Paradox

This flick is clearly not for everyone. If you need a fix of mindless entertainment, keep looking. If you want to try meeting the challenge of following multiple time loops that fold over on themselves, you'll be right at home.

Best viewing might result if you separate the movie into categories of Acting and Premise. Yes, the acting is uninspired, and the half dozen or so characters are largely under developed. They display a liberal helping of the nerd quality that goes with a small team (somehow) building a time travel machine unnoticed. But, their judgment ratchets back to plain ordinary or worse as they deal with mounting problems.

IMO, the premise and writing are where this story shines. There have been a lot of sci-fi tales that toy with time travel and multiple (or alternate) time lines. The easiest to understand and follow is the classic reboot, where events don't quite match a previous story, but story progression is relatively linear. Even when there is some interaction or movement of characters between parallel time lines, it's still relatively easy to keep up.

"Paradox" is the other flavor of time travel. In this case, the timeline includes not one, but multiple loops between the present and one hour into the future. Characters try coming to grips with concepts such as destiny, and whether they can alter the fates that seem to await all of them. At the heart is the question whether one can go into the past to change an event responsible for a current undesirable situation, and, of course, what happens if you meet yourself (or can you?). There is even an honorable mention of "Schrödinger's cat." The fact that a writer kept this all sorted out is worth the watch.

So to repeat: if you don't want to think, move along. If you want a challenge, press "Play."

Clearly this is made on a relative small budget for straight to TV\DVD release, which maybe some should consider if scoring based on films with ten to a hundred times the budget with visuals to match.

So I try to review based more on acting and story. The first 15 minutes or so of acting in fairness did seen rather poor but certainly picked up during the film.

Sadly the time machine itself seemed very unrealistic and I was left feeling they could have put far more effort into that than they did with what seemed like nothing more than a bit of stage rigging that you often see in pop-up form in shopping centers etc when they have "celebrity" appearances etc. However I tried to not let that bother me to much and just try to enjoy what was clearly a budget film. Soundtrack was decent enough and certainly helped with the atmosphere for the film quite a lot so top marks on that.

The story itself was certainly above average for these budget films and no real pointless angles or daft endings even if a very slight twist in the end. Sure, if you over analyze the script and scenes you will find plot holes to complain about quite easily. But it's not supposed to be or claiming to be a factually or theoretically correct on the script front. If your willing to just sit and watch the film without over analyzing or judging it to much based on budget it's quite an enjoyable film to fill 90 minutes.

I've seen worse. Let's start with the music. Very soap opera reminiscent and a tad too loud. The lighting seemed fine, but the sound was odd. During the scenes where the actors were speaking in a normal volume, it was good. During the scenes where the characters were in a panic (and the actors were way over the top), the sound was somehow...hollow. I can't explain it. It was almost as if they knew the sound quality wasn't great, so they bumped up the volume on the music.

The premise, of course, is always fun. You could spend hours pondering the time travel paradox through your mind to no avail. The screenplay itself wasn't bad. I can only assume that the direction given the actors was to be intentionally over the top. Less is more in film, they know that. These are experienced actors. Was Michael Hurst simply catering to the B film fans?

Then again, Michael Hurst is providing work to actors that need to keep working. He's also likely having fun shooting, making a little money and building his own resume. I love Scifi...quality Scifi. If you enjoyed Ex Machina, Europa Report, Predestination, Snowpiercer, Automata, et cetera, then you will not find this to be worth your time. It could have been quite good had they slowed down and allowed for quality acting to come through. It felt like they rushed through to save money and were quite satisfied with just another B movie. It's a shame.

Deep in the heart of the city, a group of brilliant young scientists, led by the mysterious Mr. Landau, are on the brink of completing a machine that will let them travel one hour forward in time. When the first to time travel comes back with dire warnings of the rest of the group's impending demise, who can they trust? More to the point, will they survive, or is their fate already sealed?

Paradox has all the usual ingredients of modern, low budget sci-fi thrillers, from the convoluted story packed with twists and turns, to wonky sets, ropey CGI and hammy acting. The thing is, it actually seems to work for the most part.

The movie is pacey, energetic and unpretentious. Despite it's obviously low budget and limited crop of acting talent, the ensuing 90 minutes are rather enjoyable. Naturally, Zoe Bell is the cream of the acting crop here and she's always worth watching. Her physical talent is a touch underused during the film, but when she gets the opportunity, she uses it well. The rest of the largely unknown cast, despite having some truly naff dialogue to work with, are at least appealing despite some, shall we say, enthusiastic performances.

The direction and editing are pretty snappy and the movie motors along at a fair old click. It's silly, perils of time travel sci-fi hokum, so if you're expecting anything more, this movie is not one for you to watch. If however, you fancy some cheesy, undemanding fun with some campy acting thrown in with your thrills and spills, then there will be no contradictions in you giving Paradox a view.

All things considered, this is more than watchable. It has a simple idea, a simple set and it executes it without too much hassle.

I didn't really get on board with any sense of drama and/or nervous tension, and I was unable to commit myself to the characters. Finding a lot of the acting a touch wooden with predictable scripting, although this may have been an intentional 'cheesy humour', I couldn't quite tell ! There was one character who didn't have many lines but was playing a 'thug/heavy' role, and in response to some techno babble asked for it to be dumbed down ... I did laugh out loud!

However, I am glad I watched to the end as there was an unexpected twist!