Things Will Be Different
Written and Directed by Michael Felker
Starring Adam David Thompson and Riley Dandy
Runtime: 95 minutes
Unrated
Available to rent or purchase October 4

by Rachel Shatto, Staff Writer

In Things Will Be Different, writer/director Michael Felker makes his feature debut with this twisty tale of time travel and sibling conflict that immediately placed him on my radar as an emerging talent and storyteller.

The film follows siblings Sidney (Riley Dandy) and Joseph (Adam David Thompson) who are on the run following a heist of some unspecified variety. While the duo have managed to make their getaway and abscond with a bulging bag of cash, the authorities are closing in. With sirens blaring and the police at their heels, they hit the road making their way to a safe house—a secluded farmhouse—only to once again have authorities hot on their trail. Lucky for them, or perhaps unlucky, the true safehouse is not the four walls of the house itself but a time travel portal inside it that puts them truly outside the reach of the long arm of the law. The only catch is they have to hole up for a couple of weeks in the farmhouse on the other side of the door to let time naturally progress before reentering the present day world again.

This little blip in time doesn’t just offer them a chance to evade law enforcement and smoothly make off with their ill-gotten gains, but offers the semi-estranged siblings an opportunity to reconnect and heal their relationship after a previous crime went sideways. While their seclusion and bonding session begins well enough with whiskey and plenty of laughs, as the time of their enforced quarantine comes to an end, it becomes suddenly, shockingly clear they’re not the only ones enjoying the use of time portals. They are trapped in a time vice by mysterious forces who know far more about the doorway, and who is using it.

This creates something of a “bottle episode”, leaving its cast to bounce off walls both literal and figurative while a ticking clock and a mysterious threat loom. The film makes the most of its largely single location, somehow infusing it both with the anxiety-inducing feeling of walls closing in while also feeling utterly adrift in time and space. It’s a unique balance, but both in turn serve to create a metaphysical vice around Sidney and Joseph’s increasingly delicate psyches. But is it a heist film, a psychological potboiler, a revenge tale, a character study, an exploration of the complicated dynamics of siblings unwinding decades of relational strife, or a time travel thriller? Yes. Yes to all of them, and the sum of all its parts equals a highly entertaining and frequently surprising exercise in lo-fi sci-fi.

While the final act doesn’t quite tie up all the film’s many threads and themes, nor do its scant answers completely live up to the mysterious potential, it’s ultimately a success thanks to its compelling, mysterious world-building and two excellent, pathos-laden performances by Thompson and Dandy.

Prior to this film, Felker worked closely with two of its executive producers, Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, as the editor on several of the duo’s films including The Endless and Something in the Dirt. With Things Will Be Different, Felker successfully strikes out on his own in the genre while also creating a film that sits comfortably aligned with Benson and Moorehead’s brand of character-driven sci-fi mind-benders. His take on alibi by time travel introduces interesting new temporal mechanics, hints at a larger world, and leaves just enough questions dangling to make us eager for another opportunity to disappear into this parallel universe.