It’s been a while since we last a quirky independent science-fiction film and what could be more indie than a project in which the two directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead are also the lead actors. This project was made with a tiny budget and involved no one who is well known. Nonetheless it earned sufficient notice and praise from critics to make it worth paying attention to.

Justin and Aaron are brothers who get by doing menial cleaning work and the younger Aaron in particular is miserable. One day they receive a video message from a member of a commune that they once belonged to, which makes Aaron long to go back. Justin however remembers them as a UFO death cult but is convinced to return just for a day. When they arrive at the place, called Camp Arcadia, they are warmly welcomed and Aaron is attracted to a woman there, Anna. Justin notices that the residents have not aged since they left about 10 years ago and they later participate in a camp activity that involves a tug of war with the other end of the rope leading into the sky. More and more strange occurrences the next day and they get the impression that there is a large, invisible entity watching them from above. Eventually they witness two full moons in the sky and it is explained to them that the entire camp lies within a sort of time loop.

Despite a certain amateurish quality to the production, the initial setup works well enough and there’s even a nice H.P. Lovecraft quote to set the mood and hint at what they’re aiming for. The premise of a pair of brothers going back to a cult that they left years ago is a promising one and I liked the idea of a seemingly friendly camp hiding a dark secret. Unfortunately as is often the case with these things, setting up the mystery is easier than delivering a satisfying payoff and the real situation as is eventually explained on screen lacks any kind of logical consistency. For example, even if it is a time loop, the people trapped in it clearly retain their memories and their volition so why is it that in some cases, they are compelled to repeat the same actions over and over again? Also the timeline for the brothers’ previous stay in the cult doesn’t make sense at all. Presumably they stayed for some time as part of the commune, so why weren’t they trapped along with the others back then?

The film does try for a bit of serious drama by developing the relationship between the two brothers but it fell flat for me as neither are particularly gifted actors. In fact, what is striking throughout is that they don’t seem alarmed enough at the patent impossibility that they witness nor do they seem to have much of a sense of urgency even when it’s clear that they are working on a time limit. But probably the film’s biggest fault is that the entity doesn’t seem malicious enough. At one point Aaron even points that the time loop seems like an easy way to achieve immortality, at the cost of suffering pain due to dying at the end of each loop. I don’t think Justin has a satisfactory rebuttal to that. In fact, the situation here doesn’t even feel much like a time loop to me. It’s more like each group is permanently trapped in their own pocket dimension or something which makes endless existence simply boring. There’s a kind of existential horror there that’s worth exploring but the film doesn’t do that well either.

I read that the directors have previously made a film that shares some similarities. I haven’t watched that one as I’ve never heard of it but a quick reading of the plot summary makes it sound much more horrific to me. As it is, this one has a core idea that is probably only worth a Twilight Zone episode or something rather than a full-blown film. I do like that there are indie producers who develop science-fiction films like this, but that doesn’t mean that they are all good and this one isn’t.