Counter Clockwise (2016) Reviews

• If you liked Primer, you'll like this.

  moonlit-42017-02-18

  This is an indie sci-fi time travel / psychological thriller movie with an obviously low budget. The action scenes in particular could be more convincing but they contribute to the whole in a weird sort of way. As a nerd I happened to love this movie, especially the way it made me laugh at certain things and because I thought those were the things the director wanted me to laugh at! You may or may not catch some of the details that made me enjoy it more, but a mind for subtleties is surely required to appreciate the this work. Recommended especially for people that have, or like to think they have, a degree of OCD.

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• Tries to be a cult film...maybe in the future

  judejay-279892017-02-18

  This is very stylish film, perhaps a little heavy handed in its surreal filming, but it's populated by a very human cast, that brings it all down to earth. Nice questions raised, which are never really fully answered, and gives you a nudge to sort it out for yourself. I think it asks a lot from the audience, which is why the low score on here. I never do much reviewing, but I thought I'd put this one up, because if you've not seen this you really should check it out.

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• Back to the drawing board....

  MrGKB2017-08-17

  ...please and thank you, this lo-fi effort definitely needed some serious rewriting to create a viable story, never mind the necessary re-casting of a more appealing lead. I realize this was essentially a vanity project (and really, not a badly conceived one), but if the execution isn't relatively flawless, such things typically end up frustrating and confusing. "Counter Clockwise" is no exception to this rule of thumb. I won't spoil things for those who want to take a shot at this tale of time-travel paradoxes, but will mention that no one is likely to grok this film on one viewing. Sadly, it's just not worth sitting through a second time to figure things out, let alone try to digest much of the low-rent Tarantino exchanges between the nebbish lead and the various cut-out characters he encounters in his time- warping travels. Of interest strictly to time-travel completists.

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• Intriguing Triangle until the end

  bychrisphillips2019-02-04

  Counter Clockwise is an indie film, however, it is well done. It paints a very interesting puzzle that you hope will be solved all the way until the end. Michael Kopelow plays a scientist named Ethan. At the beginning, Ethan and his lab partner are working on an early stage teleportation device. Their first attempt on a live subject is with a small dog with an ejected tracking device. The system says that it's successful, but the dog doesn't reappear. Ethan goes home and we meet his wife. Ethan orders flowers for his mother for upcoming birthday. He goes to the liquor store to buy some wine. When he's leaving the store, someone being chased bumps into Ethan and his wine falls and shatters on the ground. The shattering of the wine bottle is the first clue that something has gone wrong. And this is an important clue that the viewer isn't aware of until much later, if at all. The next scene, Ethan is ordering flowers for his mother's upcoming birthday party. On the cam feed from his lab we see that the teleported dog has reappeared in the transporter. Ethan goes to the lab and finds his dog, alive and well. Ethan leaves his partner a voice message that the dog returned. Ethan, of course, injects himself with a tracker and tries to teleport himself for very disastrous results. Ethan finds himself 6 months in the future and into a timeline that his lab is now owned by another company, his house for rent, he's accused of killing his wife and sister, and his mother is in a coma after a stroke. What is really intriguing about the story is not the time travel, it's more about Ethan trying to unravel what has happened to his life and how to put it back together without making things worse. Ethan is a rather unreliable narrator. He is prone to fantasies, which his mother says to him in one scene that he's been driving her crazy since he was a child. So, is Ethan really transporting himself into the future, or has he simply gone mad and killed his wife and sister? At one point, his old boss says they downloaded all his data and all they saw was a tracking device that's completely undetected. So, is it a teleporter? A tracker? A time machine? However, soon we realize that Ethan is really stuck in a loop that started before he ever stepped into the teleporter. We later realize that the person that bumps into Ethan in front of the liquor store is himself running from corporate bad-guys. Another clue that he's stuck in a loop is that the first time he sees his lab partner after using the teleporter, she tells him that he keeps going back. For him, it's the first time so he's confused and so is the viewer. Since Ethan has a tracker, the lab partner has been keeping tabs on him and she says Ethan has used the machine "again." After watching until the end, I realized that the movie wasn't just about Ethan time traveling, it was also about his sanity unraveling. As he desperately tries to fix the murder of his wife and sister and illness of his mother, he slowly unravels the story of what happened, but seems to be unable to fix any of it. In that sense, it reminded me a lot about the Australian movie Triangle (2009) with Melissa George. In Triangle, Melissa plays a grieving mother that finds herself in a mystery and a time loop and no matter how far back she goes, she finds herself in the loop. Ethan is a similar loop, so the story is non-linear as he jumps back and forth to reveal what happened after he tries the transporter.

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• A Mess

  LLgoatJ2017-03-07

  I really love films concerning time travel so was looking forward to watching this. Unfortunately it was a mess. I know nothing about making films or directing but even I could tell it was badly edited and poor techniques. It really felt like a school project than an actual film. Other reviewer has compared it to Primer but at least that film looks professional and is actually a decent if complex film to watch. Anyway I would avoid this film. It really is a mess with poor acting, poor editing and a plot that makes no sense and is unbelievable. The numbers going across the computer screen when they use the "teleport" is 1980s portrayal of computers.

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