Primer (2004)

Primer (2004) is a low‑budget, brainy sci‑fi thriller about four engineer friends — Aaron, Abe, Robert and Phillip — who, working nights and weekends in a suburban garage, accidentally build something far beyond the error‑checking devices they intended. When Abe discovers the machine’s strange side effects, he and Aaron realize it can be used to travel through time. Rather than grand adventures, the film follows their painstaking, almost clinical experiments and the moral and logistical fallout as the two men use the device to try to gain an edge on the stock market and keep control of their discovery. Secrets, shifting loyalties and increasingly risky improvisations strain friendships and blur the line between careful engineering and reckless ambition. Watching Primer is a deliberate, immersive experience: the dialogue is highly technical and economical, the visuals are spare and realistic, and the plot unfolds in a dense, non‑expository manner that rewards close attention and repeated viewings. Expect a slow‑burn tension, overlapping timelines and moral ambiguity rather than clear answers — a puzzle of cause and consequence that challenges you to piece events together and to sit with unresolved, unsettling consequences. If you like puzzles, realist sci‑fi and character‑driven tension more than spectacle, Primer is a compact, uncompromising film that lingers after it ends.

Actors: Shane Carruth, David Sullivan, Casey Gooden

Director: Shane Carruth

Runtime: 77 min

Genres: Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller

6.1 /10 68 /100 6.7 /10 6.5 /10