"SYNCHRONIC" (2020)

SYNCHRONIC (2020)

Directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorehead
Written by Justin Benson
Starring Jamie Dornan, Anthony Mackie and Katie Aselton
Running time 1 hour and 36 minutes
MPAA rating: R for drug content and language throughout and for some violent/bloody images

by Hunter Bush

I really like those Moorehead & Benson boys. They seem like good people. I first got into them slightly before their previous flick The Endless premiered but their names quickly rose high atop my Pay Attention To -list. Starting with Resolution in 2012, then through Spring in 2014 and The Endless in 2017, they’ve proven to be writers/directors/performers who know how to deliver big ideas on modest budgets. But, though Synchronic shows their production values increasing, their ideas are no less expansive.

Where some of their previous efforts have had that particular Lovecraftian flavor of existential horror, Synchronic reminded me of Phillip K. Dick right out of the gate. Not a bad thing when dealing with the tropes they are here: designer drugs, the nature of reality and how it only exists the way it does because we think it does. But Benson & Moorehead don’t just approach big concepts, but also big issues. For better or worse.

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN, Vol.21 - November 2020

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN
Vol. 21 - November, 2020

by Hunter Bush


Howdy once again, y’all. This is one of the more difficult intros for me to write in my two-ish years on this column. I’m writing this before Election Day y’see and have no way of knowing what will happen, and it’s twisting up my guts not knowing. I’ve been putting it off and putting it off and now I’m into the final week of October and haven’t done diddly. By the time this comes out, things will hopefully be looking up, but there is the chance that they’ll be somehow even darker than before and that’s a reality that I’ve been chewing on for weeks. More likely that not though, they’ll be in some horrible liminal space where we don’t know what will happen.

So before I get into this month’s column proper, let me just say to you all that I know things have been difficult for a while now and it may be a while longer until they’re, not but I have to believe that they will get better. Whenever I needed a break from what I used to consider stress (oh how naive I was) I’d pop over to the nearest movie theater and see something. Anything really. Whatever was playing next. Obviously current circumstances and concerns make that impossible (or at least staggeringly ill-advised) but I’m here with the latest Everything Old Is New Again to help you keep an eye on what’s coming to screens in the near future.