Time Cut is a 2024 science fiction slasher film directed by Hannah MacPherson, written by MacPherson and Michael Kennedy (Freaky, It's a Wonderful Knife), and produced by Christopher Landon. It stars Madison Bailey, Antonia Gentry, Michael Shanks, and Griffin Gluck.
The film follows a teenage girl who finds herself sent back in time to 2003, where she sets out to save the older sister she never knew from a knife-wielding masked killer. The film released on Netflix on October 30, 2024.
Previews: Trailer
Time Cut includes examples of the following:
- Advertising by Association: Per the trailer, the film is “From the minds that brought you Freaky and the studio that brought you Fear Street”.
- Anachronism Stew: While the Diegetic Soundtrack is period correct, the song that plays during Lucy's "Mister Sandman" Sequence at the school is "So Yesterday" by Hillary Duff, came out on July 14th, 2003, almost 3 months after the date she travelled to.
- Big Sister Instinct: Inverted. Summer's death was before Lucy's birth, so she grew up never knowing her. However, once they spend time together, Lucy eventually develops such a strong instinct to protect Summer that she is prepared to let herself be erased from existence, risk destroying the entire universe, or start World War III simply to protect Summer.
- Bully Hunter: Part of Future Quinn's motive for the killings is revenge on Summer and her friends for standing by and allowing him to be bullied and tormented.
- Costume-Test Montage: There's a montage of Lucy trying on different early 2000's outfits.
- Crazy Jealous Guy: Future Quinn is driven by Summer's rejection of him in 2003, so he eventually developed time travel to kill Summer and all her friends, reasoning he'd be removing the source of his trouble.
- Create Your Own Hero: The killer murdering Summer results in her parents having Lucy to try to replace her. Lucy then stops the killer from accomplishing his plan.
- Disproportionate Retribution: In another timeline, Summer laughed when Quinn was thrown into a river and rejected his romantic advances. His response to this is to kill her and all her friends. Also overlaps with Misplaced Retribution, since he doesn't target the people who actually threw him in the river. However, he does mention that he became a lonely unloved recluse, in addition to the bullying and rejection, implying he had problems at home as well.
- Doppelgänger Gets Same Sentiment: Averted. Summer and Lucy are perfectly comfortable around Quinn even after finding out that a couple of negative experiences are all it would take to turn him into a homicidal killer, since he actually helped them stop his evil future-self.
- Empty Bedroom Grieving: Summer's bedroom is left intact after her murder. This allows Lucy to retrieve an old letter twenty years later.
- Entitled to Have You: One of Future Quinn's motives to kill Summer is that she rejected him and told him she could not love him "like that".
- Freudian Excuse:
- Future Quinn becomes the Sweetly Slasher because his classmates relentlessly bullied him and his crush Summer laughed as it happened, his crush Summer rejected his advances after he wrote her a love letter and mentions that he has no friends or loved ones either.
- Lucy becomes a Knight Templar Little Sister prepared to let the universe be destroyed or potentially start World War III, because she feels she's "never really existed to begin with", having lived under the dark shadow of Summer and her death her whole life, forever unable to live up to Summer's ghostly legacy. She decides Summer deserves to live more than her. Although despite Lucy never being born in the new timeline, she is able to still exist, a relic from another one, and lives in the past with Summer and Quinn.
- Future Me Scares Me: Quinn is horrified and disgusted that a future version of himself would become a monstrous killer and helps Lucy and Summer stop him.
- Gayngst: Summer is a closeted lesbian who felt she had to break up with Emmy out of fear of coming out to their parents. Emmy, in response, writes a scathing letter, basically calling her a coward. However, at the end of the film, they do get back together.
- Grandfather Paradox: Quinn warns Lucy about how this as a reason she shouldn't try to change the past. Quinn tried to weaponize this, threatening to kill himself to stop his evil future version from killing Lucy and Summer but is told that is not how time travel works, which appears to be confirmed when Lucy negates her own existence in the future without affecting herself in the present.
- I Choose to Stay: After saving the day, Lucy travels back to the future, only to find out that her parents have no idea who she is, and she was never born. However, she gets to stick around in the past, with Summer and Quinn, as a relic of another timeline coexisting with her new home.
- Improvised Weapon: The killer snaps a DVD in half and uses one of the shards to stab his first victim in the throat.
- Lipstick Lesbian: Summer and Emmy.
- Malevolent Masked Man: The killer is a person in a simple face mask and black hoodie. It is revealed to be a future version of Quinn, the science geek, twisted by years of bullying.
- "Mister Sandman" Sequence: Lucy has one when she arrives at her school in 2003, albeit with a slightly anachronistic song.
- Offscreen Teleportation: The killer twice blocks the teens when they try to escape, even though his ability to get ahead of them is downright impossible.
- Posthumous Sibling: Lucy was conceived as a replacement for her dead sister.
- Practically Different Generations: Because Lucy is a Replacement Goldfish for her deceased older sister, Summer, Lucy is about twenty years younger. This is humorously pointed out in the film's final scene, where Summer and Lucy playfully debate who is the older sister, thanks to Timey-Wimey Ball allowing for Lucy to stay in the past.
- Product Placement: When first released in Netflix, it was preceded by an "brought to you by Olive Garden" advertisement. The characters are seen eating at Olive Garden no less than three times over the movie.
- Replacement Goldfish: After their first daughter is murdered by the Sweetly Slasher, Summer's parents decide to have another child, Lucy, which is implied to be this trope. Lucy says she has lived under Summer's shadow her whole life, and even uses this as a reason to let herself be erased from existence.
- Repurposed Pop Song: The bulk of the trailer is set to "Complicated" by Avril Lavigne.
- Ret-Gone: Since Lucy was only conceived long after Summer died, she's concerned that saving Summer will mean erasing herself, though she eventually comes to the conclusion that doing nothing would be worse. Future Quinn notes that time travel doesn't work like that when Quinn threatens to kill himself, and though Lucy does indeed erase herself from the future, it doesn't affect her existence going forward.
- Stop, or I Shoot Myself!: Quinn threatens to kill himself to stop Future Quinn, who laughs off the threat since time travel doesn't work that way. It does, however, provide enough of a distraction for the time machine to charge so Lucy can grab Future Quinn and bring him to the future with her.
- Surprise Incest: Early in the film, Summer and Lucy are implied to be mistaken for a lesbian couple by their parents, having no idea that Lucy is actually Summer's sister from the future.
- Swiss-Cheese Security: Stealing a single key card is all that is required to steal anti-matter from a nuclear research facility. And the fence leading onto the facility grounds is secured with no more than a simple chain-and-padlock, which Lucy and Quinn are easily able to duck under. Future Quinn somehow snuck in and killed a security guard without so much as tripping an alarm.
- Teens Are Monsters: Years of relentless bullying twists and corrupts an alternate timeline version of Quinn into a Serial Killer.
- That Nostalgia Show: Released in 2024 and set in a highly nostalgic 2003, with shots of Ugg boots, low-rise jeans, CDs, and shopping malls scored by Avril Lavigne.
- The Time Traveller's Dilemma: Lucy hesitates over saving Summer because it will likely mean she herself will never be born. Fortunately it turns out time travel doesn't work the way she thinks.
- Time Crash: Quinn fears this might happen, but ultimately, there are little consequences for Lucy's time travel, except that a security guard dies in the place of Summer and Emmy.
- Timey-Wimey Ball: Lucy defeats and kills Future Quinn, who is revealed as the Big Bad. Throughout the film, the dilemma is that if Summer lives, Lucy is never born, as her parents only decided to have a second child because of Summer's death. However, once Lucy defeats and kills Future Quinn, Lucy decides to stay in the past, after travelling once back to her own future and discovering she's been erased from their lives and have no idea who she is. Lucy is now a relic of another timeline, still somehow existing, even though her own actions prevented her own birth in the current one, this is implied to be because Time Travel in this film works on a multiversal level. Lucy simply exists in a new universe of her own creation, one where she never existed. Future Quinn is also from a timeline/universe where he never travelled back and killed four people, including Summer.
- Transparent Closet: Summer and Emmy’s falling out is revealed to have been caused by Summer refusing to admit their romantic relationship due to wanting to stay in the closet, particularly to her parents. When Summer has Lucy over for dinner, their parents quickly assume that the two of them are dating, implying that they already suspected Summer’s sexuality.
- Turn of the Millennium: The bulk of the movie takes place in 2003.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Inverted. Lucy is an Unwitting Preventer of Doom. By showing up in 2003 and saving Quinn from being thrown in the river by Ethan and Brian, she prevents the sequence of events that led to Quinn's murder spree. Then the inversion is subverted: Time travel in this movie works on the branching timeline principle, meaning that the Quinn who did become a murderer still exists. Somehow, he travels into this timeline and carries out his plan anyway.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: What happened to Lucy’s iPhone? It’s not seen anywhere after she changed her clothes…