Rating: NR | Runtime: 102 minutes
Release Date: October 4th, 2024 (USA)
Studio: Magnet Releasing
Director(s): Michael Felker
Writer(s): Michael Felker

You shouldn’t be here.

It’s ultimately about regret and guilt. That’s why Joseph (Adam David Thompson) got in touch with his estranged sister Sidney (Riley Dandy) in the first place. Something went down years before wherein she got caught and he ran away. He feels he owes her as a result … even if she doesn’t. So, because she’s drowning in debt and he’s barely making ends meet owning a bar, they band together for a heist that will make all their troubles disappear. The plan is even foolproof enough to get Sidney to agree to leave her daughter Stephanie for the two weeks necessary to evade the authorities. All they must do is travel through time.

I say that matter-of-factly because writer/director Michael Felker presents it that way in his feature debut Things Will Be Different. That’s not to say it isn’t still a wild concept to this brother and sister duo, though. It’s simply not an impossibility and therefore worth the risk. Why? We don’t know. We don’t need to know. All that’s asked of us is to believe Joseph and Sidney decided to take the leap of faith that the regular in his bar who presented this opportunity is trustworthy. Just go to an abandoned farm, dial a couple grandfather clocks as though they were combination locks, enter a closet upstairs, and poof!

Unfortunately for them, however, the device working doesn’t necessarily mean the plan will. So, right when their allotted two-week exile expires, a board is suddenly found nailed across the door frame of their escape. Whatever power is at work is revealed to have “keepers” of a sort who weren’t expecting them as guests. But instead of getting rid of Joseph and Sidney for playing with things they didn’t understand, these voices inexplicably saved on a tape recorder to conduct real-time conversations with the siblings propose a quid pro quo. While they might be unwanted, they aren’t harming the system. They can therefore leave as long as they first kill another unwanted guest who is harming it.

The film intentionally leaves a lot of exposition out to ensure we focus solely on who these two characters are today. Joseph is stuck in the past trying to make good on a demand his sister never made of him. Sidney is stuck in the present wanting nothing more than to return home and be with her daughter. So, this “job” places them in a dark headspace that leads him to alcohol so he can numb this new sense of guilt from keeping her away from her kid and her towards conspiracy theories in a bid to figure out what’s actually going on in the hopes answers might supply them an exit. And all the while they wait for their target … if said target even exists.

I don’t want to say too much since the most important bits arrive in the third act, but the title is relevant as words uttered and words with meaning in the context of time travel. Things were supposed to be different this time in that they neither should have been taken away and things can be different if they’re afforded the chance to do it all again. Will they, though? Anyone who’s ever watched a time travel film knows the science fiction construct generally comes at a price. Maybe one alteration makes things worse. Maybe every alteration changes nothing. Sometimes the pain of regret becomes a part of who we are until the real damage is proven to be our inability to stop trying to fix what can’t be repaired.

Felker does some compelling things with the idea that this farmhouse is “between time.” The notion that Joseph and Sidney can talk to unknown entities on either side of their purgatorial stillness and that those people can instantly change things by ostensibly moving through it is pretty cool. And don’t assume that your ability to guess who their mysterious target is will ruin the ride since Things Will Be Different is less about escaping an environmental prison and more about surviving the prison of their minds. Why this person needs to die is irrelevant. How Joseph and Sidney logically end up here when the chicken and egg equation doesn’t quite add up is irrelevant too.

Heck, even the voices on the other end of that tape recorder are irrelevant considering they’re merely facilitators with no actual ability to change anything. They don’t recruit people they don’t know for fun, after all. They need something to happen and Joseph and Sidney are simply the people in a position to get it done. Felker has created a hermetically sealed puzzle box to force his characters into confronting the choices and mistakes they’ve made. And once they voluntarily travel inside, that seal guarantees they reckon with those actions because it isn’t the safe haven they were sold. No, it’s a hell wherein they become their own worst enemies until finally accepting that peace may only be found in oblivion.

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Adam David Thompson and Riley Dandy in THINGS WILL BE DIFFERENT; courtesy of Magnet Releasing.