User reviews

I was not expecting much of this movie, because it was obviously made for TV. The summary in the TV guide made it sound interesting, although it was not exactly clear what the movie was about. I'm glad I didn't give it a miss, because it really was worth watching. I think it took me about 20 minutes to understand exactly what was going on, and that Caspar Van Dien's character was not going to be the one doing the time travelling, but once I realised that, I really began to enjoy the movie. It's not often nowadays that I sit through an entire movie, and am glued to the screen, but I was with this one and it wasn't entirely predictable either. I like a movie that makes you think about the situations it portrays, and time travel is a fascinating topic. The acting probably wasn't perfect, but I've seen much worse, and I put this movie on the same level as "Deep Impact" - it has substance.

I didn't have high hopes for this time travel movie, but I was surprised. The movie's plot helps overcome its low production values and occasional unbelievable coincidences. The characters are for the most part believable (especially the 'villians', who are more desperate people driven to desperate measures.) But fans of time travel movies should enjoy this movie.

This is a direct-to-video production with corresponding production values and acting. Well, the mayhem about the stadium looks almost as good as a big-budget disaster movie. Usually the subject of time travel offers infinite possibilities that are mostly mutilated by a weak script, but Thrill Seekers (yes, USA title or not, i get it on cable by that title) offers an intelligent story with plenty of intelligent twists - telling more would spoil the surprise. The atmosphere is also good, though the music has little merit in that : Tourists visiting disaster areas & war zones exist, sadly enough, but the emotionlessness that comes with it does not show until you have seen this. The best part is, it lives up to an expectation few time travel movies can develop to : in the end, the plot comes together. The sole major turn-off : Casper van Dien with a beard. He has this i-want-back-to-shark-attack look glued to his eyes.

This movie is, happily, not a waste of time. It is fairly intelligent, and for the most part manages not to get too lost in temporal theory. The premise lies with Tom Merrick (Casper Van Dien), a former award-winning reporter now working for a tabloid, discovering that the same person was present at the RMS Titanic sinking, the Hindenburg crash, and an electrical plant fire where Merrick nearly lost his life. As he investigates, he attracts the attention of some strange agents who might be time travellers.

While the movie is relatively fast paced and manages to steer clear of too many cliches, it is unfortunately marred by a couple of gaping plot holes. However, it is nice to know that Casper Van Dien can actually act, and he manages to do a decent job on this one.

So, the final verdict: not too bad SF, and fairly good entertainment for two hours. 3.5/5

Sometimes, you will find a little gem between all the cheap and poor B-movies that was aired all night on TV. "Thrill Seekers" is really one of this seldom gems and shows clearly, that you don't need a few 100-million dollars to made a good movie. The story makes it! And the story of the tourists from the future that traveling along the time-line to visit disasters of the past, is a very good plot. Our hero (living in our time) examines some old photos of disasters and make a very strange discovery... I will do not spoil the movie for you, but the many surprises and a lot of good twists (especially the last, and i mean the really very last :-) make it better than a lot of big Hollywood films that only works with massive action and CG-effects to cover a weak plot. Yes, you will probably find some logical errors in the film, but if you make a movie about time-travels, you can't avoid it, because nobody knows, what is really a logical error when time-travel warp the logic, or that, what we called logic, itself. So, what is going on when you go back in time and change the past... will you change the future, or some alternate futures in a multilevel universe? Who knows! And perhaps some visitors of the future are already among us... maybe it's a good idea to examine the photos of yesterdays disasters again and more exactly... I give it a 7 of 10. It is really worth to see it!

We don't expect much from made-for-TV movies with a cast of unknowns. But actually, the Time Shifter is an engaging, well-acted science fiction piece that got me thinking.

Primarily, this is due to Casper Van Dien, who plays the starring role, which involves a lot of running around frantically, determined to explain what's going on to himself and others through various natural disasters.

Who should see this film:

-- Science fiction movie buffs

-- Action movie buffs comfortable with the science fiction genre and with nothing better to do

-- Time-travelers looking to waste a little time in-between stops

I'll give "The Time Shifters", which you can find in video rental, a 7 out of 10.

When you buy as many DVDs off the dollar rack at Wal-Mart as I do, you tend to watch such films with extremely lowered expectations. Occasionally one film rises above what I'd expect from a mere "dollar DVD" and THRILL SEEKERS (sounds like a title for a porn film, doesn't it? It's also known as THE TIME SHIFTERS, if anybody cares) is one such movie. THRILL SEEKERS has an interesting concept and a decent script but unfortunately becomes a victim of the low budget constraints placed upon it by its made-for-TV origins. THRILL SEEKERS stars Casper Van Dien (of "Starship Troopers" fame, who is unfortunately one of the most wooden actors of his generation) as a formerly ratings-hungry TV reporter who left his job in disgrace after his insistence on getting "one more shot" during a spectacular warehouse fire got his camera crew killed. Desperate for work, he takes a job as a reporter for a sleazy "Weekly World News" style tabloid newspaper and is given an assignment to write a story on famous disasters throughout history. While researching archived photographs of such catastrophes as the Titanic sinking and the Hindenburg explosion, he notices the same black-suited man in each photograph, and he doesn't appear to have aged a day even though the events took place years apart. His editor sends him on a plane to Washington to do more research at the Library of Congress, and it just so happens that the same black-suited guy is on his plane. (Don'tcha just love coincidences like that?) He accosts the stranger and finds out he's a "Thrill Seeker," a time traveller from the future who is taking a "tour" of famous disasters. His presence on this plane, of course, means that it's doomed to crash, so Van Dien hijacks the plane just in time to avoid a mid-air collision (thanks to a clip borrowed from the film "Turbulence," according to the end credits). The black-suited guy is nowhere to be found when the plane lands, but Van Dien has stolen his computerized "tour itinerary" book which tells him the next disaster is going to be a subway crash in Chicago. Escaping from the local police and with his research assistant from the newspaper (played by Catherine Bell of "JAG") in tow, he races to stop the "Thrill Seeker" before the crash can happen. Unfortunately, the "tour company" in the future is now threatened since they've been discovered (not to mention, Van Dien's halting of the air crash has "altered the time line" of course), so two assassins (who look like they borrowed their outfits from a "Matrix" yard sale) are sent back to try and eliminate him before he can screw up the future any further. Confused yet? The rest of the film is basically one chase scene after another, as Van Dien and Bell avoid both the police and the hired killers while trying to reach the final disaster on the Thrill Seeker's itinerary, a catastrophic fire at an arena during a hockey game. (Some additional tension is added for Van Dien's character by placing his ex-wife and young son at the game.) I wont' tell you how it all turns out but I will say that THRILL SEEKERS kept my interest even though trying to keep up with the constant "timeline changes" and how they affected the characters did become a bit of a headache after a while. I'm sure that more hardcore sci-fi fans would find a lot to pick apart in THRILL SEEKERS, and I'm surprised that I liked it as much as I did, but for a buck I can't complain, can I? THRILL SEEKERS turned out to be an unexpected treat.

I'm a big fan of time travel movies even when they are lousy, but this is the plot to "Timeshifters" as I see it: a time-traveler from the future played by Julian Richings travels back in time to view the destruction of a nuclear plant. Distracting a reporter (Casper Van Dien), he causes the reporter to survive his would-be death altering the timeline to his future. The reporter's survival alters the outcomes of three more major disasters and results in yet another alternate future. Described from this angle, the movie would have been very boring, but instead told from Van Dien's character's point of view, we have a top notch action film with two MIB bounty hunters, shifting time-lines and a father reunited with his son. Van Dien is marvelous and convincing and Catherine Bell of "JAG" looks incredible (she's also a great actress). The "archive" photos of Richings at the Titanic, Hindenburg, and others disasters look very good as do the other special effects and plot twists. This is one movie I would want to see over and over!

The production values of this movie are really, really, bad. People run through train stations with guns drawn while no-one notices, and the special effects of disasters are very amateurishly done. The motivations of the main characters are simplistically drawn. Add a whole slew of pretty bad performances, and you've got a recipe for disaster.

Yet despite all this, I rather enjoyed the movie, in spite of itself. The time travel paradoxes were well handled - to the point where I found myself rooting for the nominal "bad guys," instead of the "good guys." The story is interesting and well handled, and Catherine Bell is, as always, a knockout.

One point - the general premise of the film (and this isn't really a spoiler; it's spelled out right away, but if you don't want to know anything about the film, stop reading), that of time travellers from the future taking vacations to the past to view disasters, is taken (uncredited) directly from C.L. Moore's classic story "Vintage Season," one of my favorite sci-fi works. The details are different, but the premise is identical. Moore's story has been filmed more faithfully, as "Disaster in Time." Anyone who liked "The Time Shifters" should check it out, or even better, the original source material.

As time-traveling stories go, this one's better than average. The writers did a decent job trying to account for all the inevitable paradoxes, and the story itself is decently paced and involving.

Casper Van Dien plays Tom Merrick, an ex-TV-journalist trying to put his life back together after an accident cost his crew their lives and him his job. He goes to work as a reporter for a local tabloid, and while investigating disasters of the 20th century, he stumbles upon an incredible coincidence; pictures taken at 3 disasters several decades apart include what appears to be the same man. Catherine Bell plays Elizabeth Wintern, another worker at the tabloid who gets caught up in Merrick's quest to find out who this man is. Merrick and Wintern eventually learn that a company in the future is offering entertainment packages, allowing people to go back in time and witness history's greatest disasters... including some that haven't happened yet as far as Merrick and Wintern are concerned. Merrick takes it upon himself to stop these impending disasters, and finds himself pursued by both "temporal security agents" who are trying to keep their timeline intact, and by local police who think Merrick has planned these events himself.

Don't take my compliments at face value; the movie is far from perfect. There are several plot holes and gloss-overs. I found the writers' ideas on how time travel works to be inconsistent in places. Martin Sheen is completely wasted in his role, having all of maybe 5 minutes of screen time. Finally, in many places I began wondering who I should really root for. Merrick is supposed to be the hero of the movie, trying to keep these "future" disasters from occurring, but at the same time, I could sympathize with the people from the future trying to stop him, especially after I learned what Merrick's actions cause to the future population.

Pitfalls aside, this is an engaging, well-acted movie that will make you think about the morality of time travel. A very solid 6 out of 10.

I've been trying like crazy to find this on DVD. The fact that no stores (including Blockbuster) carry it, might make you believe that that's proof that the movie sucks. But, when I think of how hard I'm trying to find it....I realize how much I enjoyed it.

It's simple....just when you've seen just about every "back in time", "ahead into the future" film......along comes The Thrill Seekers with a unique angle....a man joy riding through disasters. Makes me think of what it would have been like to be on the Titanic, Hindenberg...even the World Trade Center. Don't particularly know the actors all that well. I was sold on just the story itself. It made me walk away wondering what it would be like to travel back to famous/infamous dates in time.

If you walk away and find yourself thinking about a movie's plot a year after seeing it....doesn't it deserve a 10?

Acting? Directing? Lighting? Script?

Who cares?

It was simply fun.

John

This movie will never be seen as one of the great classics, it is much too pedestrian in execution for that - sadly. The actors are mostly competent as is the direction, but with the exception of Catherine Bell and James Allodi none is really good, sometimes delivering lines as if just reading from cue cards.

What is really intriguing is the script, which does not rely on the typical B-movie thriller baddies. All characters really *are* characters, the supposed baddies actually have good reasons to hunt down the two main characters. There's even two juxtaposed dialogues spelling it out for the sake of the usual couch potato.

Even more surprising is the stand on Free Will the scrípt takes as Casper van Dien tells Catherine Bell that their hunters may try to safe their own past, but he has all his future in front of him. As long as we cannot predict the future in any meaningful way (lets say with 100% assurance) we have a contingency of decisions, which all influence the future.

In the hands of a more visionary director, with some changes to the cast and made for the big screen it could have been one of the best sci-fi thrillers for a long time - and much more interesting than *Blade Runner* or the second and third installment of *Matrix*.

If I had to choose one word to summarize this movie, and I did, it would be "weak". Which the movie certainly is, even weak for a "TBS ORIGINAL". There are several things that are just too wrong : 1) there's no subway in chicago, and you can clearly see that they shot the movie in canada. 2) There are no copps hockey in chicago or atlantic city. 3) it's just all too weak. It's fun to see for a chuckle or two, but inexperienced viewers may suffer head injury. Thank you.

Zapping through the movie channels last evening, I came across: Next feature presentation: Thrill Seekers with Martin Sheen. I wonder if one could sue the channel for this kind of tendentious (but not factually wrong) publicity? Anyway, it made me decide to watch. Hardly any Martin Sheen, but entertaining for sure, and with surprisingly decent special effects for a TV movie. The plot is intelligent, and would be a good starting point to get people to discuss the paradoxes of time travel. Suppose you could go back and kill Hitler before he came to power, would you do it? But if you would, can you be certain nothing worse would happen? And how would it affect your own life? Would you still exist, even? (My parents met because of the war.) Or: if you go back to a time after you are born, can you meet yourself? All of this is hardly original, of course. SF writers in the golden age (which was sadly ended by Star Wars, shifting from intelligent writing to blockbuster special effects) frequently tackled the issue, for instance describing the butterfly effect: a firm organises time trips to the Jurassic, where thrill seeking (again!) hunters can kill a dinosaur a fraction of a moment before it would have died, thus not altering the time line. But one hunter stumbles and accidentally kills a butterfly. He gets back to his starting date, but the killed butterfly has changed the time line and this new line turns out to be the hunter's worst nightmare. Something similar happens in Thrill Seekers. But here the protagonist has the means to go back in time to change a future he has already experienced. This, of course, was already obvious from the moment they take the laptop from the disaster tourist. In fact, Merrick could have used that device to go back to before he boarded the plane and, using some kind of subterfuge, a bomb alarm for instance, avert the plane crash, and the subway crash, and the fire... But we wouldn't have had the same film then.

One question of logic though. If Merrick goes back into his original time line, the time guards would also be in there, but unaffected by what will happen later. In the film, they follow Merrick back from the future. The film does not explain this. But the question doesn't end there. If you go back to when you were 3 hours earlier, you would also not yet have any memories of what was going to happen those next 3 hours. Merrick and the time guards should not have had any knowledge of the disaster happening 3 hours in the future.

I also wonder how the title sequence relates to the film. I admit I wasn't paying a lot of attention, trying to figure out when Martin Sheen would be mentioned, but in retrospect I wonder if there wasn't any subtle message in the sequence?

Pretty good show for a Sci-fi TV movie. It is interesting how they use the concept of traveling through time to past disasters for entertainment purposes. The acting is above par also. Martin Sheen should have had a bigger part though. I gave it 7 out of 10.

I started watching this movie because I saw Martin Sheen was starring, but as I gradually found out, he only appears on a flickering screen about 3 to 4 times for less than a minute. It's clear he's only on the casting list to attract an audience. But in the end it really didn't matter, I was somehow a very entertaining movie, the bad acting didn't spoil it. Also you could predict the plot quite easily but that didn't make it less interesting, somehow even more interesting. Do not wonder how it is that everything is so coincidental. Just watch it with a pizza and a beer after work and you'll have a good time watching this B-movie.

When examining photos of some of the great disasters of the 20th century, a investigative reporter discovers a man who appears in several of the disasters--separated by decades, yet seemingly not aging a day. So he begins to investigate. When he chances upon the same man on a plane flight, things start happening. Unfortunately, this promising sci-fi idea quickly dissolves into a disappointing bore, thanks in great part to the wooden and dull acting of Casper Van Dien. Apparently he thought this was a photo shoot and never engaged the acting gear. The beautiful Catherine Bell is wasted as the love interest. Somewhere in here there's a pretty good idea, but its not worth watching the movie to dig it out.

I will not remember this film for the performances or the direction even though these departments were not awful. What made me like the movie was the appeal of the sci-fi story. The plot was good and of course could have been burnished into an elegant film with some effort. The film leaves you satisfied right up to the last frame of the film--don't miss it.

I particularly liked the development of the character of FBI agent Stanton with his watch. I only wish the director had thought of giving the character more time on screen.

This is not a good film. It is so bad that it occasionally becomes good. The acting is truly awful. The production quality is also very low. There is a huge problem with the script - most of it just does not stand up to scrutiny. Accept the story and you may enjoy it but start thinking about it and you will end up wondering how such a story full of holes and illogical elements could be made into a film.

I caught this mostly by accident last night on TBS and it was much better than I expected. I think there are only a half dozen or so possible plots for a time travel story -- but this movie has enough twists and turns to keep it interesting. The coincidences are just a bit too much, but all is forgiven when I can be surprised in the last 30 minutes.

90's acting, 90s lingo, 90's DP and the 90s over-the-top action. All typical. Not quite nostalgic. Not quite classic enough. Kinda' stuck out there in no-man's-land. It's a fair to mediocre movie at best. Hence the 6 star rating. It is what it is. Just maybe, "Time" will tell if it makes the grade.

While trying to look up a similarly named title on Amazon my interest was peaked by 'The Time Shifters' (aka 'Thrill Seekers'). Boasting a 4.5 star rating (as of this writing), over fifty reviews & known names Casper Van Dien (Starship Troopers), Catherine Bell (JAG), Martin Sheen. Then I found out it's a low budget made-for-tv movie from the late 90's shot in Canada. Were my eyes deceiving me? Was it gonna be good?

Tom Merrick (Dien) is a reporter looking for a story to take his career to the bigtime. Doing that gets him some primo footage, but he's more than a little to blame for his coworkers deaths. Years later, he's a shell of his former self, but lands a job at a tabloid where looking thru pics of old disasters spots the same man. On a flight to DC to verify their authenticity, he's shocked to see him onboard which unravels people from the future sightseeing tragedies and the company run by Grifasi (Sheen) responsible.

Two bumbling FBI Agents for the necessary law as Merrick goes on the run. Naturally the key suspect in two disasters he helps avert with co-worker Elizabeth (Bell) later along for the ride. Goons from the future with mixed messages, moral compasses and lastly a pull at your heart strings element via an estranged young son that conveniently gets tied into one last disaster. Dien fares pretty well, but like everyone else - Bell, Sheen - surface level only. In fact Sheen only shows up on a screen to give orders, yell at his lackeys.

At 88 minutes everything trucks along at a reasonable pace, but the implausibilities, coincidences and laughable parts stack up. Deaths that have little emotional weight due to the obvious theme. An extended chase scene gets stupider as it goes along. A weird message installed when a tragedy is partially averted yet a bunch of people still die - but not anyone close to him - so let's share a romantic kiss. Zzz.

As you can see the truth about 'The Time Shifters' came crashing down for me in undramatic fashion. Those who love time traveling b-movies, consider themselves part of the Catherine Bell fanclub apply within. There's really nothing here to get excited about. It's competently made from a technical standpoint, but the story, characters, dialog all fall outside gripping stuff. Word of mouth isn't what it used to be.