This nifty, quirky little Spanish thriller starts out as a deft Hitchcockian thriller, complete with voyeuristic Everyman (a nicely understated performance by Karra Elejalde, making for a pleasingly unfashionable middle aged hero), an imperiled - and stripped - pretty young woman, a scissors attack in the woods and some Herrmannesque strings on the soundtrack. It ends as a twisting DONNIE DARKO-ish tale of dual realities and time travel, all layered with a streak of droll gallows humor.

   Hector (Elejalde) and his wife (Candela Fernandez) have just moved into a new house in the Spanish countryside. While unpacking their stuff, they receive a mysterious call even though no one apparently knows their number and, while testing out his binoculars, Hector witnesses a topless young woman apparently being menaced by a man sporting blood-stained bandages over his face. Checking out the scene, Hector ends up taking refuge at a largely abandoned research silo presided over by a lone bearded scientist (Nacho Vigalondo), who has been evidently working on a time-travelling device. Hector ends up experiencing it first hand, travelling back to a few hours prior and, although ordered not to change anything about the past, he cannot resist trying to save the young woman and his subsequent actions helps to mess with the two alternate realities, creating a second “Hector” and, inevitably, a third.

   Elejalde is terrific at conveying the growing bewilderment of the initial “Hector” and at subtly differentiating between all three “Hectors”, finding a muted sense of menace in his alter-egos. In the film’s neatly plotted script, seemingly incidental throwaway details early on prove crucial when the story turns into an escalating nightmare of one poor schmuck trying to get things right while only making them far, far worse.

   Refreshingly devoid of special effects or elaborate set pieces, while also remaining satisfyingly ambiguous about the silo and its genius / madman occupant, the movie is riveting and taut from start to finish. The superb final pullback shot cleverly undercuts its own sense of resolution with a suggestion that Hector, in all his incarnations, is destined to be trapped in this loop forever.