Primer

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Shane Carruth directs. Troy Dick behind the camera. Shane Carruth cuts. Runs lean at under 100 minutes. Made its budget back several times over at the box office. Produced in United States of America. Dialogue in English, French.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

• 1Tight 77-minute runtime — shorter than most television pilots.
• 2Shot for just $0.0M — micro-budget by Hollywood standards.
• 3Grossed $1M — a 77.9× return. The kind of profit studios chase for a decade.
• 4Released 22 years ago.
• 5Dialogue crosses 2 languages: English, French.
• 6Lean credit list — fewer than 30 people officially credited.
• 7Directed by Shane Carruth, shot by Troy Dick. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
• 8Editor Shane Carruth shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
• 9Shane Carruth and David Sullivan and Casey Gooden carry the top of the cast.
• 10Marketing tagline: "What happens if it actually works?".
• 11IMDB entry: tt0390384 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
• 12Classified under 10 themes, including "distrust", "garage", "mathematics", "identity crisis".

The technical file

Cinematography

Troy Dick

Editing

Shane Carruth

Production design

Shane Carruth

Sound

Shane Carruth

Runtime

77 min · 1h 17m

Aspect ratio (typical)

1.37:1 (Academy)

Status

Released

Budget

$7,000

Box office

$545,436

Return

7792% of budget

Original language

EN

Certification (US)

PG-13

IMDB

Primer (2004) ↗

Also by

Shane Carruth

• 
  Upstream Color

  2013 · ★ 6.3
• 
  Breakthrough

  2015 · ★ 6.0

Stills · wallpapers

Selected frames

Full-resolution frames — open one to save it as a wallpaper.

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Trailers & featurettes

Watch the pieces

• 

  ▶
  Primer (2004) Official Trailer

  Trailer

Community reviews

What people are saying

• CinemaSerf2023-09-04
  ★ 6/10

  This has quite a clever concept - a group of four engineering friends are building a prototype piece of equipment. "Abe" (David Sullivan) discovers - accidentally - when testing it, that is has positively game-changing potential and confides his secret in his colleague "Aaron" (Shane Carruth). Rather than share this invention between the group, the two decide to relocate their gadget and use it to exploit the stock markets and make themselves rich. It demonstrates quite well, the conflicting values and morals that this sort of limitless opportunity might present if given to any one of us - but the characterisations are way too one-dimensional. The dialogue is relentless, and after a while you just want them to stop talking and get on with it. It's short - and does require a bit of concentration to get anything out of it - but more, I found, as a source of an ethical conversation about "what if?" than about anything to do with this piece of drama, itself.

  Read full review ↓
• James2023-10-15

  Brilliant concept, yet so-so execution which would have been helped by a higher budget. However, this is a brilliant attempt at creating a time travel film with next to no money. While the film has its faults, the performances and dialogue are great and I love that it doesn’t expect its audience to be dumb; by the way, when I say that… I mean it. This is maybe the most confusing film of all time.

  Read full review ↓

Production companies

Who made it

• ER

  erbp

  US

Key crew

• MusicShane Carruth
• ProducerShane Carruth
• Sound DesignerShane Carruth
• Production DesignShane Carruth
• EditorShane Carruth
• Sound Re-Recording MixerDavid Ho

Themes & keywords

What it's about, really

• distrust
• garage
• mathematics
• identity crisis
• time travel
• time machine
• paradox
• mechanical engineering
• determinism
• incredulous

Release history · US

When it landed

• Premiere2004-01-16· Sundance Film Festival
• Theatrical (limited)2004-10-08PG-13

Also known as

International titles

• TalálmányHU
• 命运之门CN
• WynalazekPL
• РуководствоRU