More people should watch this time travel thriller on Netflix

before hitting play on Simultaneously 2019there is one thing you should know.

It’s not like it’s a low-budget sci-fi movie with a catchy premise. It’s not like he’s starring Anthony Mackie and Jamie Dornan as best friends. It’s not like its directors directed a few episodes of it Marvel Knight of the Moon.

This is where Synchronic really annoys you with its loopholes and dissonances and nonsensical timing. travel A mechanic that loops around in your head until a miraculous counter-argument emerges from the fog and convinces you that it all makes sense after all.

Surprisingly, this is a recommendation to watch Synchronic. A frustrating, divisive and dark indie gem with a sparkle. It’s another taste of the exciting talent of directors Justin Benson and Aaron Morehead (see Endless 2017 for twisted horror flavor). Just lean into Synchronic’s inspired fury, and you’ll end up with a — on the other hand — rewarding experience.

Mackie and Dornan play Steve and Dennis, two paramedics working in New Orleans. They are called in to treat a series of people who tell incoherent stories after taking a drug called Synchronic.

Steve and Dennis investigate the origins of drugs and the impossible capabilities of time travel, while also dealing with their crumbling personal lives. Steve is a tired ladies’ man and Denise is stuck in a dysfunctional marriage.

The best episodes of Synchronic include the actual sci-fi element itself. this Discovery. Steve and Denise walk along a dark road in the middle of the night, talking about their normal lives, until they enter a house and discover a shocking scene from a horror movie, where a person has been stabbed and a medieval sword is inexplicably is protruding from a wall

Thanks to some map devices, Steve finally takes the drug himself. This is where Synchronic becomes remarkably viscerally exciting.

Starting with its low-key plot point, the flick sends Steve and us into the scary unknown. The threat of sudden and violent death hangs over everything, because in this time-travel story, Steve is a black man, and going back to certain places comes with a whole layer of danger.

The mechanics of how the time travel drug works are convincingly teased out as Steve conducts the experiment. An analogy involving a record player is worth a character’s appearance alone. At one point, directors Benson and Morehead shake things up by giving us Steve’s first-person perspective, putting us right in the driver’s seat to experience what emerges from the tense, unpredictable darkness of the next location.

Other aspects of the drug are lost, including the slight pull following the people behind its production. Plus, while effective in some ways, the overall sense of realism can reveal the drug’s ridiculous abilities.

However, Steve’s precise and intelligent direction and sense of humor, delivered with Mackie’s deadpan gesticulations, shine over the harsher edges of the overtly synchronic. The story is by no means complete, chaining itself to a thinly developed emotional core involving Steve, Dennis, and Dennis’ daughter, Brianna. (A terrifying scene involving Steve’s dog is either an example of poor character decision-making or a deliberate deflection of our emotional strings.)

Synchronic’s bittersweet ending is disappointing, but it doesn’t diminish the impact of its larger parts. We hope this film will lead you to watch another Benson and Morehead film. Moviesfour of them They are part of a connected world (Some connections are stronger than others).

Synchronic is streaming Netflix now. It can be slow, with occasionally slurred dialogue and an ending that throws you off guard. You need the peak attention span of watching a movie to absorb the subtle details that explain what’s going on. And yet, it still remains to be interpreted whether absolutely everything makes sense. Take a step? decide yourself