Movie review: Synchronic
SYNCHRONIC (NC16)
Ratings: 2.5 Ticks
After all that exhausting time-inverting and mind-bending we were subjected to in Christopher Nolan's Tenet, this sci-fi horror flick's "time-travelling pill" concept is pretty tame in comparison and won't give you the same high.
New Orleans paramedics and best friends Steve (Anthony Mackie) and Dennis (Jamie Dornan) encounter a series of gruesome accidents and deaths linked to a mysterious new designer drug called Synchronic.
But when Dennis' teen daughter disappears after ingesting it, Steve discovers that the psychedelic challenges everything he knows about reality and the flow of time itself. The film has two distinct halves that seem to be from different movies with extreme tones.
It kicks off strongly, almost like an upper, characterised by users dying or being injured in horrific fashion, and escalating white-knuckle tension as the mystery deepens, suggesting something malevolent is afoot.
But when Steve embarks on a suicide/rescue mission, sentimentalism and cliches take over, turning Synchronic into a downer that eventually suffers from the same side effects of lesser movies. - JEANMARIE TAN
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