No Substance #188: Sam Odlum’s Time Addicts
1.
I found myself watching a film called Time Addicts a couple of weeks ago. It’s a small Australian movie about a pair of crack addicts, Denise and Johnny, who are hired to sneak into a rundown house to steal a bag of drugs, the contents of which are somewhat ill defined. Once inside the house, they become trapped and, unsurprisingly, smoke some of what’s in the bag.
A few seconds later, they disappear into time.
I know how this sounds.
I know that I just told you that there’s this film about crack addicts that smoke some shit and go through time and I’m presenting it to you like you should watch this film.
And I am.
It’s actually a pretty good.
2.
I love time loop films. A good time loop film is like a little puzzle, a locked room mystery, and for some reason, I just can’t get enough of it. I saw Groundhog Day as a teenager and I guess it left something in me, though the real film that did it for me, the one that seeded this love for the repetitive narrative, was Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run. I must’ve been nineteen when that came out and I remember watching it a couple of times in the cinema, in love with the whole thing, the logic, the energy, the way still photos were used to show different lives, the music, and of course, Franka Potente running and running. After that, there’s been a bunch of them that I’ve loved, from Edge of Tomorrow, Looper, Happy Death Day, Timecrimes, Palm Springs, and my personal favourite, Primer.
There is a neatness to time loop films I enjoy. I guess that’s what gets me. A good time loop works, if you’ll forgive the comparison, like the gears in a watch. Every piece fits together. Every piece moves another. I am not, by nature, someone who likes to have everything explained to him, or demands it, or even wants it. Generally, I like loose ends and ambiguity. But a good time loop film isn’t about that. Sure, it can leave a few untidy bits, or something unexplained, but mostly it has plot points to hit, moments to cut back on and expose differently. In an ideal time loop, every part touches the other and forces movement. The joy, or at least my joy, is watching that unfold.
3.
Time Addicts is a low budget film. I suppose now we’d call it an independent film, or something like that, but some independent films have huge budgets and casts and I just prefer small or low budget films. Also: Time Addicts largely takes place inside a single house and has a cast of four, plus some extras. It’s a little, lean thing, made on a limited budget.
It’s a smartly made film. You don’t often get to say that these days, that a film that leans into its constraints and uses them well, but Odlum does here. He uses the single set of the house and its furniture and set design to convey to the eras of the film, which are mostly limited to now, the 1990s, and the 2050s. I must admit some mild horror that the 90s is now a destination for time travellers who can inadvertently run into their parents – was there a memo that said I was old and movies would now seek to take aim at me and I somehow missed it? Pretty sure I only agreed that films were meant to go back and meet their parents in 1948 or something like that. Though there’s probably someone out there saying, please, 1920s.
At any rate, Time Addicts might use drugs but isn’t really a drug film. The drug aspect of it is pretty much the gimmick that allows the time travel, and all the other tropes of drug films are pushed to the edges, or ignored. You’ll not find any babies crawling on the ceiling, or horrifying scenes of addiction playing themselves out. The film is, by and large, a thriller comedy, or mystery comedy really, and Freya Tingley (Denise) and Charles Grounds (Johnny) play a lot of their role for laughs, especially Grounds, whose Johnny is the largely inept raconteur of the two who hasn’t had a good idea in his head, ever. Tingley’s Denise is somewhat more grounded, and is the heart of the film, where all the emotional beats take place.
Time Addicts is largely about family. At its edges it sermonises a bit on drugs, about the causes of addiction and how they ruin family, but it’s arguable that that’s a by product of the narrative itself rather than the intention of Odlum. Mostly, though, it’s about understanding your parents, and trying not to make their mistakes, a theme that helps keep the film centred while Denise and Johnny pull out their crack pipes, light up, and shuffle through time. And it has that nice clockwork precision through it, of each piece slipping into the other, knocking on and creating a whole that loops together. It is, perhaps, a bit unsure of itself in some places, and relies on a few cheap tricks to make it all work, but largely it does and it’s pretty satisfying when the reveals start to click into place. It’s not Primer, or Run Lola Run, the two films I think are the best comparisons, but it’s a nice addition to the time loop genre that they are part of. Actually, you know what, I think I’d add Palm Springs to this list. I thought Palm Springs was a smart film that uses its resort setting well, and is also well worth a watch, if you haven’t seen it.
But Time Addicts first, I think.
4.
There won’t be a newsletter next week. I’m having a small hand surgery later this week and they’re going to splint up my hand afterwards. It’s nothing serious, but it’ll probably be like that for a week or so, and it’ll make typing a drag, so I’ll skip. Depending on how things go, I might skip the following week as well, but hopefully not. At any rate, my plan is to take it easy and enjoy whatever pain killers I’m given.
Be well.
Ben
(Ben Peek is the author The Godless, Twenty-Six Lies/One Truth, and Dead Americans and Other Stories, amongst others. His next book will be The Red Labyrinth. His short fiction has appeared in Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, Nightmare, Polyphony, and Overland, as well as various Year’s Best Books. He’s the creator of the psychogeography ‘zine The Urban Sprawl Project. He also wrote an autobiographical comic called Nowhere Near Savannah, illustrated by Anna Brown. He lives in Sydney, Australia.)