Like arty thrillers Pi and Memento, Primer is an exercise in style, with one of those puzzle-plots to twist your brain. If the film has anything going for it, it's writer-director Shane Carruth's distinct visuals.
But where Darren Aronofsky (Pi) and Christopher Nolan (Memento) ask interesting questions and engage us to follow them into the labyrinth of their worlds, Carruth pushes us away. He's not content showing us how intelligent his movie is, he also must tell us. An endless string of techno-babble is flung at us, which starts out as merely frustrating, but soon becomes outright repellent. After a while, we just stop caring.
It would help if we had more appealing characters as our tour guides. Abe (David Sullivan) and Aaron (Carruth again) are driven entrepreneurs who like to fiddle with engineering equipment in their garage. We never learn exactly what their latest invention is, but it produces some interesting side effects. At first, their passion and discovery is infectious, but soon their friends and family begin to suffer and we realize these are very narcissistic people.
What ensues is part science fiction and part thriller, all under the guise of clever filmmaking. Carruth is counting on audiences making the assumption that since his movie is essentially about an intellectual journey, it also must be an intellectual movie. But making a film about intelligence doesn't necessarily mean the film has any.