ehmcmichael
This might actually be the worst movie I've ever seen. From start to finish, there was ZERO effort put into explaining anything about what was going on. There is a hint of imagination lurking within, but it is muffled by a cloud of half-formed plots. I find that it's not very effective for a film to just blatantly exclude the audience. The characters are either stumbling around a bleak, rocky landscape pointing calculators at things, hiking for some reason, or having really awkward, badly scripted conversations, or they're stumbling around without pants in a mysterious building. There is definitely something to do with time travel, but the characters have to take off their pants and straddle some kind of exercise machine. It's MADNESS. I hated every second of it. The characters like to just start talking about things that the audience has no information about, and build a shaky, agonizing plot around it. I don't even know where to begin explaining it's other intricately weaved flaws. Please don't watch it.
merklekranz
You can discuss cerebral this and creative that until the cows come home, but in the end, "Idaho Transfer" must be regarded as pure crap. I hate to seem like "Captain Obvious", but this is nothing more than hippies wandering around in the desert, talking nonsense. The word tedious immediately comes to mind. There is zero character development, and there is never a hint of explanation for the time travel device. Beyond that there are extended scenes, like improving your rock skipping technique, that are criminally boring. Sure it's low budget, but so are lots of other films, so that is no excuse for this terminally comatose minimalist nonsense. Recommended, for sleep inducement. - MERK
web-314
I like films that don't tell you everything. Unfortunately, this film tells you nothing. Once you get passed the main premise, nothing is explained, apart from "Do humans survive in the end?" and "Is there going to be a gratuitous boob-shot?". SPOILER QUESTIONS: What's the deal with the girl's father, why are the government investigating, why doesn't the government use the machine, were there bodies in the train, what happened to the other people who transferred, why didn't they bury a huge store of food and supplies so they could use it in the future, why didn't they ever try going to another time..? It is also nice to have a film that contains elements that aren't essential to the plot, and this film has them in spades, but a little more explanation would have been nice.The film is pretty well directed, and some of the main actors are okay (others are bad). The ending is really bad. It is like they wanted something really profound, but ended up with something very cheesy and almost nonsensical.Overall, I'd say the film is pretty interesting. It is a quiet builder. I got it as part of a 50 DVD pack called Nightmare Worlds.
clarkmc2
This film reminds me of two very different films. In its pacing, use of space and landscape, cinematography, spare character development with deliberate mystery and blanks to be filled in by the viewer - or to be left a mystery - it reminds me very much of L'Avventura. This is a comparison of success, as Idaho Transfer does all the same things quite well. Not the masterpiece the great Italian film is, but very successful none the less.I also admit to being very taken with the spare quality that low cost productions sometimes create out of necessity. The resulting atmosphere is one of my favorite things to discover in a film, and this is one of the most successful examples I have ever seen.Another plus is the way amateur actors, with the right direction, create an ambiance of dialog and presence almost impossible to get with experienced performers. Again, this film does it better than most. It is a little like the extremely effective delivery of Bela Lugosi's lines in Dracula - a result of delivering them phonetically in that case.The other film I thought of was Virus - Fukkatsu no hi (1980), reputedly the most expensive Japanese film ever. Virus tried to do most of the same things as Idaho Transfer, but with a large scale, name actors and way too much wasted cash. It is by comparison dead on arrival. Peter Fonda's little film walks all over it, beating it at its own game on every level, and by a large margin. That is no small accomplishment, and neither is this film. For me it is close to perfect in every quality I most enjoy in films. I'd like to give it a ten, but then what would I give L'Avventura?
AD
