Crew
Director – Hannah MacPherson, Screenplay – Michael Kennedy & Hannah MacPherson, Story – Michael Kennedy, Producers – Matt Kaplan & Christopher Landon, Photography – Tony Mirza, Music – Anna Drubich, Visual Effects – Bunte Farben, Image Trading Company (Supervisor – Chris Wells), Urban Prairie Post Production (Supervisor – Darren Wall) & Zoic Studios (Supervisor – Richard Patterson), Special Effects Supervisor – Marc Reichel, Makeup Effects – Katie Goett, Production Design – Jean-Andre Carriere. Production Company – Ace Entertainment.
Cast
Madison Bailey (Lucy Field), Antonia Gentry (Summer Field), Griffin Gluck (Quinn), Michael Shanks (Gil Field), Rachael Crawford (Kendra Field), Samuel Braun (Ethan Myers), Jordan Pettle (Mr Fleming), Megan Best (Emmy Golden), Sydney Sabiston (Val), Kataem O’Connor (Bryan)
Plot
On April 18, 2003, in the small town of Sweetly, Minnesota, teenager Summer Field becomes the fourth victim of the serial killer known as The Sweetly Slasher. In 2024, Lucy is Summer’s sister, born after her death, who has grown up in shadow of her sister’s absence. The town has been devastated by the killings. Lucy receives an internship at NASA, but her parents do not want her to leave. Visiting Summer’s grave, Lucy is drawn to a nearby barn by a flash of light and enters to discover a time machine. She is transported back to 2003, several days before Summer’s death. She convinces genius physics student Quinn of who she is and asks his help. He presses upon her how dangerous it would be to change events in her past, but Lucy cannot help but become involved in stopping the slasher’s spree and trying to save Summer’s life, even though it might mean her never being born.
Timecut comes from Hannah MacPherson who had made one previous film with the horror film Sickhouse (2016) and has worked as a director on various teen series. The film is produced by Christopher Landon, known for other successful horror films such as Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (2015), Happy Death Day (2017) and Freaky (2020), among others.
Timecut – which around the internet is being referred to as Time Cut but is just one word on the credits – came out twelve months after Totally Killer (2023), which mashed the slasher film up with the 1980s time travel film in amusing ways. The producers claimed that Timecut was made before Totally Killer – given the amount of time it can take to get a film produced and distributed, one will give them the benefit of the doubt on that one. Whatever the case, it was still dismissed as a copy of Totally Killer by everybody anyway.
It is also worth noting that screenwriter Michael Kennedy has been behind several of these other slasher genre mash-ups with the scripts for Christopher Landon’s Freaky – a mash-up of slasher and bodyswap film a la Freaky Friday (1976); It’s a Wonderful Knife (2023) – slasher and It’s a Wonderful Life (1946); and Heart Eyes (2025) – slasher and romantic comedy. All but Wonderful Knife were made under the aegis of Christopher Landon.
Hannah MacPherson and the script try to get all nostalgic for growing up in the early 2000s. This means we get a few montage shots with portable Discman players, Heelys roller shoes, ugg boots and the like. It feels though that the period is so much in recent memory – only twenty years gone – that little had changed and the film doesn’t quite get the same cultural jolt that can be made out of going back to the 1970s and 80s. I mean, since when have you heard about people making fun of 2000s fashion sense and fads? Never. Or maybe that’s just me getting older and not having noticed much difference. On the other hand, the scene where Madison Bailey explains the idea of her cellphone to Griffin Gluck and he reacts in an amazement feels improbable – cellphones had become widespread by that time (2003 was the year I brought my first phone, for instance).
Michael Kennedy does create a good time travel dilemma and one that acknowledges many of the issues that films like Back to the Future (1985) sweep under the carpet – that the protagonist changing the timeline would dramatically alter their lives. Here Madison Bailey must confront the choice between whether to save her sister’s life or not because doing so would mean that she would not be born. The film does arrive at an okay twist revelation of the killer’s identity – but seems to do little to credibly establish how said individual becomes that person. There is also no explanation of where the time machine came from and how it ended up in the barn when Madison Bailey finds it.
Timecut also feels like a terribly bland treatment of its themes. It doesn’t entirely letdown on the slasher side of things, but equally this is balanced out by lots of talk about sisterhood and a big pro-LGBT message in another twist. However, the ending is something that kills the film. [PLOT SPOILERS]. Here, despite being told that she cannot change the future, Madison Bailey succeeds in doing so. But then comes the banally feelgood scenes where she returns back to 2003 and decides to slot in and live her life there, all despite a complete lack of any identity papers. Not to mention her family just deciding to unofficially adopt her, all so that she can have the sister she never did.
Trailer here