becomes a bore. The film takes place across a day, the character only traveling back in time 90 minutes or so. Hector is an unlikeable character and his actions as the various versions of himself make no sense.

To be more clear, an example is when Hector 2 has wrapped bandages around his entire head making himself look like a maniac, who then stabs and chases Hector 1, and forces a woman to undress. The motivations are completely unclear. The only reason Hector 2 does these things is because it predestines Hector 1 to go to the time travel machine in the first place. Hector 3's actions are similar in their lack of clarity, and the only seeming motivation being to keep the predestination paradox intact. Maybe the writer/director is trying to make a point about lack of free will. Personally, I just think its lazy writing. You can't have a plot that revolves entirely around a predestination paradox, and have characters that behave outside of any idea of logic or common sense. Otherwise, what is the interest of the film? What is the draw? When the entire draw of a film is its concept, rather than story and characters, something was fundamentally wrong right from the script up to the filming.

All in all I think the movie is good for entertainment but there is a major flaw that I just cant ignore.

Spoilers from here on.

How did it all start? The premise for Hector is, that he Voyeuristicaly watches a naked girl, searches for her (which is creepy on its own) and finaly gets chased into the time machine by himself.

But the very first Hector who started all this(which we dont see in the movie) must have gotten into the time machine by his own, because there was no one who could have chased him. So I waited all the time that this major plot point would get explained at the end. Or better said: I waited for a twist which opens our eyes how it all started.

But all we get to see is dumb hector who willingly travels back into time several times and the scientist just does whatever Hector tells him.

But it was still an enjoyable movie. But I dont think that I will watch it a second time.

I think the movie would have been much cooler if hector got lured into the time machine by the scientist. Imagine that the scientist hired someone to chase hector to the lab, so the scientist can make experiments on him. At first hector will play along, cause he thinks the scientist tells him the truth. At some point he finds out the truth and seeks revenge.

But with everytime hector travelled back, he changed something out of stupidity, like talking to himself in the past, and the final showdown between the scientist and hector will take place at an altered reality. Hector wins and goes into the time machine a last time. He comes out and sees that he traveled to the future but this time everything is normal again.

I think in the beginning, Hector 1 really cared to keep on being Hector 1 but after he pulled his wife's foot & she fell down to the ground & died, he became very despondent & didn't care about keeping everything "in order" as was told by the Young Man anymore. To have his wife alive again, he started to have murder in his mind, knowing that by getting into the tank, he could go back to the past by 1hr30, alter events to safe his wife his way. He returned to the silo, refused to tell his motive, forced the Young Man to put him back in the tank. Later, he got out of the tank, left, met the Girl & subsequently, brought her to his house. Hector then met his wife ( without letting the 2 women knew each other's presence), took her to a safe place. In order not to arouse the girl's suspicion, he climbed upstairs by the ladder into the window, put his wife's red coat on the Girl ( Clara died with the red coat on ), cut her hair & told her to run to the roof. He & his wife then sat still while the other Hector pulled the Girl's leg, she fell down to the ground & died. Hector, by then, could keep his wife alive but also had committed the perfect murder. He also didn't care anymore whether this meant he committed a crime against the order of the universe. Therefore " Time Crimes " on 2 levels : personal & universal.

I mostly liked this movie, but I don't like the way writer/director Nacho Vigilando used this woman more like an object than a character. She goes out of her way to show kindness and patience to a stranger, but we never find out her name or a single piece of information about her. Her body is full-frontally exposed for no practical reason, and the protagonist, Hector, repays her kindness and patience by sacrificing her so he can have his wife back. He tells her she's beautiful first, which apparently is his idea of compensation for what he's about to do to her. The women in this movie are unusually compliant and unquestioning. And this isn't the last time Vigilando would have his protagonist order a woman to disrobe, he did the same thing years later in "Open Windows."

Spanish science fiction film that has one of the worst posters and DVD covers I've seen. Its a man with pink bandages standing in a long overcoat. It makes the film look like a horror film instead of a science fiction thriller. The lousy art was the reason I hesitated seeing this, however when a friend kind of insisted I see it I had to actually sit down and see this.

The plot concerns a man who is chased to a scientific lab by a man in bandages. At the lab he ends up in a time machine which sets in motion a chain of events with dire consequences.

This is a good little film that is far from perfect. I'm finding it hard to really discuss my feelings for the film since to do so would require discussing how the plot plays out. The easiest thing to say is that the film mostly works but how some of the complications play out don't feel completely natural. I'm not revealing anything to say that the film loops back on itself, but as a result some of what happens feels more like it was done to remain true to what happens rather than to fully make sense of what a person would do (a character has to act a certain way during the middle portion of the film when his behavior on the ends isn't like that). Its not fatal but at the same time it lessens what happens because it doesn't wholly make sense, even though what happens around it does.(yea I know that makes no sense.). Even with the problems I liked the film. (I also enjoyed the DVD extra of a chronological version of the film that shows what happened in such away that we see the criss crossing of time. In a weird way it helps unknot some of the less clear moments of the real cut of the film) Worth a look if you like trippy time travel films.

The set up for this film is great. Mysterious and frightening events lead an ordinary guy to a laboratory with a time machine. Once there, he is sent backward in time by a scientist in order to escape some deranged, scissor wielding pursuer who's all bandaged up and looks like Dark Man. Up to that point the movie had me. Then it lost me. I must agree with what another reviewer wrote here: the main character's actions push the limits of plausibility after he goes back in time! HERE IS THE SPOILER: He finds out that he is the deranged pursuer, come from the future, chasing himself in the past. It is a premise with potential but the way the film lays it out, every coincidence seems overly convenient, implausibly strange, and repeatedly the ethics and true nature of the main character are called into question. He terrorizes, humiliates and ends up killing a young woman in the film, all to set things right in time as he sees them. Is there really an ordinary man who would do this? It leaves one feeling confused as to what the psychology of this guy is. Did time travel scramble his brain cells? THAT WOULD BE MORE UNDERSTANDABLE AS AN EXPLANATION! He seems to be working on the logic that he must do these insane things to send himself back, but why doesn't he consider doing nothing? What about noninterference? That's what they do in Star Trek, and it seems a lot easier! The film is otherwise well made, there is good pacing and atmosphere and all the actors do fine jobs. Unfortunately, when a story seems so off center, the good work that was put into it seems utterly lost. If there is a remake I suggest the script go through serious revision!