Primer gains its seductive power by leaving the solution tantalizingly out of reach.

| Jun 16, 2017

Primer is off-putting: in trying to be elusive it's simply obstructive.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 16, 2017

An exhilarating, disturbing and funny experience.

| Jun 16, 2017

Mind-bending thrillers like Primer are terrific viewing with your teenagers. Maybe if you're nice, they'll explain the ending to you.

| Feb 8, 2008

Scary, puzzling, and different.

| Jun 4, 2007

This film imagines its viewers to be smart, possessed of a decent attention span and game for a challenge. It doesn't happen all that often.

| Feb 9, 2006

It's easy (and exhilarating) to be caught up by its possibilities.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 17, 2006

Not recommended for entry-level time-travel theorists, but experienced 'chrononauts' will meet themselves scratching their heads in amused puzzlement as they emerge from an earlier screening.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 19, 2005

One of the most wilfully obscure sci-fi movies ever made, Primer will either blow your mind or drive you out of it.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 9, 2005

Unrelentingly boring.

| Original Score: C- | May 4, 2005

An unapologetically cerebral movie of ideas.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 3, 2004

It's one thing to admire what writer/director/composer/actor Shane Carruth wrought on his $1.98 digicam budget; it's quite another to have to sit through the mind-numbing results.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 3, 2004

A jigsaw puzzle made of pieces that may or may not fit together, it assumes the intelligence and interest of its audience, a brave move that pays off big.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Nov 12, 2004

Carruth challenges us to imagine the impossible, then asks us to consider the moral, ethical and spiritual implications of what we have witnessed, and put those considerations on equal footing with man's desire to go where no man has gone before.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 12, 2004

It is maddening, fascinating and completely successful.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 29, 2004

Has such an engaging, offbeat first half that it's all the more frustrating when it gets lost inside its own convolutions and delayed revelations.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Oct 28, 2004

It's hard to always know what Primer is saying or where it's heading, but it looks fantastic while it unfolds and you won't be able to forget what you've witnessed.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 24, 2004

Incredibly confusing but oddly compelling.

| Oct 22, 2004

The first thing Shane Carruth should have done as a director was fire himself as an actor, because I think he gives a terrible performance.

Full Review | Oct 19, 2004

It's dense, and in a way that doesn't begin to reward the effort required to untie it.

| Oct 15, 2004