There have been a lot of timewarp/loop/limbo movies lately – Drive Back is also at FrightFest, typifying the cycle – so the promise of the title, significantly only onscreen after the fadeout and before the end credits, is hard to fullfil … but this does have a few significant diversions from other essays the the caught-in-a-time-trap pictures, not least that the brother and sister protagonists have actually chosen to throw themselves into a warp with the intention of hiding out in no-time for a fortnight as a way to evade the cops (signified by sirens and flashing lights) after what we presume is an armed robbery since they tote rifles and have a bagful of recently-acquired cash. All this is up for debate, as is the identity of the ‘bar patron’ (Chloe Skoczen) who hands Joseph (Adam David Thompson) a book of written instructions which have to be followed out so he and Sidney (Riley Dandy) can open a door in an isolated farmhouse and find themselves in another, minimally inhabited time.
In the now, the house has attracted some gun-happy yahoos and will attract the cops, but Joseph and Riley are strategic enough to scare off the clods, though Joseph notes the idiots will be back soon ‘with someone who knows how to shoot’. The time travel mechanism of the house is unlocked by working two clockfaces like the combination of a safe, leading the bandits to a time where the fridge is stocked with odd edibles and there are bottles of booze – even video and CD entertainment – but some parts of the property are sealed off. It soon eventuates that they’re here for longer than the expected two weeks and a vise – mystery characters played by Justin Benson and Sarah Bolger – communicate with them via a literal safe, a hand-held cassette recorder and scratched words on wood. The deal has changed, and now the duo are stuck where they are until and unless they kill an intruder who is due down the pike – though they have no reason to trust the vise more than the masked gunperson who eventually stalks across a frosty waste where a cornfield stands in the present.
Written and directed by Michael Felker, who has edited features for executive producers Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, this is an exercise in the makes-your-head-hurt sub-genre of time-twister (in the line of descent from Primer, which turns out to be one of the most influential low budget s-f films of all time) which depends a lot on the central performances, especially since the film is reticent about definitively establishing things about the characters and their situations – even they muse that they might be on the end of ‘torture porn’ persecution by alternate versions of themselves, with the possibility that they might not even strictly be each other’s sibling despite their signifying matched wrist tattoos and that the masked menace could be closer to them than to the enigmatic manipulators who say they’re only peripheral to what’s really going on. It’s low-key and whispery to a fault, forcing you to meet it half way and fill in some of the ellipses – but it somehow makes time wittering on monotonously into a suspense situation.
As with most of these films, it’s really about being trapped in a relationship – here, brother and sister rather than a couple – with unresolved resentments, betrayals, obligations and sincere attempts to make things right by taking obviously wrong-headed paths (hot tip – armed robbery is not the best way to pay off a bunch of personal debts and secure the future of a loved daughter) which all lead to this quietly eerie, abandoned-since-the-Korean War farmhouse at the edge of a world. Note the significant needle drops – the Cornelius Brothers’ ‘Too Late to Turn Back Now’ and the Andrews Sisters’ ‘I Want to Go Back to Michigan’.