Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.0

Time Lapse Blu-ray Movie Review

Don't #@$&! With Time

Reviewed by Michael Reuben June 22, 2015

First-time feature makers Bradley King (director/co-writer) and BP Cooper (producer/co-writer) did not discover until they were filming their script for Time Lapse that a similar device had been used in an episode of the classic TV series, The Twilight Zone, but they weren't deterred. Stories about manipulating time are virtually a genre unto itself, and King's and Cooper's take is sufficiently original, and they explore it with such relentless logic, that it easily withstands comparison to previous efforts. One of the strengths of Time Lapse is its ordinary setting and everyday characters. The film takes place where you wouldn't expect anyone to stumble across the scientific breakthrough of the century (or maybe the millennium). As a result, the people who do stumble across it aren't sharp enough to grasp the dangers of what they have found, and they quickly get themselves into trouble.

Time Lapse played at film festivals around the world, where it earned numerous awards. It received a limited release in U.S. theaters in May 2015, when it was also posted on iTunes and Amazon. It is now being issued on Blu-ray and DVD by XLrator Media.

Time Lapse is set entirely in a rundown ranch-style apartment complex, where the live-in managers are a trio of twenty-somethings: Finn, an aspiring painter (Matt O'Leary, The Lone Ranger); his best friend, Jasper, who smokes too much weed and is addicted to betting on dog races (George Finn, LOL); and Callie, Finn's girlfriend (Danielle Panabaker, The Flash). At the moment, Finn is suffering from creative block. He spends hours staring at blank canvas, interrupted from time to time by phone calls from tenants with maintenance issues.

When Callie goes to check on an elderly tenant, Mr. Bezzerides (John Rhys-Davies, seen only in photos), who is two months behind on his rent, she finds no sign of "Mr. B", but she does discover an ungainly and somewhat sinister machine with a lens at one end aimed out the window and pointed directly at the apartment occupied by Callie, Finn and Jasper. Next to the device are stacks of self-developing film for an old Polaroid camera. On the walls are rows of neatly arranged photographs of what Callie recognizes as her own living room. It appears that "Mr. B" constructed a giant camera that snaps a picture every day at exactly 8:00 p.m. As Callie, and then Finn and Jasper, study the snapshots, they realize that the camera photographs the scene in their living room (and whoever happens to be in view) precisely one day ahead, providing a glimpse into the future.

Once the three roommates grasp the true nature of their discovery, they have to decide what to do with it. For Jasper, the answer is immediately obvious. He stands in the window at 8:00 pm holding up a sheet of paper with the day's racing results written in big block letters so that, a day earlier, his (slightly) younger self will know how to bet on winners. Finn uses the photographs to solve his artistic block. In many of them, he is standing before painted canvases, and he carefully reproduces what he sees in the pictures, on the theory that he's simply tracing the brush strokes he is already destined to make. Finn's activities, as well as Jasper's, raise intriguing questions, which even the best friends cannot overlook, of whether the future is already set or whether it can be changed by our actions, once we have seen one possible outcome. The question becomes particularly challenging on one occasion when Finn is unable to see that day's photo and panics, because he doesn't know what to paint. But if the artwork is truly "his" creation, shouldn't he able to paint it even without seeing it in a photograph beforehand?

Callie's role in exploiting the machine in "Mr. B's" apartment initially appears to be that of a helper to the two men, but as the days progress, oddities in the new images of the future prompt the roommates to begin querying each other about their motives and activities. Suspicions infect all of the relationships, because isolated images put the roommates in the position of having to deduce everything that led up to that moment in time—and the explanations aren't always obvious. Further complexities are introduced by the appearance of Jasper's bookie, Ivan (Jason Spisak), who is understandably skeptical about Jasper's sudden infallibility in picking winners, and of a woman from "Mr. B's" past (Sharon Maughan), who comes looking for him.

In the end, everyone who comes in contact with the Bezzerides machine discovers that one's path forward cannot be directed at will, with or without a window into the future. Tiny details that are easily overlooked turn out to have immense importance. Crucial information may never enter the frame; indeed, someone may be deliberately withholding it, and there would be no way to tell. And chance can always intervene, as demonstrated by the film's twisted conclusion.

Time Lapse Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Time Lapse was photographed by Jonathan Wenstrup, who has served on the camera crews of numerous reality TV shows and acted as DP on many shorts and several independent features. The bulk of the feature was shot digitally on the Red Epic, but King and Cooper reveal in their commentary that some scenes were photographed with DSLR cameras. After editing and post-production color grading, it's impossible to tell the difference. XLrator's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray was presumably sourced directly from digital files.

The Blu-ray image reflects all the usual virtues of digital capture, which is to say that it is clean, sharp and detailed, with solid blacks, good contrast and a naturalistic palette that only occasionally dials up specific colors for effect. For example, the Bezzerides "machine" is lit to look almost alien, and a party sequence is bathed in alternating shades of red, green and blue. Otherwise, everything about Jasper, Finn, Callie and their surroundings is meant to appear as ordinary as possible. Noise, interference and artifacts were wholly absent.

Digitally originated material compresses easily, so that XLrator has been able to get away with an average bitrate of 18.98 Mbps. It also helps that Time Lapse does not involve major action. It's a thriller with a sci-fi core, where the tensest moments arise between people talking to each other.

Time Lapse Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Time Lapse's original 5.1 soundtrack has been encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA. The sound mix doesn't have any big moments, except for the recurrent firing of the Bezzerides machine when it photographs the future, which sounds like a supercharged camera shutter that expands outward and reaches deep into the lower registers. Otherwise, there are distant sounds from the apartment complex and other parts of the environment and the all-important dialogue, which is always clear and properly prioritized. The thriller score by Andrew Kaiser consciously aspires to follow in Bernard Herrmann's footsteps, and it's fairly successful.

Time Lapse Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentaries with Director/Writer Bradley King and Producer/Writer BP Cooper


• Feature Commentary: In the first of their two commentaries, King and Cooper focus on the development of the script, casting, the experience of making the film and post-production. They also discuss various story points, including the character of Mr. Bezzerides and the involvement of John Rhys-Davies.


• Filmmaking 101 Commentary: In their second commentary, King and Cooper try to focus on the practical elements of low-budget filmmaking, but inevitably there is overlap with the "Feature Commentary", because they must use their own film as an example. A critical element for Time Lapse was obtaining a location that the production could control in its entirety.



• Deleted Scenes (w/Optional Filmmaker Commentary) (1080p; 1.85:1; 4:00): The commentary explains why each scene was cut.
• Callie in the Kitchen
• Mr. B Flashback



• Behind the Scenes (1080p; 1.78:1; 22:52): Longer and less formal than a typical EPK, this series of on-set conversations and semi-candid glimpses of the cast and crew at work provides a sense of the atmosphere during production.



• Trailer (1080p; 1.78:1; 2:01): In addition to the film's trailer, the disc also plays a trailer of The Machine at startup, which can be skipped with the chapter forward button and is not otherwise available once the disc loads.

Time Lapse Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Because I have tried not to give anything away, I haven't been able to do justice to what makes Time Lapse so involving to watch, which is the way it transforms established relationships into paranoia, then reveals that reality was both better and worse than the characters' most fearful suspicions. Let's just say that, by the end of the film, collecting back rent or struggling with an artistic block is the least of anyone's problems. Time Lapse is consistently intriguing and unpredictable, and the Blu-ray is technically superior. Highly recommended.