Lemme start by thanking you once again for organizing this stuff and putting in the work. I'm glad I watched the movie and I'm happy for the discussion even though I want my 90 minutes back.

That said, I don't know if there's a worse genre of science fiction cinema than "talkin' about time travel" movies. You get all the sophistry of a late-night dorm conversation with none of the spectacle of a Back to the Future.

Time travel is, of course, a thought experiment and the good explorations of it demonstrate the theories. This is what makes them fun, even if we don't quite buy Michael J. Fox's hand disappearing as he plays guitar. The bad explorations of it are merely lectures. Primer comes immediately to mind, but at least Primer had a vision. It had a goal.

I'll Follow You Down is one of those Canadian Content movies that was made largely with public subsidies on the points system that then failed to achieve distribution because it's bad. There's this belief amongst sci fi fans that there's this vast suppressed ocean of great fuckin' sci fi that nobody gets to see because The Man is keeping it down or something but the reality of the situation is most of it is shit.

The shittier they are the more likely they are to throw things in non-linear so it's harder to see the shit. Really, this is a movie about a selfish scientist who invents time travel but keeps it from his wife, goes back in time to ask Einstein some questions but gets shot, so his son and father-in-law become obsessed while his wife commits suicide, so the son goes back in time (without telling his girlfriend) so he can make his dad feel bad by committing suicide in front of him. I mean, (1) fuck you for wasting my time (2) fuck you again for forcing this plot down everyone's throats (3) fuck you thrice for blowing 90 minutes on it because Rod Serling solved this problem no less than 24 times in 50 minutes or less.

And sure. CAUSALITY. But the random appearance of a gun to shoot the protagonist at the end is such a tired short film trope that some film festivals ban it in writing (DC Shorts Fest among them). This was lazy, sloppy writing, lazy, sloppy directing and lazy, sloppy acting and everyone involved should feel bad. Here's a better time travel movie in which Superman simply thinks about going to 1918 because he falls in love with a picture of Jane Seymour:

(Of course, that's Richard Matheson so yeah, it's gonna be better)

I wanna do another time travel movie to get the taste out of my mouth. I haven't seen Looper but I hear good things. I'd also recommend Edge of Tomorrow but I'll bet it doesn't stand up to repeat viewings. Also, two of the absolute best movies ever made - Back to the Future and Groundhog Day - are technically time travel movies.

Fuck this movie. Thanks for recommending it and thanks for doing this, but fuck this movie.