Time Cut is an interesting problem for a Netflix flasher film. Similar to Totally Killer, it’s a slasher film and a time travel movie and it doesn’t get either quite right, though for different reasons.

It’s about a town that had a slasher problem in 2003. In 2024, the sister of one of the victims (who she never knew) time travels back to just before the killings started. She has to make the ethical choice to save the victims or just find a way home.

As a slasher film, it’s a little mediocre. Clearly edited for a PG-13 rating, it constantly pulls its punches. They have some good ways to off teenagers, but they keep cutting away and/or not doing much with the ideas (looking at you, escalator). Plus the slasher is as boring as you can get… just a guy in a mannequin mask.

But part of me thinks the slasher angle wasn’t the point of the film… it was the cute time travel story they started with then grafted the horror movie onto it. It could just as much been about kids dying in a traffic accident, for example. Same ethical dilemmas would be raised.

As a time travel story, the differences between 2003 and 2024 aren’t that great… a lot more Michelle Branch and Avril Lavigne plus more low rise jeans, belts, hats, and printed tees. I say that though as a tragically unhip Gen X guy who, on first glance, didn’t notice the Uggs on the kids in the school. Hmph. Time is the crucible in which we burn.

But they did make some iPhone and modem dial-up noise jokes that set off my nerd alarm. No, iPhones didn’t exist yet but it wasn’t so far off that people would be that amazed. Or dial-ups so far in the past.

But I’m getting lost in the weeds here… it’s more about the characters and some pretty decent time travel ethical dilemmas. And the film takes these reasonably seriously, I suppose. It’s not the most galaxy brain of time travel paradoxes but they were good enough.

So, yeah, the flick is only a half-decent slasher… but I guess good enough to drape over a time travel story for Halloween. But it’s also only a half-decent time travel movie. The film eventually works itself out and while it won’t smash the time/space continuum, it’s kind of ok.

Score: 77