As a filmmaking duo, directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead have left a lasting impression in carving out their own little niche of low-fi sci-fi efforts, exploring their brain-bleeding ideas with such films as The Endless, Synchronic, and Something in the Dirt. Their features don’t always coalesce in an entirely satisfying manner, yet they remain admirably consistent in generating intriguing premises and demonstrating considerable skill for drawing audiences in with a tantalizing hook. Accompanying them on their journey has been editor Michael Felker, who is responsible for cutting all of their films since 2014’s Spring. Felker graduates to directorial duties with Things Will Be Different, his feature-length debut, and it’s fair to say he’s learned a lot from the school of Benson & Moorhead (who take on executive producer roles here). Largely working with just two actors in a single remote location, Felker embraces the micro-budget challenge, looking to put a metaphysical spin on the fugitives-on-the-run subgenre. The picture kicks off with a pleasing sense of urgency, and Felker — who also scripts here — does generate plenty of moments of tension, but much like its cinematic forebears, Things Will Be Different fails to reach a satisfying conclusion, electing for a cop-out of an ending that spoils an otherwise terrific opening act.
Having just pulled off a daring heist with an exorbitant take, siblings Joseph (Adam David Thompson) and Sidney (Riley Dandy) rendezvous after a sleepless night on the lam. With law enforcement closing in on their location, they take refuge in a rural home on the edge of a cornfield, isolated from the burden of society. Fortunately for them, this is no ordinary home: having been clued in by an associate of theirs, the far-flung residence actually serves as a portal to time travel, allowing the brother and sister to remove themselves from their own timeline and hide out, displaced from their own temporal present, until the heat dies down. The house offers all they could ever need during this time, including home entertainment, a fridge that replenishes food, and a liquor cabinet that never runs out of booze. While the initial plan is to spend two weeks in this undisclosed era before returning to their own time, they soon find themselves trapped in place by a grim entity known only as the Vise Grip. Desperate to leave, the Vise Grip warns them that the only means of departure is to kill an unidentified third party heading toward their location; otherwise, they will be doomed to die in the home without the ability to return to their own time.
Credit where it’s due, Felker does get Things off to a rousing start, immediately dropping us into the shoes of Joseph and Sidney. The pair are estranged, with Sidney a recovering drug addict who scammed many friends out of money, whereas Joseph is a failed business owner, having lost his own bar. Both are seeking to climb out of rock bottom with one big score, hoping to turn their lives around for good. After getting a feel for this intriguing duo, the film’s introduction of the home unveils a few neat logistical idiosyncrasies, where the act of time travel involves the strategic winding of a pair of grandfather clocks and the use of a rotary phone in a cavernous closet space, while communication with the Vise Grip is conducted via speaking into a tape recorder stored in a safe. Leaving the property proves to be impossible as well, with one attempt to go beyond the perimeter resulting in Sidney convulsing and vomiting up blood (the chilly landscape is also captured with compelling cinematography by Carissa Dorson). It’s all beguiling stuff, but still plenty gratifying, as Felker keeps his head above water through the first half, freezing Joseph and Sidney in a sort of novel purgatorial timeline as they await an unknown menace.
But as days stretch into months for our protagonists, Felker slowly loses command of the material as the wait grows interminable. A visitor does eventually arrive on the premises, snapping the picture awake with tense sequences of chases, stand-offs, and gunplay, but explanations are still in relatively short supply. For a film concerned with guarding its secrets, Things Will Be Different could arguably use a bit more finesse with regard to its treatment of exposition, as it frequently casts much of the “how” and “why” by the wayside in order to tackle something on a grander cosmic scale. Felker has clearly invested a lot of love in his characters and has some big ideas brewing, but this failure to more intricately explore the world he’s conjured means that Things drags to its misguided conclusion, making little sense of anything before bowing out with an insulting beat, as if Felker were throwing his hands up in ultimate defeat. It’s a shame, because the director’s first project holds considerable promise for a good half of its runtime, but a satisfying conclusion apparently was not part of the alternate time and space conjured here.
DIRECTOR: Michael Felker; CAST: Adam David Thompson, Riley Dandy, Sarah Bolger, Justin Benson; DISTRIBUTOR: Magnet Releasing; IN THEATERS: October 4; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 35 min.
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