Time Trap

Time Trap is a 2017 science fiction action adventure film, directed by Ben Foster and Mark Dennis. Starring Brianne Howey, Cassidy Gifford, Olivia Draguicevich, Reiley McClendon, and Andrew Wilson, it tells the story of a group of students in a remote area of Texas searching for their missing professor. They then discover a mysterious cave by accident. While exploring the cave, the group experience a series of bizarre and dangerous events related to time and space distortion.
== Plot ==
In a remote area in Alamo, Texas, Jason Hopper, an archaeology professor, is exploring with his dog Boss on the trail of missing hippies from the 1970s. He notices a cave far in the distance and inside what appears to be a cowboy whose gun and attire don't seem to be from the current generation; is standing paused in place in the tunnel. Shocked with this discovery, Hopper turns around and drives back to town. Apparently, he set up the expedition with his teaching assistants, Taylor and Jackie. Hopper dismisses them stating that their research is done, and he goes to the cave alone. Seeing the cowboy still frozen in place. When Hopper enters the cave, he touches a layer the separates the atmosphere between the outside world and the cave. Once he steps through the layer the cowboy starts to move. After five minutes inside, he notices a strange dim of light and escapes the cave when noises are heard. Outside, the sky is dark all of sudden and Boss has disappeared. Hopper returns to the campsite; however, his Jeep is covered with overgrowth plants and the battery has expired. He then finds a SUV with Jackie's backpack inside. With no other option, Hopper gets back into the cave, believing Jackie and others may be inside, and as he throws glow sticks in the tunnel one stops midair through the layer, uncovering the equivalent of time is much slower.
As Hopper has not returned after two days, Taylor and Jackie go looking for him, with Taylor's crush Cara, who brings her sister, Veeves, and her friend Furby. Following Hopper's trail to the campsite and the van belonging to Hopper's parents near a cave, they find a different entrance with climbing ropes leading inside. They decide to follow it, but Furby chooses to stay behind as backup for the base camp. They lower themselves into the cave, breaking through the same invisible layer. Hearing a girl screaming, they rush to climb back out, but the rope frays, and Jackie falls, injuring herself and Taylor. When Furby does not answer their radio calls, Taylor thinks Furby is messing with them. Calling for help, they receive a transmission from within the cave and follow it.
At a different junction, they discover another opening to the cave and Furby, dead with a broken neck. Watching his video recordings, it spans several days from his perspective, while only about an hour had lapsed in the cave. He began researching the hippies' journal, discovering they were Hopper's parents and that he is searching for his missing family. His parents were following legends of the Fountain of Youth. The story tells how Queen Joanna had sent Juan Ponce de León and dozens of expeditions in 1506 to bring a vial of healing water to her dying husband, Philip I, but all have failed, and speculated that this cave system is the root of the story. Hopper's father went looking for the healing water when his sister got ill and none of them returned. Furby found another cave opening. After running out of food necessities, he went into the cave to retrieve keys for a vehicle but fell when his rope severed.
Taylor deduces the cave is inside a time distortion where events move more slowly. With few options, Cara free-climbs out of the cave to get a GPS beacon. Outside, the terrain has become barren, and there is no signal with an oncoming dust storm. She discovers a massive triangle-shape object in the sky. Returning to the cave, comparing video recordings, Cara has experienced 30 minutes on the surface while she had been gone only a few seconds from their viewpoint, confirming Taylor's theory. Reviewing Furby's footage again, they learn he survived the fall but was murdered by a caveman. Veeves also realize from the footage that the sun's path is actually changing with the seasons. Cara and Taylor conclude the time difference is much more drastic than they suspected and for that an entire year is passing every 1 second, meaning the few hours they have been inside the cave is enough to calculate 5400 years outside.
Hearing more howling, Cara prepares to climb out again for help but is interrupted by a futuristic humanoid spaceman descending via a retractable ladder. A caveman suddenly attacks, but is subdued non-lethally. They flee just to find a whole tribe of cavemen inspecting the dead bodies of the cowboy and Hopper's parents. Discovered, Taylor fights the cavemen and is killed. The spaceman returns, protects the others from the cavemen, and then places Taylor into a healing pool of water and he is resurrected. More cavemen attack, and the spaceman's helmet is removed exposing him to air that he cannot breathe, but uses his dying breath to show them several old media clips about their disappearance and indicating that humans have become space-faring to preserve humanity as Earth has become inhabitable in the future and the triangle-shape object that Cara saw earlier is a space station to send ships to distant planets to colonize. The group realize there is no way back and they must decide whether get out of the cave right now or stay there forever.
Taylor finds Hopper injured in front of another time dilation, containing his long-missing sister and a legion of conquistadors in battle with the cavemen over control of a waterfall, the source of the time distortion, at the center of the fountain. Hopper explains the field is strongest here (equivalent to .01 seconds), making rescue of his sister impossible; he tells Taylor to go and save the others, as he is also dying. Preparing to leave the cave with the spaceman's ladder, the students are chased by cavemen when they disactivate the ladder; Cara is pulled through the portal by evolved beings before she fell with the rest. From their perspective, she reappears through the portal, differently dressed and with rope-like mechanisms which pull her friends through. A short time later, Furby awakens, along with Hopper, his parents, and sister, all having been retrieved and resurrected with the healing waters. The others arrive, happily explaining they are aboard the space station and have a lot to talk about. The scene shows them on a spaceship sending them into orbit to whatever planet.
== Characters ==
*Brianne Howey as Jackie
*Andrew Wilson as Hopper
*Cassidy Gifford as Cara
*Reiley McClendon as Taylor
*Olivia Draguicevich as Veeves
*Max Wright as Furby
*Hans Marrero as The Guardian
*Rich Skidmore as Rich Pintauro
*Chris Sturgeon as Hopper's Dad
*Sofie Marie Lusitana as Guardian Girl