Synchronicity Movie Review

Synchronicity (2015)

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Written by: Jacob Gentry, Alex Orr (story)
Directed by: Jacob Gentry
Starring: Chad McKnight, Brianne Davis, AJ Bowen
Rated: R
Watch the trailer

Plot
Set in the future, physicist Jim Beale creates a time machine and must travel into the past.

Verdict
The wooden acting reinforces the underdeveloped script and ham-fisted dialog. The actual concept isn't complex, but the script is too cumbersome to follow. We're left with style and mood which can't carry a film.
Skip it.

Review
I like time travel movies. If it's time travel, I will watch it. This occasionally causes me to fall into the trap that is Synchronicity. I rue the day I saw the ad for this film.
It has a promising start despite the obvious lack of budget. The dialog is stilted, but it's earnest in creating a sci-fi film noir vibe. This movie, and the music, escaped from the eighties. I like the eighties, but as the movie progressed, the credit earned from the eighties vibe quickly dissipated.

Synchronicity - Underdeveloped. This is a good rough, rough draft.

It's obtuse and not because of the science, but but because of bad writing. The incredibly flat acting heightens the bad writing. You have to wonder if McKnight is reading cue cards. His love interest is a horridly underdeveloped character. This has the typical time travel trope where what we saw happen in the beginning is influenced by time traveler Jim. The twist is this isn't time travel, it's dimension hopping. Jim traveled to an parallel world.

Jim thought he was guiding a single timeline, but he was wreaking havoc across multiple worlds, each with their own Jim Beale. Each is almost indistinguishable from the initial world we see. These worlds can only support one Jim, otherwise the plot would have no tension or point. When two Jims are in the same proximity, one of them experiences vomiting, headaches, and eventually blacks out. In the end Jim lucks out and hops to a world where his double has already died so he gets to live. Apparently his double is called John Bain, but I don't know why.
I don't know how or why this movie was made. It instills hope in wishful filmmakers that you're project too could actually be made no matter how bad. And that's a compliment.