The Time Shifters

Sometimes, you will find a little gem between all the cheap and poor B-movies that was aired all night on TV. "Thrill Seekers" is really one of this seldom gems and shows clearly, that you don't need a few 100-million dollars to made a good movie. The story makes it! And the story of the tourists from the future that traveling along the time-line to visit disasters of the past, is a very good plot. Our hero (living in our time) examines some old photos of disasters and make a very strange discovery... I will do not spoil the movie for you, but the many surprises and a lot of good twists (especially the last, and i mean the really very last :-) make it better than a lot of big Hollywood films that only works with massive action and CG-effects to cover a weak plot. Yes, you will probably find some logical errors in the film, but if you make a movie about time-travels, you can't avoid it, because nobody knows, what is really a logical error when time-travel warp the logic, or that, what we called logic, itself. So, what is going on when you go back in time and change the past... will you change the future, or some alternate futures in a multilevel universe? Who knows! And perhaps some visitors of the future are already among us... maybe it's a good idea to examine the photos of yesterdays disasters again and more exactly... I give it a 7 of 10. It is really worth to see it!

I caught this mostly by accident last night on TBS and it was much better than I expected. I think there are only a half dozen or so possible plots for a time travel story -- but this movie has enough twists and turns to keep it interesting. The coincidences are just a bit too much, but all is forgiven when I can be surprised in the last 30 minutes.

As time-traveling stories go, this one's better than average. The writers did a decent job trying to account for all the inevitable paradoxes, and the story itself is decently paced and involving.

Casper Van Dien plays Tom Merrick, an ex-TV-journalist trying to put his life back together after an accident cost his crew their lives and him his job. He goes to work as a reporter for a local tabloid, and while investigating disasters of the 20th century, he stumbles upon an incredible coincidence; pictures taken at 3 disasters several decades apart include what appears to be the same man. Catherine Bell plays Elizabeth Wintern, another worker at the tabloid who gets caught up in Merrick's quest to find out who this man is. Merrick and Wintern eventually learn that a company in the future is offering entertainment packages, allowing people to go back in time and witness history's greatest disasters... including some that haven't happened yet as far as Merrick and Wintern are concerned. Merrick takes it upon himself to stop these impending disasters, and finds himself pursued by both "temporal security agents" who are trying to keep their timeline intact, and by local police who think Merrick has planned these events himself.

Don't take my compliments at face value; the movie is far from perfect. There are several plot holes and gloss-overs. I found the writers' ideas on how time travel works to be inconsistent in places. Martin Sheen is completely wasted in his role, having all of maybe 5 minutes of screen time. Finally, in many places I began wondering who I should really root for. Merrick is supposed to be the hero of the movie, trying to keep these "future" disasters from occurring, but at the same time, I could sympathize with the people from the future trying to stop him, especially after I learned what Merrick's actions cause to the future population.

Pitfalls aside, this is an engaging, well-acted movie that will make you think about the morality of time travel. A very solid 6 out of 10.

This is a direct-to-video production with corresponding production values and acting. Well, the mayhem about the stadium looks almost as good as a big-budget disaster movie. Usually the subject of time travel offers infinite possibilities that are mostly mutilated by a weak script, but Thrill Seekers (yes, USA title or not, i get it on cable by that title) offers an intelligent story with plenty of intelligent twists - telling more would spoil the surprise. The atmosphere is also good, though the music has little merit in that : Tourists visiting disaster areas & war zones exist, sadly enough, but the emotionlessness that comes with it does not show until you have seen this. The best part is, it lives up to an expectation few time travel movies can develop to : in the end, the plot comes together. The sole major turn-off : Casper van Dien with a beard. He has this i-want-back-to-shark-attack look glued to his eyes.

This movie is, happily, not a waste of time. It is fairly intelligent, and for the most part manages not to get too lost in temporal theory. The premise lies with Tom Merrick (Casper Van Dien), a former award-winning reporter now working for a tabloid, discovering that the same person was present at the RMS Titanic sinking, the Hindenburg crash, and an electrical plant fire where Merrick nearly lost his life. As he investigates, he attracts the attention of some strange agents who might be time travellers.

While the movie is relatively fast paced and manages to steer clear of too many cliches, it is unfortunately marred by a couple of gaping plot holes. However, it is nice to know that Casper Van Dien can actually act, and he manages to do a decent job on this one.

So, the final verdict: not too bad SF, and fairly good entertainment for two hours. 3.5/5