Watching this right now, reminds me of 80's cinema, the guy even looks like a nerdier Patrick Dempsey, seems okay so far, it reminds of the 80's look.
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I had the same thought, but then I noticed modern-day things, like Tobe's digital camera, the cop mentioning the internet, and the 2006 Caprice cop car.. :)
shareI got the same sense regarding the setting, but I think it just has to do with Tobe's love affair with the past. I highly doubt it's set in the 80's.
As mentioned, Tobe's frequently used camera alone is a good indicator. The first digital camera with an LCD (as his has) is the Casio QV-10 in 1995, but it didn't become popularized until many years later. Furthermore, his model is thin and more modern suggesting it's probably a post-2007 model.
Aside from the above, there's the fact that his cell phone is a flip phone, which hadn't become really popularized until the mid 1990's. He has a Yahoo Mail email account, which wasn't launch until 1997. Then there's the fact that Tobe used Google (albeit called 'Search' in-movie), which was launch in 1998.
Overall, the movie did a good job hiding the timeframe, but it gave away the time through the camera and one other significant clue -- Tobe's laptop. He uses a Dell laptop and, from the design, it must be a D6XX or D8XX series. The D6XX series was released around 2006.
So logically speaking, the movie is, at the very least, set in the late 2000's.
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