KILL PILL

TIME IS A LIE… REALITY BENDING THRILLER SYNCHRONIC IS HERE TO EXPAND YOUR MIND. OR MAYBE JUST BLOW IT…

- NICK SETCHFIELD

QUANTUM THEORY IS A hell of a drug. In the case of Synchronic, the latest from directorial tag-team Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, it’s embodied in a little white pill with the power to unlock time itself.

Drop one and the true nature of the universe is visible – and you don’t even have to hug a stranger on a sweat-drenched dance floor. The ultimate in designer pharmaceuticals, it’s proof that Einstein – no slouch when it came to the secrets of reality – was bang on the money when he said “the difference between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” Synchronic – the titular drug – shatters that illusion. But at what cost?

“Those ideas are so interesting,” says Benson, who also wrote the screenplay. “Telling science fiction stories essentially using the block state universe idea, that time isn’t really a flowing river, it’s more of a frozen river, where everything’s happening simultaneously… We’re obviously not the first ones to do it. But yeah, there was definitely a fascination with that. It was rooted in reading a lot of Alan Moore, undergrad physics classes, Wikipedia dives…”

“Stephen Hawking’s books are written for stupid people like myself!” laughs Moorhead, sharing the Zoom call with his creative partner. The pair met as interns for Ridley Scott’s commercial production company, bonding over a shared love of genre.

Named by Variety as among the 10 directors to watch in 2015, they’re known for inventive, category-defying fare, from 2014’s romantic body horror Spring to 2017’s time-looping tale The Endless.