Time Cut review (2024)

Time Cut proves that timing is indeed everything. Even when it comes to time traveling teen slasher films.

Twenty years ago, a serial killer went on a massacre slaying four teenagers. One of them was Summer Fields (Antonia Gentry), whose death rocked her parents while casting a massive shadow over her sister, Lucy (Madison Bailey, Black Lightning). While Lucy never met Summer, but her parents (Michael Shanks and Rachael Crawford and most of the community still seem to be living life going through the motions decades later.

Unexpectedly accessing a time machine, Lucy is transported back to 2003 where she has a chance to save Summer while learning more about the sister she never knew. Fortunately, she gains an ally in Quinn (Griffin Gluck), the bullied nerd who’s got a massive crush on Summer.

Quinn isn’t as skeptical as he probably should be just for the sake of creating an interesting conflict and tries to help Lucy navigate the moral grey area of stopping the killer or letting the established time period play out.

If that summary sounds a little like deja vu, that probably means you’ve already watched Totally Killer, a slasher with a very similar premise. In some ways the similarities seem so close it couldn’t be a coincidence. The irony is that Time Cut was actually shot before Totally Killer, but the SAG-AFTRA forced its delay. In this case that meant Time Cut had to be basically flawless to get in front of viewers after Totally Killer.

In too many ways, Totally Killer is a better time-traveling slasher. Lucy doesn’t have much shock from going back a decade and she’s certainly not aghast from the lack of modern-day PC sensibilities. Besides an obligatory fashion check-in, Lucy adjusts remarkably well for someone who grew up with unlimited cell phone access and having to rely on dial-up for Internet service. It seems like director/co-screenwriter Hannah Macpherson and co-screenwriter Michael Kennedy could have played up more of Lucy struggling to adjust. Especially since Time Cut isn’t that much of a slasher.

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The opening sequence tips Macpherson’s approach to the slasher aspects of the film. The masked killer, wearing a mask that looks too bizarrely similar to the Totally Killer villain, takes an implied swipe at Summer with a scythe in a more implied than bloody scene. On screen there’s only three deaths. Macpherson doesn’t seem overly committed to the gorier aspects of a slasher film with innovative or clever death sequences. It’s all fairly ho-hum. That’s going to prove disappointing to some genre fans who appreciate creative death scenes.

Another disappointment is the killer just doesn’t seem particularly competent waiting an exorbitant amount of time before making their kills. Add in the killer’s oh-so deliberate pacing and it doesn’t seem feasible for them to catch up to any of their victims if they get a running start.

At its heart Time Cut is more about Lucy and Summer connecting. Bailey and Gentry make for believable siblings and the film is at its best with Lucy learning about Summer including her struggles in coming out to be with her would-be girlfriend Emmy (Megan Best). Maybe the 20-year gap would have played better if the film were set in the 90s when coming out was “Earth-shattering” news?

As a subplot, Summer’s sexual preference doesn’t actually play much into the film’s payoff. Perhaps Macpherson and Kennedy didn’t like the optics of a teen girl being killed/targeted to get killed because she was a lesbian, but it would have given a bit more depth than the generic motive used.

Time Cut disappoints as a slasher and as a time traveling film. This is a premise that should result in a fun, culture clash style with the hero having to go old school to save a loved one. This underwhelming effort probably needed a bit more time fine-tuning the script and embracing the genre.

Rating: 4 out of 10

Photo Credit: Netflix

Check out Totally Killer on Amazon Prime.

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