Time Cut (2024)

Slash to the future, stab two

Antz and A Bug’s Life. Bicentennial Man and AI: Artificial Intelligence. Dante’s Peak and Volcano. Films of similar premise released in quick succession by different studios are, according to Wikipedia, called “twin films” and date back to the competing adaptations of the play The Miracle released in 1912.

There’s no getting around it: Time Cut is a mirror image of Totally Killer from last year. Both films are novelty comedy slashers with a Back to the Future twist: A young woman goes back in time to prevent the murder of a family member from a masked killer. Both are concerned about the future repercussions of changing the past. Both have scenes where I momentarily wondered if the protagonist was about to start making out with their past-family (in true Back to the Future style). Both have twist reveals suggesting an alternate timeline. Hell, the killers even have the same ugly mask.

There are some key differences, of course. While millennials wrote and directed both films, Totally Killer hops back in time to a caricatured, outsider-view of the 1980’s; Time Cut, meanwhile, jumps to 2003 which the director and co-writer, Hannah MacPherson, presumably experienced herself. That’s not the only difference: Totally Killer is much more committed to being a comedy than Time Cut. But the similarities are more striking than the differences; both are pretty lousy as slashers-proper, for example.

And yet I still sorta like both for merely existing. I’ve been addicted to these novelty slashers that match Scream– or Friday the 13th-style teen murder sprees (usually by masked killers of unknown identities) to narrative premises or structures usually associated with specific films – e.g. Groundhog Day, Freaky Friday, It’s a Wonderful Life — ever since I watched the terrific Happy Death Day a few years ago. You can see my full list of proposed high-concept slasher riffs in my Freaky review. (Shoutout to ED for using that comment section to keep me abreast of the release of these types of films.)

I haven’t yet said much specific about Time Cut yet because I frankly don’t have all that much to say. It’s an adequate execution of the logline: girl from present day with a dead sister accidentally goes back to the day of the murder and decides to try and save her sister. Our heroine is Lucy (Madison Bailey), a science geek whose entire existence is colored by her sister’s passing. Her parents are in an eternal, depressed haze, especially near the 20th anniversary of the death of the daughter Summer (Antonia Gentry). The large age gap between the sisters is explained as her parents deciding to have another child after their first one dies, though this doesn’t line up with the parents’ aimless malaise otherwise.

Adequacy is nothing to sneeze at! That’s doubly true for a movie that clearly got greenlit based on its premise. High concept slashers do not bat a thousand: see: It’s a Wonderful Knife. I’ll admit some of the film’s impact is undercut by the sheer number of redundancies with Totally Killer. That’s not, strictly, Time Cut’s fault. And there are, indeed, a few things it does better than Totally Killer: the character relationships and family connection are more investing and developed: Lucy processing the cruelty of young, sudden death, especially of her lovely sister, is palpable in a way that’s not always true of slashers.

But there’s not really any component of Time Cut that’s particularly noteworthy. As a slasher it is downright moribund. It really only bothers with suspense for a single scene — a stalk through a dusty old museum — and even that scene is poorly staged. I don’t mind PG-13 slashers in general, but this is a soft PG-13 that averts its eyes from nearly all violence. Why even make a slasher at that point? The film gestures towards some inventive and brutal kills, including one involving someone’s face getting caught in an escalator at a mall, only to avert the camera’s eye a moment before it unfolds. (I do wonder if the film has an R-rated cut somewhere; but why would they have hired gore makeup artists and not used any of their work in the main release?)

As a production piece evoking 2003, Time Cut disappoints as well. The fashion is there, but MacPherson puts in very little legwork to make Time Cut feel like 2003. I’m not expecting a Linklater-level production, or even something as immersively early-millennium-evocative as Didi, but MacPherson really should have thought about why she wanted to set it during her own teenaged years. Corny as Totally Killer’s 1980s were, it at least had a purpose and throughline for the setting with nonstop gags about regressive identity politics and halfhearted safety norms. Time Cut’s 2003 is mostly “they sure didn’t have smartphones” and “low-cut jeans were in.” I actually groaned when a 16-year-old made an “I should invest in BlackBerry” anachronism joke. Have the writers met actual teenagers before?

There is one exception to the forgettable production, and that is the needle drops. (This is especially true relative to their paucity in the otherwise over-the-top production of Totally Killer.) I couldn’t find MacPherson’s age listed anywhere, but some combination of she and the music supervisors (Laura Webb, Lindsay Wolfington) were certainly 11-15 year old girls in 2003. The gang’s all here for quintessential tween/early teen girl-power jams of the era: Michelle Branch, Hilary Duff, Avril Lavigne, Vanessa Carlton, etc. The film’s signature moment, as seen in trailers, is a slow walk down a 2003 hallway scored to Duff’s “So Yesterday.” So long as a 2003 tune is blasting, Time Cut numbs me to any of its problems by tickling the “high school years” receptor in my brain. I was vibing.

So the film is not much of a period homage, not much of a slasher, and not much of a comedy, with a lackluster YPM (yuks per minute). That leaves it as a time travel thriller-drama-mystery, where it coasts by as watchably pleasant. The story is well-paced, and the character dynamics between Lucy, Summer, and nice guy nerd Quinn (Griffin Gluck) work well enough.

The cast is unremarkably good or bad, with just one specific highlight: Antonia Gentry. Keep her on your radar. As I watched Time Cut, I kept wanting the scenes with Gentry to go on longer, let her act a little more. She has a distinct look and presence, strong chemistry with everyone around her, and strong acting instincts to back it up, too. She co-stars in a streaming TV dramedy I haven’t watched, Ginny & Georgia, and she is also charming in the just-fine teen comedy Prom Dates from earlier this year.

I ultimately mark Time Cut just a smidge below Totally Killer, partly because it came second and the novelty of the premise has diminished, and partly because nothing from the overall production really pops and offers a compelling reason for its own existence. I had a decent enough time watching it, but not quite enough to give it a recommendation.

Is It Good?

Nearly Good (4/8)

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