| Maybe it’s just me, but time travel serial killer movies really need to have a comedic edge to them. Why are we trying to take this genre seriously? It’s not built for seriousness. There is a very noticeable lack of comedy in Time Cut. The first third of the movie is basically pure depression. A sister, and her parents, and a town, mourning a group of teens killed twenty years ago. | | 2024
Directed by: Hannah Macpherson
Screenplay by: Michael Kennedy, Hannah Macpherson
Starring: Madison Bailey, Antonia Gentry
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When Lucy (Madison Bailey) is visiting the site of her sister’s murder (a sister she never knew who died before she was born), she accidentally time travels to 2003. The second act starts with a teen in a world she never knew, but again, the movie never goes for laughs, now we just have a brightly-coloured world where everyone just accepts time travel, and there’s still a whole lot of depression going on.
The second act at least gets interesting, as long as you have survived the slowness thus far, when tension builds as our heroes – Lucy and her new friend Quinn – attempt to stop the murders and find the killer. That intrigue only gets us so far, unfortunately.
The third act goes for philosophy and a completely stupid resolution which viewers won’t be dumb enough to predict. By this time, it’s clear there’s no comedy, but introducing a slowly contemplative dilemma about who should live and who should die, also doesn’t fit. This genre is too inherently silly to be able to spend 10 minutes on an ethical moral quandary. A better movie could perhaps find a way to fit that in, but not this one.
Serial killer thrillers, especially if we’re incorporating a teen time travelling, work best when the audience can join in the mystery and try solve who the killer is. It’s not possible here, get prepared for a really bad ending.
Time Cut is a teen time travel serial killer movie that is slow, filled with depression, attempts some moral philosophizing and then really ups the ante with an ending that is worse than everything that came before it.
Last year, Amazon Prime released Totally Killer, a movie in the exact same genre with a similar premise that is actually good because it’s funny.
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