Time travel and slasher movies seem like a rare combination, but there might be something in the air. Last week I watched Totally Killer and really enjoyed it. I think the universe heard my enthused raving, because Time Cut just came out.

I have, in the course of a few short days, seen the number of time travel slasher movies I’m aware of double. Maybe this is the new Moore’s Law and next week I’ll learn about two more? Anyway, I liked Totally Killer a lot, so I had to give Time Cut a try.

Time Cut is the wan and sucked-dry shadow of Totally Killer, like a vampire is targeting time travel slasher movies and Time Cut was its first victim.

Time Cut felt bland, and flat. It lacked the energy and desperate earnestness that pushed Totally Killer along so reliably. While Totally Killer’s characters were sometimes unbelievably stupid and myopically petty, those characters’ actions and words (and the story) felt like they emerged from the characters first, rather than being squashed into the story because they had to be there.

Characters’ choices and words in Time Cut, on the other hand, felt driven by convention and plot requirement rather than via any kind of interior motivation. Choices were made because the script said so. Words were spoken because they were what was on the page. It reminded me at every step that it was artifice rather than truth.

I make big noises about truth and honesty in some of my reviews. What that really boils down to is a desire to feel like the emotional lives of the characters, and the characters’ experiences, are real—if everything feels real to the characters, I can more easily accept it. When those experiences don’t feel real, characters’ actions and reactions feel artificial and forced. The choices characters make, the lines they speak, those are all part of this experience. I want them to feel grounded in the characters’ reality, so that I can believe the characters and their story—even when the characters are idiots.

I know art is artificial. I understand that. I just want it to convince me that it’s telling me truths, if not THE truth. Or it can give me really good spectacle, but that’s a tangent for another time.

For all its flaws Totally Killer landed that simulation of truth beautifully. I could let myself forget that what I was watching was concocted fiction following a plan. Time Cut never sat in that beautiful moment of simulated emotional reality for long enough for me to forget that it was artificial.

Time Cut tries to benefit from several big emotional pivots arising from larger emotional arcs. Yet instead of building the foundation for those larger emotional arcs and letting us experience them, the movie simply tells us about them as they happen—or even tells us that they happened at some point without us seeing anyone experience or reflect on them. It’s deeply unsatisfying.

Time Cut does manage to create a few beautiful moments that feel honest and true, eventually. They’re brief, but they’re poignant and they’re there. The problem is that, for me, those moments happened about an hour into the movie. When you finally hit the right notes at the right time an hour into your runtime, you’ve screwed up.

This is too bad, because the movie absolutely had potential. Great ideas were present. If those ideas had been tied more coherently to more clearly motivated characters, and if those characters were given more to work with in the script, this movie could have dragged me along by my heartstrings. It would have been magnificent.

Instead, Time Cut feels like a cautionary tale. It’s worth assigning alongside Totally Killer for a comparison course on time travel movies. Maybe it’s worth revisiting as a rewrite project, a learning exercise. But I can’t recommend watching it unless you want to do your own analysis of how a time travel slasher movie can fail the promise of its premise.

I have strong (negative) feelings about how this movie’s characters talk about time travel, more due to missed opportunities than anything else. I also have strong (positive) feelings about a few of the core emotional scenes at the heart of the movie. If you don’t want spoilers, let’s leave it here. You should know enough by now to know whether you want to see this.

If you do want some specifics, here there be *SPOILERS*. You’ve been warned.

First, time travel.

I’m really pissed by the way this story deals with time travel. It talks about the potential consequences of time travel, and it intentionally scares us (and the characters) with those consequences. Then, the story refuses to engage with time travel and the consequences of paradox with any clearer grounding despite making those consequences key to the story’s ultimate resolution. It feels cheap and deeply unrewarding, incurious and unwilling to explore the very premise that launched this movie to begin with.

Plus, with this incuriousness the movie squanders what could have been great character building that would have propelled the story more cleanly to the actual written conclusion. Here:

Our protagonist Lucy (from 2024) accidentally goes back in time. When she realizes what’s happened and speaks with Quinn (helpful nerd friend from 2003) about the risks of changing the past by trying to prevent something awful from happening, Quinn says that messing with time is bad and can create a paradox that deletes existence. Infuriatingly, Lucy doesn’t have any alternative theories about time travel and paradox—she doesn’t suggest anything, or debate anything, or offer an alternate theory before being swayed by Quinn’s arguments. She’s a fucking nerd from 2024 who got an internship to NASA, I don’t understand why she’s written as hapless and uninformed about a common sci-fi trope. At the very least, she should have a smattering of ideas and be able to hash them out with Quinn. Even if the script needs Quinn’s interpretation to win, Lucy should be making counterpoints and asking clarifying questions.

The movie could then reinforce all of that by having this discussion of time travel and paradox come up again with Summer (Lucy’s 2003 sister, last victim of the slasher in Lucy’s 2024 timeline). Summer’s argument that they have to stop the murders if they can would give Quinn and Lucy another moment to argue briefly about time travel and paradox (honestly, this can be written accessibly, but it feels like they didn’t even try). That would give Lucy more grounds to be frustrated with Quinn when he changes his mind about the arguments in the presence of Summer.

Okay, *MORE SPOILERS* now. If you care at all about the identity of the slasher, look away.

The whole unmasking of the slasher and revelation of the slasher’s backstory feels grinding and belabored. It relies on a villain monologue instead of letting the other characters discover what is going on and why. If there’d been real conversation around paradox earlier, then when the slasher is finally unmasked and everyone (Lucy, Quinn, and Summer) sees who has been stalking and murdering people, the question of time travel and paradox could come up again naturally. Lucy could claim (unwanted) victory in her first argument with Quinn even as the slasher laughs her and Quinn down, instead of just passing it off with the slasher’s wet flop of a line: “You’ll learn that’s not how time travel works.” This would also let Summer spell things out (“I’m lesbian you dipshit!”), let Quinn from 2003 reevaluate his life choices, and give Quinn a clearer chance to disavow any desire to become Quinn from 2024 (the slasher). Maybe this way the whole slasher backstory can feel less horribly belabored.

See, like I said before; the problem is that Time Cut wants to benefit from several big emotional pivots arising from larger emotional arcs. Time Cut relies on monologue and forced exposition, simply telling us about those emotional moments as they happen—or even tells us that they happened at some point without us seeing them—instead of letting us experience them. It’s deeply unsatisfying.

My dissatisfaction is made worse by the fact that, when the movie does land a scene, it’s good.

The best example, for me, comes when Summer reveals that she didn’t believe Lucy’s claims about being from the future. Summer admits to Lucy that she’s gay, and says that Lucy’s “I’m from the future and you have an annoyingly handsome husband” rang false, and… that was actually really good. There’s solid emotional vulnerability and honesty in that scene. You can see Lucy desperately trying (and failing) to protect her older sister from the truth—that she is murdered in Lucy’s timeline.

That’s gold. 

Unfortunately, the rest of the movie just doesn’t live up to that. There’s so little other emotional foundation for me to connect with, and the characters so often feel flat. The movie’s core conundrum, of Lucy choosing between saving her sister and preserving her own future life, could be really solid. Instead of making that choice feel fraught, or making us worry about the temporal consequences of Lucy’s actions, Time Cut mostly flops and flounders on the screen as the actors aren’t given enough to work with. One good scene isn’t enough to save the movie. There aren’t enough other stand out moments, and there isn’t enough emotional traction elsewhere to give me moments of satisfying resolution. Even the concluding scenes—which should feel great!—feel flat.

*END SPOILERS*

It hurt to see such a potentially awesome concept feel so unsupported by its movie. I can’t recommend Time Cut. It doesn’t even manage to work with the culture shock of time travel beyond the technological divide. Watch it if you want something schlocky that reaches out and falls short.