Time Lapse

Finn, a painter who is wrestling with a creative block, shares a cramped life in an apartment complex where he serves as the building’s manager, living with his girlfriend Callie and their best friend Jasper. When an elderly tenant, Mr. Bezzerides, stops paying rent, Callie checks on him and uncovers a suspicious setup: a large camera aimed steadily at their living room window. The device spits out a daily Polaroid that shows events that will unfold twenty-four hours in the future, always stamped with the time 8:00 p.m. This eerie fixture becomes the trio’s unsettling anchor, a window into what is to come.

The investigation takes a darker turn when they discover Mr. Bezzerides’s charred body in his storage unit, surrounded by scattered notes hinting that straying from the events captured by the photos could invite death. Convinced that they must mirror each image exactly to avoid a paradox, they begin to recreate every shot, even using the gambling tips that the photos reveal. Finn finds a spark of renewed purpose as his art flows from painting the scenes depicted in the camera’s images, turning the future into something tangible on canvas. Tension thickens when a future picture hints at Callie sharing a kiss with Jasper, threatening the fragile balance of their relationships.

Trouble intensifies when Ivan, Jasper’s bookie, learns about the machine and pressures the trio to leverage it for gambling profits, threatening to withhold each new photo for his own gain. After a cryptic image of skull and crossbones appears, Jasper begins arming himself for potential violence. When Ivan turns violent, Jasper shoots him and his recruited enforcer, Marcus, and the pair conceal the bodies, escalating the group’s peril and moral compromise.

The plot thickens further when Dr. Heidecker, a colleague of Mr. Bezzerides, reveals a startling possibility: the camera can be reprogrammed to take images that advance more than a day into the future. A prior photo sent by Bezzerides before his death suggests the machine is safe unless physically damaged, but Jasper remains skeptical and ultimately kills Heidecker as the risk seems to escalate.

A new photograph shows Jasper and Callie engaged in sex while Finn lies unconscious, prompting Jasper to assault Finn and lock him in the storage unit. Finn eventually escapes, confronts Jasper, and is saved only when Callie ends Jasper’s life. The balance of power shifts again as Finn uncovers a harder truth: Callie has been using additional morning photos—taken at 8:00 a.m.—to send messages back to her past self, manipulating events and erasing or shaping past encounters with Jasper. With this revelation, Finn tries to destroy the machine, but Callie shoots him, sealing the fate hinted at by the now-bloodstained window from an earlier image.

Believing a reset is possible, Callie writes a warning note and posts it on the window for her past self to see. Her plan is thwarted when security guard Big Joe, who is now a police officer, arrests her, and the note falls out of sight, unseen. The camera continues to churn out images, printing the very note Bezzerides had sent Heidecker and leaving one final, unrevealed snapshot to close the story. In the end, the machine’s power to shadow the future remains, leaving the living room window—and the lives of Finn, Callie, and Jasper—haunted by what might have been.

Last Updated: October 09, 2025 at 16:16