Snoozy time-travel slasher Time Cut kills time (and little else) back in 2003

Movies are now treating the aughts like a second Stone Age. Hannah Macpherson’s Time Cut revels in the 2000s nostalgia of Avril Lavigne and Vanessa Carlton needledrops after a girl travels back in time to save her deceased family member from a slasher villain. Is your déjà vu intensifying? That’s also the plot of Nahnatchka Khan’s Totally Killer (this time substituting 2003 for 1987), which hit Prime Video last year. Mimicry isn’t uncommon in cinema; Dante’s Peak and Volcano were released in 1997 to independent acclaim. The problem is, Time Cut doesn’t evade, and even invites, comparisons to Totally Killer—unfortunate parallels that do Netflix’s Halloween release no favors.

Macpherson and co-writer Michael Kennedy (Freaky, It’s A Wonderful Knife) introduce the unassuming suburbia of Sweetly, Minnesota and its resident Lucy Field (Madison Bailey). She’s an only child by tragedy; her sister Summer (Antonia Gentry) was murdered by the “Sweetly Slasher” in 2003, before Lucy was born. It’s now 2024, and Lucy has just been accepted into NASA’s newest internship program—but a hidden barnyard time machine has other plans. Lucy finds herself back in 2003 talking to Summer for the first time in her life, faced with a choice: preserve history and avoid paradoxes, or save the sibling she never met.

It’s a compelling adventurer’s conundrum, but Time Cut doesn’t dwell on its science-fiction logistics. Macpherson instead adopts a 2000s teenage dram-com aura—Sisterhood Of The Traveling Pants but with corpses. This approach strives to execute a bubblegum-and-pillow-fights sleepover movie with identifiably important messages about friendship and sexual identities. That’s all splendid, no objections, but Macpherson’s reliance on gateway horror padding sells Time Cut’s slasher subplot miles short. Here, genre hybridization is a losing battle, sacrificing scares and intensity in favor of corny jokes about Instagram not yet being invented.

Shades of Happy Death Day 2U also pop up alongside similarities to the aforementioned Freaky and Totally Killer, but Time Cut is child’s play in comparison. Lucy’s journey into the preppy hellscape of 2003 doesn’t come with hard-and-fast rules, mentioning the butterfly effect yet diminishing any stakes for narrative ease. The vanilla slasher elements are treated the same way, especially character deaths that don’t show a lick of violence outside a blood puddle or two, as cutaway editing dodges the on-screen action. Macpherson homes in on the expected emotional arcs of sisters bonding across planes of existence, or of dorky crushes falling for popular cuties (Griffin Gluck plays a friend-zoned nice guy). It’s all boilerplate after-school drama begging for a darker edge.

That leaves Time Cut to take surface-level swipes at all its ideas. Fleeting references to now-defunct 2000s mall culture or outdated technology provide a quick, superfluous high, but there’s nothing substantial about the meat of storytelling. Lucy’s panicked reaction to the sounds of a dial-up modem is humorous, and there’s a nifty Walkman/compact disc bit, but those are the few post-Y2K jokes worth mentioning. Seeing staples like Juicy Couture and Uggs define Sweetly High’s hallway fashion sense is a blast from the past, but the references hardly graduate past the minimal sight gags. In fact, there’s a lax visual distinction between 2003 and 2024; playlist earworms ranging from Fat Joe to Wheatus do the heavy lifting instead. Speaking of distinctions, the Sweetly Slasher’s mask is oddly stylized with the same doll-like texture as Totally Killer’s Sweet Sixteen Killer (despite Time Cut wrapping production first), which does Sweetly’s less menacing slayer dirty.

But in a larger sense, Sweetly’s Americana microcosm is undefined. Its inhabitants are cardboard cutouts; Macpherson struggles to develop supporting characters beyond their one-word descriptions and downplayed plot relevance, which deflates any of the film’s whodunit mystery aspirations. Time Cut rests fully on the shoulders of Bailey, Gentry, and Gluck, while everyone else dissolves like cotton candy after their required usage. Lucy’s devotion to Summer can be fondly tender, and Quinn’s repressed desires hit that shy guy sweet spot, but everything’s so achingly one-dimensional. It’s as filling as snacking on packing peanuts.

Realistically, Time Cut’s junk food is for those who haven’t yet been exposed to horror archetypes. Macpherson’s approach is easily digestible, but it’s not even the best “time-travel back to save your relative” title we’ve gotten in the last few years. It’s a glancing blow of a snoozy slasher far more interested in being a 2000s rewound comedy, meeting somewhere in the unenthusiastic middle. It walks, talks, and underwhelms like too many mid-range genre titles marred by tonal indecisiveness. Killer soundtrack, though.

Director: Hannah Macpherson
Writer: Michael Kennedy, Hannah MacPherson
Starring: Madison Bailey, Antonia Gentry, Griffin Gluck
Release Date: October 30, 2024 (Netflix)