“Primer” is quite possibly the dullest time-travel movie ever made. I can imagine it appealing to people that understand advanced theoretical physics but for the rest of us, this a boring film with dialog that is almost impossible to understand.

Four entrepreneur friends are struggling to come up with an invention that can make them money. They decide to split into two teams and that leads them to a shocking creation. Aaron (Shane Carruth) and Abe (David Sullivan “Argo”) do not quite realise what they have accomplished at first but they have made a device that can allow them to travel backwards through time. They start experimenting with the machine, hoping to exploit it use to make money but it could have disastrous consequences.

The characters in “Primer” have no real distinguishable personalities and they have the most indecipherable physics conversations. Characters in sci-fi movies can explain complex ideas (look at “Event Horizon”, “Gattaca”, “Blade Runner” etc…) but I was just completely lost listening to these men. The fact that they also are not interesting as characters made me care even less about what they were saying. If you are going to do a film with only a small group of characters, you need to make sure that there is as interesting as possible and the writers of “Primer” have just failed here as far I am concerned.

The concept of time-travel is fascinating and it has been explored in many entertaining films and tv shows such as “Star Trek”, “The Terminator”, “Dr. Who” and “The Twilight Zone”. However, the makers of “Primer” just seem so fixated on creating a really detailed explanation of everything that they forgot to actually make the movie enjoyable. As it is, this is a painful watch because it is so undeniably boring. I’m all for movies that challenge us such as “Dark City”, “The Prestige” and “Fight Club” but the only thing this challenged was my attention span.