SYNCHRONIC

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2020 | 15 | Blu-ray/dvd

Directors Justin Benson,

Aaron Moorhead

Cast Anthony Mackie, Jamie Dornan, Katie Aselton, Ally Ioannides

New Orleans is a city with a storied history, which makes it the perfect location for this unusual time travel thriller. A new designer drug is sweeping the streets. Paramedic Steve (Anthony Mackie) takes it and discovers that it allows a haphazard form of time travel. When his colleague Dennis’s daughter vanishes, Steve suspects the drug is involved and sets out to find her.

Directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead proved adept at reinventing old tropes with previous films The Endless and Resolution, and so it goes here. Synchronic feels more like horror than science fiction. The visual effects recall the nightmarish surrealism of Annihilation and the city’s past is presented as a strange and dangerous place to linger.

It suffers from some pacing issues and plot contrivances – at one point the drug’s creator just shows up to helpfully explain things. And while the film probes the friendship between two flawed men, it’s hard to care too much for Jamie Dornan’s selfish, surly Dennis. But this remains stylishly shot SF with bags of atmosphere.

Extras A commentary from the directors and producer; an insightful Making Of (15 minutes); featurettes on previs (eight minutes) and visual effects (three minutes); a one-minute deleted scene; a very funny fake ending; trailers. Will Salmon