Review: SYNCHRONIC

A young couple share a trip that starts out like an hallucinogen but quickly becomes real as one descends to a swamp and another falls to his death from a height that isn't the elevator he just entered. A pair of paramedics answer the call but are mystified by the scene. The next case is even more bizarre. Word of a drug trending wildly on the scene called Synchronic coincides with more crime scenes where contemporary New Orleans people are being skewered with ancient swords or dying from snakebites in modern apartments. And then the daughter of one of the paramedics vanishes. Has she reacted to her pain from the trouble in her home by running away? If she did, did she do it with a dose of synchronic? If so, what does that mean and can she return?

Justin Benson and Aaron Morehead have been quietly building a reputation for no-budget movies with sky high concepts like The Endless or Resolution. They have come to be identified as the current face of cosmic horror, extending the kind of world building that made H.P. Lovecraft's writing so durable. There are even offshoots like After Midnight or She Dies Tomorrow helmed by other writer /directors but given production clout by Benson and Morehead. Usually, what happens from here is either the continuation to exhaustion of an underground effort or a breakthrough that changes its field. Synchronic is the latter.

There's a boosted budget visible on screen in the effects and casting (Anthony Mackie and Jamie Dornan, for starters) and the concept is more given to action rather than the mumblecore workshopping of previous entries. Synchronic has more mainstream production values but keeps the darker thinking that made the others so vital. So, if it looks so comfortably commercial and runs on good ideas, why does it get so draggy?

The set up is intriguing. The notion that a means of fleeing one's own time with a drug that only works on younger people is brilliant. The extra work put into the two leads' lives, their friendship and what will have an impact in the finale is all by the book. The trouble is that there is too much dwelling on information we already have which appears to be added depth until it starts getting fatiguing and suggests that the narrative has stopped moving. That might be cute in another time travel movie but in this one it really only looks like a lack of discipline. To my mind Benson and Morehead have misjudged the impact of the mainstream aesthetic to the effect that instead of it allowing them to smuggle in some radical thinking it only stirs a need in the audience for the kind of heightened action they associate with the look and feel. So, do you dumb it down and get it done or bend the commercial look until it works with the sci-fi? Here it's neither, we just know that we want Steve's discovery montage a lot earlier than when we get it, the intrigue over the drug and its infiltration to be speedier, and the already good bromance between the lead characters to be notched up.

That said, if you relax about this stuff and are willing to get to a gripping conclusion you will be rewarded with a compelling sci-fi outing that will take you places you didn't expect (despite what you might prefer to expect). I can report that by the final scenes I'd pretty much forgotten my reservations about the middle act as I got caught up in an action sequence of a kind that was only left as a promise on earlier outings. Benson and Morehead are worth the support of anyone who wants their cinema mixed up with great what-ifs. And I'm already in line for their next outing.