I'LL FOLLOW YOU DOWN
Starring Haley Joel Osment, Gillian Anderson
Directed by Richie Mehta
Time travel stories tend to distinguish themselves from other sci-fi fare by proving as reliant on emotion as imagination. In particular, films in which a protagonist revisits the past are capable of deriving considerable power from delving into that question that occasionally taunts us all: “What if?”
Erol (Haley Joel Osment), a Toronto physics genius, believes that he's been left living “the wrong life” due to past events. After his father (Rufus Sewell) disappeared on a business trip a decade earlier, he watched his mother (Gillian Anderson) slip into a deep depression. When tragedy touches his life yet again, Erol discovers that he might possess the means to travel back in time and set things right. However, rewriting history may also result in his relationship with his pregnant girlfriend (Susanna Fournier) never happening.
Bolstered by strong supporting turns from Anderson and Fournier, Osment convinces as an isolated young man who's unspeakably devoted to the few people he holds dear. Consequently, the seemingly impossible decision he finds himself staring down ensures that this speculative fiction is laced with genuine emotion.
Unfortunately, writer-director Richie Mehta proves uninterested in moderating the film's tone, maintaining the same sombre register for every scene. Furthermore, just as the film is cluttered with blackboards displaying endless theories (the chalk budget for this thing must’ve been insane), the script’s thematic concerns are gracelessly expressed through onerous, repetitive dialogue rather than imaginatively incorporated into plot developments that push the story and its concepts in exciting new directions. Consequently, this tale of time travel is rendered dramatically inert.
