Netflix Time Travel Flick Tries and Fails to Convince Gen Z The Mid-2000s Were Cool
Who doesn’t remember 2003? Truly the focal point in a historical era that oversaw blossoming technologies becoming readily available, the early beginnings of the internet and an ultimately questionable taste in fashion. Naturally audiences have been enquiring en masse if 2003 is a year worth a time travel caper in a similar vein of Back to The Future. Finally audiences have received some clarity on such issues in new Netflix original Time Cut; with the answer being a simple lukewarm maybe?
This teen comedy/slasher centres around Lucy, your typical teen awaiting her internship for NASA; a lucrative means of escaping her small town of Sweetly, Minnesota. A town haunted by a serial killer active 21 years ago; who took the life of Lucy’s sister Summer. Lucy’s parents however, forbid her from leaving the town as they fear for her safety, feeling more assured she will be far from harm at home in the town once preyed upon by a serial killer never caught (the first of many delightful paradoxes the film presents but never resolves).
As quick as this premise can solidify itself, Lucy is thrust back to 2003 (the time of her sisters death). Now facing the harsh scientific conundrum of can she save her sister or is the past unchangeable, a conundrum that is thrown out the window quicker than the film was dumped onto Netflix with little marketing and fanfare to pre-empt.
At every possible opportunity Time Cut ties itself in hypothetical scientific knots, whether Lucy saving her sister will cause a paradox, cease Lucy’s existence, or have no effect on life at all. These are issues the film takes more joy in presenting than in resolving in any way.
Where it has its most fun is relishing in the 2003 setting, slamming you incessantly with bops and the eccentric fashion style of the era. Juicy Couture tracksuit sets and Alanis Morissette are the films bread and butter as it does everything in its power to insist that the early 2000s is worthy of a time travel flick.
Although 2003 does make for a colourful and, for some, nostalgic point of time to travel to, Time Cut struggles in its justification in why it rewinds time back to the mid-2000s. What sets this comedic time travel romp apart from those who came before it (think 13 going on 30 or Back to The Future), is that it spends very little time in the present before it goes back to the past.
Time Cut spends little to no time exploring the town haunted by a past serial killer (bar one student suggesting “they should totally do a podcast on it” with as little self-awareness as possible), the family torn apart by a murdered daughter or how its main character fits into all this. It speeds through its opening act to get right to the mini-skirts and portable CD players of 2003.
The truth of Time Cut’s messy and confused script is that it fundamentally believes Lucy to be its main character. She’s not, 2003 is. The film offers no depth or emotional stakes to its story or its characters. After the third reference to early 2000s technology being medieval, it becomes clear the film has little else to offer than reminiscing on 2003. An interesting offer considering the film is clearly aimed at young teenagers, who were not yet born at that time. All the characters have to offer is referential quips about their era, the unarguably best being when one character enquires if Arnold Schwarzenegger is president, to which Lucy responds “Its much worse”.
This leaves what could be a fun romp to the mid 2000s as nothing more than a bland mystery flick filled with trope characters (nerd, girly nerd, jock and popular girl to be exact here) and cringeworthy levels of referential humour directed at the early 2000s.
It all feels a bit contrived and unnecessary. This isn’t to say that 2003 isn’t worth a time travel flick, rather the film should offer something more than time travelling to 2003. Time Cut is a film that can only work on a superficial level. With nostalgic costuming and classic bops to boot the film aesthetically pleases yet aside from this, the film offers only contrived characters with muddled motivations towards solving an ultimately bland and predictable mystery. This teen drama aesthetic mixed with the 2003 setting leaves audiences with one more mystery to solve; who was this made for?
