I’ll Follow You Down aka Continuum (2014)
(On Cable TV, November 2019) As a Science Fiction fan and relapsing critic, one of the most exciting developments in the genre throughout the 2010s has been the emergence and maintenance of a stream of low-budget SF movies focused more on character-driven emotional issues than whiz-bang spectacle. They’re really not always good (some of them are, in fact, quite terrible) but they offer a more mature than usual, less thunderous alternative to the special-effects extravaganzas privileged by Hollywood studios. I’ll Follow You Down is one such film, focusing on a time-travel premise not as an excuse to strangle baby Hitler, but to help a young man find closure about his missing father. Gillian Anderson stars (this not being the sole small-scale SF film in her filmography) as the mother of the protagonist, although a grown-up child star Haley Joel Osment may earn the most attention as the tale’s protagonist. Alas, despite writer-director Richie Mehta’s best intentions, I’ll Follow You Down does fall flat. The stakes are clear but rarely exploited, Osment doesn’t quite have the intensity required of the role, the film does fall into clichés (not all of them science-fictional), and the ending is a muddled unsatisfying mess that loses itself attempting to do something other than the expected. (Here’s a note to those filmmakers mulling small-scale SF movies: The expected is forgivable if it makes audiences happy. That it all.) Time-travel films work best with, appropriately enough, a deadline of sorts to meet and I’ll Follow You Down is far too laid-back to crank up that ticking-clock element. The cinematography is also quite reserved, meaning that there’s no execution bonus to compensate for an underwhelming substance. But while I’m somewhat disappointed in the result, I’m still upbeat about the existence of the film (a Canadian production!) as a further data point that the Science Fiction genre is perfectly viable—and interesting—to filmmakers without a sizable special effects budget: it’s always about the characters and how the science fictional premise affects them.
