‘Things Will Be Different’ Review: A Time-Traveling Thriller With A Twist

Writer-director Michael Felker’s lo-fi sci-fi thriller begins in a train station, with its two characters already there. They meet at a restaurant with guns and bags full of money, then go into the woods and change their clothes before moving on to their destination, a remote house where they plan to drill. Things Will Be Different leads us quickly through the opening, using dialogue between the two to tell us everything we need to know about them.

Sidney (Riley Dandy) and Joseph (Adam David Thompson) are brothers who haven’t met in a while, although they seem to trust each other enough to be partners in crime. Sidney has a daughter to raise and Joseph owns a grocery store, so they both need a payday. Like many great sci-fi stories, Things Will Be Different it takes a tale that had all the makings of a compelling, authentic story – clever pacing, a setting and characters that become clear after a few lines of dialogue – and then throws the world’s wrinkles into the middle to see how everyone is doing.

In this case, the object is a special door inside the farmhouse that allows Sidney and Joseph to get out of the time it travels. Details of travel time in Things Will Be Different—like how a door is operated using a grandfather clock or a booklet with handwritten instructions that Joseph follows when operating it—gives the whole thing an effective quality. It takes on the eerie power of superstition or urban legend, the idea of ​​supernatural things that we can’t see—things we can access if we know the trick, like saying a name three times in a mirror or laying hands on the head. two watches just right.

The only downside to Sidney and Joseph’s plan is that they have to stay at the farmhouse for two weeks before making the return trip. They are more than happy to do so, reconnect and while away the days in a sour haze of whiskey and gleeful laughter. But then messages start appearing, showing that the two are not the only ones playing with time—and that the other travelers may not be playing well with others.

This scope allows the film to play with time in a clever way, from sudden events (often accompanied by a very convincing “noise”) to regular conversations using a shared Dictaphone. In many ways, Felker’s film feels like a low-budget remake Tenetour heroes discover that they are caught in the “junction” between the past and the future that serves as the “temporal pincer” of the film.

Because it can’t rely on big, results-driven images to drive its ideas, Things Will Be Different they must have skills. The conflict grows as the brothers wait for the traveler to come for another time, hoping that this will give them a way back home as they doubt more and more how they can really trust each other. There’s a slight lull as the film transitions from a sci-fi-tinged sibling drama to an absurd drama before becoming a full-on drama. But the ending is so difficult that it only adds up to whatever energy was lost in getting there.