Time Trap (2017)

I’m not really sure what to make of Time Trap.  It’s a fairly simple movie wherein some students and their friends go in search of a missing professor.  The professor had initially gone in search of his parents and sister, who went missing years before.  At the heart of all of this is a system of caves that no one seems to want anything to do with.  Once inside, time slows down.  The further in you go, the slower time gets.  Thus, we have a time trap.

It’s a really good premise.  The problem is that the movie doesn’t do much beyond that.  It’s sort of like The Blair Witch project, which the film does reference.  It’s mostly about a group of people sinking deeper into a problem like quicksand.  The odds of them returning to a normal life seem to go down with each passing discovery.  (Outside light gives the group a clue as to their predicament.)

The ending is a little odd, but not unexpected.  The group is rescued, but finds themselves in a totally alien environment.  I didn’t really get the resolution I wanted.  It’s indicated that they were presumed lost, although we don’t know the exact amount of time that has passed.  All of their loved ones have since perished.  The problem is that we don’t know what will become of them.

Because of this, I’m wondering if this was intended as a backdoor pilot.  It would be the perfect intro to a new series, akin to Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.  The group would presumably have to adapt to life in the far future.  I can’t find anything online about a TV show or any sequels, although it wouldn’t surprise me to find one later on.

It’s kind of difficult to recommend.  The movie is all buildup with little actual resolve.  I kept waiting for something to happen.  It was available streaming on Netflix and has an 87-minute running time, which are definite advantages.  The movie also doesn’t seem to try to overreach.  It stays within the confines of a simple, coherent story and does it fairly well.  It’s just that it’s kind of a letdown not knowing what kind of world the group entered.  I can only hope that that story is for another movie.

IMDb page

Lone Survivor (2013)

WARNING:  I’m going to give away major details about the movie that may spoil it.  You’ve been warned.


I generally don’t like movies that start in the middle or end of the story.  With Lone Survivor, we not only know that one person will survive, but we spend most of the movie knowing that Mark Wahlberg’s Marcus Luttrell, is going to be that survivor.  We start with Luttrell being evacuated and treated, so we have to figure he makes it out alive.

The story is of a SEAL team sent in to kill a Taliban leader, identifiable by the fact that he‘s missing an ear lobe.  Luttrell is one of four men sent in to kill him.  We get to see some SEAL training in the beginning, just to see how tough team members are.  It doesn’t take long for the mission to go south, leaving the team to retreat.

The main problem is that three goat herders happen to find their location, setting up a predicament.  They can’t very well let them go, as the herders could reveal their location before they could get away.  Even keeping them alive could provide them opportunity to somehow get word back.  No one wants to kill three people who did nothing to the SEAL team, so the decision is made to leave them tied up and seek higher ground so that they might call for extraction.

It’s never that easy.  You never have a movie where everything goes right.  Otherwise, we wouldn’t have a movie.  As I said, Luttrell is the only one that survives.  The other three are killed when the locals figure out where they are.   Parents should be warned that there is a lot of fighting and, by extension, bloodshed.  It’s not the kind of thing that children should watch.

This wouldn’t have been my first choice for a movie.  My parents rented it through Netflix and asked if I wanted to watch.  I decided to give it a try and ended up watching the whole thing.  The movie is based on a book, which was an account of Operation Red Wings.

It’s difficult to really go into any sort of detail about the movie because so much of it is the action.  The first part of the movie is getting to know those involved in the mission.  The second part is the team trying to get out of a bad situation.  I probably never would have rented the movie on my own.  It’s not the kind of movie I usually go for.

Most of this is that the story is tenuous.  The entire thing is predicated on one thing going wrong.  If the team hadn’t been discovered, the mission may very well gone off without a hitch.  Yes, this is based on a true story, but how many teams accomplish their missions flawlessly?  How many times does a mission have one or two mistakes, but still work?  As I said, I started the movie knowing something bad was going to happen and that we’ be building up to that.  It’s one of those situations where the title gives away the movie.

Lone Survivor Official Trailer #1 (2013) - Mark Wahlberg Movie HD

Official Site