Starring: Lydia C. Bushfield, Daniel Mark Collins, Kevin James Thornton
Director: Kevin James Thornton
Country: USA
A low budget US indie that has somehow found release in the UK, this high concept low execution movie follows the unnamed Commander (director and star Thornton) as he returns to the family home following the death of his mother. While clearing out his old bedroom, he finds a cardboard time machine that he created as a boy and uses it to get glimpses of his future. Or is he? Or do we even care?
With the machine made of tin foil, cereal boxes and cellotape, it’s pretty clear that this machine doesn’t do what the narrative is claiming it does. It serves to function as a coping mechanism for grief, using nostalgia and a regress to childhood to deal with the tremendously adult task of clearing out his mother’s home. Thornton does an adequate job in masquerading deadpan as something deeper, but as this greying bearded man sits in the wobbly cockpit of his decades old invention talking to his computer co-pilot (Bushfield), the childishness that is meant to be endearing comes off solely as dogged denial. Plus what we’re seeing in his future is painfully dull regardless.
With a cast of only three actors the film gets caught up in being whimsical and ends up feeling pointless. Its concept is cute, but a concept like that needs something more substantially human supporting it, which this simply doesn’t.