I don’t get it. But you know what? After reading over a dozen other reviews, I am convinced that no one else does either, so I no longer feel sheepish in expressing my ignorance. More importantly, nor do I feel hesitant to express me lack of enthusiasm towards the film on a whole. The thing is, I’m increasingly convinced that there really is nothing to get in Primer. It’s intentionally weird because being less so would have required explanations – explanations that would have weakened the story. Thus, Primer is, in essence, a cheap shot. It’s a cheap shot in the sense that it heavily relies on ambiguity (particularly towards the end) in order to avoid having to put together a cohesive story. That is not good storytelling – it’s cheap.

The story tells us about Aaron (Shane Carruth) and Abe (David Sullivan), two twenty-something guys who are always tinkering with something in their garage, always wearing a shirt and tie, and always arguing. We don’t always understand what the machine does at first, and we never fully understand what they are constantly arguing about. They seem to be passionate about something though, and it seems important.

In the second half of the film they argue about something else. We discover that they have discovered that their machine allows you to travel backwards through time. We first see the guys using the box to go back a day before and purchase stocks they found out rose for the day. They later discover that they have to kill the other living versions of themselves so they don’t multiply. They also do a lot of other things in the last 20 minutes that just don’t fully connect. I was able to catch on to some of it, and must admit, there is some cleverness. The convolutedness of the storyline reflects, in ways, the convoluted state of the guys’ lives as they must deal with the many consequences of time travel. As crazy as it all gets, it’s actually kind of fun. It’s almost hard for time travel stories to not be fun, and though Primer does its best to completely destroy the story with incessant bickering between the two characters, it can’t keep a good idea down completely. As confusing as it all is, there’s never a single slow moment.

Primer is also cheap literally, however. Allegedly it was shot on only seven grand. I don’t totally believe that, but on a certain level, it makes sense. Primer is, in fact, very cheaply made. Many critics loved this fact, a number noting the Soderbergh-esque feel to the picture, but it didn’t quite hit me like that. Rather, it simply came off as a cheaply made film to me. The amateur filmmaking did add an element to the general notion that amateurs were getting into waters too deep to swim when they built the time machine. But the filmmaking too often just felt poor. There’s one scene in particular where the sound is horrendous. The “made the whole movie in the garage” type feel is not good filmmaking – it’s just cheap.

Year: