This is a plea that goes beyond even normal spoiler warnings. Magnet (the new genre label formed by Magnolia pictures) has put together a domestic trailer for the Spanish science fiction thriller TimeCrimes. The give all the goods in the trailer. Not in the same manner the Quarantine (remake of [*REC]) trailer shows the final sequence of the film buried in an montage, no, this trailer gives you all the mystery in the form of big BOLD intertitles. TimeCrimes is a strange and rewarding viewing experience. It lets the concept runs way ahead of the viewers understanding, then lets the viewer in on things, then run ahead of it again, and so forth. If you watch the film in a full theatre, you’ll hear ‘aha’ and chuckles when people catch up with the game, or the movie pulls a clever turn on expectations. But it seems ludicrous to give many of those elements away in the trailer. And the trailer would be totally fine visually if those intertitles were dropped.

I love the selection of films that Magnet is on board with. They are giving the original Let the Right One In a theatrical release in North America. They are releasing crazy genre stuff like Dianipponjin (deadpan Japanese monster movie) and Mirage Man (Chilean superhero martial arts flick), Olivier Assayas’ Boarding Gate and they just picked up the Thai autistic-martial arts film Chocolate to give it a theatrical push in the land that hates subtitles.

But.

I find the TimeCrimes marketing strategy to be not good. Not good at all.

Thoughts on the film from Fantasia ’08:
TimeCrimes is a nearly impossible film to talk about without spoiling the fun. Suffice it to say that I cannot remember the last time I saw a film that interacts with its audience in such a novel way. It makes you feel smart while watching it because it rewards those paying attention and hand-holds those that are not in the most subtle of ways. In the full house screening it was quite joyful to hear the different grunts and giggles as folks started to comprehend the gears in this particular swiss watch. Timecrimes may not have anything really to say, it actually offers a pretty vicious brand of nihilism which would probably make Michael Haneke crack a grin, but it plays to its strength of solid, solid plotting. It is a puzzle-box film in the best sense of the term and it can play quite confidently in the same sandbox with Memento, Run Lola Run, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead, and Primer.

(Thanks to our fine pals over at Quiet Earth for pointing to the trailer so I can warn y’all away from it!)