Marina Antunes [Film Festival 12.12.19] scifi drama



Munro Chambers really impressed earlier this year with a stellar performance in the hugely entertaining Harpoon (review) so when his name appeared on the credit list of Entangled, I was instantly drawn to the movie which on closer review, sounded like it would be right up my alley.


Chambers, along with Paloma Kwiatkowski, Robert Naylor, and Sandra Mae Frank, star as a group of college students experimenting with time travel. Their experiments yield results but they don't realize just how successful their experiments are until months after one of them is tragically killed in a car accident and the dead colleague appears seemingly out of nowhere and carries on as if nothing has changed when in fact she's been dead for five months. Soon, the entire group is dealing with doppelgangers of themselves who have nefarious motivations - namely killing the present version of themselves.



The concept sounds promising and writers Michael MacKenzie and Doug Taylor have some great ideas and an interesting thriller at the centre of their story but Entangled has a number of major story problems. One issue is character motivation; there's never an explanation as to why the doppelgangers want to eliminate themselves. Sure, there's some discussion about how two versions of a person can't survive on the same existence and one of them will ultimately die but why don't the doppelgangers just go back?


What's more, the movie begins as a story about time travel but in the final act, we discover that one of the doppelgangers has a significant physical trait that does not appear in her present-day counterpart. So wait... is Entangled a time travel or a multiple universe movie? I don't know and I'm not sure the writers know either.


One could probably overlook this story flub if Entangled was completely engrossing but the movie never really takes off. The direction is serviceable but unmemorable, the story interesting but with a few too many inconsistencies and the acting is, for the most part, flat. Chambers and Mae Frank are by far the most engaging of the actors but their counterparts are all so bland that their energy feels like it's being sucked into an alternate universe.


The concept is intriguing but Entangled is a dud featuring a couple of interesting performances that are lost in the mix. It's not so egregious that it's infuriating but it also doesn't offer enough of interest for a recommendation.

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