As soon as I popped in 2005's A Sound of Thunder, it demanded I watch it.

No previews or commercials -- straight to the title screen. As I arranged my floor nest, it started automatically. I tried to pause it (I still had baseball to read about, damn it), but it overruled me and started playing anyway.

This is clearly a movie with deep psychological problems, manifesting in extreme neediness poorly disguised as confidence. "Stop your normal life right now," it seemed to say. "I'm about to rock you like a hurricane made of unicorns and laughter."

What did it so badly want me to see?

Edward Burns is head scientist for Time Safari, a company that sends the rich back in time to hunt allosaurs. Despite their strict hygienic protocols, one of their trips alters the past. Unless Burns can go back and stop the time waves washing away the present, humanity as we know it will cease to exist.

A Sound of Thunder follows a strange arc. For its first act, it at least pretends to understand causality. Sure, they're shooting dinosaurs with electromagnetic rifles, but those dinos were gonna die anyway. Much like graverobbing, it's a victimless crime.

Then comes the crazy.

Instead of the future being changed instantly, it's altered through a series of "time waves." It's impossible to penetrate their "ripples" through normal forms of time travel, but if only they can employ the "slingshot effect," that hoary savior of sci-fi movies everywhere, it'll all be OK!

Meanwhile, the waves are leaving the city covered in deadly, deadly brambles and man-eating monkeysaurs.

I would bet my life, or at least your life, that Roland Emmerich (2012, 10,000 B.C.) was approached to make this movie and turned it down. Then again, I'd turn down an Edward Burns vehicle too, that dirty name-wrecker.

This is right in Emmerich's wheelhouse. The blatant disregard for science. The characters being chased around by everything from bugs to sea monsters to volcanoes. A Sound of Thunder's crummy effects budget wouldn't cover the cost of Emmerich's morning bowl of Diamond-O's, sure, but otherwise it wouldn't look out of place on his "Yay! I Made This" shelf.

Instead it's directed by Peter Hyams, whose career has grown less promising by the decade.

This movie is widely hated by all, but I found his direction more competent than the boo-birds suggest. At times, it's even kinda fun.

Would it help to be drunk? Of course. In a perfect world, it'd be mandatory. Failing that, enjoy A Sound of Thunder with sarcastic friends or a serious concussion.

* Contact Ed Robertson at edwrobertson@gmail.com