K-SCORE: 69
Director: Dennis Iliadis
Spoiler Level: Moderate
“there should be permadeaths”
Though compelling, +1 loses control of its premise by the end. The idea is that all of the characters are suddenly cloned about half an hour back in time, so depending on where they are physically, they are more or less likely to encounter their doubles. The relationships between physical space and the two close together timelines, as well as the choices the characters make when confronting their copies kept me interested. They have a lot of good reactions. The protagonist ties his double up. The young girl loner and maybe sociopath has some creepy sexual connection with her double. There’s a guy who is just asleep next to his double the entire film which is really great.
But It really derails when the doubles get “closer in time” to the originals and more clones start dying. Given the fiction, at the end when they merge, some originals have died and some doubles, so there should be permadeaths but there aren’t. Whichever version of a character is alive at the end is deemed “real” and stays to live on. Weak choice and internally inconsistent with much of what +1 presents.
I liked watching this though and the epic teenage party is an interesting and unexpected setting choice to explore this sci-fi time travel mini-premise.