Netflix recommended Time Cut, 2024. I'm a sucker for time travel/time paradox science fiction stories, so why not a movie?
Scene 1: 2003. Sweetly, Minnesota, har har. Summer Fling -- her real name, har har! -- goes to a barn dance-themed party. Quinn (Griffin Gluck), the nerd with the unrequited crush on her, didn't think she would come, due to the serial killer targeting teens in the area. He tries to give her a card confessing his love, but before he has a chance, Ethan (Samuel Braun, below), the obnoxious jock whom she is dating, drags her off.
Cut to the dance. Jock Ethan suggests that they raise their cups in memorial to the three dead teens, while a Michael Myers-masked killer stalks outside, and a police car zooms over the bridge.
Uh-oh, Summer fling spills something, and goes to the empy bathroom to clean up. The state police arrive to break up the party, but Summer doesn't hear them. The killer arrives, chases her around, and finally grim-reaps her to death. So he was going to wait until the party emptied out except for one person?
Scene 2: April 18, 2024. Lucy awakens in her bed, goes out to a porch swing to mourn her dead sister, who she couldn't possibly have known -- and checks on the status of her application to a 3-month internship with NASA -- she got in!
She scooters through town , which is in decay -- graffiti everywhere, town clock smashed, stores closed. 20 years ago the Slasher killed four teens, and the town went into its downward spiral. Turn the slasher barn into a tourist attraction, like Lizzie Borden's house.
In school, she tells her science teacher that she got in. He's ecstatic. But she can't tell her parents because this is the anniversary of their daughter's murder.
Out in the hallway, the students are all talking about the murders -- the biggest event in the town's history. Two were killed in the mall. "What the heck is a mall?", someone asks. Another at the Marine Museum, and the fourth at the big dance.
Scene 4: At home, Lucy visits her sister's old room, kept up as a shrine. Overwhelmingly pink, a Buffy the Vampire Slayer poster, a landline phone, a creaking floorboard...wait, there's something under there -- notes. "Summer, now I'll be free, but you'll never be. You'll regret this." Girlfriend had lots of secrets.
Scene 5: Dinner at the Olive Garden The server brings the "Field Family Special," and announces "You look so much like her." Come on, it's been 20 years. How does a casual acquaintance even remember?
Mom and Dad (Michael Shanks, left) are walking shells, immersed in their grief like Miss Haversham moaning over that 30-year old wedding cake in Great Expectations. They had Lucy as a substitute, but they ignore her individuality and accomplishments and just treat her as a reminder of her dead sister.
Lucy comes clean about her internship offer. "WHAT? Go to DC for 3 months? It's full of serial killers! You can get a job at the tech company like me." My Dad assumed that I would be going to work in the factory. He only agreed to college when I got a full scholarship -- he figured I would go to work in the factory afterwards.
Next stop: The abandoned barn where Summer was murdered. They've built a shrine full of photos, ceramic horses, Barbie dolls, and teddy bears. Way more than 20. They must come here every week.
Uh-oh, Lucy forgot the offering she was going to leave. As she fetches it, she hears a machine beeping and thrumming from inside the barn! It's a weird techno-thing with a "start" button. Do not push "start" on a strange machine girl! She pushes it. Two lasers pop out and start thrumming, and zap! Her parents aren't around, and the barn is brand new. No bars on her cell phone -- no network! It's 2003!
Who put a time machine in the barn? This makes no sense.
More after the break. Caution: Explicit.