Things Will Be Different

The actors were great, the script not so much. I was bored and falling to sleep watching this dull movie. Confusing storyline that made you not care about the two leading characters. A brother and sister duo hide out in a farmhouse in a psychological thriller masquerading as a horror film. The brother and sister are stuck in a time loop and they can't seem to escape this farmhouse, the movie goes on and on as it tries to explain to the viewers the premise of the characters and film. But as the film ends you still feel like what in the hell did I just watch. A mishmash of me praying will this movie ever end.

Michael Felker was the editor for a number of Benson & Moorhead films. They're something truly special if you haven't seen them. Unfortunately Benson & Moorhead have been wasting their talents on comic book slop the past few years, and indefinitely into the future. With A24 being (almost) the only company doing anything creative in cinema, it's pretty obvious Felker wanted to make a B&M film. Good on him!

The results are... not great. Most aspect of this movie are done very well, but the screenplay is weak and goes to shambles about 2/3 of the way through. It's not even that it becomes contrived or illogical, actions and situations defy any explanation. Imagine someone getting shot at, so they go inside and start making breakfast. This is an exaggeration and doesn't happen, but it's that kind of disconnect that becomes prevalent. Events are barely held together. People seemingly teleport from place to place. Some of it is explainable in retrospect, but a lot of it isn't. Or the explanation is insufficient and doesn't answer all the questions. Where B&M movies have an air of mystique, this is just messy.

The entire movie kind of feels like the intro to a larger story. Like we're looking at a small part of something REALLY interesting, but we'll never see the whole. Imagine if The Endless was remade to just be the guy at the barn. Just imagine how small and limited the movie would feel, knowing the bigger picture. That's what this feels like.

A botched getaway and a time travel is not one of the usual mixes. Also the mood and set-up of the time travelling is unqiue. The deeper look at the broken family bonds, desperation and imprisonment is excellent. An imaginative story that breaks the usual trends. Great performances. Excellent audio effects and visual effects. It's puzzling but does it's duty in keeping the audience's eyes peeled.

The basic premise of TWBD is that two siblings, Joseph (Adam David Thompson) and Sidney (Riley Dandy), are robbers on the run from the law. They proceed through the woods to a farmhouse. They enter the house and by following some instructions in a notebook, they are able to exit through a closet door and reemerge, as it were, in a different time (but same farmhouse) to wait out the police for fourteen days.

So far, so good. And the cinematography (by Carissa Dorson) makes the most of the rural location.

Of course, Joseph and Sidney end up getting stuck in the farmhouse. They discover that the location actually functions as the "property" of a mysterious guide who speaks to them through a tape-recorder and is willing to help get them back to the present if they complete a specific task: the elimination of a mysterious (third) intruder. It is only toward the end that we learn just how fraught that task actually is.

TWBD does its best work through visuals: not just the facial expressions of the two principal actors, but the flashbacks to childhood (blurred images of a parental figure at a piano); the various (presumably alcoholic) beverages and vintage glassware that are a constant feature of TWBD; the trees, fields, and hills of the rural Midwest; the strange photographs, paintings and tchotchkes of the absent prior owners; etc. A second viewing is almost required to make sense of the visual displays that kaleidoscope and change constantly.

That said, the film is not as friendly in linking the narrative together for the viewer. But the thread is there. And there is a discernible conclusion, which in my view has to do with "breaking" a cycle of decisions, and the sacrifice required to do that.

A lot of viewers appear turned off by the temporal twists and non-obvious narrative. However, I think you might like this feature if you like, for example, Flanagan's own debut ("Abstentia"), the films of Isaac Ezban or Moorhead & Benson's "Synchronic" or "The Endless." (Benson has a part near the end. It is easy to see why he agreed, given the subject matter. Well, that and the fact that he is one of the Executive Producers. :-) )

I will certainly be looking out for Michael Felker's next film. This was an impressive debut.

The movie's premise was quite good. The siblings hide in a temporal B&B to avoid the law. However, they soon discover that leaving is not as easy as they thought. They can communicate with the people responsible for time travel using a tape recorder locked in a safe. They are tasked with confronting an adversary who appears later in the story.

The execution, however, leaves much to be desired. I agree with other reviewers: the cinematography is excellent, the sound and music are above average, and the acting ranges from superb (the brother) to good but somewhat forced (the sister). The main drawback of the movie is its screenplay. While it has potential, there are super boring parts interspersed with a few sudden twists. Moreover, many elements are either left unexplained or explained in a lacklustre manner.

Despite its shortcomings, I enjoyed the movie. It would have benefitted from being 30 minutes shorter, featuring more realistic sibling dialogues, and providing better explanations for a few key elements, for example, delving deeper into the adversary's identity. Still, it was more than satisfactory for a low-budget flick.

P. S.

A few other movies gave me similar vibes, most notably Timecrimes (2007), The Field (2019), and The Endless (2017).