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USA • 2014 • 104m •
   • Directed by: Bradley King. • Starring: Danielle Panabaker, Matt O'Leary, George Finn, John Rhys-Davies, Amin Joseph, Jason Spisak, Sharon Maughan, David Figlioli, Judith Drake, Mark C. Hanson, Dayci Brookshire, Mark C. Hanson. • Music by: Andrew Kaiser.     Three friends discover a time machine which takes pictures of the future. They begin to use it to win race bets and everything goes fine till one gets greedier than another. They begin to lose faith in each other giving a sense of backstabbing as uglier truths unfold in the photos and the situation soon gets out of control.
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Secondly, just because a concept has been previously explored in another filmshowwhatever doesn't invalidate this incarnation. Sometimes it's worth exploring an idea from a different angle, with different characters, etc... As far as I know there's no rule in the universe that says you can only consider something a single time. Are thoughts disposable now too, like everything else? I find these ideas of time-travel quite interesting, so I'm very happy to view alternate hypotheticals...
Anyway, this film was intriguing, despite some obvious clichés like the bookie. The characters themselves are not particularly interesting, but I don't think this is a film intended to develop deeply rich characters. Like another reviewer mentioned, this is more like an extended X-Files or Twilight Zone episode, but that's fine. I don't watch the X-Files for the amazing character development... The basic premise is that the three main characters find a camera that takes pictures of the future, and decide to try and use that power for personal financial gain -- in this case via illegal betting. This is another cliché, but I think most people in real life are clichés, so this decision fits perfectly in-line with real life. 99.99% of all people in the world would immediately decide to win the lottery or something with this device, so it makes sense that the characters in the film would head down this path as well. Naturally with power like this you want to keep it a secret, and the movie characters are no different. Understandable. Unfortunately, this sort manipulation of the universe tends to cause others to take notice of things that "just aren't quite right", and this leads to trouble.
I think the most interesting aspect of the story is the characters know the future a day in advance, and immediately decide that they need to fulfill the predictions or else the universe will collapse or something. Once you know the future, is free-will destroyed? If that's the case, then does free-will even exist at all to begin with? As soon as they know the future, the characters are now being pulled forward in time by the photographs rather than them making decisions for themselves. It's a very curious thing. It's almost as if once you know the future, your present self ceases to exist until that point in the future. This is good bedtime thinking fodder, guaranteed to melt your brain a bit.
All in all, the film was well-made. All the sets and shots and angles were very good. The actors did well portraying arguably clichéd characters. The only thing that stood out to me as out-of-place was the camera machine itself. It had a very futuristic and "shiny" visual style that didn't seem to match the rest of the props or setting, especially the Polaroid output. The story was decent enough to keep me engaged throughout the film, though, and there are some very interesting twists in the second half.
Review by poopjuggler from the Internet Movie Database.
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