Time Lapse - EXPLAINED | A mind-bending Time paradox

Time travel movies are fast becoming a real favorite for me. Recently ‘Predestination’ blew me away, and now ‘Time Lapse’ has thoroughly impressed me as well. I just love the way how they all seem to be based on a single premise - “Don’t mess with time!”. I have seen a lot of great time-travel based movies like ‘Back to the future’, ‘Timecrimes’, ‘Predestination’, ‘Time bandits’, ‘Star trek’ and even the ‘Terminator’ series. I am a huge fan of Back to the future series due to its Dynamic timeline and let’s be honest, Doc Brown was just kickass. 😎

Interesting eh?

Time travel can be disorienting and is certainly a debatable topic. We do not have a perfect notion for the same but generally there are 3 theories of Time travel as shown above. My favorite is the Paradox theory. Fixed time and Parallel timelines are also interesting but nothing messes with your mind more than a paradox. The best way to understand it to read the famous Grandfather paradox example.

Time lapse or not?

Before we dive in, lets read the synopsis of the movie:

Three friends discover a mysterious machine that takes pictures 24 hours into the future and conspires to use it for personal gain until disturbing and dangerous images begin to develop.

Sounds interesting, right? What will you do if you have the power to see the future in advance?

Let’s travel time?!

Time Lapse has managed to find the perfect balance between simplicity and complexity existing in parallel like the flip side of the coin which IMHO is not very easy to present. The story starts with the Trio, caretaker manager Finn, his girlfriend Callie and his best friend Jasper, sharing the same apartment. One day, they investigate the apartment of a missing scientist, only to discover a mysterious camera pointed directly at their living room window capable of taking photos 24 hours into the future. As per the scientist’s diary, they discover he has foreseen his death a week ago and has tried escaping it despite understanding the Cardinal rule of Time.

To their horror, the Trio discovers the dead body of Scientist in a storage room and quickly make believes the cardinal rule. So the tenant has figured out a way to shoot Polaroids that show what will happen 24 hours in the future. Even though the inventor is dead the device has programmed to automatically take one picture every single night. Rather than calling the police, the housemates use the camera to make their wildest dreams come true, but after exploiting the camera for personal gain they soon find themselves blindly recreating whatever future the photos show them, or else risk the perils of messing with time, in this paradox-filled sci-fi thriller. And it is in this complicated soup of details that our play unfolds upon our three characters. Add chaos. Insert questions about the determinability of time. Toss in a question or two about free will.

What will you choose?

The story is exciting and keeps you wanting more, needing to know what the next picture is going to show. The ending was handled brilliantly as well and will please a lot of ‘twist’ lovers. It will nuke 100% your perspective on everything that you were previously assuming and you get an idea of what Time Lapse is really all about.

Everything about the movie is absolutely worth the watch and anyones recommendation. Brilliant pacing, great directing and excellent acting performances by pretty much everyone.

This is clearly a very low-budget film, but this one I feel is an EXCELLENT example how you can make a very good movie with very little IF you know how to create and tell a good story and can put it together properly. I was really sucked right into the story and characters of this one right away.

It is vastly entertaining and leaves you thinking about it for a long time after. I strongly recommend this movie to every sci-fi and thriller fan out there, I hope you will find it is well worth your time. Meanwhile, here is the official trailer to peak up your interest:

SPOILERS BELOW

A lot of my friends had this complaint that the movie was too complex to apprehend, so I have decided to compile a chronological order of the event as they happened in linear timeline. Only proceed if you have already seen the movie. Trust me, you will regret spoiling this one. :)

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The correct order:

Here is the chronological order of events happening in the movie. This may help you in understanding the plot and ease up that headache you must be donning after the mind-bending experience of the Time lapse. Here we go:

1. Callie checks on Mr. B and discovers the machine
2. Machine takes a photo at 8 pm every day
3. Jasper pushes to use the machine to gamble
4. 1st Photo shows they bet on the track
5. Photo also shows Finn has painted a new painting
6. Trio realizes they must make all events in photos occur
7. Mr. B’s disappearance is covered up w/ Big Joe security guard
8. A week in, they get a photo of Callie kissing Jasper
9. Jasper’s bookie Ivan learns of the machine
10. Ivan begins forcing them to pose for photos for him to bet on
11. Jasper sees skull and crossbones painting which he sees as a warning
12. Big Joe gets a job as a police officer and drops off his keys
13. Ivan threatens trio, but Jasper convinces Ivan that the photo is of his death
14. Jasper stabs Marcus and then clubs Ivan to death when he returns with photo
15. Bodies are all hidden in Mr.B’s storage unit
16. Dr. Heidecker (Mr. B’s colleague) arrives & makes the trio explain
17. Mr. B had mailed Heidecker a photo for the next night showing blood on the window & Mr. B’s hat
18. Finn finds a photo of Callie and Jasper having sex he assumes is for the next night
19. Finn tries to negotiate and prevent the events from occurring
20. Jasper knocks Finn out and locks him in Mr. B’s storage.
21. Finn breaks free and threatens to destroy the machine.
22. Jasper continues, they fight, and Callie smashes Jasper’s head in.
23. Finn realizes that the machine takes photos at 8 am as well
24. Callie reveals that she has been using the morning photo to send herself messages to manipulate events and rekindle her relationship with Finn
25. Finn decides he is going to destroy the machine, Callie shoots Finn creating the blood splatter Heidecker sees in the photo Mr. B had sent him.
26. Callie attempts to send herself a message by sticking a message to the window to fix events and Big Joe discovers Jasper and Finn murdered.
27. The paper falls from the window… It’s a wrap.