When time travel gets trippy
Forget Tenet — SYNCHRONIC is 2020’s most head-spinning sci-fi. The directors explain the rules of their universe
RULE 1: TIME IS NOT LINEAR
The idea for Synchronic, the fourth film from filmmaker team Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, first began germinating in 2015. “Apparently, physicists are pretty well decided that time is not linear in any particular way,” Moorhead explains. “It’s just that that’s how we perceive it. Justin threw this idea at me: if time is not linear, what if there were a way to actually see it that way? Now, this is our pop understanding of it. Of course, we are mere indie filmmakers. But we found that interesting. And also absolutely terrifying.” Having previously tackled time loops in their 2017 film, the cosmic headscratcher The Endless, the pair began workshopping ideas, working within the ‘growing block universe’ idea — “the theory that the future isn’t set yet,” as Benson explains. “The past and present are, but the future is yet to be created.” So there would be no going forward in time. With the rough physics in place, the pair began working on their concept.
RULE 2: THE TIME MACHINE IS A DRUG
Rather than a giant H.G. Wells-ian contraption, here time travel takes the form of a simple designer drug — the “Synchronic” of the title. When taken, the user’s pineal gland transports them to a random spot in history for exactly seven minutes. The name came from researching real designer drugs, says Benson. “It seemed like it needed something with the word ‘chronic’ in it, because of the mental real estate of Dr. Dre’s
The Chronic,” he says. “And then obviously, the word itself deals with time, as well.” Both are fascinated by the real-life world of designer synthetic drugs. “It wasn’t just a mechanic,” Moorhead says. “It helped actually give the movie realistic stakes. There’s plenty of designer drugs that only show up in a handful of head shops because the FDA cracks down on them. That world of designer synthetic drugs is completely insane.” (Though he is keen to point out: “There was no hands-on research, as it were.”)
RULE 3: THE PAST IS THE BAD GUY
The film sees two paramedics, played by Anthony Mackie and Jamie Dornan, investigate a series of bizarrely anachronistic deaths — including one impaled by a medieval sword
— as the Synchronic drug sweeps New Orleans; eventually Mackie’s character starts experimenting with the drug himself. As his character puts it in the film: “The past fucking sucks, man.” “We wanted the past to be a monster,” says Benson. Moorhead agrees: “Back To The Future is an amazing film, but we started thinking, ‘Y’know, the story is obviously very, very different if you’re not white.’” Synchronic, then, opts to take a distinctly unromantic view of history. “I often think about, like, Shakespeare In Love or something. They’re all clean and dressed up — whereas [in reality] most people were just covered in dirt and smelled bad and died of now-preventable diseases by the age of 30. We wanted to make a movie about that.”
RULE 4: THE SCI-FI IS REALISTIC
With temporal narcotics driving the story, the mood of the film is murky and unsettling — but with one foot always on the ground, too. Moorhead agrees: “The word is definitely ‘trippy’. But our visual-effects artists were able to design the effects [in a way that’s] very organic. The past should be the most awful tactile sensation. One of our notes to our costume designer was: ‘More dirt!’” The pair cite True Detective and Donald Glover’s Atlanta as visual references for ‘magic realism’. “One rule was: the past is only ever shot with a handheld camera on someone’s shoulder,” Benson says. “So that it felt like we just dropped the camera there.” Bill & Ted, this ain’t.
SYNCHRONIC IS IN CINEMAS FROM 29 JANUARY