Time Travel Slasher Time Cut (2024) Isn’t One to Press Rewind On
Title: Time Cut
First Non-Festival Release: October 30, 2024 (Digital/Streaming Platforms)
Director: Hannah Macpherson
Writer: Michael Kennedy, Hannah Macpherson
Runtime: 91 Minutes
Starring: Madison Bailey, Antonia Gentry, Michael Shanks
Where to Watch: Check out where to find it here
Even though it has been in development an entire two years before the release of Totally Killer, Time Cut manages to be a forgettable and largely empty-calorie horror outing despite their similar stories.
In Time Cut, Lucy (Madison Bailey) wanders through life stuck in the shadow of the murdered older sister Summer (Antonia Gentry) that she never met. Frustrated with her parents over their fixation on Summer and longing to follow her dreams of landing a NASA internship, Lucy resigns herself to following their unreasonable rules. When visiting Summer’s grave as a family, Lucy notices something strange from a nearby barn. Upon entering, a flash of light from a Time Machine transports her back to 2003, just two days before Summer’s birthday. With time against her, Lucy must fight to solve her sister’s murder before it happens.
Lacking horror and comedy, Time Cut is a clunky Back to the Future riff that doesn’t inspire the nostalgia it tries to churn out.
From the get-go, Time Cut starts with some questionable decisions on how the journey begins. Lucy’s accidental transport is only the beginning of Time Cut’s uneven time travel rules. From changes in the past to the uncertainty of the future, only the surface level plot necessities are paid attention to in Lucy’s journey. As Lucy intervenes on behalf of her sister and races to solve the mystery behind her killer’s identity, she begins changing the course of events, as one would expect. The time travel logic goes haywire once the killer is revealed. From there, the story gets even sillier without any of the charm necessary to pull it off well.
Despite being set twenty years in the past, it almost seems like Time Cut forgets that it is a time travel film in anything but its ending logic. Sure, some Y2K fashion sneaks into frame and a few references are thrown in about historical events but everything feels very much like the current day. From the language to the characterization, everything just feels off in some way. The aesthetics match the modern sheen most Netflix projects are associated with, making its time travel hopes seem distant with its reality.
The cast does a fine job selling the various thrills but still comes short in the end thanks to the half-baked character development. Main character Lucy lacks any compelling character trait to keep the audience interested in her quest to save her sister. Her defining traits amount to being kind, lonely, and wanting to have more freedom from her overprotective parents. Even the way she stumbles into the time machine embodies her passivity. Madison Bailey does a fine enough job playing her, but it isn’t much of a triumph when Lucy is such a blank canvas. The rest of the cast are just as committed as Bailey, doing what they can with the limp characterizations from the script.
Underwhelming plots and characters can be saved in a slasher film by solid scares, but Time Cut fails to stand out in any meaningful way in the kill department. Between its low body count and propensity to employ simple stabs and slashes, Time Cut lacks the creativity to be memorable in anything beyond its time travel gimmick. It does include a few fun chase scenes, but the tension is lacking with how safe every encounter feels.
Ultimately tolerable yet bland, Time Cut is another recent Netflix horror film that fails to sink its teeth fully into its premise. Inoffensive scares, forgettable characters, and middling attempt to capture early 2000s nostalgia, Time Cut doesn’t do much with its fun premise. The production values and cast are there, but it doesn’t amount to much in the end. If time travel, wacky killer reveals, and Y2K fashion are your thing, take a trip down memory lane on Netflix with Time Cut.
Overall Score? 5/10
