Back to the (not so great) past

 

New Orleans is one of those places where the decay of the bayou mingles with death (think the classic New Orleans jazz funeral), and voodoo and witchcraft haunts the streets of the French Quarter and Garden District. An appropriate setting, therefore, for the co-directing team of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead and the latest in their horror genre of character-driven stories that have very humanistic and philosophical edges - Synchronic, which opened in theatres, drive-ins and VOD this weekend. Steve (Anthony Mackie) and Dennis (Jamie Dornan) are EMTs working the overnight shift where they respond to a series of gruesome calls where people have died or are deeply traumatized. Turns out a new designer drug has been going around: Synchronic, which, believe it or not, takes people back in time. If only we could pop a pill for the experience, right? Well, Steve, who’s diagnosed with brain cancer and fears his days are numbered, decides to experiment. And it might make him find his buddy Dennis’s recently lost daughter, Brianna (Ally Ioannides), who also took the drug. Time travel in this case lasts only seven minutes. Thank goodness, because the past isn’t necessarily as romanticized as we sometimes think. Steve returns to the howling winds of the Ice Age and introduces fire to Early Man. Then he disappears into the era of the Conquistadors and is almost devoured by an alligator. Back in the present, and seeing the movie Back to the Future on TV, Steve tells the bartender, “the past fucking sucks!” And, surrounded by the panorama of New Orleans at night, he exclaims to Dennis, “the present is a miracle, bro.” These literal trips to earlier times are interspersed with the working days and nights of the two men’s lives. Dennis is constantly fighting with his wife Tara (Katie Aselton) and Steve, single and a bit of a player, tells him ultimately how good he has it. He describes his life – which could be all of ours – as defined by “random events, chance and luck.” And Dennis, reflecting on Steve’s possible last days, suggests, “all that crazy shit before you die, there’s infinite possibilities.” Both Mackie (Steve) and Dornan (Dennis) have built up substantial acting resumes. Mackie has appeared in 8 Mile, Million Dollar Baby and The Hurt Locker, Dornan in Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette but likely is best known as Christian Grey in the Fifty Shades trilogy. Here they connect effortlessly in a classic buddy film with supernatural overtures. Some of the best cinematography occurs in the time travel sequences especially in the set of what was presumably the Battle of New Orleans.