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Karra Elejalde, Bárbara Goenaga, Nacho Vigalondo, Candela Fernández

An ordinary guy takes an extraordinary step through time in this science fiction thriller. Hector (Karra Elejalde) is spending a few days in the countryside with his girlfriend, Clara (Candela Fernánd... read more read more...ez), when he sees something that catches his attention while playing with his binoculars. Looking at a nearby house near a wooded area, Hector spies a beautiful woman taking her clothes off, and decides to take a stroll and give her a closer look. However, when he arrives at the house several minutes later, the woman is lying in the grass and appears to either be dead or passed out. As Hector examines her, he's attacked by a strange man and flees on foot. Hector seeks refuge in a building that turns out to be a research facility owned by a mysterious scientist (Nacho Vigalondo), who gives him a place to hide inside a futuristic closet. However, Hector realizes it was actually a time-travel machine when he emerges a few minutes later and looks out the window to see himself standing over the unconscious woman in the distance. Los Cronocrimenes (aka Timecrimes) was the first feature film from writer and director Nacho Vigalondo, who also appears as the scientist. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

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77% liked it

6,302 ratings

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70 critics

R, 1 hr. 28 min.

Directed by: Nacho Vigalondo

Release Date: September 20, 2007

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DVD Release Date: March 31, 2009

Stats: 999 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (999)

  • jmanard52
    April 25, 2010
    jmanard52
    So as the movies started I have to say I was a bit weary. I was like of there is nothing in this movie, i got the plot already. then they started throwing the little twists. And I was like oh hell no there is no way they can pull this off now. Lo and behold they did. A very solid... read more time travel story that actually MAKES SENSE and when all is said and done. You understand what has happened. Well worth finding.
  • blacksheepboy
    April 26, 2012
    blacksheepboy
    A decent time-travel film that seems like an extended Twilight Zone episode lacking a strong main character. It starts really mysterious and intriguing in its first half hour but soon becomes extremely predictable - until it reaches a clever twist in the last act of its circular ... read moreplot.
  • flixsterman
    April 8, 2012
    flixsterman
    "People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff." -Steven Moffat
  • garyX
    March 27, 2012
    garyX
    A middle aged man becomes the unwitting victim of an experiment in time travel and in his desperation to recreate events and return to his life, things seem to increasingly spiral out of his control. Timecrimes is one of those cause and effect paradox stories that science fiction... read more writers are so fond of and reminded me of The Butterfly Effect crossed with Back To The Future 2. Like Twelve Monkeys it obviously owes a debt to La Jetee, but as it concerns itself with the same four characters over the same 90 minute period, it seems far more like small potatoes than Terry Gilliam's film. The premise is simple, having a familiar Twilight Zone feel about it and because of this, once you twig the big twist (it doesn't take long) you know exactly where it's going to go. It is an interesting and initially intriguing film, but the low budget production quality and gratuitous female nudity gives it a slightly seedy edge that reminded me of a trashy slasher flick. Not a bad little mind-bending sci-fi/horror hybrid however, and worth a look if like this type of thing.
  • 76Majikat
    March 15, 2012
    76Majikat
    An intelligently written, complex time travel story, a fascinating plot, which will have your mind working overtime trying to keep up with the backtracking and new scenarios.

    Great to see time travel theme tackled within a more natually acted cast and theme rather than a typical... read more Sci-fi setting..

    Enjoyed it equally on both viewings.
  • romy861
    June 4, 2011
    romy861
    This reminded me of "Triangle", but foreign language, not on a ship, and making a lot less sense. It was entertaining enough, but confusing all the way through, so much so that I stopped even trying to patch it together, hoping it would all come together in the end. It didn't. ... read more We never find out why he got in the tub in the first place, so without that, the whole thing made zero sense.
    I would not call it a bad movie, but I would certainly prefer to watch "Triangle" any day to this. Yes, that one was a little confusing too, but there is a bit of logic to it at the end at least. This one, you just sit there afterwards thinking, "So why did he do that??".
    Performances and appearance of the film are fine. Karra Elejalde is good as jaded, middled aged Hector and Nacho Vigalondo is convincing as the nerdy scientist who works at an institution next door (conveniently closed for the weekend when this takes place). Barbara Gooenaga is beautiful as the young girl who entices and helps Hector, but ultimately the whole plot(s) with her make no sense at all.
  • gokhale1
    December 6, 2010
    gokhale1
    Ok, so we have seen a number of films dealing with time-travel and the central theme of Temporal Paradox, so why should we really bother to see another one? The reason will be crystal clear when you watch "Timecrimes" (Spanish: "Los Cronocrímenes"). This is a sleeper surprise pac... read morekage that delivers the goods and how!

    It all starts with a "Rear Window"-like beginning, where the hero of this twisted story, Hector (Karra Elejalde) sits on the lawn of his new house in some isolated area with his pair of binoculars pointed towards the woods not far away from his place, while his wife, Clara (Candela Fernández) does some arranging of furniture around their home. He catches a glimpse of a young girl with her hair covering her face, removing her t-shirt. Curiosity gets the better of him, of course, and as soon as Clara leaves to buy some groceries, Hector sets out into the woods to investigate the situation.

    Soon, after a deadly encounter with a mysterious figure with bandages wrapped around his head, and a verbal contact with a cryptic voice on a walkie-talkie, Hector finds himself transported to a time roughly about an hour earlier, seemingly by accident!



    "Timecrimes" instantly brings to mind the 2004 independent American film, "Primer" which was much more complex than this and far difficult to comprehend in the first viewing. But so is not the case with this film.

    "Timecrimes" uses the complicated theme of "self causality", the cause-and-effect loop, where the effect itself becomes its cause! However, writer-director Nacho Vigalondo employs very clever tactics in order to pull it off and avoids using multiple characters in extremely complex situations. Instead, he keeps the situation considerably simple by restricting the events in question to about three primary characters. By doing so, he plays it safe and almost avoids the inherent plot holes which usually arise in depictions of paradoxes like these. Even though he keeps it simple, Vigalondo introduces some clever twists in the narrative which just seem right, without being over-indulgent or pretentious.


    Nacho Vigalondo uses the choicest of locations far away from the hustle and bustle of the city that acts as an apt setting for the events in the film.

    A racy background score combined with terrific sound effects add to the film's many qualities.

    Vigalondo directs like a true professional (this is his first full-length film) and turns "Timecrimes" into an edge-of-the-seat sci-fi mystery.

    Karra Elejalde is brilliant as Hector. Watch his reactions, so precise, those of a bewildered victim who is naturally confounded about the situation he finds himself in. The director himself, Nacho Vigalondo stars as the young scientist and does pretty a good job himself. Adding good support are the female cast, Candela Fernández and the girl in the woods, Bárbara Goenaga.


    Watch Nacho Vigalondo's "Timecrimes". It is an astounding achievement for low-budget cinema as well as for Spanish cinema.
  • mumby1988
    July 8, 2010
    mumby1988
    Just as James Cameron and Francis Ford Coppola cut their teeth making low-budget horror films, so many revered filmmakers started out in science fiction. John Carpenter, though more renowned as a horror director, began his career with Dan O'Bannon on the sci-fi comedy Dark Star. ... read moreWay before Star Wars had even been conceived, George Lucas was testing the water with THX 1138. Then there are more recent examples, like Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko, Duncan Jones' Moon, and Timecrimes, the debut effort from Nacho Vigalondo (insert cheap food-related gag).

    Timecrimes is an interesting and gripping time-travel film which manages to make the best of its low budget and serves up a twisty and captivating plot. Its limited resources and self-contained storyline prevent it from being the most ambitious examination of time travel, but all the pieces fit together very stylishly and the film has an interesting, horror-inflected aesthetic. Taken purely as a thriller, it manages to sustain the level of tension despite (or perhaps because of) the repetition of certain encounters with subtle additions or changes, and the creative decisions it makes are always interesting.

    In any time-travel film there are three big obstacles which have to be overcome. The first is that every last journey and its consequences have to be explained without resorting to yards of dull exposition to fit tab 'a' into slot 'b'. Characters cannot simply use time travel as a deus ex machina to get them out of every tricky situation, and the film must be constructed in a way that such journeys are justified visually rather than vocally.

    Timecrimes manages to pass this test, with only one real instance of exposition or revelation. And even that scene is played out with suspense, as we realise just how many versions of our main character may be existing simultaneously. All the little pieces of the storyline fit together like a well-made jigsaw, and the film cleverly turns small details into matters of great importance. The small section of dialogue about getting a table through a doorway becomes all-important when said table is used to stop the man in the pink bandages coming up the stairs.

    The second obstacle facing time-travel films is that the story must be simple enough to prevent the film tying itself in knots, but complex enough to allow the twists and paradoxes to actually have an effect. Films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (which involves internalised time travel, i.e. in the minds of its characters) succeed because they draw in their audience with a straightforward premise and then proceed to test said audience's mettle by mixing up the order of events and questioning the motivations of characters.

    Timecrimes does this brilliantly, beginning with an ordinary suburban couple who are just moving into their new house. Their relationship seems relatively straightforward, and there is nothing about their new environment that would lead you to think they were in danger. Having set us up, the film takes a Hitchcockian twist as the husband looks through his binoculars (a Rear Window reference) and espies a girl undressing in the woods. He gets dragged into the subsequent events out of little more than curiosity, and for the early sections of the film we feel as disorientated as he does, as we try and come to terms with what is going on.

    The third and final obstacle is that the film must ensure the safety of its characters in terms of continuity and motive, while sustaining tension and making it seem they may not survive. Within this there is the subsidiary problem over whether two versions of the same person can come into contact: in Timecop, they can so long as there is no physical contact, while in Back to the Future Part II merely seeing your past self is catastrophic.

    Timecrimes is in the company of 12 Monkeys and Slaughterhouse-Five, thematically speaking, since all three films pay little attention to the actual technology which could cause time travel. Instead, they focus on the damage it can cause to the people who partake in it, both physically and psychologically. The twist with Timecrimes is that some of that damage is self-inflicted. A number of key scenes are restaged and our response changes according to the knowledge we accumulate. The first time our leading man is stabbed in the arm with the scissors, we'd scared that he could be killed; the second time, it is much more poignant. As the scientist says, "this machine doesn't solve problems; it creates them".

    Timecrimes is also interesting from a visual point of view. The early scenes resemble a late-1970s slasher film, in the manner of John Carpenter's Hallowe'en or Sean S. Cunningham's Friday the 13th. Much of the action takes places in the woods (a classic horror setting), we have a young girl who is either in her underwear or naked for a lot of the film, and the killer has a hidden face and a sharp implement for a weapon. Flavio Martinez Labiano's cinematography is grainy and murky, and the portentous music leads us to expect a certain amount of bloodshed.

    But the film turns out to be one of many pleasant surprises. Every time it seems to adopt or emulate one particular style or genre, it quickly dodges or departs from its conventions. Aside from the opening chase between Hector and the pink-bandaged man, the film does not resemble a slasher in either its plot or execution. It works hard to justify the nudity, taking something that on first viewing is gratuitous and retuning it so that the second time around it makes a little more sense.

    The other great success of the film is that it manages to sustain tension even as all the pieces fit together. Like a lot of time-travel films, the big twist happens in the middle; without wishing to give it away, we find out who the pink-bandaged man is fairly early on. But the film remains tense (and often scary) because of the increased stakes that come with more versions of oneself running around. Having established the rules surrounding continuity and doppelgangers very early on, we do not need loads of exposition to explain what will happen if Hector should fail.

    The film does have a couple of weaknesses which are frustrating. Despite its general success in justifying the nudity (albeit in a roundabout way), the decision to have said girl then fall to her death for the sake of continuity is a troubling one. The ending as a whole feels unsatisfying, with Hector and his wife sitting on the lawn waiting for the scene to play out. It seems flippant or at least out of tone with the rest of the film.

    Nonetheless, Timecrimes is an intriguing science fiction thriller which suggests a long and rewarding career for its director. It doesn't attempt any kind of deep analysis of free will, and it may not hold up to repeat viewing. But it is still an entertaining low-budget film with intelligence and conviction, along with a decent central performance and good photography. It's 12 Monkeys meets Hallowe'en with bits of Rear Window thrown in, and though it can't compete with any of those, it deserves to be seen.
  • 366weirdmovies
    April 8, 2010
    366weirdmovies
    Fleeing a chance encounter with a bandaged madman in the woods, a middle aged man finds himself inadvertently thrust backwards in time. One of the better plotted time-travel movies, but there's little that's truly cinematic about this four character, one setting movie (which wo... read moreuld have made a great short story or play). REAPPRAISAL: Originally, I thought this was an extremely clever script that would have benefitted from a glossier production. After watching TRIANGLE, a bigger-budget effort which steals liberally from TIMECRIMES but is more muddled and actually subtracts from the basic scenario, I've come to appreciate the rigor and discipline in the script here much more. I'm bumping it up a half star.
  • gor41
    March 13, 2010
    gor41
    Perfectly formed time travel drama which cleverly ties up all its loose ends neatly and doesn't make your brain ache too much trying to follow the logic. Does feel slightly clinical in its approach, as if it is designed as a proof of concept rather than engaging entertainment.

View All Los Cronocrímenes (Timecrimes) Reviews

Critic Reviews

Roger Moore
March 18, 2009
Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel

Very cool. Full Review

Tom Long
March 13, 2009
Tom Long, Detroit News

The key here is to keep things moving without letting the logical (or illogical) complications weigh down the action, and [director] Vigalondo does this well. Full Review

Wesley Morris
January 22, 2009
Wesley Morris, Boston Globe

The director operates his metaphysical contraption with enough wit to jolt away your skepticism. Full Review

Michael Phillips
January 8, 2009
Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

The modest satisfactions of Timecrimes come down to a protagonist divided against himself. Full Review

Roger Ebert
January 8, 2009
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Timecrimes is like a temporal chess game with nudity, voyeurism and violence, which makes it more boring than most chess games but less boring than a lot of movies. Full Review

Colin Covert
December 19, 2008
Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune

The idea isn't bad, and Vigalondo makes the pretzel logic of the situation lucid, but he doesn't have the chops to give the tale the suspense and humor it needs. Full Review

Walter V. Addiego
December 19, 2008
Walter V. Addiego, San Francisco Chronicle

It begins slowly, but when it gets going, it rings a series of amusing, if not entirely unpredictable, changes on the theme 'what if you went back in time and changed things?' Full Review

Michael O'Sullivan
December 18, 2008
Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post

It's not the first time a movie has played with the idea of a time traveler encountering an earlier version of himself, but the exceptionally gripping film takes the concept to a new level of devilish... Full Review

Gary Goldstein
December 12, 2008
Gary Goldstein, Los Angeles Times

Spanish filmmaker Nacho Vigalondo's low-budget brain-drainer Timecrimes is only half as clever as it thinks and even less entertaining. Full Review

V.A. Musetto
December 12, 2008
V.A. Musetto, New York Post

Trippy viewing awaits, as long as you're not a stickler for logic. Full Review

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