Now this is how you do low-budget (only 4 actors required, and about 3 locations, one of which is in a generic wood) time travel science fiction right. Although it has to be said that this movie caused a massive argument between me and Jami, so perhaps "right" is inapt. But anyway, this passes the David Lewis (famous 20th century philosopher who wrote on Time Travel among other things) smell test. It's also, unlike Primer, genuinely disturbing, both in content and implications. Here is a synopsis (with spoilers, so skip if you're planning to watch it, and I do recommend it). A middle-aged Spanish couple, a skinny, short-haired (this is very important) wife (Clara) and a dumpy, balding, hairy husband (Héctor, our "protagonist") are just moving in to a half-finished house in the country (polythene on the windows, unfurnished rooms). She seems to be doing all the work while he, first, tries to nap, (while a radio plays loudly, including "Picture This" by Blondie), then gets a strange call consisting of heavy breathing, tries to call back only to get an answering machine that says it's a restricted number, then (after briefly making out with Clara) he sits outside in a deck chair (while she works on assembling a table) scanning the countryside with his binoculars.
While so doing he spots something pink, then when he looks closer he sees a young woman with her face hidden by long hair who, as he watches, takes off her t-shirt (an unnecessary touch by the filmmakers, which definitely adds to the quease-factor later on - she is also young and gorgeous which actually works against a later plot point). Having lost a bet that she will be able to get the assembled table into their bedroom upstairs (that table doesn't survive the movie intact), Clara goes off on some errand (that Héctor would have had to do had she succeeded) in her boxy little blue car. Héctor, meanwhile, decides to investigate, whether for prurient reasons or just because it's weird is not clear, but the former certainly makes sense. He comes across a discarded bicycle next to a knocked-over recycling bin in a country lane, next to a path leading up into the woods, which he takes. Not far in, he comes across the young woman, now completely naked and apparently dead. He approaches cautiously and sees she is breathing (and that her clothes are scattered in front of her) when suddenly he gets stabbed in the arm with a pair of scissors. Shrieking in pain and terror, he runs off as fast as his beer gut will let him. Looking back he sees that his assailant must have been the pink he saw earlier, because he is a man in a trenchcoat with pink bandages completely swathing his head, like a messier version of the Invisible Man. He hides and keeps peeking at the strange figure, who terrifies him by jerking round and looking at him miming binoculars. With another squeal he lumbers off again. He encounters a fence with barbed wire on top, which he half-climbs, half knocks over and continues running until he comes to a house. Nobody answers, so he breaks a window to enter. He sees nothing of note except a calendar on the wall on which somebody has scrawled an S-shape with two xs in the open parts of the S.
Exploring further, he finds first a first-aid kit that enables him to bandage the nasty stab wound, and then a lab in the basement. There is a walkie-talkie on the table and he manages to contact a man and he tells him he is being chased (as they talk, a clap of thunder is heard). After a pause in which he blocks the door to the lab, the man asks if the man chasing him has a bandaged head, and tells him that (a) he (the man) is in a turret-shaped building up the hill from the house, and (b) that he can see the bandaged man approaching on video monitors. He advises Héctor to come to him where it is safe, as the bandaged man will find him in the house. Héctor runs frantically up to the turret (up a lighted pathway - it is now night) where he finds that the man is young and bearded, and the turret appears to be a lab with a large circular piece of equipment with a lowerable dome above it at the center.
A car (small and boxy) pulls up and suddenly the face of the bandaged man is at the window. The young man tells Héctor that the only way to escape is to hide in the circular equipment, which is full of a milky liquid. He will join Héctor but he has to control the dome. Héctor reluctantly gets in and then is alarmed because the man shows no intention of joining him. He tries to get out, but it is too late. He is drowning in the liquid...
and then the dome is immediately lifted... and it's daylight. And the young man acts very surprised to see him. Yes, you've guessed it, he has time-traveled, back to earlier in the day, just before the moments of the beginning of the film. One thing the young man (who is played by the writer-director, what is it about time travel films that inspires megalomania?) tells him, once Héctor sees himself in his own garden through binoculars, is that he must not mess things up. Of course, he immediately calls his own number, and we get to hear the other side of the original phone call, and when the earlier Héctor calls back, the young scientist is alerted and tears Héctor off a strip. So, of course, Héctor immediately steals a car and drives off. Driving down the hill from the compound, he passes a very familiar young woman riding a bicycle uphill. He stops just after she has passed out of sight, and is clearly thinking of turning round when out of nowhere a big red truck rams him off the road. The (little, boxy, white) car is wrapped around a tree and Héctor acquires a nasty gash on his forehead. Woozily, he unwraps the bandage from his arm, which is still soaked in the milky-white liquid from the time machine, so that mixed with his blood it goes pink, and starts bandaging his head. A thought seems to strike him about not being seen when there are two of him, and he bandages his entire head. Yes, of course, he is the man who was chasing him earlier. And suddenly, the young woman has appeared, full of concern, ready to help him.
She even has a pair of scissors ("from cutting my neighbor's hair earlier" - they will be used again for hair-cutting later) that she uses to tidy up his bandages, and that he surreptitiously pockets. There then follows the most unpleasant part of the movie, where "Héctor 2", now apparently (a bit late!) taking seriously the scientist's admonition not to disrupt anything, recreates everything he saw (which, of course, entails making the poor young woman strip at knifepoint, and eventually stripping her entirely after she has tripped and knocked herself out). He even stabs himself with scissors and has to try three times before he can get his earlier self to see him turn round suddenly and mime binoculars. Then, once his earlier self has fled, he collapses for a rest. But then he hears the woman scream and races into the woods to find her gone. Things are a bit fuzzy after that (for me) but he arrives at his own home just as night falls and realizes that she is inside. He tries to track her down to explain but (naturally) she first throws a table downstairs at him and then hides in the bedroom. He breaks down the door and chases her onto the roof (he can't really see her because it's dark) at which point she falls off the roof! And he looks down - and it's Clara! It must be Clara, she's got short hair. Horrified, he slumps down in a fugue state... until a crack of thunder brings him to and he realizes he's got the walkie talkie in his pocket and can listen in on the conversation between Héctor 1 and the scientist, and can even tell the scientist to lure Héctor 1 to the turret when Héctor 1 is barring the basement door. Suddenly, he is resolved, having just tried desparately to keep the past the same as it was, to change it, and save Clara! And so he races up to the turret (in Clara's little blue car - another clue that the corpse is Clara) and startles Héctor 1 into the machine. And now things start to get really interesting... Will he be able to save Clara? Can the past be changed? Well, what would David Lewis say?
(If you never intend to watch the film you can get the whole story explained here.)
