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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Perfect_Timing (7 months ago) Reply

Having just seen this screened at the SF Independent Film Festival (SFIndiefest), I can clearly and loudly proclaim that the above review is, at best, mistaken, and at worst a blatant miscategorization. Perhaps they saw an early edit screener that was changed, but all the questions and flubs that they claim to be problematic are very clearly and adequately explained during the film (some, in fact, in the beginning voiceover during the initial title sequence). The students are experimenting with multiverse theory and alternate realities and at no time claim to be attempting time travel. There is explicit language that the trip is one way. My only gripe in terms of glitches is that the “dead” character’s cell phone works just fine 5 months after the fact. I thought it was pretty decent, particularly for an independent film and the characters were fairly compelling. Though far from perfect, “bland” is a bit of an understatement.

Baffled (7 months ago) Reply

First line of the film (in V.O): "You've heard about Multiverse Theory, right?" Mulitverse theory is explained several times during the movie (just in case). Time travel, never uttered. Did you watch the movie, or just read the erroneous synopsis in the festival program?

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