Needle in a Timestack (2021)
(On Cable TV, December 2021) As far as low-budget SF films go, there’s a lot of intriguing material in Needle in a Timestack. Taking place in a future where time travel is expensive but commonplace, the film explores the consequences of an existence where the present may be altered abruptly, leaving characters wondering if things have always been that way. For instance, our protagonist’s happy marriage is complicated by the idea that the ex-husband of his wife is rich enough and jealous enough to go back in time to try to get her back. In the film’s rather romantic outlook, characters can sense when things are wrong (such as having a cat rather than a dog) and find themselves longing to fix things. There’s a lot of cold melancholy in writer-director John Ridley’s film (as adapted from SF legend Robert Silverberg’s short story of the same name), and an effective use of SF devices rather than special effects in creating its world. I wasn’t completely convinced by the film’s logic, but so it goes for films more driven by dramatic logic than science fact. (Furthermore, logic and time travel don’t go well together when causality itself is a suggestion.) The cast can be surprising at times, with Leslie Odom Jr. in the lead role, Orlando Bloom as the antagonist and Freida Pinto as one of the two women in their lives. The low budget is used as well as it could, I suppose, although the film could have used a slightly wider scope in order to create its worldbuilding. Still, Needle in a Timestack finds its place among other recent low-budget SF films executed tastefully, with some intriguing dramatic situations made possible by extraordinary devices.
