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.

The viewer is both miles ahead of the characters in guessing where this is going, and befuddled at the clumsy ways it gets there, or avoids letting us think we know how it's getting there.

Michael Felker’s debut feature is polished and sophisticated. Things Will Be Different is intelligent and emotionally mature science fiction.

The sense of yawning gaps in the scarily wide open fields and skies is reflected in logic and budget holes as Felker’s yarn progresses, though he also withholds solutions, knowing mystery offers more, in an enigmatic calling-card.

If you predicted the twist in “Strange Darling” (2024) within the first few minutes, do not watch “Things Will Be Different." If you did not, then this movie will blow your mind, and you will probably want to watch it repeatedly.