It is a new collaboration between filmmakers Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, both of whom began working together on the film Resolution of the Year 2012, with a script written by Benson, they were responsible for producing and directing it. The film was well received by critics, and because it was an independent production, it was a success.

They continued to work together, participated in the anthology film V/H/S Viral and in 2014 they released Spring, a fim that mixed romance and terror. Their screening at the Toronto Film Festival was praised by Guillermo del Toro. It was not enough for them to be directors, producers, editors and screenwriters, they were also the actors of their next film, The Endless, which participated in the Tribeca Film Festival in 2017.

Both filmmakers always set their stories, with elements of science fiction and horror. Both are very talented, consolidating their own style. All their films have that touch of independent cinema, with positive results. Last year, both directed an episode of the television remake The Twilight Zone.

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What is the plot?

Dennis Dannelly and Steve Denube are two paramedics from the city of New Orleans. Dennis has a beautiful wife, an 18-year-old daughter named Brianna and has just had another child recently. Steve lives alone, has no wife or children and just received fatal news from his doctor, he has a tumor. The lives of the two friends and co-workers will change when, suddenly, they receive constant emergency calls, in which people have been injured or killed in strange circumstances. Everything indicates that it is a new synthetic drug that is circulating in the city, but in reality it is more than a drug and when Brianna disappears because of this drug, Steve will investigate what is happening and try to help his friend. The discovery he will make will be amazing.

The film may not be at the same level as his previous works, but the beginning is good, we see how a couple of drug addicts, each in a different place of the hotel where they are, suffer the effects of this new drug called Synchronic. The supernatural element is present in these two scenes, implanting the question of what the hell is going on. Are they visions or is it reality?

The presentation of the two protagonists also hooks, the paramedics attend an emergency in a house where there is a young man with an overdose and a man with a mortal wound made with an ancient sword. There is a small sequential shot that brings tension and emotion to that moment. Where the police and paramedics will find details that seem to have no logical explanation.

It is Steve's character who pays the most attention to those details. Even though he spends every day with a hangover, because he consumes alcohol and pills every day. The fact that he receives the warning that he has a deadly tumor in his head will make him rethink everything in his life. At the same time it will help you have more control of the drug that is causing the strange deaths.

When Dennis' daughter disappears, after taking the synthetic drug, Steve, who has nothing left to lose, will experiment on his own, with the last doses of the drug that are in circulation. This is the moment, when we the viewers will also discover what really happens to the people who use the drug.

The whole science fiction part, which includes the time jumps, is interesting and I would have liked it to be developed in more depth. But there is almost no time for logical scientific explanations, the directors prefer to focus on the personal drama of each character and the pieces fit together, to take us to a predictable ending.

There comes a time in the story when we know what is going to happen, I even imagined what the ending would be and I managed to do it well. The narration of the story becomes very conventional, but since I love everything that has to do with jumps in time, I remained interested in the story, even if the ending was exactly as I imagined it.

Does this make it a bad film? No, not at all. It is perhaps the least accomplished of all the filmography of this couple of filmmakers, but the concept, that touch of independent cinema and the performance of one of its protagonists, make the film entertaining.

As I said before, the character Steve Denube is the one who supports the whole film. He is the best developed character and the one who really pulls the strings of the story, moving it forward and showing us the great mystery surrounding drugs and what happens to the people who use them. The other characters are the weakest in the story, even Brianne, who is the one who causes the big turn of the plot, we don't feel anything for her disappearance, because she is shown to us as a strange girl, a teenager who wants to be independent, but everything is dealt with quickly, without any depth.

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Anthony Mackie is the actor who plays Steve Denube, the paramedic who falls ill with cancer, but he will do everything he can to help his best friend recover his missing daughter. It is the charisma of this actor that does not keep him interested in what is happening in the story. This actor began his film career in the movie 8 Mille, and called attention to his character in the Oscar-winning film The Hurt Locker. He is currently a famous movie star, because he is part of the Marvel movie universe, where he plays Falcon and was part of phase 4 of that superhero movie universe. The actor was born in New Orleans, the city where the story of the film takes place.

Jamie Dornan plays Dennis Dannelly, the other paramedic, whose disappearance of his oldest daughter triggered a family crisis. His character remains oblivious to the truth for most of the film, he finds out, only when his friend decides to tell him what is happening and what he plans to do to make Brianna the actress dislike her character, the way she accepts all the surprising facts, does not make much sense. I really liked this actor from the TV series The Downfall, where he played a serial killer. That was before he became very famous, because his face is now associated with the character Christian Grey, from the film adaptations of the book series 50 Shades of Grey. I don't have much to say, I just hope he will disassociate himself from that character and take on more demanding and sordid roles like the one in the series The Fall.

The actress Katie Aselton plays Tara, Dennis' wife, a character that has few scenes and that we didn't get to know very well. She is only there to create conflict in the marriage after the disappearance of her eldest daughter. The actress has participated in several films, but is not very well known. And Ally Ioannides is in charge of playing Brianne, Dennis' daughter who, when she turns 18, moves to a fraternity house and disappears after using the synthetic drug. This actress is known to fans of the television series Parenthood and Badlands, where she worked. But in this film not long ago, she is only the trigger for the story's main conflict.

For the music for the film, the filmmakers have hired a friend who has worked on their previous productions, Jimmy LaValle. He is the founder of the music project The Album Leaf and has composed the music for Spring and The Endless.

Trailer

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POSTER

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