Review of Time Cut, directed by Hannah MacPherson

In the past few weeks, as I exist in a state of what I call funemployed, I’ve been watching a lot of movies and television shows. It’s been a fun time, as I’ve been trying to catch up on my backlog. It also means that I’m getting way ahead of blog posts, too. So if you like reading reviews of movies and books, this site might be for you!

But because I’ve been watching so much (and in a dire need to exercise in-between movies—I can feel my heart hating me for all of this), that means I’ve been seeing everything that Netflix adds in the past few months. I saw this movie Time Cut on the #1 movie slot and decided to give a gander on this cold November morning.

I had not heard of this movie before its release. I used to be on top of the movie releases when I was working as a film critic at an online outlet, but now I’ve just been vanishing into the void of movie news and going with the flow. It’s been working well for me, but it comes with some surprises.

Anyways, the plot of this movie is why I ultimately decided to sit down and watch it. I thought it seemed pretty interesting, but it could also backfire terribly if the script wasn’t good enough to sustain the horror elements.

And man do I have some thoughts about this movie. Let’s get into the review and summary!

A girl accidentally time travels, and decides to save both her town and murdered sister.

We begin this movie in the past: the year is 2003, and three teenagers have just been murdered in a small town. These three students include senior Summer Field’s best friend Emmy and two other good friends. There’s a Spring Fling going on every year, and she’s not too thrilled to be going to it after the deaths of her friends.

When her friend Quinn tries to give her an envelope, Summer doesn’t seem too interested and walks away. When her ex-boyfriend Ethan tries to dance her, she has the same reaction and heads to a bathroom away from everyone. But as she’s in that bathroom, the police shut down the party, leaving her alone with a killer.

She tries to escape into a barn, but the killer follows and manages to stab her to death. We then pivot twenty years into the future, when a high school student named Lucy laments on how she exists in this town without really being noticed. She’s Summer’s younger sister, but her parents are still mourning Summer.

Even when Lucy gets an internship at NASA (do they even have those for high schoolers???), her parents wave it off and say she should stay home over an Olive Garden meal. They go to Summer’s memorial next, but then Lucy finds a machine underground that takes her back to 2003.

There, she meets Summer at the high school. Turns out the machine dropped her off two days before the murders took place. Lucy also notices how much better the town looked back then; the murders really ruined its reputation and the spirit of everyone who lived there.

Lucy heads to her science teacher, who has no idea who she is in this timeline, and asks about time travel. It’s there she meets physics extraordinaire Quinn. The senior prank is then initiated, and Quinn is the victim of this round. As they’re preparing to dump him into the lake, Lucy saves him and tells him about the time machine.

With his help, they try to solve what happened here. Quinn gives her a ride and discovers that she is Summer’s sister, and Lucy gets herself invited into the home. It’s there she realizes her parents were different before Summer’s death; her timeline happened because of the death.

It’s at the mall Quinn works at later that they discover the Slasher killing two of the victims, not Emmy, but Lucy intervening causes a security guard to die. It’s right after this that Summer realizes the truth, and she starts working with the two of them to try and stop the killer. Lucy also finds out Quinn is in love with Summer.

As the duo tries to find fuel for the time machine, Summer goes to the dance. There, she confesses her love for Emmy, but then the Slasher appears. Lucy and Quinn barely save the day and prevent her from getting killed, but we learn that the Slasher is actually Quinn from a future timeline.

Turns out him getting rejected caused him to become a psychopath. The bullying was also a main driver here. It was his time travel that created a hole for Lucy to pop through, which leads to his death after Lucy transports them to 2024 and kills him.

But after that, she realizes in this timeline she no longer exists, as her parents have no idea who she is. Lucy decides to go back to 2003 and live her life. There, she also gets a NASA internship, and seems more confident about where her life is going from here.

Overall Thoughts

The plot in this movie is a little bit wack, and I thought the script was pretty weak for what this was. The killer being Quinn was something I did a double take at. I can get the bullying pushing him over the age, but the rejection of his love letter is a bit much for being a reason. Toxic masculinity coming from that angle.

Anyways, things are just a little too convenient in this plot. The horror elements are there, but they’re not really the focus as we’re looking more at Lucy’s interactions with the people in the past. I think maybe this would’ve worked better as a television show, allowing more time to flesh out the characters and their intentions.

All of this is to say this feels a bit rushed to me, and it doesn’t come across as well as it could be because of that. Someone might love the movie more than I did at the end of the day, which is fine.

Taste is subjective! You might like it and I don’t, but that doesn’t mean either of us are wrong. Everyone likes different things. Go watch this if you’re interested; don’t let a negative opinion stop you.

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