Time Cut is a new Netflix sci-fi horror film that follows Lucy going back in time to 2003 to save her sister Summer from being murdered by a masked killer. I’ll skip the fluff and just say I was not a fan of this movie for a number of reasons.
For one, it feels incredibly low effort. The amount of work this movie puts in to teleport us back to 2003 is minimal. The wardrobe was lazy. Others have picked it apart on social media relentlessly but just slapping uggs on people isn’t enough to convince people we’ve gone back two decades. It really seemed like an excuse to have a playlist filled with songs like “So Yesterday” by Hillary Duff or “Complicated” by Avril Lavigne. Honestly, aside from a couple of jokes about Twitter and phones, if you started watching this movie from the halfway point, you wouldn’t know they even went back in time, which makes the whole premise feel pretty pointless.
I know this movie technically was in the works before Totally Killer, but it is a bad look to have such a similar premise yet be this less interesting. I think this is due to this movie being incredibly tame. There is no blood, all the kills are done off-screen, and they aren’t even done in any cool or creative ways. While movies don’t need to be graphic to be good, they need to have something to get the heart pumping. The chase scenes are all predictable and the killer’s mask is extremely uninspired. The horror elements of this horror movie are a complete letdown.
The acting is fine, but the movie is weirdly edited and has moments of bad ADR. The visuals in this movie are cheap and like the soundtrack, it is pretty uninspired. This movie feels every bit like a Netflix movie in all the derogatory ways.
There are very few good elements to this movie but it does have some. There is an interesting dilemma that is presented to our lead Lucy as she tries to save Summer. It is given some weight and an emotional conclusion. Summer is also given an interesting character arc that is teased throughout the movie. It is a little predictable, but when you remind yourself that this film is set in 2003, it does add a sweet emotional resolution for her as well. I appreciated how the town they live in is void of color following the murders of 2003 as a symbol of how they never really healed and when Lucy travels back, she is welcomed by colors all around her.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Time Cut is a movie I should’ve known I wasn’t going to like going in. I don’t like time travel in movies and this movie didn’t do anything with it to counter my biases. The movie was too tame for me, and it lacked the quirks of Totally Killer, a movie it will forever be compared to due to their identical plots and the proximity of their release dates. Worst, it just felt low effort, from its script to its costume design. There didn’t seem to be an attempt to make an authentic 2003 feeling, yet the movie clearly tried to use nostalgia to sell itself based on its soundtrack. While I wasn’t a fan, maybe it’s something you’ll enjoy more.
