> Yeah, those are the rules. And in fact there is a forum post where they're transcribed -- by no one less than Shane Carruth, the writer/director/star/etc. I've posted a link below.

Those are kind of cool -- I especially like how Abe writes with a he/she and a his/her, even that early on. Kind of a weird forward-looking perspective, I'd say.

The fact that rule #1 appears to be unimportant at the end is one of the things I still find intriguing about the movie -- more on that later. #2 would have been a good idea in theory, but it was certainly made to be broken. #3 turns out to be more true than Abe would have imagined, I think, and #4 is just all around interesting -- curiosity seems to be what ended up killing them.

OK, some more spoilerish thoughts.

The talk about the boxes not being "one-time use only" confused me the first time through, although now I understand it to mean that rule #1 does not apply, somehow. Trying to work out the reality of what that would mean, though, messes with my head.

Here's the thing: in the timeline we see after Abe uses the failsafe, I think it is pretty safe to say that both Aaron2 and Abe2 both had to come out of Abe's failsafe box. At first I couldn't see how that would work properly -- after all, the box has a set A point, and they would both have to come out VERY close to that point. However, somebody on one forum thread suggested that when Aaron2 got out of the failsafe, he stopped it and set it to restart not long after, which is plausible -- Abe may not have noticed the small time discrepancy when he was getting in for his long trip back. Of course, that still means that Aaron2 and Abe2 are both *in* the same box on a going-forward basis, or something -- they each got in from a different timeline, but they both get OUT in the same timeline. And, of course, I assume that Aaron3 came from his own failsafe2, which he brought back through with him when he made the jump from Aaron1 to Aaron2. I *think* this all makes sense, but I don't like to think too hard about what one would find if one were to shut down a box "in transit", although I suspect that it would just always be empty unless someone had got in at the A point and was going forward at the time. After all, shutting it off prevents the original B point from existing, so how COULD there be someone in there coming back? The future they were coming back from clearly can no longer exist.

OK, another weirdness, completely unrelated to time travel (surprisingly).

"Tell you what, why don't you take Kara and Lauren and put them in the box... and then you and Aaron can each keep a set and you can stop feeding off it."

What the heck was that about? It seems clear from the rest of the movie that Abe cares about Aaron's family, but I didn't think it was anything like this... Do you think Aaron was just being a jerk, or was there something weirder going on here?

Probably my biggest question: what prompts Aaron1 to use the failsafe the first time? The obvious answer seems to be the party -- maybe Aaron3 lied to Abe2 when he said nothing happened the time he wasn't there? Or did he just want to look like a hero? It seems like a very strange way to go about looking like a hero, and would certainly say some odd things about Aaron. The narrator seems to imply that Aaron2 goes back because he wants to "engineer a perfect moment" but at that point it just seems more reasonable to be going back to refine things. Of course, if Aaron2 didn't screw up royally at the party, why would he need to go back? Maybe Aaron3 lied to Abe2 about the time that he WAS at the party as Aaron2, and maybe somebody got shot that time, too.

OK, this is all making my head hurt. I think that's enough for now.

Don "Addicted to this movie" Monkey