Matthew Turner | On 28, Oct 2021

Director: Paul Ziller
Cast: Nicholas Lea, Emilie Ullerup, Michael Paré, Malcolm McDowell, Ryan Robbins, Gina Holden
Certificate: TBC
Where to watch The Philadelphia Experiment (2012) online in the UK: IMDb TV

Has Boss Level whetted your appetite for more time travel titilation? Transport yourself no further than Time Travel Thursday, our column devoted to time travel movies. It’s on Thursday.

Directed by Paul Ziller, this 2012 remake of 1984’s The Philadelphia Experiment (reviewed in a previous column) was originally made for TV, and it shows. Strictly speaking, it’s more of a do-over than a remake, since it only keeps the bare bones of the original story and creates entirely new characters. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that it’s a new interpretation of the urban legend surrounding the Philadelphia Experiment, except it also happens to share the same title as the 1984 movie.

The 2012 version also shifts the perspective of the narrative. The 1984 movie followed the two characters from 1943 on their journey into 1984, whereas here the film begins in 2012 and deals with a ship – and a man – materialising from the past.

Scientist Richard Faulkner (Ryan Robbins) is conducting an invisibility experiment under the watchful eye of Kathryn Moore (Gina Holden), the head of vaguely sinister government corporation Greywatch. When 1943 US Navy ship the USS Eldridge materialises in Springview Pennysylvania as a result of the experiment, soul survivor Lt William Gardner (The X-Files’ Nicolas Lea) stumbles out into the future, just before the ship disappears again. Meanwhile, local sheriff Carl (John Reardon) gets trapped aboard the ship, his arm fusing to the hull when it de-materialises.

By a frankly astonishing coincidence, Carl’s hacker girlfriend Molly (Emilie Ullerup) just happens to be William’s granddaughter, so together they set out to rescue Carl and return William to the past. Meanwhile, with the ship de-materialising and rematerialising all over the place, Kathryn dispatches trigger-happy, Terminator-like henchman Hagen (Michael Paré, the star of the 1984 movie) to kill William and anyone else who might have seen too much.

In terms of time travel tropes, The Philadelphia Experiment scores quite highly. The “phase generators” of the original invisibility experiment qualify as an actual time machine, complete with crackling lightning and those pulsing pole-type things. It also has several scenes of William wandering around marvelling at The Future, some of which are funny (“$2.25? For coffee?”) and some of which are not so funny – he gives a rather disapproving look to two gentlemen walking together on the street, in a throwaway bit that should probably have been cut.

The script also includes one of the classic time travel tropes, in a scene where somebody helpfully draws a timeline on a whiteboard to explain what’s happened. Except the drawing is just two circles connected by a line, so it’s rather surplus to requirements as a visual aid.

The film isn’t entirely without its good moments. For one thing, the special effects aren’t bad, considering its made-for-TV budget, particularly when the ship materialises in mid-air and falls into the roof of a skyscraper. It also has a very cool, upside-down opening shot, although there’s nothing as stylish or distinctive as that in the rest of the movie.

The performances are mostly fine, although the script requires Nicholas Lea to scream loudly in pain every few minutes (his atoms are fused with the ship, you see) and this eventually becomes both laughable and annoying. Also, anyone planning to see the film because of top-billed Malcolm McDowell (as the original creator of the experiment, still alive in 2012) is destined for disappointment – he doesn’t show up for 44 minutes and is in precisely four scenes.

Unfortunately, the good bits are vastly outweighed by the bad bits. Indeed, there are so many, that the film almost enters so-bad-it’s-good territory. Almost. Either way, it has more than its fair share of hilariously terrible moments, beginning with the moment when William sees a newspaper with the date written on the cover in giant letters (27th August 2012, in case you’re wondering).

There are plenty of problems with the script too, such as the way Molly just takes the sudden reappearance of her grandfather completely in her stride or the fact that there’s no real reason for Greywatch to order the deaths of everyone involved – something that is apparently authorised by the President. (Weirdly, that actually gives it something in common with the 1984 movie, which also had people shooting at the heroes for no real reason.)

The biggest problem is that the script doesn’t know which story it wants to tell. The 1984 film dialled down the time travel elements in favour of telling a rather charming love story, but the 2012 version doesn’t even have that. The ridiculously sentimental ending suggests that the original script was about Mollie getting to know her grandfather – who disappeared long before she was born – but the script never really explores that idea.

The film’s one original angle – that the fusing of William’s atoms with the ship essentially gives him superpowers (bullets pass through him and he can shoot energy bolts) – also goes under-explored, other than William using his powers to escape from Hagen.

However, the strangest moment comes when the ship de-materialises in the centre of a nuclear power station in the UK, with a shot of the resulting explosion from space suggesting it causes catastrophic damage across the entire country… and it’s just shrugged off with a line of dialogue.

It feels churlish to nit-pick further when there are moments as hilariously awful as that, but there are two more problems that stick out. The first is that Malcolm McDowell tells Molly she should remember the phrase “Ivory Gate” – which is then never mentioned again – and the second is that multiple other people get phased aboard the ship every time it de-materialises, and yet the only person we ever see trapped aboard the Eldridge is Carl.

Needless to say, the film completely squanders the opportunity to do something interesting with the concept of time travel, despite constant threats of creating conflicting timelines that would destroy the world or something. Also, since Molly’s mother has already been born when William disappears, the film misses the chance to have her very existence depend on William returning to the past.

In short, the made-for-TV remake of The Philadelphia Experiment is full of missed opportunities and wasted potential, essentially ignoring its central concept in favour of generic and not very well staged action staples, such as car chases, explosions and punch-ups. It’s also frankly criminal that they had Michael in the cast and didn’t find a way for him to reprise his original character.

 

The Philadelphia Experiment (2012) is available to watch on Amazon Freevee for free (with adverts) within the Amazon Prime Video app. For more information on how it works, click here.

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