Time Cut
Time Cutis a frustrating film , twice over . On the one hand , it take a literary genre vanity that should be a layup and sleepwalks decently through it , in a room that implies the hearing merit no elbow grease beyond what it take to get them to fight play . As if those who have sex slashers or time - locomotion movies are won over by premises alone , not the passion and creativity of their execution . sealed scenes left me find more insulted than defeated .
Cast
On the other hand , there is another , secure movie bury withinTime Cutthat occasionally peeks through , and that I so desperately want to be watching . You never want to be leave envisioning an substitute path for something you just finish , so clear to you thatit becomes aggravating to think about what the film actually was . Still , I admire it for provoking the questions that it does , and I ’m still try out to grapple with the cognitive dissonance of that . I rationalise if , in trying to reconcile these reaction , my review leaves you feeling the same path .
Time Cut Wastes Both Its Slasher & Time-Travel Elements
Creativity Is Missing Here, And Nothing Works Without It
In 2003 , four teenagers were murdered by the Sweetly Slasher , with Summer ( Antonia Gentry ) the final victim . In 2024 , her sis Lucy ( Madison Bailey ) , born after the cleanup , lives with the wreckage . The town is a shell of its formal ego , most of its businesses shuttered . Lucy ’s parents seem stuck in a joyless holding pattern . They keep Summer ’s room perfectly intact and can process their living daughter ’s life only in term of the potential for danger . When she wins a summer internship at NASA , they can only suggest the lab where her father works instead , nearer to home .
One day , in Summer ’s room , Lucy find out a ostensibly threatening letter under her floorboard , signed " E. " The first and only clue in yr . Then , on her family ’s annual pilgrim’s journey to the shrine they ’ve build where Summer die , she get a inscrutable flash of luminance coming from a nearby b . She follows it , finds a mysterious machine , and ( despite being set up to us as NASA - saucy ) just presses the start push . One affair lead to another , and Lucy encounter herself in 2003 , on the mean solar day the execution begin .
The film is unable to sustain any tension and is on the face of it afraid of its own potential for violence …
To protrude with the bad , both the slasher and time - travelling portions ofTime Cutare defined by laziness . They draw a bead on to the bare minimum of function , miss the ambition for fun or creative thinking required to stand out in either music genre . The details of the case and the mechanics of the time machine are breezed through in clunky exposition and technobabble . Neither have any substantial bearing on the tarradiddle .
The nature and consequences of time travel , fertile ground for imaginative play , are left severely underbaked here . So much fourth dimension is devoted to talking about fear of a universe - destroying paradox , a familiar cliché , but how many movies actually commit to that concept ? We know someone will attempt to shift the yesteryear anyway ( there ’d be no floor otherwise ) , so why spend so long harping on what unavoidably wo n’t bear out ?
I ’m Still Here is all about the profoundness of feeling in an unstable , tumultuous meter , and how it sway the gravy boat of a on the face of it stable family unit .
The revulsion sequence are even less successful . The film is unable to sustain any tensionand is seemingly afraid of its own potential for violence , despite gesturing toward the originative weapon system choice that is much a bar for entry into the slasher music genre . The cause of death lacks any mien or personality , and , in part because of the rigidity of the clip - traveling assumption , has no real power to surprise . The character ’s design has an unfortunate resemblance to that oflast year’sTotally Killer , but with a less inspiring execution , which leaves it fair toothless .
I should linger on that equivalence a mo . Time CutandTotally Killerhave signally interchangeable premises , often separate by technicalities like babe vs. mother , 2000s vs. 1980s . Time Cutwas announced and filmed first , but not only didTotally Killerbeat it to market , it ’s also ( while more dear than great ) distinctly higher-ranking in every area I ’ve take apart so far . I do n’t bonk quite what to make of this co-occurrence , except that Netflix ’s movie undoubtedly suffers from its competitor ’s existence .
Lucy’s Family Status Is The Best Part Of Time Cut
I Wish This Had Been The Whole Movie
And yet , Time Cutmakes one fascinating choice that could ’ve really set it apart , had it been properly foreground . Lucy has a complicated relationship to this traumatic event , having been raised in its shadow . She ’s eager to finally meet the sister she ’s only lived with as a ghost , and she rule Summer soft to know . But she also notice her living a much sunnier lifespan . Her parent are warm , caring , and encouraging . Truly happy . They welcome Lucy in , thinking her a friend of Summer ’s , and they widen their umbrella of care when they sense in Lucy a less - than - nurturing home life .
Those are heavy , thorny questions to go with threatening , thorny feelings . They give stretches ofTime Cutreal weight …
Bailey play these scenes with a doleful soupcon that seems out of whole tone with so much of what the cinema is doing , but also so much more compelling . Lucy ask her unwitting parents if they ’ve ever debate having a 2d minor , and with a have it off glance at Summer , they tell her no . One was always all they needed . And given how talks eventually confirms Lucy was no chance event , the film is remarkably point-blank about the fact that she was born to fill the golf hole leave by Summer ’s dying . They just do n’t have it in them to love her on her own terms .
With the nature of time travel undecipherable , Lucy is interest about how intervening in the killings will change the future , and Summer ’s slaying is by far the most perturbing . It ’s clear to her that if Summer lives , her parents will never have her . Her life is distressing , but clearly full of potentiality . Is she uncoerced to trade in it for her family to be happy without her ? Summer , who is n’t maintain in the dark very long and gets nigh to Lucy , faces a alike enigma . Can she take over her own death if it means her baby get to exist ?
Those are heavy , briery questions to go with expectant , setose feelings . They give stretch ofTime Cutreal system of weights – far more than I would ’ve call up possible after watching the quietus of it . I ca n’t serve but think about how interesting it would have been to have this threadbethe film ; how racy the characters and themes could have become . It would ’ve put a headier , sci - fi spin on the slasher format , or else of the nominal genre splicing we got . I have to give the movie recognition for institute this seed . But it does n’t deliver the rest of what ’s onscreen .
Time Cutis now available to pour on Netflix . The movie is 93 minutes tenacious and is not currently scab .
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A teenage fille goes back in time to the other 2000s to save her sister from a dangerous killer .
