It’s difficult to convey how one feels about Synchronic after leaving the auditorium. Confusion, bewilderment and many other emotions – including huge amounts of enjoyment are amongst them, but it really does take a while to digest what you’ve witnessed for the previous 100 minutes or so.
Image provided by LFF
Anthony Mackie and Jamie Dornan lead the cast of the film, directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (The Endless), which is set in present-day New Orleans. Both are emergency first-responders, and also life-long best friends. Mackie’s character, Steve, is single, lives alone with his pet dog (called Hawking, natch) whilst jumping from sexual partner to sexual partner, not really managing to settle. Dornan’s Dennis, however, is a married man of many years, a newborn baby in arms and an older daughter who is celebrating her 18th birthday. The grass is greener on the other side to each of their points of view, the pair having hidden personal struggles, Steve from a recent health diagnosis – he has a terminal brain tumour – whilst Dennis is feeling the trappings of a long marriage and the normality of everyday life.
Professionally, an epidemic is taking place on the streets, the pair constantly called to calls where patients have seemingly overdosed on a mysterious new ‘legal high’ drug called Synchronic, a hallucinogen just operating within the confines of the law. What’s different about this drug is that its users have strange lethal symptoms – some have knife wounds, whilst others have literally spontaneously combusted and burned to death. At the scene of each call are also strange artifacts – a rare coin here, antique door handle there – all very much out of place.
The story takes a big turn when Dennis’s daughter Brianna (Ally Ioannides) mysteriously disappears after taking the same drug 0- wrappers are found nearby at each event, you see. Steve gets hold of the last remaining packets of the drug and, after a big chance meeting with its creator, downs a couple to try to get to the bottom of why his friend’s daughter has vanished. What he finds is that the drug takes him back in time for 7 minutes at a time – to a specific period, depending on where he is stood. His pill-popping experiment takes him back to the Ice Age (twice), meetings with the KKK, and other random, very hostile moments in history.
Synchronic is difficult to categorise in one particular genre. The opening scenes convey a sense of horror, with tons of bloody gore, and later on, we’re well into the realms of pure science fiction and time-travel – an interesting concept presented but one which you can help but feel has been fully exploited. The film’s title, which is defined online as ‘concerned with events existing in a limited time period and ignoring historical antecedents,’ does actually describe things quite nicely, but I had lots of issues with how the filmmakers have the narrative play out.
The first half is, quite frankly, very slow-burning and a little confusing, and you’re not quite sure where you’re being taken. In retrospect, this is the stronger half, the most interesting aspect the relationship between the two central characters and their own personal issues. The time-travel stuff is interesting – when we eventually get to it, but why must Steve always ‘time-leap’ to moments in time which are almost always hostile?
Dornan slowly becomes very much the supporting character. I was really interested in the contrasting relationship between his and Mackie’s character. Both actors are good enough in their respective roles, but I felt that there was more to explore away from the main plot device which comes just about the mid-point.
Synchronic works only if you buy into that plot device – essentially time-traveling pills, and I have to be honest, I wasn’t completely invested. It comes across as completely preposterous, particularly because the first reel of the film is very much grounded in a gritty reality. That said, I can’t say that it wasn’t enjoyable and immersive. I was fully invested and willing to see how it all played out, no matter how ridiculous it all seemed.
To describe Synchronic, it is like Limitless meets Back To The Future via Quantum Leap and Bringing Out The Dead, a film with a mesh of many ideas. An interesting feature, but one that doesn’t really fully realise its huge ambition – though I defy you not to have a good time.
Synchronic is awaiting a release date.
