User Reviews

"Your dad never broke a promise ever and the way he looked at me at the airport, it just looked like he knew something." Marika (Anderson) and Erol (Osment) kiss goodbye to their husband and father at the airport as he leaves for a conference in New Jersey for a few days. When he never returns they begin to worry, when no one can find him they fear the worst. 12 years later Osment is told a secret by his grandfather that may answer the question that has plagued the family for years. I had no idea what to expect from this when I started to watch it. I was interested almost right away but when the time travel thing came up I laughed a little. The more I watched the less absurd it sounded and that actually became the reason I was so sucked in. This is a movie that was actually able to stay one step ahead of the viewer the entire time. Just when you think you know what is going to happen it throws something at you that surprises you right up until the ending that is both shocking and perfect. This is the type of movie that after you watch it all you want to do is tell everyone you know to watch it. That is the beauty of lower budget films. There aren't many blockbuster movies you rave about and think wow my friends need to see this. Overall, this sucks you in and keeps you interested the entire time trying to predict what will come next. I give this a high B+.

One would guess one of the worst horrors a person could endure would be the sudden, and completely mysterious, loss of a loved one as if that person just suddenly fell of the face of the earth. This is one of the lesser roads traveled by science fiction movies. No, it's not entirely original, but certainly can be with certain creative story turns. That's the kind of humble brilliance shown in "I'll Follow You Down".

A Toronto based physics professor, a husband and father to a young son, takes a speaking engagement at Princeton University. The man gets there, he's met by his wife's father, also a professor, but simply disappears. Years pass and the young son is on the cusp of going to, possibly, MIT. The boy still doesn't know what became of his dad. His grandfather decides it is now time to tell his grandson a quite wild hypothesis which is that the boy's father was able to create negative energy which allowed him to travel in time. This sets up a good story because the boy's father was attempting to do the impossible: meet Einstein. Haley Joe Osment, seldom seen since childhood….at least by this viewer, comes back to the screen playing the young son of the missing man. He is actually quite good. His mother is played by the excellent Gillian Anderson, another seldom seen diamond herself. Finally, the grandfather is played by Victor Garber, also an excellent choice.

If you sense I liked this film you are correct. It is purposely slow because building the human element is served well as such. It's humble and it doesn't try to be anything it shouldn't. A creative sci-fi story brought to the screen simply as an excellent idea realized through solid acting. If you like Sci-Fi with a very solid human drama this is good indeed and highly recommended.

This low-budget film out of Canada combines a clever time-travel premise with an abundance of sentimentality. Haley Joel Osment is good as the young time-traveler/scientist, who journeys through time from 2012 to 1946, to meet with the father whom he lost in the same wormhole.

Gillian Anderson is also good as the bereaved wife of a husband whose secret life as a time-traveler she never knew. The plot is unfortunately mired in an unnecessary relationship of Osment's character Erol and his girlfriend, who seeks to persuade him not to take the plunge into the time warp in search of his lost father.

SPOILER ALERT FOLLOWS: A golden opportunity was missed when young Erol meets his father at the moment when he attempts to have a private conversation with Albert Einstein. The father knocks on Einstein's door in Princeton, N.J. in 1946, but Einstein is out for a walk. Incredibly, the filmmakers do not follow through with what could have been a great scene with the iconic scientist.

Some of the best scenes were those of young Osment with Victor Garber's character of Gramps, who is working with him on the time machine. But filled with melodramatic scenes, especially the shocking ending, "I'll Follow You Down" is overwhelmed with maudlin and mundane moments that detract from the excitement of what should have been the single-minded focus of the film: time travel.

I really wanted to like this movie more than I did because I'm found of Anderson, Sewell and Garber's acting and I love the sci-fi genre.

First, I didn't think it was sciency enough. Sure, we finally get to hear some interesting dialogue in the 3rd act, but it just needed to be pushed further. I was always wanting more.

Secondly, and most importantly, I felt Osment was miscast in this role. This is my first time seeing him act since the Sixth Sense and that one sci-fi film with Jude Law. He was so recognizable to me in this film partly because even with the beard, he still has child-like features. His big round eyes, separated eyebrows and tiny mouth. I wasn't convinced that he could be the leading man. In fact, his stature also seemed dwarfed by other actors, especially his onscreen girlfriend. It also felt as though he was overacting in some scenes. I liked him better as a child actor. Also, the writers made his character halfway unlikable. Seriously, who treats their suffering mom this way? At times he seemed understanding while other times he was kind of harsh/impatient/dismissive towards her grieving. It's like he couldn't understand the depth of her love and loss for his dad, whilst he had this same level of devotion and love towards his girlfriend. Selfish much?

Thirdly, Bruhier who plays the girlfriend was passable in her acting, but holy crap the writers made her unbearable to watch! Her charterer was the most selfish, bratty, entitled person in the entire movie. I actually was happy not seeing her again. They truly made her unlikable and therefore, I was NOT drawn into this entire love/baby in the oven story. Also, Osment's interaction with Bruhier were some of the most unbelievable chemistry I've seen in a while. Plus, his overacting almost always seemed to be involving scenes with the girlfriend. Too melodramatic!

Fourthly, Sewell's character as the dad almost seemed unlikable for a split second. The opening act depicts this very handsome, devoted husband and father barely being able to leave his wife and son at the airport. Then the next time we see him, his selfness almost irked me. The fact that his son had to commit suicide for him to abandon his plan and go back home, was hard to watch. It's almost like the dad didn't give a damn that his wife committed suicide, that his son's adult life was in ruins, etc. While I'm glad the character did go back, the ending didn't have the impact that the writers think it had because of the extremities it took to get him to change his mind.

Lastly, this movie definitely needs a suicide trigger warning. So that people can decide IF they want to watch it and/or prepare themselves for it. It was the most disturbing thing since I wasn't aware that it's not only 1 suicide but 2 AND a miscarriage. Here I was gearing up for the excitement of a sci-fi, and it's really about family drama - VERY TRIGGERING DEPRESSING DRAMA at that.

Everything else about the film was ok. I do like the ideas around the way they executed the time travel. Also, I only felt a connection with the mother and grandpa. Everyone else, I could have cared less what happened to them.

Gabe Whyte (Rufus Sewell) is about to leave for a convention in Princeton by plane. He still plays a game of chess with his son Erol (Haley Joel Osment) and says goodbye to his wife Marika (Gillian Anderson) in a loving (surprising) way at the airport. But Gabe doesn't return and leaves his family lonely and broken behind. A not ended game of chess is a lasting memory of him.

About 12 years later after the mysterious disappearance of Gabe, we see Erol back as a mature 21 year old brainiac who excels in science and math. A gifted student who has probably inherited the genes from his family that consists entirely of academics and scientists. A traumatic event brings his grandfather Sal (Victor Garber) as far as to talk about the disappearance of his father and tells Erol his theory. Over the years Erol is more and more convinced that his father died. According to Sal, his son discovered an ability to travel back in time through so-called "wormholes" and wanted to meet Einstein in a parallel universe.

So "I'll follow you down" is about time traveling. It's certainly not easy to come up with an original movie about that since there are already unmentionable films about this phenomenon (Back to the Future, Looper, 12 Monkeys, Terminator, About Time, Déja Vu, ....) which are imbued with action to keep the attention of the audience in a grip. "I'll follow you down" focuses on the scientific and emotional part of time traveling. Despite the lack of action or excitement it remains an intriguing SF questioning again the well known complications. What impact does a change in the past have on your present life? Will your personal situation still be identical in both family and professional way? It's certainly not a flashy youthful SF adventure movie like "Back to the Future"! It's still pretty clever of the director Richie Mehta to cast famous faces for this low-budget indie SF . An "X-Files"-like story deserves someone like Gillian Anderson, who indeed didn't loose any of her good looks over the years. Haley Joel Osment who everyone knows as the endearing little boy who could see dead people in "The Sixth Sense" and who went looking for his real personality in "AI". Besides the fact that he has gained some weight and has a goatee, you can still discern that angelic look in that bigger face. He can still look so sad with those puppy eyes. Especially Anderson delivers a brilliant performance as the depressed wife who lost her eternal love and never got over this loss so she got psychiatric assistance over the years and kept going with medication. Osment went on with his life and build a life together with his childhood friend. The disinterested gaze while his mother talked about his father and their first encounter, says enough.

Unfortunately a big part of the film focuses on the relationships and what the possible consequences would be if Erol plans to travel to the past. Would it have an influence on his personal life ? The making of the time machine is limited to showing a welding mask, complicated mathematical formulas of quantum physics on a board and a small portion of a kind of diving bell. The display of the ultimate time travel itself is fairly limited and was at the time in the episodes of "Dr. Who "much better portrayed. It also bothered me that after the 12-year period Erol changed a lot, while his mother and grandfather still had the same appearance. Quite unbelievable.

It's not an action packed movie but has nicely detailed character studies and a terrible dilemma Erol has to make a decision about. Ultimately, it's nothing more than a family drama in which the husband abandons his family, who are left behind with unanswered questions. In "I'll follow you down" he wasn't off to get cigarettes, after which he didn't return. He just got stuck somewhere in the past. This Canadian film should certainly not be considered as a failure, but still it missed something and there was still a dissatisfaction that bothered me. It was as if I've looked an episode about traveling by train and there wasn't even a fragment where you could see the train they were traveling with....

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