Very discreetly, without making a fuss, this little piece of science fiction and adventure for all audiences has perched at the top of the top of the most watched on Netflix.
It premiered more than three years ago, in May 2017, at the Seattle festival, a year and a half later it began to be seen on US streaming platforms, and now it comes to us on Netflix.
But ... why has it made such an impact among the public? The reason may be its accessibility, which poses a journey through time that is very easy to understand despite the fact that it also displays a couple of juicy paradoxes.
Or its casual tone, almost in the atypical of films like 'Primer', without parody but also without unnecessary gravity, and that launches the viewer without complicating life an approach to time travel that is not seen very much in the cinema. often: traveling for so many years, centuries, millennia, that the passing of the days stops making sense.
You may want to skip the next paragraph if you want to arrive absolutely virgin to the plot of the film, although we will be very moderate with spoilers : in this case, it is a group of young people of different ages who manage to make the trip. They are trapped in a cave where time passes slower than outside. Much slower : one minute in equals fifteen years out, which means that a few hours after being trapped, thousands of years have passed outside. The explanation for the temporal mess has more elements of fantasy (folkloric, even) than of pure science fiction, although elements of the remote future with a scientific point will enter the equation.
Travel to the ends of time
I've recalled a couple of time travel literary classics when I watched the movie (both, coincidentally, recommended on our list of the best science fiction books ever).
On the one hand, 'The end of eternity' by Isaac Asimov, whose plot of guardians executors of temporal logic has nothing to do with 'Time Trap', but that I have remembered when the film steps on the accelerator of time travel and it almost made it to the finish line , so to speak.
Time Trap Film T
I have also remembered the very adventurous and unscientific -like this movie- 'The Time Machine' by Herbert George Wells. The Victorian classic shares with 'Time Trap' his journey towards a future in which civilization is a mere memory, and the appearance of aggressive and primitive beings, although there the Morlocks are an involution of humans, and here they have an origin very different. In both cases, the argument is not posed as a highway of travel back and forth in time, but an adventure in (almost) only one direction.
In any case, what is clear is that Mark Dennis and Ben Foster, with the script of the first, present here a not convoluted story, which has more in common with the tone of the eighties fantasies aimed at a younger audience than with a indie production that tries to delve into the narrative twists and turns and logical contradictions of time travel.
Even so, it is appreciated that they do not underestimate the viewer, and although there is some moment of excessive redundancy (the protagonists take a little longer to realize that something strange happens as the hours pass), the film does not fall into excessive pauses discursive, and gets to the point with comforting ease.
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'Time Trap' is an effective, simple and direct film, and that limps a bit in a final third that does not quite live up to expectations , with the crowded appearance of a series of special guests who do not always spin the plot how well that would be desirable.
And that still, they propose images of ingenious beauty, such as an instant of anachronistic epic conflict frozen in time, or the momentary visualization of what happens outside the cave, of such iconic force that the moment does not spoil it even some very improvable CGI effects.
And furthermore, it is enhanced by details such as its unpretentiousness or exquisite moments of pure wonder, such as when the boys realize the time they are spending in the cavern thanks to the kind of light they see coming through a hole.
Despite its plot swings, some characters that at times are not particularly interesting and a plot hubbub not too well explained in its conclusion, it makes all the sense in the world that it has perched on the most viewed of the platform. After all, who has not thought at some point of moving centuries and centuries in a few seconds.
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