I loved the first two movies by Benson and Moorhead. "Resolution" was a perfect example of how to take a miniscule budget and tell a captivating story with loads of mystery and twists and turns. "The endless" went into a similar direction, even incorporating parts of "Resolution" and mixing up genres from Thriller, Horror to Sci-Fi including a very dry humor.
"Synchronic" is a different movie but again heavily focussing on the obscure dimensional themes from the other movies. Time has always been a focus of the movies and while there was portals and strange cults before, now there is a synthetic DMT-like drug that is making the user travel through time. The main characters are two paramedics who encounter the collateral damage of the drug and get entangled with finding out what is happening with so many dead, injured or disappeared users.
The acting and cinematography is great but everything feels distant... the characters are not talking very much, show very little emotion and it feels like a cold kind of buddy movie as their relationships are unraveled... well kind of at least. While one is troubled by his disappeared teenage daughter and his relationship to his wife falling apart the other one gets diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor which leads him to investigate further into the Synchronic phenomena as he has nothing to lose now and guessing that his buddies daughters disappearance may be connected to the drug.
Now ... that is it. The drug itself opens many possibilities with time shifting, people slowly entering other times, bringing back strange items or wounds from ancient weapons. It is all beautifully done when its done... but the storytelling felt lazy to me. The introduction of the chemist who syntheticised the drug for example is one perfect example of this .. and there are many. So there are many things in how the paperthing story unfolds that feel very "Hollywood" while the real interesting aspect of how and why the drug works are ignored. Its all very superficial and in case the movie was supposed to be about the characters relationships... honestly I did not care. Everything was acted and told in such a distant way... it just passed right by me and made me wonder if the movie really was over when the screen went black.
So many possibilities and illogical decisions like a paramedic just dropping full doses of an unknown drug he is even short on to complete his "research" on it. The chemist feels like a cheap storytelling device incorporated with a crowbar just to drop him off on the sidelines immediatly. And basically the whole movie was like that. Its about two people, everything else being randomly dropped into their life and disappering... and then its hard to even care for these guys. At the end I felt like I was emotionally cheated or something. Which is disappointing as the basic premise and quality of the movie had so much potential. Its not that "Synchronic" is a boring movie but honestly there is not so much happening for all the mystery at its core.
"Synchronic" is a different movie but again heavily focussing on the obscure dimensional themes from the other movies. Time has always been a focus of the movies and while there was portals and strange cults before, now there is a synthetic DMT-like drug that is making the user travel through time. The main characters are two paramedics who encounter the collateral damage of the drug and get entangled with finding out what is happening with so many dead, injured or disappeared users.
The acting and cinematography is great but everything feels distant... the characters are not talking very much, show very little emotion and it feels like a cold kind of buddy movie as their relationships are unraveled... well kind of at least. While one is troubled by his disappeared teenage daughter and his relationship to his wife falling apart the other one gets diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor which leads him to investigate further into the Synchronic phenomena as he has nothing to lose now and guessing that his buddies daughters disappearance may be connected to the drug.
Now ... that is it. The drug itself opens many possibilities with time shifting, people slowly entering other times, bringing back strange items or wounds from ancient weapons. It is all beautifully done when its done... but the storytelling felt lazy to me. The introduction of the chemist who syntheticised the drug for example is one perfect example of this .. and there are many. So there are many things in how the paperthing story unfolds that feel very "Hollywood" while the real interesting aspect of how and why the drug works are ignored. Its all very superficial and in case the movie was supposed to be about the characters relationships... honestly I did not care. Everything was acted and told in such a distant way... it just passed right by me and made me wonder if the movie really was over when the screen went black.
So many possibilities and illogical decisions like a paramedic just dropping full doses of an unknown drug he is even short on to complete his "research" on it. The chemist feels like a cheap storytelling device incorporated with a crowbar just to drop him off on the sidelines immediatly. And basically the whole movie was like that. Its about two people, everything else being randomly dropped into their life and disappering... and then its hard to even care for these guys. At the end I felt like I was emotionally cheated or something. Which is disappointing as the basic premise and quality of the movie had so much potential. Its not that "Synchronic" is a boring movie but honestly there is not so much happening for all the mystery at its core.