Primer is a tale about scientists run amok, only these scientists are working engineers just hoping to come up with a moneymaker.

Abe (David Sullivan) and Aaron (Shane Carruth) have boring day jobs, but at night and on the weekend they work on entrepreneurial notions in their garage lab.

Initially, there are four guys in the group, but once Abe and Aaron stumble upon something that looks promising, they go it alone and lose the other two.

After a lot of chat and much footage of the two men looking amazed, it turns out that their promising new discovery is a widget that blocks gravitational pull and has time travel possibilities.

As soon as they build a gizmo large enough to hold a person, they begin to manipulate past, present and future, and without meaning to, they alter their own lives in ways they could never have foreseen.

Problem: As none of the characters in Primer is fully developed you won't much care what they experience.

Primer was filmed in Dallas over a few weeks and has a pronounced low-effect look and atmosphere. It's a tiny-budget indie film with an interesting sci-fi story premise. Too bad the mystery overwhelms the humanity, so it doesn't quite work. Still, the film has an air of intrigue and it requires sleuthing on the part of the viewer.

As for that sleuthing, the detail-conscious might like to know that the film opens in theatres here with a special offer: If you pay to see Primer once, you can see it again free just by showing up with your original ticket stub.

And you might very well want to do that.

(This film is rated G)
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