2067 (2020)

Elevator Pitch: An Australian city is the one surviving area of civilisation due to climate change but the oxygen supply results in people dying of the sickness. Salvation may be available due to the development of a time portal. The operators send a radio signal through it and get a message back which is “Send Ethan Whyte”. Chronocorp, the developers of the portal find Ethan and persuade him to be transported 400 years into the future where he finds himself in a lush forest with a skeleton with a hole in its skull, appearing to be him. He eats a poison berry, resulting in his co-worker Jude, being sent through the portal to save him. But Jude has an agenda which may not be good for Ethan.

Content: No sex or nudity, or drinking or smoking. The people in 2067 seem to have a pretty miserable time. We see Ethan as a child witnessing the death of his mother at a shooting, and at various times visions, or holograms of his father who is the scientist who has developed the time portal. Ethan’s wife is suffering from the sickness making his reluctant to go to the future. But he goes and finds himself in a forest, and later is joined by Jude. Together they find the portal which is in a distressed state. It is Ethan’s job to activate it.

A View: I don’t think the writers nailed the time travel problem, particularly the body of Ethan with a hole in the head being discovered by the Ethan whose progress we are following. If I was able to explain the error I would understand time travel, but the best time travel tropes suggest that you should not be able to meet yourself, and this might apply to your own dead body. That’s not the only difficulty. Because of the failure to engage us in the story this is not really a watch, even when doing something else.

Here are three movies which in my view nail the time travel narrative: Source Code, Looper, Hot Tub Time Machine .