One of my favorite films of all time, Primer tells the story of a young entrepreneur and tinker-hacker, making a life-chaning discovery: a box that lets whatever is inside experiences 1300 times the passage of time, essentially creating a time machine. Shot for a low-as-beans budget of $7,000, this is incredibly smart, and reasonably challenging on first watch. The paths of characters and their experiences cross, and overlap, and keeping it all straight can be difficult. However, it's not necessary (nor possible without many inferences and assumptions) to know all the paths and implications, as evidenced by xkcd's inclusion on "[Movie Narrative Charts](http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/movie_narrative_charts.png)", though you can spend the time figuring it out as a thesis project if you so choose. I saw this in theatres and my mind cracked open a little bit. It took a few beers to put it back together, so watch with a friend, and keep a six pack handy.
Cannot recommend this movie enough.
Currently available streaming in its entirety on [YouTube](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=gFJMcAB5SFU). Plex it and watch it tonight!
This is definitely a very enjoyable movie. It’s one of those fairly rare films that really takes on a whole new meaning with multiple viewings. For me, this is in the same league as Clerks for “awesome ultra-low-budget films”.
I love Primer but it’s so complicate! Even now I still don’t fully get it. I’ll have to watch it again some time and try to note down who goes back in time to when. Amazing film though, especially for the budget.
Primer is by far my favorite time travel movie. I would highly recommend it to anyone. However, it is a movie you may need to watch to figure our what on earth just happened!
Primer is an amazing film. And as far as the time travel films go it’s the best i’ve seen.
It’s just so uncompromising in its no-nonsense approach, like a mathematical formula that is deadly dry but exact. No fluff, and no over-exposition when it really goes down the rabbit hole in the end. It has spoiled all the other time travel films for me.
It has nothing spectacular and a lot of talking and the end is every bit as confusing as everybody says it is, and yet it nails the whole concept perfectly.
I liked Primer too. Did you know Shane Carruth, the director of Primer, made a second film called Upstream Color 9 years later? And it's equally (if not more so) brilliant. I've written about Upstream Color here: https://forums.plex.tv/topic/96345-upstream-color-2013/
