The Best Time Travel Movie You’ve Never Seen Just Got A 4K Upgrade

Working on the outskirts of horror and sci-fi for nearly two decades, Spanish filmmaker Nacho Vigalondo made his feature debut in 2007 with the independent film that provided the template for all his work to come. Timecrimes – newly released in a 4K UHD restoration by Vinegar Syndrome — is a low-budget exploration of an exceptionally bizarre time loop problem, deploying essentially no visual effects while telling an increasingly complex tale of a man trapped in a temporal paradox who keeps creating new versions of himself.

The film stars Karra Elejalde as Hector, a man whose strange journey begins when he spies a partially naked woman in the forest behind his house. As Hector goes to investigate, he’s attacked and stabbed by a man wearing bloody bandages on his face. The confounding plot escalates from there, as Hector stumbles upon a building housing a time machine and, at the behest of a scientist played by Vigalondo himself, travels back one hour in time, triggering a chain of events that soon finds at least three versions of Hector helplessly attempting to stop the causal spiral he’s trapped in.

How Was Timecrimes Received Upon Release?

Timecrimes was well received when it premiered at Austin’s Fantastic Fest in September 2007, and went into limited release afterwards. The film won two medals at Fantastic Fest, while Vigalondo won Best New Director at Spain’s 23rd annual Goya Awards. The film holds a 90% “fresh” rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, as well as a sturdy 79% audience score.

The New York Times noted that Vigalondo had “audacity to spare” in crafting his film with virtually no special effects, while The Guardian called it “heavy on fiendish cross-currents of temporal interaction.” Many reviews applauded Vigalondo for relying more on ideas and resourceful filmmaking than visual razzle-dazzle.

Why Is Timecrimes Important to See Now?

Essentially taking place in the backyard and surrounding woods of a Spanish country house, Timecrimes cost an estimated $2.6 million to produce. That’s not chump change for an indie feature, but it’s a far cry from what a Hollywood time travel spectacle might cost. The movie was one of several low-budget sci-fi films that came out in a roughly decade-long stretch that included Primer (2004), Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010), Monsters (2010), Another Earth (2011), and Coherence (2013), all projects that used limited resources to trade in heavy ideas.

In a retrospective for The AV Club, critic A.A. Dowd suggested that Timecrimes was actually an allegory about “the sheer difficulty of carrying on an affair,” noting that Hector’s “wandering eye” is what triggers the cascading series of events, and that like an unfaithful spouse, he keeps constructing more elaborate lies, excuses, and cover-ups — filtered through the lens of time travel — to hide his indiscretions. By the time there are three Hectors running around the woods, the protagonist(s) — like an adulterer — has trouble keeping his story straight, even to himself.

Another interpretation, from the director himself, suggests that Hector isn’t really in control of the events that happen around him. “The theory of this film is that you only have free will within the limits of your perception,” Vigalondo told Electric Sheep magazine in 2009. “If you haven’t seen what happens inside a room, you can change what happens there, but if you have seen inside the room, you cannot change anything.”

The fact that all these concepts are explored in a movie that uses just five actors and three locations is a credit not just to Vigalondo’s clever script and direction, but to the flexibility of sci-fi and the possibilities of filmmaking itself. For anyone dismayed or discouraged by the way that major studios and streamers continue to throw hundreds of millions of dollars at empty time-wasters, it’s a movie that viewers and aspiring filmmakers can be encouraged by.

What New Features Does the Timecrimes 4K Blu-Ray Have?

Boutique genre label Vinegar Syndrome’s new UHD Blu-Ray is available in both a standard edition and a limited edition slipcase. Both feature a freshly rescanned and restored 4K presentation of the film, along with two commentary tracks from Vigalondo (one new and one archival), a new commentary track from writer Alexandra West, a contemporary interview with Vigalondo, and a new video essay.

Also included are more archival features from previous home video releases, including a 44-minute making-of documentary and a variety of cast and crew interviews. But the most interesting “new” item — a version of which was previously available on the Spanish DVD — is an alternate 69-minute cut that presents the film’s narrative in chronological order. It provides a fascinating perspective on a film that already contains multitudes within its modest scope.