Synchronic, the latest release from wunderkind indie filmmaking duo Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, posits a world in which the titular designer drug allows you to go back in time for seven minutes each use. The catch is that the consumer doesn’t have any control over when and where he/she travels back to, resulting in potentially dangerous drops into unfamiliar and often harsh terrain. It’s an interesting premise for sure, albeit one that necessitates shallower analysis than the duo’s previous and widely celebrated outing, the Lovecraftian mind-boggler The Endless. 

Anthony Mackie and Jamie Dornan stars as EMTs Steve and Dennis, respectively, who trawl New Orleans’ seedy underbelly into the wee hours assisting overdosing addicts and other skeevy types. The camera roves around like it’s attached to a druggie itself during these sequences, which ooze with menace and rot with dirt. During one such jaunt, the paramedic duo is told “time is a lie” and, naturally, dismisses it until Steve stumbles upon the arty drug, Synchronic, and starts to question whether that is in fact true. It’s a bit like Tenet, if Christopher Nolan’s 2020 film made sense or wasn’t purposely distancing.

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Synchronic’s time travel science makes more sense than Tenet, too, although it’s just as heady. Benson and Moorhead play with time-lapse footage in increasingly clever ways as Steve tries to figure out how the focal pills works, with dazzling VFX and tactile set-pieces on hand to further the woozy effect. The drug-fueled sequences are incredibly well-realized, disconcerting and frequently terrifying. Synchronic indirectly kicks off with one that becomes more horrifying as more details emerge about it, and the score by frequent collaborator Jimmy LaValle trundles along like a booming, omnipresent specter. 

Benson and Moorhead are such masters of sculpting their own enigmatic, unique simulations that even a strip club-set sequence doesn’t read as cliché when ordinarily it would. The issue with Synchronic isn’t necessarily the setup or even the dour, cynical tone that turns on a dime in the final act, but rather everything else going on around it. The narrative focuses on Mackie and Dornan, but it’s the former who’s the ostensible lead, a man on the wrong side of 40 who’s just found out that he hasn’t got long left and desperately wants to feel a connection to the world he’s leaving. 

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It’s curious, then, that Steve spends much of the second and third acts of Synchronic chasing after his buddy’s missing teenage daughter. As played by Ally Ioannides, Briana looks distractingly like Jared Leto during his dark-haired phase (around the time of “The Kill,” when he was being profoundly serious indeed) and makes about as little of an impression. She’s a cypher, much like her mother whose sole role in the movie appears to be yelling at Dennis for not doing enough to help her. That the female characters are given such short shrift would be understandable if the men did anything noteworthy. 

Dornan is sidelined for much of Synchronic, which is fine because Mackie is the stronger actor, his distinctive baritone illuminating much of the story’s foggier moments. The fact that all historical time periods are essentially bad news for a Black man is toyed with but not excavated to the required extent. Plus, a troubling racial note in the climax leaves quite a sour taste in the mouth too, suggesting Benson and Moorhead perhaps bit off more than they could chew here. 

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Mackie is a commanding screen presence, and he sells every moment of Steve’s journey even as a recurring motif featuring coffins washing artfully up in the rain threatens to send Synchronic careening into full-on sentimentality. If nothing else, the movie is yet another example of just how good of a performer the Marvel star is. With any luck, he’ll get more opportunities to branch out in the future and really show off what he can do. Here, Mackie is lumbered with wafer-thin characterization — just like everybody else, to be fair — and a bizarre savior complex. The fact he manages to wring so much genuine emotion out of the role is testament to his skillset. 

As Benson-Moorhead movies go, Synchronic is surprisingly light-hearted, even funny at times with a line about grabbing “fake ayahuasca from the store” standing out as one of the best. The visuals looks great, too, the eerie purple cosmos looming overhead as much of the action unfolds, and NOLA is an ideal setting for this kind of late-night tale of casually misbehaving dudes just trying to get by in the world. The filmmakers may even be commenting on their own working relationship and the unspoken difficulties involved in trying to get along with someone who knows you better than you know yourself. 

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Although Steve and Dennis’ relationship is the anchor for Synchronic, nothing much is gleaned about either of them over the 102-minute runtime. It’s almost as if Benson and Moorhead came up with this killer premise and then tried to mold everything else around it, which may go some way towards explaining why the missing person element rings completely false, and also why Steve’s cancer diagnosis goes from super important to an afterthought within the space of one act. Maybe the point is that nothing is certain in life but death, and we need to cling to those closest to us?

Regardless, after a thrillingly mysterious opening segment, Synchronic settles into something resembling a regular nuts-and-bolts cop thriller, except with paramedics instead of law enforcement. The sequences where Steve takes Synchronic are masterful, which only makes the rest of the movie feel like more of a letdown. Benson and Moorhead’s typically dark, cynical tone is well-suited to the material until a too-neat ending tries to retcon Synchronic into something else in the most jarring way possible. Sadly, this is middle-of-the-road stuff, which — for the guys who gifted us The Endless — stings all the worse.

Joey Keogh (@JoeyLDG) is a writer from Dublin, Ireland with an unhealthy appetite for horror movies and Judge Judy. In stark contrast with every other Irish person ever, she’s straight edge. Hello to Jason Isaacs.