Speaking to my very personal tastes for a moment, there is a small set of directors whose movies I generally want to see and am optimistic about, because their track record is not just good, but of the specific kinds of things that I am likely to want to watch. Alex Garland, Daniels, probably Jordan Peele, maybe Taika Waititi (I can forgive a mediocre superhero movie; such is their nature). Another one is Moorhead & Benson, the directors of this movie, but for whatever reason the description of this one in particular always disinclined me, so I put it off. Well, I think I probably should have had more faith, because I still enjoyed it a fair amount.
It has a lot of the characteristic elements of their work, such as its fascination with the act of filming itself, its "unsettling" tone, its slow burn setup, and its relatively normal setting that descends into the weird and paranormal. There's even an X-Files reference in there, which I appreciate. And it uses this framework of strangeness to investigate real human feelings about actually important human experiences (in this case, seeking human connection, and death, and the philosophy of what "matters"). And personally I think it did a good job avoiding falling into the trap of over-closing its storylines and letting the implications stand for themselves, while still providing enough to make it work.
The movie is definitely not perfect; ultimately, I think the basic storytelling framework is just a little less compelling than The Endless for instance, and ultimately I don't REALLY care too much about the guy's failing marriage, even though it is critical to the themes. On the other hand, I read some other complaints about the movie like "the world's rules are a little too fuzzy" - and sure, like all films involving some degree of "time travel" it would fall apart under detailed scrutiny, but that's exactly the point of an unsettling paranormal film. You can't know what the rules are, and life itself is the ongoing attempt to discover the fuzzy rules of reality, just as Falcon is trying to do through his experimentation, and achieve something worth achieving before you run out of time.
Score: 6/10
IMDb: Synchronic
PS: The most unsympathetic moment of the film is when he puts his dog at risk. What are you doing?? This is not an acceptable choice!!! But at least it evoked for me the bittersweet and blackly tragic feelings of The Sirens of Titan as Kazak disappears into the chrono-synclastic infundibulum. In fact, there's a lot of Vonnegut in here to me, largely in its expression of the ultimate powers of Luck and Randomness and the way humans build meaning out of the meaningless (plus the particular sort of black comedy-but-also-not style). Maybe that's why I liked the movie. Or maybe I'm just projecting too much meaning onto it.
PPS: These scenarios would have played out a lot differently for a white guy than a black guy. They seem fully aware of this.
