Director: Ricky Kennedy
Cast: Ben Everett, Daniel W. May, Elizabeth Lestina, Garland Buffalo
Have I Seen it Before: I’m surprised I didn’t write it myself.
Did I Like It: I should have loved it.
And yet…
Artificially aging digital footage shot less than five years ago doesn’t make it look like archival footage. It doesn’t make it look like anything more than an attempt at filmmaking via a snapchat aesthetic. The faking of newspapers fares even worse. The less said about expert talking heads who are clearly actors reciting lines, the better. It fundamentally sours any attempt at verisimilitude, and the entire conceit behind a mockumentary is to manufacture verisimilitude.
And yet…
This movie is constructed exactly as it should be. As I was watching, I was concerned that this would just be a little alternate history ditty, like C.S.A.: The Confederate State of America (2004) with a flux capacitor. I was prepared to be disappointed.
And then things begin to change within the movie. Time itself changes as the movie unfurls.
As it begins, it’s almost so subtle you’re not sure it’s even happening. The story of the invention of the time machine becomes more and more tragic the more it is changed. The countries on a globe behind one of the experts become increasingly red. Museum pieces change, especially newspapers begin to change. Nixon wins in 1960, but doesn’t live throughout his term.
By the time we see a picture of Hillary Clinton on the wall of a general’s office (which only a few minutes ago had Barack Obama), it’s too late. We’re already within this web of time changing shenanigans.
And then things stop changing. And then they change back to the way we remember things to have unfolded. I’m left wanting. It could have been far more engaging if things only continued to unravel, or at least unravelled in far more mind-bending ways before the toothpaste is put back in the tube and pandora’s box is once again close.
So, do I like this movie? Well, I’m sure there are timelines in which I can fully recommend it, and yet again other timelines where I hate it. The timeline we are stuck in is somewhere between a delight and limp cinematic soufflé, and so is this movie.