Time Freak (2018)

Time Freak (aka Time After Time) review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso

Time travel can be a unique concept for a film is trying to stress a certain theme. In Back to the Future, one teenager learns that his parents used to be just like him. In See You Yesterday, a teen duo try to prevent police brutality in their community but find that no matter what they do, the systemic racism keeps the violent cycle going. But with Time Freak, it’s about trying to fix a relationship. This is not even a theme that inexplicably comes about. This is the whole drive.

This isn’t even a completely original idea of staging a romance amid time travel. The film About Time also attempted this with mixed results. The results of Time Freak, however, are far less stellar, especially when considering the talent involved. Asa Butterfield plays Stillman, a physics student who just can’t get over the fact that he was dumped. Rather than move on, he decides to take his expertise in building a time machine to go back and try to mend his shattered relationship with Debbie, played by Sophie Turner. Imagine having developed one of the most remarkable inventions in the history of mankind and using it for the sole purpose of trying to nab a do-over with your ex-girlfriend.

And from here your brain can pretty much fill in the blanks of how this story will go down. Stillman will attempt multiple times to figure out how he screwed up his relationship through a series of trial and error. It all sounds like fun until the time machine breaks and then, uh oh, time to play this relationship for keeps, as if he shouldn’t have been doing that this whole time. It takes a whole development of a time machine to learn the one thing most people learn by their late 20s that you just gotta accept your destiny. Maybe things will work out and maybe they won’t. In this case, everything works out for the character so there can a happy ending. And as much as I hate the idea of rewriting movies, the idea of Stillman failing feels as though it would resonate so much more.

Time Freak doesn’t find little else past its initial concept of time-travel romance which is meandering at best and stalkerish at its worst. One part of the film features Stillman trying too hard to make sure Debbie is happy and their perfect life only makes her unhappy. Everybody has to learn eventually that the whole idea of trying to redo the future will have unintended consequences, just like relationships which can either go onto marriage or die before such a step. This is a picture that gives a generation the cheat codes for romance. And just like any video game where you enable god mode, there comes a time where you tire of the immense power and desire a challenge. Time Freak never quite rises to that occasion and loses out on finding something more than the painfully obvious of such an ordeal.