Things Will Be Different

Thompson and Dandy are outstanding physical actors, not just in scenes of hand-to-hand combat and gunplay but in quiet moments where they eat a meal or talk about their pasts.

But sometimes necessity is just necessity, and here, as the scattershot plot advances... the film is crying out for a splash of CGI, a practical effect, another location, anything.

Even if the balance between the high concept and the human component falters at times, Things Will Be Different is an auspicious effort to amalgamate what touches the heart and what tickles the brain.

Despite an intriguing high-concept lo-fi premise, its oddities and uninteresting superfluities mean that it never really emerges from its self-imposed inertia and gloom.

In many ways, the film feels like a micro-budget rendition of Tenet, as our heroes discover that they’ve been caught in a “vice-grip” between past and future that functions much like that film’s famous “temporal pincer.”

The thematic subtext of people stuck in their troubled existence is a solid foundation, but Felker can’t find the momentum in a story about people who have so little of it.

Things Will Be Different injects enough substance into the usual twisty fodder to make it worthwhile.

The bleak movie never aims to be logical.

Things Will Be Different has an ambitious time-traveling concept revolving around a brother and a sister. Unfortunately, this botched sci-fi drama gets caught up in being too mysterious for viewers to care what happens to these underdeveloped characters.

The acting is a little wobbly here and there, but the material is strong enough to compensate, and Felker's approach to sci-fi tech (including bits of old wood!) is charming and ingenious.