There are a couple of extra twists in the time travel conundrun presented in “Time Cut,” a tale of teens terrorized by a mad slasher in small town Minnesota. 2003.
Serious moral choices are faced, in addition to the “can’t change the past without changing the future” paradoxes of such movies.
That’s a good thing, because the slasher movie all this time traveling is attached to is an unintentionally funny bust.
It features a rubber-masked nut-with-a-knife. Yawn. The killer comes at one victim with a grim reaper’s scythe at one point. I mean, come on.
Kids new to the genre experiencing this “Halloween” to “Scream” variation will also get a taste of the most head-slappingly-obvious product placement in recent film history.
If you can’t decide between Oliver Garden or just snacking on a Butterfinger afterwards, you’ll know Netflix’s machinations worked.
But it’s a slasher star vehicle for “Outer Banks” ingenue Madison Bailey, and she acquits hewrself with honor in a narrative that could not be more generic were it not for her and the whole time traveling thing.
“Time Cut” opens with the final murder in a spree killing. Somebody murdered a handful of teens in Sweetly, Minnesota (it was filmed in and around Winnepeg, Manitoba) back in mid-April of 2003. The killer wore a blonde villain’s mask. Summer (Antonia Gentry) was the last victim.
In 2024, Summer’s sister Lucy (Bailey) lives with the consequences of that before-she-was-born murder. Her parents pay tribute every April 18, and keep Summer’s room as it was, a shrine. Lucy’s town is a shell of what it was back then.
But perhaps that’s why Lucy’s all about the science of getting out. She’s won a NASA summer internship which her fretfully protective parents (Rachel Crawford, Michael Shanks) will never go for.
A flash of light in a barn on the farm where that last murder took place lures Lucy in, where she discovers a TIME MACHINE, you guys! She stumbles into its laser beams, and next thing she knows, she’s stuck in 2003 — a bit too fashion-forward to fit in, with an iPhone that can’t find a connection and beloved science teacher (Jordan Pettle) who has no idea who she is, and is 20 years younger.
And then there’s that perky, popular classmate who turns heads. That would be Summer, still alive as the slashing has yet to begin.
Lucy stumbled across Summer’s letter stash and has some suspicions about who the killer might have been. She can poke around, listen in and make some guesses.
First, though, she’s got to prove how girlhood has changed in 20 years by getting tough and intervening in a school bullying ritual. She’s got to meet the smartest kid in school, science nerd Quinn (Griffin Gluck), the one person who might buy in to her crazy story.
She’s got to subject herself to new bestie Summer’s makeover montage and condition herself to enjoy the girl pop of Vanessa Carlton, Hillary Duff and Avril Lavigne.
Go to the cops? That wouldn’t help this little-effort-involved plot. Lucy and Summer’s dad’s place of employment is so convenient to the narrative that it might provoke a laugh.
Otherwise, there isn’t much humor ro this, “Marty McFly” references included. Every dangerous situation is set-up so obviously as to scream “CONTRIVED.” Legions of “Scream” movies have ridiculed these conventions and the genre’s most obvious turns.
But the moral quandary of who to save or try to save, who to let die or who to kill is almost interesting.
Not that any of the young cast brings much to the shock, grief and terror everybody in Sweetly High should be experiencing when the murderous mayhem starts. Only Bailey comes close to adding that to her character’s emotional repertoire. And “close” here just doens’t cut it.
Rating: TV-14, violence
Cast: Madison Bailey, Antonia Gentry, Griffin Gluck, Samuel Braun and Megan Best.
Credits: Directed by Hannah Macpherson, scripted by Michael Kennedy and Hannah Macpherson. A Netflix release.
Running time: 1:31
