Stream or skip?

Time reduction (now on Netflix) is a combination slasher and time travel film starring Madison Bailey and Antonia Gentry as sisters who meet each other for the first time when one of them travels back in time to prevent the other from being killed. Perhaps it goes without saying: it’s complicated. So yes, this is one of those plots that takes us to a city of paradox where the grass is green and the consequences for the space-time continuum are potentially disastrous, but can director Hannah McPherson and her co-writer Michael Kennedy (bizarre) take us ooooooooo?

SLICE OF TIME: STREAM OR SKIP?

Essence: SITLEY, MINNESOTA, APRIL 18, 2003. Three high school students have just been stabbed to death by a killer, and yet the spring show must go on. Summer Field (Gentry) isn’t too happy about this—these three high school kids were her friends, and no one except the lovable nerd in a D&D shirt, Quinn (Griffin Gluck), cares. Almost immediately after Summer says, “I guess I’m the only one who’s afraid of a serial killer,” she goes into the bathroom all alone, which is a terrible decision because the slasher killer is in Ken (or at least in Ken ) mask and hoodie chase her with Rambo’s (or at least Rambo’s) knife. He misses, so he chases her into the barn, where a reaper’s scythe (or at least one that looks like a reaper) is leaning against the wall. This time he won’t miss it.

It is now APRIL 18, 2024. Lucy Field (Bailey) has an internship at NASA, but her parents aren’t sure they can afford her the amazing life of an astronaut or anything like that. You see, they’ve been overprotective ever since Summer was knocked down 21 years ago. Summer’s room is a time capsule of 2003 with a Buffy poster, a boombox with a CD, and newspaper clippings about the murder that they wouldn’t have kept if they were in their right mind, but what do I know? I’m not a psychologist. Sweet Slasher never killed anyone again and the murders remain unsolved, but in Summer’s room there is a loose floorboard and underneath it are handwritten letters that look like capitalized clues. She, Mother and Father Field (why didn’t they name their second daughter Spring Field? Missed opportunity) go to the murder scene to pay their respects on the anniversary, and Lucy wanders into the barn and stumbles upon the time machine and the zappo. , it has been rescheduled to APRIL 16, 2003. Now, if you’re wondering why exactly this happens, I recommend not asking, because while it’s eventually explained, it’s not at all satisfying. Just deal with it, that’s what I say.

Anyway. You are currently doing math. If Lucy was the eldest in 2024 and Summer was the eldest in 2003, then Mother and Father Field may have conceived their second daughter in mad grief and perhaps with some medical help, since two-plus decades between children is unusual . Don’t worry, I won’t go into that hole because there are too many spoilers – very stupid spoilers. She finds Quinn, and since he is a “physics genius”, she tells him about the inconveniences of time travel, and after he says “What is Twitter” and “Is Paris Hilton still popular?”, he agrees to help her, at first by feeding her a popular name-brand candy bar whose logo is the subject of the film’s best photographs, and then warning her of a potential disruption of timeline continuity if she goes through with her attempt to stop the Sweet Slasher from sweetly slicing her sister. While she’s mulling it over, she still tinkers with things, meeting Summer and hanging out with their parents, bringing up some complicated feelings and allowing for some crazy dialogue like, “I’m your sister. I’m just not born yet” and “We don’t change the future, we just transform it, as in She’s all thisand “Let’s go steal some antimatter!” Now if only Time reduction it was as much fun as I imagine it to be. That’s how it is, I think. That’s how it is.

What movies does this remind you of?: Time reduction really really wants to be Back to the Future meets ScreamBut Absolutely killer implemented the idea in a much funnier way and with fewer visits to the popular soup and breadstick restaurant whose logo is the subject of the second best photograph in the film. It feels like Netflix is ​​trying to repeat the success Fear Street and/or Nanny.

Performance worth watching: Bailey and Gentry are excellent actors who share a sweet moment as long-lost sisters pining for things. But they too often get stuck in stupid, sloppy plotting that doesn’t do them any good.

Memorable dialogue: Quinn kills brains, causing the old butterfly effect:

Summer: We need do anything!

Quinn: Doing anything in that context is extremely subjective. We could have saved a life. We might as well start World War III!

Sex and skin: Nobody.

Our opinion: Having lubricated my elbow a little, Time reduction could be a true magician of the mind who oscillates wildly between amusing nostalgic fetishism and dark existential musings. We have Wheatus needle drops and outrageous clothing fashions mixed with Lucy’s realization that if she prevents her sister’s death, her parents likely won’t try for another child. And that means her. It seems that she might find herself in the great nothingness of nothingness. How selfless is she? What are her options? How much is her life worth? So many questions and so little interest in where they will lead, because there is a cool plot here, and it clearly takes precedence over all these boring ones ideas. I mean who wants think about things here? Thinking is for squaresman.

As such, the film flies past one creatively lucrative opportunity after another as if they were orange cones on a construction site. Time reduction consists of a bunch of period references with no humor, heavy drama with no depth and characters with not much going on in their inner lives. Example: a scene in which American Psycho DVD is used as a weapon. It would be a lot funnier if the killer pulled the disc out of Netflix’s red mailer. This is also the type of movie where the third act confrontation in 2024 is bound to involve some era-specific ephemerality, so the EV charger ends up being used as a blunt weapon. It’s a joke? I think that’s how it should be. Now the character is using the same-sex marriage license as a blunt weapon? This would be funny.

This is a long way of saying that Time reduction lazy and it sucks. Visually, it’s flat and dull, like cheap cable TV. And the script is such a mess, it compromises comedy and drama on both sides, landing on a mediocre, bland mess that feels tame for younger audiences, and a crumpled, underexplained conclusion that would be complete nonsense if I typed it , but in execution it comes across as a shrug. Any opportunity the filmmakers had to extract some enjoyment from the plot seems to have been squandered, only to call it a day. Viewers will certainly feel the same.

Our call: Time is up. Too easy, I know. But it fits. SKIP THIS.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.