Time Cut

Time Cut
Starring Madison Bailey, Antonia Gentry, Michael Shanks, Griffin Gluck
Directed by Hannah MacPherson

There's been a few times in cinema history where two films centering around the same topic were released within the same year. "Olympus Has Fallen" and "White House Down" and "Antz" and "A Bug's Life" are two examples. Another example is 2023's "Totally Killer" and 2024's "Time Cut," released on Amazon Prime and Netflix respectively, that both center on the same concept. Both involve a young girl traveling back in time to save a loved one. Yet only one was decent, while the other was filled with cliches, lacking emotional depth, character development, or elevated stakes. "Time Cut" is the latter.

Twenty years after her sister Summer Field (Antonia Gentry) was murdered, high school student Lucy (Madison Bailey) is applying for a NASA internship while her parents don't want her to go, being overprotective since their first daughter was murdered. One day while visiting Summer's memorial at the place where she was murdered, Lucy discovers a time machine and is teleported from 2024 to 2003, days before Summer's untimely end. She befriends loner geek Quinn (Griffin Gluck) who assists her in getting back to her original time, all the while going through emotional turmoil as to whether or not save Summer and the other victims of the serial killer, as in changing anything in the past could alter everything in the present, including Lucy's own existence.

The premise sounds more exciting than what you see, because essentially everything happens by happenstance. Lucy had no idea time travel was even a thing, but she accidentally uncovers a working time machine that takes her back to the time before Summer was killed. She wasn't actively looking for a way to stop the killing, she just finds the means and jumps in. It's not even a major plot point because it's just something that exists without purpose and without a reason except for the film's existence to be explained. Unlike "Totally Killer," Lucy doesn't even realize a time machine exists, which is frustrating in the ways of storytelling, because it just is, with no logic behind it.

Speaking of no logic, there's not a lot of it in the movie in its entirety. Lucy doesn't really think through her actions in the past, except for the generic "Back to the Future" rules of not interfering with the time-space continuum. It's a matter of creating a terrifying future that Lucy struggles with not interfering with the future, not the fact that she was literally born as a replacement daughter for grieving parents, and if Summer hadn't been murdered, Lucy wouldn't exist at all. That's just a passing thought in the movie before, of course, Lucy decides to do the right thing and try to stop the killer.

The performances are stock character cliches and don't offer any depth of emotion, especially when you consider Lucy's predicament. Sure, she never knew her sister in her timeline, but Madison Bailey only offers a few emotional expressions: worry and confusion mostly. Griffin Gluck doesn't fare any better, playing the stereotypical geeky outcast who somehow doesn't question Lucy's time-traveling capabilities. Antonia Genry is the Tree (from "Happy Death Day") in this film, going from the popular girl to the one you're supposed to have some emotional feels for, but Gentry doesn't pull it off anywhere near as good as Jessica Rothe.

What makes the film even worse is it abandons its own thought processes and has the fastest, least exciting conclusion you could imagine. Then it goes even further by disregarding any laws of physics or time travel in its conclusion, which feels like a rejected end of a pilot episode of a cheesy sitcom. It seemed that the only reason the director wanted to make this film in the first place was to highlight the fashion and especially the music of the early 2000s, but that in and of itself doesn't prove the film's existence - it just makes us wish we had the time back watching it.

The Score: D