For “Things Will Be Different,” his debut feature, writer-director (and editor) Michael Felker tries and tries to find ways to strip predictability out of his supernatural thriller. But when you’re working in a genre with fixed expectations, that often means throwing logic out the window and stumbling towards nonsensical as you struggle to go where no “Twilight Zone” episode has gone before.

Two armed siblings (Riley Dandy and Adam David Thompson) meet in a remote diner. They’re all alone. He’s already ordered so that they can discuss their next move as they sit, rifles slung over their shoulders, bags of money at their feet.

We don’t see the heist, don’t know who they robbed. We hear the sirens. The law is on their trail.

And where on Earth would these two armed goons not stand out in a public setting like this? Idaho?

“Joe” has a plan, and apparently Sydney or “Syd” is comfortable with it. They head off into the woods, cross a cornfield, chase off some target-shooting yahoos and duck into a well-kept but empty two story early 20th century farmhouse.

They hear the sirens again, but Joe’s confidence in their “safe house” is based on what he knows, what he’s told Syd and what she — agreeing to this robbery to get out of debt — believed is that it’s a “magical safe house.”

Fiddle with the time on the magical grandfather clocks therein, utter a few words in what sounds like Latin (Joe has a notebook full of “instructions), get that magic locked upstairs door to open, and they will step through time into some safer past for a couple of weeks, and return to their time afterwards once the coast is clear.

Sure, ANY of us would buy in if our sibling told us this “stay out of jail” tale as his pitch to sign us up for armed robbery. That, or we’d just Baker Act the loon and be done with him.

They drunkenly pass their two weeks of solitude in the wintry past with vintage CDs and vhs tapes, but danged if there isn’t a catch when they try to finish off their “laying low.”

A magical safe will have to be opened (per instructions). A magical cassette recorder that communicates with the overlords of this “Vise Grip”oasis must be consulted. A magical board covering the door, where messages, warnings and threats are carved, must be contended with.

As they freak out, they must “investigate” and contend with their pasts (barely), the history of this house (for a moment) and face off with whoever or whatever opens and closes this “Vise Grip” on time, because “they” are not letting them go.

Here’s my favorite line of dialogue, delivered by Thompson as Joe.

“It’s impossibly impossible, and it’s crazy to even consider this possibly possible.”

Sure, NOW you say that.

And here’s my least favorite line, delivered by the disembodied voice on the cassette tape.

“Go inside and await for our instructions.”

What community college D-student piffle is this?

The viewer is both miles ahead of the characters in guessing where this is going, and befuddled at the clumsy ways it gets there, or avoids letting us think we know how it’s getting there.

The performances aren’t bad, or particularly affecting either.

And as much as I hate thrillers that over-explain the unexplainable, plainly Joe, Sydney or “Luuuucyyyy” have got some ‘splainin’ to do. Without that, the headsnapping leaps this “plot” takes and the absurd situations and oft-broken “rules” this world requires which this script serves up don’t add up to a coherent movie.

“Things Will Be Different” when our writer-director (and editor) figures that out. And that “await our intructions” doesn’t require the clunky preposition “for.”

Rating: Unrated, violence, profanity

Cast: Riley Dandy and Adam David Thompson

Credits: Scripted and directed by Michael Felker. A Magnet release.

Running time: 1:41