Time Lapse

So this guy invents a camera that takes pictures one day into the future. It is bulky, bolted to the floor, and uses old Polaroid film, so it only takes pictures of the window of an apartment across the way from where it is installed. Three friends, Callie, Finn, and Jasper, live there, and discover the camera. They see themselves holding up a paper with the results of the greyhound races tomorrow, bet on them, and make a bundle. You will be unsurprised to learn that the pictures of tomorrow eventually begin to be rather odd, showing things that are hard to explain. Now they are locked into posing in the window, re-creating the picture they have already seen …

If you’ve been around long enough, you will probably think of that old Twilight Zone episode, “A Most Unusual Camera.” That story was inspired by the invention of the Polaroid camera. It took pictures only five minutes into the future, and was played mostly for laughs. This is a lot more serious.

In a story like this it helps of one of the three friends is not really very bright. Such as … making all your bets with the same bookie. Come on, did you expect him to keep paying off forever, like a slot machine? There are so many other things you could bet on, and so many places to make your bets. But then we would just have a story about three people getting very rich, wouldn’t we? As in any scenario like this, it gets very complicated, to the point where I wasn’t always sure it was hanging together, but it seemed like they were doing a pretty good job of staying honest with me. I mostly enjoyed this one.