This is a review of a truly terrible movie I watched because I loved not one, not two, but THREE movies by the same creators. I did not review the ones I loved. I will hopefully do so later. I am a bad person. SORRY Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead!
Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead wrote and directed three fantastic movies, all of which are best enjoyed knowing as little as possible in advance.
The Endless is a horror/suspense/multigenre movie about two brothers who fled a UFO cult, then return for a visit as adults. The horror is of the creeping tension/appalling realizations variety; there's minimal/brief violence/gore. It's unpredictable and excellent.
Resolution is related to The Endless. I watched it second and was very surprised to learn that it had been made first. It's about two friends in a cabin, one trying to help the other kick a nasty drug habit, and plays mostly like a naturalistic buddy comedy-drama with elements of horror/suspense. Again, extremely minimal/brief violence/gore. It's also brilliant.
Spring is not related to the other two and is almost impossible to categorize. Half the fun is figuring out what genre it even is. IMO the best experience is to go in knowing absolutely nothing about it, except that it's about a young American man grieving the death of his mother, who goes to Italy and meets a young woman. I loved it and found it very touching. It has some violence and IIRC a cat dies.
OKAY now let's talk about Synchronic, their shockingly terrible and accidentally hilarious movie. All I knew going in was that it was by Benson & Moorhead, was about time travel, and starred Anthony Mackie - good signs, right?
I watched it with![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
scioscribe and will include some of our comments.
It opens with a man and woman in bed. There are weird noises! The room dissolves! There is a desert! The man is flying! A snake rears up between the woman's legs! She is in a swamp and a person wearing weird mask like a gas mask is gesticulating at her! Stock footage of the Milky Way! A person merges with the wall! I probably forgot some things!
Cut to paramedic Anthony Mackie and his partner, Jamie Dornan, who walk into a weird scene with heroin addicts, a dead guy stabbed with a sword, and an empty packet of a designer drug, Synchronic.
Mackie gets stabbed by a syringe, and due to getting his blood tested, discovers that he has a gigantic brain tumor on his pineal gland. Cut to stock footage of the Milky Way. His unsympathetic doctor tells him he's a freak of nature as his pineal gland isn't calcified and so he's biologically young, ANYWAY he needs radiation therapy because he'll be dead in anywhere between six weeks and sixty years. Thanks for the useful timeline, doc!
Mackie gets radiation therapy.
Cut to stock footage of the Milky Way.
Cut to three muddy coffins.
Cut to Mackie projectile vomiting. There is way too much vomit in this movie.
I should mention that I may not be telling this story in the right order because the movie is written and edited very confusingly. It doesn't help that the lighting is pure intangible sludge.
Mackie tells no one about his diagnosis. For his birthday, he goes to a depressing strip club with Dornan, who has a wife and a supposedly eighteen-year-old daughter, Brianna, who looks thirty. Dornan bitches obnoxiously about being married. (All the men in this movie are pigs and talk about women in gross ways, something that was not a thing in the writer-directors' other movies.) Mackie is sad because he only has an adorable dog, Hawking, and is secretly dying.
They go on more calls, all of which involve Synchronic. This is accidentally hilarious as it feels like there are no non-time travel-related emergencies in the city. Apparently time travel can cause you to get stabbed by pirates, bitten by rattlesnakes, trapped in a burning building, and explode.
At one call, they learn that Brianna took Synchonic and disappeared!
Mackie buys up packets of Synchronic, is spotted by a guy who tries to buy them from him, and finds the guy hiding in his closet that night. The guy, a bargain basement Jeff Goldblum, explains that he invented the drug but didn't realize it enabled people to time travel - adults as ghosts, and teenagers physically as their pineal glands haven't calcified yet. NEITHER HAS ANTHONY MACKIE'S!
(So every person who took Synchronic was a teenager? Because every victim did interact physically with other times, and that's what killed them. It's confusing because everyone looks like an adult and is played by an adult even if they're not supposed to be adults.)
Mackie promises to destroy the Synchronic, and BB Jeff Goldblum leaves the movie forever. This is very unfortunate as he and Hawking the dog are the only sympathetic characters.
Instead, he of course takes the Synchronic and is transported to a swamp where he is simultaneously menaced by an alligator and a conquistador, which sounds like the setup for a joke. Then he goes back to the Ice Age. He then decides to TAKE HIS DOG to test whether or not he can retrieve Brianna.
scioscribe and I lost all sympathy for him at that moment. Use a pet store mouse! Just go for Brianna and try!
Surprise, surprise, he gets chased by 1920s racists and LOSES HAWKING. Hawking shows up as a sad dog ghost before dissolving.
We hate Mackie now.
Cut to Dornan, who takes a break from printing posters for his missing daughter to randomly tell his wife Mackie's ridiculous tragic backstory.
"While we were cleaning up from Katrina," he says portentously, "A crypt was flooded and three coffins floated out. They just so happened to be the coffins of his mother, his father, and his little sister, who died as a child. Upon seeing her tiny remains..."
At this point I was laughing so hard that I lost the rest of the story, only tuning back in in time to hear him conclude, "AND THAT WAS HIS THIRTIETH BIRTHDAY."
This "tragic" story has nothing to do with anything.
Mackie and Dornan go for a walk, during which Mackie explains about his brain tumor and time travel: "So I can use the time travel pill because I have the youth tumor." (This is clearly not supposed to be hilarious.)
They pontificate at each other for what feels like an eternity.
scioscribe: FUCKING SHUT UP.
Rachel: Blah blah blah blah blah.
Cut to stock footage of the Milky Way.
Mackie FINALLY gets it together to try to rescue Brianna. He finds her in the Civil War! He gets shot in the leg!
Cut to Dornan calling his wife. Music swells as he says "I need you" like he's in a life insurance commercial.
Back in the Civil War, Mackie and Brianna hobble toward the portal to the present! But then! A figure looms up like the Terminator!
It's another skanky hillbilly with a completely ridiculous accent: "HEY SLAAAAAAAAAAAAVE!"
This sensitive and thoughtful depiction of historical racism made me burst out laughing. Mackie and the hillbilly proceed to have an exchange in which I had hysterics every time either of them said the word "slave," which was at least once per second.
Hillbilly: "I'm leaving... with the slaaaaaaaave!"
Brianna returns to the present! Mackie's ghost appears! Bathetic music swells! The camera slowly pushes in on his face for what feels like forever! He and Dornan dramatically... SHAKE HANDS!!!!!
Cut to stock footage of the Milky Way.
Roll credits!
Written and directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead
Rachel &scioscribe, simultaneous: HOW
I honestly don't understand how this movie happened. They made it the same year they made The Endless, which was fantastic. You can see some similar themes as in some of their other movie, but every element of this movie was bad.
Maybe they really needed to use up some stock footage of the Milky Way.
Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead wrote and directed three fantastic movies, all of which are best enjoyed knowing as little as possible in advance.
The Endless is a horror/suspense/multigenre movie about two brothers who fled a UFO cult, then return for a visit as adults. The horror is of the creeping tension/appalling realizations variety; there's minimal/brief violence/gore. It's unpredictable and excellent.
Resolution is related to The Endless. I watched it second and was very surprised to learn that it had been made first. It's about two friends in a cabin, one trying to help the other kick a nasty drug habit, and plays mostly like a naturalistic buddy comedy-drama with elements of horror/suspense. Again, extremely minimal/brief violence/gore. It's also brilliant.
Spring is not related to the other two and is almost impossible to categorize. Half the fun is figuring out what genre it even is. IMO the best experience is to go in knowing absolutely nothing about it, except that it's about a young American man grieving the death of his mother, who goes to Italy and meets a young woman. I loved it and found it very touching. It has some violence and IIRC a cat dies.
OKAY now let's talk about Synchronic, their shockingly terrible and accidentally hilarious movie. All I knew going in was that it was by Benson & Moorhead, was about time travel, and starred Anthony Mackie - good signs, right?
I watched it with
scioscribe and will include some of our comments.It opens with a man and woman in bed. There are weird noises! The room dissolves! There is a desert! The man is flying! A snake rears up between the woman's legs! She is in a swamp and a person wearing weird mask like a gas mask is gesticulating at her! Stock footage of the Milky Way! A person merges with the wall! I probably forgot some things!
Cut to paramedic Anthony Mackie and his partner, Jamie Dornan, who walk into a weird scene with heroin addicts, a dead guy stabbed with a sword, and an empty packet of a designer drug, Synchronic.
Mackie gets stabbed by a syringe, and due to getting his blood tested, discovers that he has a gigantic brain tumor on his pineal gland. Cut to stock footage of the Milky Way. His unsympathetic doctor tells him he's a freak of nature as his pineal gland isn't calcified and so he's biologically young, ANYWAY he needs radiation therapy because he'll be dead in anywhere between six weeks and sixty years. Thanks for the useful timeline, doc!
Mackie gets radiation therapy.
Cut to stock footage of the Milky Way.
Cut to three muddy coffins.
Cut to Mackie projectile vomiting. There is way too much vomit in this movie.
I should mention that I may not be telling this story in the right order because the movie is written and edited very confusingly. It doesn't help that the lighting is pure intangible sludge.
Mackie tells no one about his diagnosis. For his birthday, he goes to a depressing strip club with Dornan, who has a wife and a supposedly eighteen-year-old daughter, Brianna, who looks thirty. Dornan bitches obnoxiously about being married. (All the men in this movie are pigs and talk about women in gross ways, something that was not a thing in the writer-directors' other movies.) Mackie is sad because he only has an adorable dog, Hawking, and is secretly dying.
They go on more calls, all of which involve Synchronic. This is accidentally hilarious as it feels like there are no non-time travel-related emergencies in the city. Apparently time travel can cause you to get stabbed by pirates, bitten by rattlesnakes, trapped in a burning building, and explode.
At one call, they learn that Brianna took Synchonic and disappeared!
Mackie buys up packets of Synchronic, is spotted by a guy who tries to buy them from him, and finds the guy hiding in his closet that night. The guy, a bargain basement Jeff Goldblum, explains that he invented the drug but didn't realize it enabled people to time travel - adults as ghosts, and teenagers physically as their pineal glands haven't calcified yet. NEITHER HAS ANTHONY MACKIE'S!
(So every person who took Synchronic was a teenager? Because every victim did interact physically with other times, and that's what killed them. It's confusing because everyone looks like an adult and is played by an adult even if they're not supposed to be adults.)
Mackie promises to destroy the Synchronic, and BB Jeff Goldblum leaves the movie forever. This is very unfortunate as he and Hawking the dog are the only sympathetic characters.
Instead, he of course takes the Synchronic and is transported to a swamp where he is simultaneously menaced by an alligator and a conquistador, which sounds like the setup for a joke. Then he goes back to the Ice Age. He then decides to TAKE HIS DOG to test whether or not he can retrieve Brianna.
scioscribe and I lost all sympathy for him at that moment. Use a pet store mouse! Just go for Brianna and try! Surprise, surprise, he gets chased by 1920s racists and LOSES HAWKING. Hawking shows up as a sad dog ghost before dissolving.
We hate Mackie now.
Cut to Dornan, who takes a break from printing posters for his missing daughter to randomly tell his wife Mackie's ridiculous tragic backstory.
"While we were cleaning up from Katrina," he says portentously, "A crypt was flooded and three coffins floated out. They just so happened to be the coffins of his mother, his father, and his little sister, who died as a child. Upon seeing her tiny remains..."
At this point I was laughing so hard that I lost the rest of the story, only tuning back in in time to hear him conclude, "AND THAT WAS HIS THIRTIETH BIRTHDAY."
This "tragic" story has nothing to do with anything.
Mackie and Dornan go for a walk, during which Mackie explains about his brain tumor and time travel: "So I can use the time travel pill because I have the youth tumor." (This is clearly not supposed to be hilarious.)
They pontificate at each other for what feels like an eternity.
scioscribe: FUCKING SHUT UP.Rachel: Blah blah blah blah blah.
Cut to stock footage of the Milky Way.
Mackie FINALLY gets it together to try to rescue Brianna. He finds her in the Civil War! He gets shot in the leg!
Cut to Dornan calling his wife. Music swells as he says "I need you" like he's in a life insurance commercial.
Back in the Civil War, Mackie and Brianna hobble toward the portal to the present! But then! A figure looms up like the Terminator!
It's another skanky hillbilly with a completely ridiculous accent: "HEY SLAAAAAAAAAAAAVE!"
This sensitive and thoughtful depiction of historical racism made me burst out laughing. Mackie and the hillbilly proceed to have an exchange in which I had hysterics every time either of them said the word "slave," which was at least once per second.
Hillbilly: "I'm leaving... with the slaaaaaaaave!"
Brianna returns to the present! Mackie's ghost appears! Bathetic music swells! The camera slowly pushes in on his face for what feels like forever! He and Dornan dramatically... SHAKE HANDS!!!!!
Cut to stock footage of the Milky Way.
Roll credits!
Written and directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead
Rachel &
scioscribe, simultaneous: HOWI honestly don't understand how this movie happened. They made it the same year they made The Endless, which was fantastic. You can see some similar themes as in some of their other movie, but every element of this movie was bad.
Maybe they really needed to use up some stock footage of the Milky Way.
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