Following his sci-fi horror features Kingdom of the Spiders (1977) and The Dark (1979), John Cardos directed another sci-fi movie that carried bit of mystery and horror but fell short of fitting neatly in any sub-genre. The Day Time Ended came out the same year as The Dark and remains more of a time travel movie mingled with an alien invasion experience.
In the movie, senior citizen Grant Williams (Jim Davis) moves along with his family into their new desert home. While his older son is away Richard (Christopher Mitchum) temporarily, the family starts experiencing unusual phenomena around the house, resembling an alien invasion. Alarmed and acting in self-defense at times, they are left wondering as to what is happening and how to figure their way out back to normal.
Much like the Williams family, if not more, the audience too is left wondering what is happening and whether it will make sense by the end of the movie. Grant does figures out that they are going through some kind of a time warp. But the plot seems to lose direction as it moves ahead – or rather remains stranded, even after the Williams family is taken to a new place and time. A lot remains unexplained in this incomplete story of a ripple through space-time.
Depending on one’s taste for open endings, sci-fi fans may enjoy watching the The Day Time Ended. It doesn’t fail in keeping the viewer’s attention for much of the movie’s runtime. However, the ending is clearly inconclusive and may not satiate all viewers’ curiosity, probably not many or even most of them. For children or young adults, this may still be an interesting piece of entertainment.
For fun fact, this was the last movie Jim Davis did so the “time” in the title could easily be replaced with “Jim Davis’ movie career.”
