SYNCHRONICITY (2015)

Studio:       Magnet Releasing
Director:    Jacob Gentry
Writer:       Jacob Gentry, Alex Orr
Producer:  Alexander A. Motlagh, Christopher Alender
Stars:     Chad McKnight, Brianne Davis, AJ Bowen, Claire Bronson, Wade Tilton, Scott Poythress, Michael Ironside

Review Score:

---

Summary:

Suspecting his lover is part of a plot to steal his invention, a physicist travels through time to change their relationship as well as the conspiracy.

---

Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Assisted by fellow physicists Chuck and Matty, Jim Beale conducts a test run of an experimental apparatus designed to create a traversable wormhole in the space-time continuum. The practice run fails when Matty, who is unable to distinguish right from left, turns a crucial hatch handle in the wrong direction during the initiation sequence.

Jim, Chuck, and Matty perform the actual experiment in front of venture capitalist Klaus Meisner, the project’s investor. Jim collapses when the wormhole opens.

When Jim regains consciousness, he learns that Klaus left, believing the experiment to be a failure. However, Matty finds that a dahlia flower came through the wormhole. The physicists review footage of the experiment and also see the shape of a person running through the lab during the wormhole opening.

Believing he is chasing whoever came through the wormhole, Jim goes outside and meets a woman named Abby Ross, who appears confused to see Jim. Klaus Meisner’s car pulls up. Jim tries explaining that the experiment was a success. Klaus insistently invites Jim and Abby to join he and his wife Helen for dinner.

At dinner, Jim asks Klaus for another unit of MRD, the radioactive isotope that powers the wormhole generator, which costs $5 million and is exclusively manufactured by Klaus’ company. Abby’s input sways the Meisners’ disposition. Klaus demands a 50% stake in the project, but Jim only agrees to 49%.

Jim and Abby go home together and begin a romance. Jim learns that Abby is Klaus’ mistress. In Abby’s apartment, Jim finds a dahlia flower in a cylindrical case labeled “KMC 0-14,” a gift from Klaus bearing the same designation as the flower that came through the wormhole. Jim receives a phone call from Chuck asking about how they first met. Chuck also cryptically warns Jim not to tell Abby anything about their experiment.

Jim goes to see Chuck and Matty and has a sudden aneurysm while in Chuck’s apartment. Jim collapses.

When Jim regains consciousness, he returns to Abby’s apartment. Touching the call box short circuits the video display. Jim is surprised when a man answers after dialing Abby’s number, but Abby arrives and takes Jim to a nearby bar.

Abby writes on the backs of cardboard coasters while she and Jim converse about the dahlia and the wormhole experiment. They return to Abby’s apartment and have sex. Jim leaves with Abby’s dahlia and has another headache before encountering Chuck outside. Jim becomes more suspicious of Abby when he sees Klaus going up to her apartment.

Back in the lab, Chuck aborts a wormhole test. Matty confirms both dahlias as identical matches. He also uncovers that the KMC designation identifies the flowers as property of the Klaus Meisner Corporation.

Klaus summons Jim to his office and asserts an ownership claim to the project due to his copyright on the dahlia, which is now essential for Jim to prove the wormhole machine actually works. In exchange for a unit of MRD, Klaus demands a 99% stake in Jim’s operation. Jim has no choice but to agree.

A second experiment is planned to open the other end of the wormhole and send the dahlia back to when it was first received. Having identified Abby as the variable in his experiment, Jim requires her to put the dahlia through the wormhole for her to become a constant. Although he feels used, Jim goes to Abby’s apartment to return the dahlia and explains that it is up to Abby to determine whether or not the dahlia will be the item that goes through the wormhole. Jim hears a man’s voice on the other side of the door.

Two days later, Jim, Chuck, and Matty prepare to open the second side of the wormhole. Accompanied by Klaus, Abby arrives at the lab with the dahlia. Jim confronts Abby about the perceived betrayal in their romantic relationship.

When the second experiment starts, Jim races to the apparatus and goes through the wormhole. He returns to the past in a parallel dimension where he ends up as the shadowy figure he saw on the footage of the first experiment. Believing there is a conspiracy between Klaus and Abby to take control of his operation, Jim begins enacting a plan to change the past and retain ownership of his wormhole machine.

Jim becomes the man in the shadows when he first met Abby and the man who answered the door buzzer at Abby’s apartment, among other mysterious instances on the original timeline. Whenever Jim is within proximity of Jim Prime in the current timeline, the two of them experience searing head pain. However, Jim’s physical condition also deteriorates according to time spent in this timeline, giving Jim only 48 hours to live.

Jim successfully convinces Chuck and Matty that he is a future version of himself who needs to adjust prior events. Jim begins taking a D-29 injection to delay the effects of his temporal feedback deterioration.

Jim returns to Abby and finds a notebook documenting details of his research. He also finds a collection of coasters Abby used to write down confidential information he told her when they frequented the bar together. Despite his concerns over her possible deception and her involvement with Klaus, Jim becomes romantically entangled with Abby again.

Jim decides to change the past so that Abby ends up in a romantic relationship with him. Jim confronts Abby after she formally ends her relationship of means with Klaus under the pretense of being in love with Jim. Abby reveals that she was actually using her notes on Jim’s research to write a science-fiction romance novel about physicist John Bane, a fictional character based on Jim.

Jim Prime delivers the dahlia to Abby for use in the second experiment. Feeling manipulated upon realizing there are two Jims, Abby angrily expels Jim and Chuck from her apartment.

Citing Abby’s notebook, which he discovered in Jim’s jacket as evidence of a paradox, Matty theorizes that Jim actually entered an alternate timeline in a parallel universe, and did not simply travel to the past. Chuck and Matty agree to use the final unit of MRD to send Jim back through the wormhole without telling Jim Prime so that Jim can permanently change the timeline with his new knowledge and avoid the negative events that took place.

In the lab, Chuck distracts Jim Prime through an aborted test in order to get Jim into the wormhole. However, Matty turns the hatch handle in the wrong direction and the operation fails.

While consoling Jim over the failure, Chuck realizes that Jim is caught up in chasing Abby across time. Jim and Abby reconcile and rekindle their love. Thinking that it could save Jim’s life in the present, Abby agrees to bring the dahlia to the second experiment in order to send Jim Prime back to the past. However, Abby is forced to go back to Klaus in order to acquire another MRD unit, which greatly upsets Jim.

Jim checks into a hotel only to discover he is already registered. He goes to his room and finds another version of himself lying dead on the bed, confirming Matty’s theory that he did indeed migrate to a parallel dimension along a timeline of infinite possibilities.

With Jim’s condition worsening, Abby joins him as he prepares to die. Having acquired the MRD from Klaus, Abby brings the dahlia to the second experiment just as she did in the previous timeline. She also slips her notebook into the pocket of Jim Prime’s jacket. Jim Prime goes through the wormhole. Abby returns to Jim only to find him still dying.

In a new timeline, Jim Prime exits the wormhole and finds Abby’s notebook in his pocket. Realizing the opportunity, Jim Prime alters the past by having his first meeting with Abby inside the bar instead of outside the lab, thus changing the way their relationship began.

---

Review:

Jim Beale is on the brink of a breakthrough.  In an unspecified near-future, Jim and two fellow physicists have created a wormhole generator capable of traversing the space-time continuum.  Unfortunately, powering the machine requires a rare radioactive isotope.  Mirroring Doc Brown and the Libyans, Jim has no choice but to deal with the devil, in this case a greedy venture capitalist, and ends up with a partner in the project he might be better off without.

Successfully punching a hole in time doesn’t bring an inter-dimensional alien invasion or Michael Biehn.  It brings a flower.  That flower connects Jim to Abby, a mystery woman whose natural allure charms Jim to a point where inventing time travel boards a backseat to the enticing romance up front.

Before long, Jim discovers the flower’s arrival has more meaning than he imagined.  There might be more to Abby than initially suspected, too.  Abby could be in league with the investor trying to usurp control of the project, potentially leaving Jim without his wormhole or his woman.  But Jim has a unique scheme in mind to keep both.  And it involves altering his recent past.

Grounding its time traversing tale in more thoughtful thriller territory, i.e. sentient robots or action-obsessed plots to kill Hitler in his crib are not in this equation, it’s understandable why “Synchronicity” evokes comparisons to the stripped-down suspense of “Primer.”  Character driven, smart plotting isn’t all they have in common.  What both movies share more than anything is an economy making the most from an indie effort’s limitations of leanness.

“Synchronicity” wears the heart of Philip K. Dick on its sleeve.  The “Blade Runner” audio/video aesthetic liberally bleeds everywhere across setting and score.  Ben Lovett’s synthesized sounds send the musical tone straight back to the 80s/90s, right where the film wants it to be.  Eric Maddison’s cinematography and Jeffrey Pratt Gordon’s production design follow in stride.  Maddison creatively angles the camera at concrete slabs so as to disguise a definitive time and place while capturing a cold sleekness in the buildings fitting for both present and future.  Circling searchlights perpetually sweeping through venetian blinds complete the Syd Mead style, even though accusations of unashamed frequency would not be unfounded.

However, those aren’t the only areas where that influence is felt.  There is also the deeply smoky noir of “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” forming a frame for the film’s fiction.

View fullsize

"Back to the Future" Easter egg in "Synchronicity."

Time travel thrillers foster frustration when fans can’t follow along or feel mentally marginalized by too much intelligence or too many inconsistencies.  “Synchronicity” requires a sober attention span to pay attention to its threads, though it still manages to coast below the scalp line without flying overhead, a few demons in the details notwithstanding.

“Synchronicity” has a core of sci-fi romance.  While the nitty gritty behind its science and the setups in its story generally don’t overcomplicate themselves, the love affair powering the plot emerges as a more convoluted pill to swallow.  That’s more than a minor hiccup given how essential Jim and Abby’s relationship is to engaging in the movie, and more than a little surprising given how many other elements are in contention for suspension of disbelief.

Brianne Davis slips in subtly as Jim’s object of affection, Abby.  Davis summons a certain sultriness that accurately captures the vixen vibe of an inexplicably irresistible femme fatale.  It’s not an empty appeal.  There’s more capable Bond girl than generic bombshell here, with Jim being understandably drawn to a layered personality who takes his head out of science and submerges it in seduction.

Trouble brews in the arc of how Jim and Abby’s relationship deepens.  Their romantic entanglement doesn’t fully form in a way that is entirely easy to be onboard with how quickly they come together and how interlocked they are from that moment.  That has to do with how the script compresses their time together to ensure Abby’s involvement remains integral to Jim’s other past-altering purpose, and intended love between them gets lost in these transitions.

Once one starts considering rationale behind things like why Abby’s direct hand in the wormhole experiment is supposedly crucial, other details essential to forward momentum are called into question.  E.g. Jim doesn’t suspect what KMC stands for?  Abby can obtain proprietary radioactive material worth $5 million dollars simply by sleeping with someone?  And two accomplished physicists can’t come up with a concrete way to help a third determinedly distinguish between right and left?  (How about, put a magazine cover on the wall and give an instruction, “turn the handle towards Peyton Manning!”)

“Synchronicity” doesn’t exactly crumble from its cracks.  These details aren’t too critical to be unforgivable, and perceived paradoxes don’t come close to “Terminator 2” territory of Miles Dyson crafting a machine from technology he hasn’t invented yet.  As finely functional as the full script is, it merely earns a mention that “Synchronicity” doesn’t sail a completely buttoned up ship as far as plot progression goes.

Michael Ironside fans, read: everyone, may be disappointed to learn that his villainous billionaire, of course named Klaus Meisner, disappears mid-movie as a character not as juiced with import as one might assume.  Still, what presence Ironside does have is enough to make anyone wish for more.  Even bored, which he doesn’t appear to be here, Ironside’s monotone menace and signature burnt gravel voice befits the “I couldn’t care less” bad guy attitude purposefully brought to every performance.

“Synchronicity” ranks as inherently less energetic and more self-contained than “Timecrimes” (review here), “Predestination” (review here), or “I’ll Follow You Down” (review here) as a time travel thriller.  The mystery element is there, but a scarcity of urgency in what the protagonist needs to accomplish lowers stakes in the suspense category.  This limits broader appeal to those seeking a faster pace and more explosive intent, though anyone entertained by streamlined style with smaller scope has cause to take this trip.  If nothing else, “Synchronicity” is essential viewing for indie filmmakers in need of inspiration or ideas on how to execute high concept with a low budget.

Review Score:  70

---