Time Cut (2024) review – 2003 Deserved A Better Horror Movie Than This Netflix Original

Welcome to Knockout Horror. Now this is more like it! After a month of checking out decent horror movies with our 2024 31 Days of Halloween feature, I had forgotten all about just how awful some horror movies can be. Thankfully, Hannah Macpherson’s Time Cut is here to remind me.

An utterly ridiculous plotline

This movie follows the story of Lucy (Madison Bailey) and her sister, Summer (Antonia Gentry). Lucy, who just so happens to be a genius high school student with aspirations of working for NASA, accidentally stumbles upon a time machine. Yes, really!

After playing around with it, she suddenly finds herself back in the dark ages of 2003. Rather than spend her time discovering how we coped back then without iPhones and… well, just iPhones really. She, instead, sets about preventing the murder of the sister she has never met at the hands of a violent killer.

This is, without question, one of the dumbest plots for a horror movie in years. This girl legitimately finds a time machine in an abandoned barn and just so happens to stumble into 2003… The year her aforementioned sister was murdered. That’s a pretty huge coincidence if you ask me, but that’s the way the story goes, so let’s play along. This is Back to the Future meets I Know What You Did Last Summer but with less fun than the former and less cleavage than the latter.

Lucy heads to her high school and is completely amazed by just how different of a time 2003 was. She then sets about meeting her sister (something, something butterfly effect) and preventing her imminent killing. Some extremely dull time travel stuff happens, some even duller slasher stuff happens, and I wonder why I even bothered thinking that a Netflix horror could be anything other than awful. I really need to remind myself of movies like Choose or Die when I even think about watching low-budget movies on this platform.

A mystifying journey back to… 2003?

It’s difficult to not criticise the time travel aspect of Time Cut. Movies like Back to the Future really put a lot of effort into recreating the past eras they depict—time-accurate vehicles, clothes, hairstyles, etc. Time Cut doesn’t manage any of that.

“The way 2003 is depicted is not going to be remotely recognisable for Millennials. Macpherson decides to simply blast ‘Teenage Dirtbag’ as if that was the only thing that defined the era.”

According to Macpherson, the only notable thing about 2003 was the music and some of the fashion. This doesn’t even feel like a different place in time. The cyclical nature of fashion means the things that were in back in 2003 are in again now: cargo pants, loose-fitting jeans, flared jeans, crop tops, etc.

The way 2003 is depicted is not going to be remotely recognisable for Millennials. Macpherson looks to be pushing 40, maybe older, so it is something of a surprise that the era is presented here as if she never lived in it.

Characters are amazed by Lucy’s iPhone, a device that would appear on the market just a few years later and was talked about from late 2006. Touch-screen phones were a thing from the early 2000s; I remember the Sony Ericsson P800 being just one example. This stuff wasn’t that remarkable or unbelievable. Screen quality yes, but the concept of having the internet in your pocket, not at all.

Instead of touching on the era in a nuanced manner reflecting some of the realities of life in a post-9/11, post-Columbine world, Macpherson decides to simply blast “Teenage Dirtbag” and Vanessa Carlton’s “Thousand Miles” at the viewer, songs from 2000 and 2001 respectively, as if those were the only things that defined that era. Weird.

The least of this movie’s problems

With that being said, the lazy and poorly represented time travel aspect is the least of this movie’s issues. This is a film with a whole bunch of problems. For one, direction is remedial at best. I have watched a lot of ultra-low-budget horror from inexperienced directors over the years, and Time Cut shares many of the problems you would expect to see in those films.

“Madison Bailey has one of the flattest and most low-effort, fatigued deliveries I have seen in horror for quite a long time. She seems disconnected, disinterested, and plain bored.”

Awkward camera cuts, jarring, abrupt scene transitions affording the movie a feeling of inconsistency and lack of flow, terrible scripting, and poorly motivated actors—it’s just a mess; the shiny veneer of high-quality cameras can’t hide how cheap this movie feels.

Acting is a major issue, as is casting. They are all actors in their mid-to-late 20s playing teens, and that is very noticeable. This wouldn’t be such a problem if the actors were competent, but that just isn’t the case. Madison Bailey, as Lucy, has one of the flattest and most low-effort, fatigued deliveries I have seen in horror for quite a long time. She seems disconnected, disinterested, and plain bored for most of the movie. Her body language and enunciation suggest a person who isn’t comfortable in front of the camera. My fiancée and I frequently had trouble understanding what she was saying.

It’s just not scary

Antonia Gentry, as Summer, is slightly better but still pretty bad. She does feel a tiny bit more energetic than the utterly lethargic Bailey, though. Griffin Gluck, as Quinn, does try quite hard and does a nice job with some of the more comedic moments. A little twist hits at the end that forces him to mix things up a bit and he feels a lot less competent. A lot of that is down to the terrible script, however. The dialogue is, at times, laughably bad.

“This is about as tame as horror can possibly get, almost to the level of feeling like an episode of Goosebumps. If Hallmark made slasher movies, they would feel a lot like this.”

Worst of all, this movie simply isn’t scary. It doesn’t even have some of the slasher jump-scares kills that can make this type of film somewhat watchable. There’s a distinctly PG feeling to the entire thing, from the scenes of violence right down to the ending.

It is clear Macpherson was unwilling to take any risks at all when it comes to Time Cut. This is about as tame as horror can possibly get. Almost to the level of feeling like an episode of Goosebumps. That feeling is reinforced with the killer reveal later on. The movie is ruthlessly predictable until it isn’t. You will be left baffled and wondering how the hell the writer managed to come up with something so completely ridiculous.

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Horror is a genre that thrives thanks to indie film makers and low budget creators. At Knockout Horror, we firmly believe that every movie that we review deserves a fair fight. That's why we grade on a curve. Our star ratings are all about context, judging a film on what it achieves with the resources it has.

A 4-star rating for a scrappy indie horror made for $10,000 is a testament to its ingenuity and raw power. A 4-star rating for a $100 million blockbuster means it delivered on its epic promises. We don't compare them side-by-side; we celebrate success in every weight class, from the back-alley brawler to the heavyweight champion. Please keep this in mind when considering star ratings.

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