Hi everyone!
Taking a quick break in Netflix Original reviews for another Fantastic Fest review from Andrew Campbell. I feel like I’ve seen this film before. Maybe a few times. But I haven’t. Or have I? I should watch it again, just to make sure.
For a few other Fantastic Fest reviews, check out “Mid90s” (Episode #411), “Suspiria” (Episode #418), “Anna and the Apocalypse” (Episode #425) with One Fantastic Spouse, and “Tumbbad” (Episode #432).
Here we go! Again!
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Hello film fans!
Andrew here - back this week with a time-traveling curiosity out of Mexico that illustrates how awesome low-budget sci-fi can be. OK, quick confession: time-travel may very well be my favorite subgenre. Any film that decently deploys the manipulation of time through any means gets a few extra points in my book. As a child of the 80s, this infatuation began with “Flight of the Navigator”, the first “Bill & Ted”, and the “Back to the Future” franchise. Over the last decade-plus, some of my favorite films in every genre have had a time-bending element: from ultra-low budget indies like “Primer” to big-budget action films like “Edge of Tomorrow”; and from the horror of “Timecrimes” to the woefully underrated romantic film, “About Time”. Any movie that revolves around a unique take on the concept of time has my interest.
Today’s movie is “The Incident”, the Spanish language film written and directed by Isaac Ezban. “The Incident” made its North American debut at the 2014 Fantastic Fest. Right off the bat, I’ll tell you that it’s best to go into this film blind. That means “no trailer”, “no plot synopsis”, heck, pause time, go check this one out and come on back. I’ll wait…
The film features two seemingly unconnected stories that share several common themes. Marco (Raul Mendez), a police officer, has two brothers who are suspected of robbery pinned down in the stairwell of a nine-story apartment building. Elsewhere, Daniel (Gabriel Santoyo) is a young boy on a family car trip through the desolate Mexican desert who is about to see his day go off the rails. Both mysteries begin to deepen as we explore a new reality.
The film starts with a police officer visiting our two crooks in an apartment in a pedestrian scene that would be a great red herring if no one watched trailers or listened to this review. The men become locked in a stairwell and then… well, that’s as far as I can go. Insert time-bending device here. Through some simple yet stunning imagery, the director reveals what’s occurring in this claustrophobic space. We then switch to an entirely different story of a family experiencing their own eerie circumstances out on a dusty, rural highway. The film alternates between both tales beautifully and, over time, inevitably reveals the connective tissue between the two.
The conceit of this film is so much fun that its issues really don’t crop up until the final minutes. The way the stories are eventually connected somehow manages to be both heavy-handed and indecipherable. There’s an extended scene where it all comes together and perhaps it’s the translation from Spanish or my confusion with some of the characters, but I had to go check Wikipedia afterward to fill in my gaps of understanding. This confusion underscores the film’s other weakness: the characters are one-dimensional. The audience really isn’t given much to root for and the characters don’t have much of an arc. So where the ending didn’t really land for me, I did enjoy the journey and that’s mostly what I find worthwhile in tales like this one.
What makes “The Incident” fantastic?
Low-budget time-manipulation flicks, and there’s no shortage of them on Netflix, often have a cool concept, but they look like a student film or the acting is atrocious or they completely lose steam after 30 minutes; or some combination of the three. “The Incident” offers up a unique take on time and reality without falling into the traps that plague similar indie films. This story is primed for an English-language remake that can provide more clarity to the plot and more depth to the characters. Until then, I was excited to learn that writer/director Isaac Ezban has another film streaming on Netflix called “The Similars” and is making the festival circuit now with a film called “Parallel”, both of which sound like they are playing in the same sandbox.
“The Incident” (2014) is a high-concept sci-fi thinker that went under the radar five years ago. Fans of time-travel and alternate universes who have enjoyed any of the films I already mentioned absolutely must add this one to their watchlist.
Rotten Tomatoes: 83%
Metacritic: NR
One Movie Punch: 8.4/10
“The Incident” (2014) is not rated and is currently streaming on Netflix.
Come back next week when I’ll be reviewing “Between Worlds”, because 2018 Fantastic Fest would not have been complete without an insane performance from Nic Cage on the heels of the highly-praised “Mandy”. I’ll let you know if the Nic-Cage-aissance is in full swing or if this one lines up with the straight-to-streaming B-movie trash he’s been blessing us with multiple times each year. I’ll see you then.
