The Dark Herald Recommends: Time Crimes (Los cronocrímenes)

This 2007 Spanish movie is proof that you don’t need a big budget to make a good film.  It’s really more of a thriller than science fiction, although there are a few sci-fi concepts regarding time travel and paradoxes.  It’s nothing you aren’t already familiar with if you’ve read Heinlein’s All You Zombies. 

Hector and his wife live in the Spanish countryside.  One day Hector is scanning the forrest surrounding their house and sees young, beautiful blonde girl.  Since he was appreciating natural beauty anyway, he continues  to look for a little more. Out of blue the girl peels off her tee-shirt and she isn’t wearing a bra. Hector is both aroused and embarrassed, after all he hadn’t meant to be a peeper. 

His wife announces she’s going shopping, he gives her a standard, “Yes, dear” kind of reply. He has a brief struggle with his conscious and decides to have another look at the blonde girl. When he sees her this time she is lying naked on the ground and appears to be injured.  

Hector sets out to help the girl but he is suddenly stabbed from behind by a man wearing bloodied bandages around his head.  Hector runs for it, goes inside the house next door and slams the door shut.  A walkie talkie chirps up and calls Hector over.  It instructs him to go down to the lab.  He eventually complies.  Then the guy on the Walkie Talkie orders him to hide in a machine and exclaims, “It’s your only chance!” 

When he leaves the machine is he is informed by the scientist that the thing he was hiding in is a time machine and he has traveled back in time one hour.  He informs Hector that he is now Hector 2.

That’s all the plot you’re getting.  Since the Darklings are familiar with time travel stories you’ve already guessed some of what will happen next but I doubt if you will figure out everything.

This is a movie that benefitted from it’s modest budget. Time Crimes is more horror than anything else and that genre always benefits most strongly from a sense of familiarity and intimacy. Hector and his wife remind you of somebody’s uncle and aunt.  They aren’t good looking or at least not anymore but they are comfortable together and you draw comfort from that. Consequently, you feel sympathy for Hector when he tries to do the right thing and is suddenly in peril for his life from that. 

You can also understand how he mostly just wants to get back to comfortable life as fast as possible but the more he tries to reach that simple goal the further out of reach it becomes. The horror is raw and real, in this setting where all the action takes place within 200 square yards.

Where to watch: Currently free on Tubi, Amazon Prime, Philo, Plex, Sling, Crackle, and Xumo (Xumo?)  with commercials. 

The Dark Herald Recommends with Enthusiasm (9/10)