Val Killmer.

The Traveler was absolutely moronic, and I really don’t say this much but I’d like my hour and a half back please. It’s actually impressive that director Michael Oblowitz has been directing movies since 1977 because it takes a lot of effort to do something for forty years and not even accidentally stumble into talent. You may recall Oblowitz’s name from the 2023 film Confidential Informant whose only positive attributes are from the film’s complete lack of self-awareness of how bad it is.

This movie was written by Joseph Muscat and it’s currently his only film as a writer. And yes, I’m going to do that thing where I say I don’t fault Muscat for his writing as it’s his first film. The first couple pancakes always get fed to the dogs, it’s just business. I’m more disappointed he hasn’t had any film-writing gigs since then, since readers of How About Notflix know there’s nothing I like more than watching people improve on their craft and seeing the end result.

The Traveler is dumb stupid-ass garbage and I only say this because the movie gives itself away kinda early and the big twist at the end is stupid and dumb and feels explicitly done to ruin the audience’s mood. Val Kilmer plays Mr. Nobody, an imposing figure who walks into a police station on Christmas Eve to announce that he wants to confess to a murder. He is promptly arrested where he immediately stops cooperating with the police.

As Detective Alex Black (Dylan Neal) starts wondering if Mr. Nobody is just a lonely kook, all kinds of spoopies start happening at the police station. The bulbs start burning out, everyone begins hallucinating, and Kilmer himself just kinda acts weird and does weird shit like whistling. Trust me it makes more sense in the film. He says that they’ll believe him by the end of the night that he’s a murderer and that’s when the slasher part kicks in. How are the cops dying when Val Kilmer is clearly locked in a cell? Why are they being targeted?

Probably past sins.

I’m going to talk about some plot points because this movie is so formulaic that I don’t consider it to be a spoiler. It’s obvious from the start that Val Kilmer is a spooky ghost man coming back from the dead to wreak havoc on the cops who beat the crap out of him a year prior. But the movie is insanely condescending with how many times it reminds us that the cops beat an unnamed drifter into a coma and how this guy looks kinda like that drifter. The gore is terrible, often involving a flat camera pointed at a wall while some guy throws bloody cuts of steak at it from off-screen.

Val Kilmer perfectly sums up this film, as his entire presence is about sitting on his ass and being silent. It’s hard to tell if the character being hostile with the police during interrogations was intentional or if Val Kilmer didn’t want to read his lines so they improvised around it. I’d say Kilmer is phoning it in, but phoning something in involves speaking and he spends most of the film just staring silently.

The cast is fine, with appearances by Dylan Neal, Paul McGillon, Camille Sullivan, Chris Gauthier, John Cassini, and others. Unfortunately their acts are hampered by spending most of the film blithering like morons, bickering with each other, and looking shocked as someone gets horribly murdered while they do nothing about it. There’s only one cop you feel bad for throughout the film and it’s the one dude who wanted nothing to do with the torture and didn’t take part in it.

Should you watch this movie? No.

Rating: D