You ever have that thing where you go to a remote cabin with a bunch of your friends, and wind up caught in a time loop movie? This is like that. You’d think by now filmmakers would have learned that you have to work really hard to do these kinds of stories in a way that keeps the narrative straight—to my knowledge, only “Triangle” has ever pulled it off—or at least be weird, cool, and cerebral enough, as the makers of “Primer” figured out, that nobody cares it’s impossible to follow. If you can’t go to one of those two paths, you’re going to have a mess on your hands, all the more regrettable when for big parts of it it seems like you were almost going to pull it off. “Triangle” was well-told enough that you could follow it. “Primer” was interesting enough that you wanted to figure it out. This came close, but ultimately, was neither. It cuts back and forth between narratives, or between timelines, with no apparent connection or reason why. It shows things that look like they’re going to be explained later, but they’re never mentioned again. Weird photographs nobody can remember taking appear, which seem like you’ll see them taken later on, but they never are. Plus, the story is repeatedly interspersed with interview segments that seem somehow related but it’s never made clear how, or if it was, I missed it.
