MIRAGE. A Fresh Take on Time Travel in Cinema

Time travel and time loops have been a staple in pop culture for years, which comes as no surprise given their virtually limitless potential for crafting stories across various genres. Just in this past decade, we’ve seen time-twisting science fiction (Predestination), romantic comedy (About Time), and even a superhero film (X-Men: Days of Future Past), all centered around this concept—and these are just a handful of examples. Spanish director Oriol Paulo also took an interest in time manipulation, resulting in the Netflix release Mirage (Durante la tormenta).

In Paulo’s film, we don’t see traditional time travel in the strictest sense—no one physically moves between different points in time. Instead, the story focuses on the consequences of altering past events, evoking comparisons to Frequency (2000). The protagonist, Vera, moves into a house where, 25 years earlier, a young boy named Nico had lived. On November 9, 1989, Nico died due to a tragic sequence of events. Vera and her husband discover an old TV and a video camera that once belonged to the boy. That same night, Vera mysteriously connects with Nico, who is still in 1989, and warns him about his impending fate. The next morning, she wakes up in a completely altered reality.

Saving Nico from death triggers a butterfly effect, affecting not only him but also countless others around him. The consequences reach Vera herself— in this new timeline, she never met her husband and never had her beloved daughter. The film follows her desperate struggle to restore her original reality, but she has limited time. She must act before a 72-hour-long storm—her only chance to reconnect with the past—comes to an end. Racing against time, both literally and figuratively, Vera teams up with a detective to navigate this alternate world, uncovering its differences from the life she once knew.

Paulo keeps the pacing brisk, though those expecting a heavy focus on sci-fi elements may be disappointed. Aside from the central premise and a few key rules regarding communication with the past, Mirage is more of a character-driven drama, exploring Vera’s emotional turmoil while gradually unveiling the tragic events of 1989. Fans of Paulo’s previous film, The Invisible Guest (Contratiempo, 2014), will recognize his penchant for surprising the audience. Mirage delivers its fair share of twists, but this time, Paulo doesn’t lean as heavily on shocking revelations. Instead, he allows the story’s puzzle pieces to fall into place naturally, prioritizing the human drama that unfolds under extraordinary circumstances.

By highlighting the contrasts between the two timelines, Mirage successfully stimulates the audience’s imagination. It naturally leads to thought-provoking questions: How drastically could our lives change if just one event in our past had played out differently? What if we had taken another route to work or stayed home one particular day—would we have never met certain people who shaped our futures? The film may not offer the thrill of physically traveling through different time periods (as seen in the German series Dark), but Vera’s mission remains gripping. Much of this is thanks to Adriana Ugarte (Julieta), who carries the film with a compelling performance, convincingly portraying Vera’s confusion and desperation. One might even wish Paulo had given her more space to shine, rather than moving quickly through dialogue-heavy scenes with supporting characters. However, the fast pace is somewhat justified by the ticking clock that drives Vera’s quest.

Despite this, Mirage stands as a solid addition to the time-travel film genre. It may not achieve the classic status of Back to the Future (to which it even makes an interesting reference), but it succeeds as an engaging drama about a woman who loses her entire life simply because she tried to save another—unknowingly altering the fate of many others along the way.