By Robert Scucci
| Published
This week, I watched the time-traveling slasher movie, Time Cut, which helped me find my true calling: I will now devote the rest of my life to building my very own time machine so I can go back to last week and warn myself about how terrible Time Cut is.
What sounded to me like a fun teen scream movie about a girl traveling 21 years into the past to save her older sister from being murdered, ended up playing out like the “Member Berries” episode of South Park, but unironically. What’s more, time travel rules are rarely applied or considered in Time Cut, making the whole thing fall apart because apparently our protagonist faces no consequences for her actions on altered timeline she finds herself on.
If you don’t believe me, then you can watch Time Cut at your own risk.
The Sweetly Slasher, And Lucy The Silver Medal
Time Cut begins in the year 2003, when a high school girl named Summer Field (Antonia Gentry) gets murdered by a masked serial killer at a Spring Fling celebration that’s held at a barn that seems like the perfect place for a serial killer to murder somebody named Summer Field. 21 years later, Summer’s younger sister, Lucy (Madison Bailey), lives in her older sister’s shadow because her parents, Kendra (Rachael Cawford) and Gil (Michael Shanks), never got over her death. In fact, Lucy was only conceived as a means to replace Summer, only to be ignored by her parents because she’s not Summer.
Early on in Time Cut, we’re told that Lucy gets accepted into an internship for NASA, which is important for some reason.
Does this mean that Lucy makes a time machine?
Nope!
Lucy just so happens to stumble upon a time machine at the barn her sister was murdered in 21 years prior, and it just so happens to be set to beam her into the past … the week her sister gets murdered. There’s literally no reason to imply that Lucy is into space and technology stuff because she’s subjected to the time machine’s whims by happenstance, but here we are.
When You’re In Time Cut, You’re Family
Lucy and Summer’s family eats at Olive Garden, like, three times in Time Cut. When Lucy goes back to warn Summer about the murderer, and her family takes her to Olive Garden, Lucy asks if they still have unlimited breadsticks in 2003, and is thrilled to find out that they do.
I’m pretty sure that these multiple product placements for Olive Garden were somehow responsible for financing Time Cut because these scenes had the most thought put into them to inform the audience that Olive Garden is, in fact, not a restaurant that simply exists within the fiction of Time Cut, but is an actual real-life restaurant that you could go to right now for a memorable dining experience at a reasonable price.
Also, flip phones? Wow, that’s so 2003 … they really nailed the nostalgia aesthetic here. They did such a great job that they didn’t even need to have a dress-up montage to let everybody know that the clothes they’re wearing is from 2003 while Avril Lavigne music plays in the background.
But they do it anyway.
Timeline Semantics Make No Sense
The entire point of Time Cut is for Lucy to make sure her older sister, Summer, doesn’t get killed. But as she interferes with the serial killer’s murders leading up to Summer, she makes matters worse (more people die than on the original timeline). Then, she flat out tells Summer that she’s going to get killed, which gets them, and their geeky friend, Quinn (Griffin Gluck), to come up with a plan to save her.
But if Summer lives, and Lucy was only conceived by Kendra and Gil so they have a new daughter to take to Olive Garden on the original timeline, then saving Summer would cause Lucy to cease to exist, right?
You wish.
And wait until you figure out the killer’s identity, which literally made me say “oh, f*ck you” and leave the room so I could scream into a pillow without waking up my family before resuming the film.
Time Cut. Stream it on Netflix. Or Don’t.
Those are your options.
