Synchronic
Rating: 2.5/5
Directors: Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead
Producers: Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead, David Lawson Jr., Michael Mendelsohn
Writer: Justin Benson
Star Cast: Jamie Dornan, Anthony Mackie, Katie Aselton, Devyn A. Tyler, Ally Ioannides, Bill Oberst Jr., Aaron Groben, Shane Brady, Lawrence Turner, Kate Adair
Genres: Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi
Release date: October 23, 2020 (United States)
Plot:
Steve Denube (Anthony Mackie) and Dennis Dannelly (Jamie Dornan) are long time close pals who also happen to work as the Louisiana paramedics. With time these two friends have drifted apart given the subtle but irreversible brokenness of the polar ice sheets.
Steve is still enjoying his bachelor’s life with random causal relationships. He likes to keep it that way as he is too caught up in the conditional tense to even think about commitment.
On the other hand, Dennis is a stereotypical ‘dude in a relationship’ – the way Steve describes him. He is married to Tara. Their marriage has grown somewhat disenchanted. Also, he is a father of two daughters born 18 years apart, but he is doing everything he can to keep things right with his girls.
The two are made to work on a novel case that has hit the city. It is about a new designer drug called Synchronic, which is laying waste to the local junkie population and baffling the EMTs. The junkies who apparently become the victims are discovered with weird stuff. One woman dies of a snake bite, which is not necessarily uncommon except that she was in a hotel without any snakes on the loose. Another one has stab wounds from an ancient sword, which is highly unearthly.
While their professional life is consumed with thrill and mystery, Steve and Dennis have a world war to battle even in their personal lives. Steve bumps into the reality where he learns that he has an inoperable brain tumour on his pineal gland. He is baffled to know that he has very little time felt.
At a parallel time, Dennis’s life is uprooted when his 18-year-old daughter Brianna (Ally Ioannides) disappears after taking the drug at a party one night. And the twist is Brianna has gone missing owing to Synchronic.
During the investigation, it is established that Synchronic is a ‘time-travel pill’. As an act of redemption, Steve decides to put his life out on the line to help find his friend’s child, whom he suspects has become stuck in another parallel hostile time. He buys all the Synchronic that is left on store shelves and commences his experiment to figure out how it works. He wants to bring back Brianna at any cost for his friend and for that he is ready to go to any extent.
And what comes next is unimaginable, startling and of course trippy!
Review:
The year 2020 has obviously been an atypical year for movie releases. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, several of the highly anticipated blockbusters got delayed. As a result, smaller projects that would normally fly under the radar now have a window of opportunity where they can potentially stand out and find an audience.
Synchronic, the latest from directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, is one such small budget movie, which was looking to make a splash. Premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in the year 2019, the movie is now being released to the general public. It is an R rated movie because of the drug content and language throughout, and for some violent images.
The movie is outlined on the idea of bending reality by using a designer drug, which is named Synchronic. The drug allows people to experience time as it actually is, and not in the way that we tend to perceive it.
Despite being on a low budget, Benson and Moorhead have stretched their resources as far as they can, which has in turn given the film some really nice visuals. The sequences where the characters use Synchronic and travel through time are well-constructed with commendable production design and good sound effects.
In order to get an emotional response out of its audience, the filmmakers have used some manipulative tropes. Quite certainly, the same has worked to evoke suspicion and inquisitiveness amongst the viewers as to whether Steve is successful in his quest or not of saving his friend’s daughter.
There also seems to be a ‘Black Lives Matter’ moment in the film when Steve, a Black paramedic, is mistaken for a criminal during one of his shifts. However, that is in the moment and the idea of racism has nothing to do with the movie overall. It does leave the viewer with a thought that no matter how far we go in terms of development, racism is a cruel reality many people have to face in their day-to-day lives.
Over and above everything, the film tries to make a point, which is very crucial for the youth and all those who take this road of drugs in order to find a deeper meaning to life and their existence. And that point is ‘Present moment is the ultimate Truth’. There is nothing in the past nor the future – everything that one craves for is right here at this moment!
There is some tension like an unsettling blaze between Dornan and Mackie throughout the movie. But the climax makes it all fade away. Overall, the movie is a good entertainment for a breezy weekend when one has nothing much to look at!
