Movies now treat the gods as if they were a second stone age. Hannah Macpherson’s Time Cut finds Avril Lavigne and Vanessa Carlton nostalgic for the 2000s after a girl travels back in time to save a deceased loved one from a slasher villain. Is your déjà vu getting intense? That’s also the plot of director Nahnatchka Khan’s Totally Killer (this time 2003 is replaced with 1987), which arrived on Prime Video last year. Imitation is not uncommon in cinema; Dante’s Peak and Volcano was released in 1997 to independent acclaim. The problem is that Time Cut doesn’t evade, and even invites, comparisons to Totally Killer — unfortunate similarities that don’t do Halloween on Netflix any favors.
McPherson and co-writer Michael Kennedy (Freaky, It’s A Wonderful Knife) introduce the humble Minnesota suburb of Sweetley and its resident Lucy Field (Madison Bailey). She is the only child in the tragedy. Her sister Summer (Antonia Gentry) was murdered by the “Sweetly Slasher” in 2003, before Lucy was born. It’s now 2024, and Lucy has just been accepted into NASA’s newest internship program — but the time machine hidden in the yard has other plans. In 2003, Lucy finds herself talking to Summer for the first time in her life, and is faced with a choice: preserve history and avoid paradoxes, or save the brother she never met.
It’s a compelling dilemma for adventurers, but Time Cut doesn’t touch upon sci-fi logistics. Instead, McPherson embraces the aura of a 2000s teen comedy-drama—Sisterhood Of The Traveling Pants but with dead bodies. This approach seeks to implement a bubblegum and bedtime pillow fight film with specific important messages about friendship and sexual identities. This is all great, no objections, but McPherson’s reliance on portal horror filler sells the Time Cut slasher subplot by miles. Here, genre hybridization is a losing battle, as scares and poignancy are sacrificed in favor of corny jokes about Instagram that haven’t yet been invented.
Shades of Happy Death Day 2U also shows similarities to the aforementioned Freaky and Totally Killer, but Time Cut is a children’s game by comparison. Lucy’s journey into hell in 2003 comes with no strict rules, recalling the butterfly effect while minimizing any risks to narrative ease. The vanilla slasher elements are handled in the same way, especially character deaths that show no trace of violence outside of a pool of blood or two, as the cut editing eschews on-screen action. McPherson focuses on the predictable emotional arcs of sisters bonding across planes of existence, or goofy crushes falling for popular beauties (Griffin Gluck plays a friend-zone nice guy). It’s all a typical after-school drama begging for a darker edge.
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This leaves Time Cut to take surface level swipes at all of its ideas. Fleeting references to now-defunct 2000s mall culture or outdated technology provide quick and unnecessary lift, but there’s nothing substantial to the core of the storytelling. Lucy’s panicked reaction to the sounds of her dial-up modem is humorous, and there’s a neat Walkman/CD combo, but those are the few post-2000 jokes worth mentioning. Seeing staples like Juicy Couture and Uggs define the fashion sense of the lobby at Sweetly High; It’s a blast from the past, but the references barely go beyond the minimal gags. In fact, there is a slack visual contrast between 2003 and 2024; Playlist earworms ranging from Fat Joe to Wheatus do the heavy lifting instead. Speaking of differences, the Sweetly Slasher’s mask is oddly designed with the same doll-like texture as the Sweet Sixteen Killer from Totally Killer (despite the Time Cut cover being produced first), which makes the less threatening Sweetly Killer look dirty.
But in the larger sense, Sweetly’s Americana microcosm is indeterminate. Its inhabitants are cardboard cutouts. McPherson struggles to develop supporting characters beyond their one-word descriptions and downplays the plot, diminishing the film’s vague aspirations. Time Cut rests entirely on the shoulders of Bailey, Gentry, and Gluck, while everyone else melts like cotton candy after the required use. Lucy’s devotion to Summer can be so tender, and Quinn’s repressed desires have infected the shy man, but it’s all so painfully one-dimensional. It’s as filling as snacking on packing peanuts.
Realistically, Time Cut’s takeaways are for those who haven’t yet been exposed to horror tropes. McPherson’s approach is easy to digest, but it’s not even the best “time travel to save your neighbor” title we’ve gotten in the past few years. It’s a slam dunk on a dark guy who’s more interested in being a 2000s comedy, and meets somewhere in the unexciting middle. It walks, talks and disappoints like a lot of mid-range genre titles marred by tonal hesitation. Killer soundtrack, though.
Director: Hannah Macpherson
Writer: Michael Kennedy, Hannah Macpherson
Starring: Madison Bailey, Antonia Gentry, Griffin Gluck
Release date: October 30, 2024 (Netflix)
