I’ll Follow You Down

In 2000, Gabe, a professor from Toronto, travels to Princeton for a conference and vanishes without a trace. He is eventually presumed dead, leaving his wife Marika Whyte and their young son Erol devastated by the unexplained disappearance.

In the years that follow, Marika and Erol grieve and struggle to cope with Gabe's absence, living with unanswered questions. The family endures a long, unresolved void as others assume Gabe is gone.

In 2012, twelve years after Gabe disappeared, Erol, now a mathematical prodigy, speaks with his grandfather Sal. Sal suggests that Gabe's fate could be linked to time travel, planting the seed for Erol's obsession.

Motivated by Sal's idea, Erol decides to recreate a time-travel machine and set out to travel back to 1946. He begins assembling the device with Sal's help, turning grief into a calculated mission.

As Erol works, his relationship with Grace becomes central to the story, and she becomes pregnant, adding emotional stakes to the dangerous project. The work on the machine intertwines with personal life and raises questions about whether the past can be changed.

Grace experiences a miscarriage, a blow that underscores the high personal cost of pursuing time travel. The tragedy reinforces Erol's understanding that the timeline may be fragile and responsive to their actions.

Back in Gabe's timeline, Marika commits suicide, overwhelmed by the unexplained absence of her husband. The event deepens the family's grief and strengthens the sense that actions across time create real consequences.

With renewed vigor, Erol finishes the time machine and prepares for the journey back to 1946. He commits to meeting his father and changing the story that led to so much pain.

Erol uses the machine to travel to 1946 and encounters Gabe, who is in that era and searching for Albert Einstein, hoping to complete a line of work Einstein began. Erol reveals his identity and explains how Gabe's absence created the chain of events they have just discussed.

Erol's revelation is intense, and he explains the cascade of events that followed Gabe's disappearance. He urges Gabe to return home and give the family the life they deserve, confronting the possibility that his choices must be changed.

Sensing that words won't persuade Gabe, Erol sacrifices himself by shooting, dying instantly, to burn a message into Gabe's mind. The act creates a permanent memory of the mission and the necessity to act.

Guided by the burned memory, Gabe resolves to go back and prevent all of this from happening. He prepares to alter the past in order to protect his family and rewrite the timeline.