‘Flashback’ Review: A Non-Linear Mystery in a Data-Driven World
While ‘Flashback’ uses the time-loop genre to warn us of predictive data analysis, its message doesn’t fully align with its cryptic story.
In a time when data is being optimized to inform us of what we want, “Flashback” suggests that our innermost desires are not always straightforward. Christopher McBride’s trippy, non-linear second feature explores various facets of the time-loop genre to offer an intriguing narrative puzzle that also hints at modern-day social alienation. Dropping the found-footage/mockumentary style of his directional debut “The Conspiracy”, “Flashback” showcases a bigger budget, more well-known stars and a more intricate story.
From the outset, the film is preoccupied with patterns, telling us that, by analyzing the trends of the past, one can accurately predict the future. Fittingly, the main character Fredrick Fitzell (Dylan O’Brien) works as a data analyst, making business decisions based on human behaviors and consumer habits. Just about anything becomes an inputted number, demonstrated by Fred’s boss Evelyn (Amanda Brugel). With only a fraction of the screen time, Brugel plays the cold, methodical spearhead of the company to a tee, allowing the corporate language to appear repetitious and robotic. While Fred feels so distanced from this fast-paced analytical life – heightened by a hypnotic score from Anthony Scott Burns – the world around him is being configured into a rigid database. An obsession with data foreshadows how neither past, present nor future will take priority over the other. Instead, “Flashback” highlights certain inherent patterns that underwrite all three: “it is all just patterns for us to identify, quantify and label” as Evelyn reminds Fred.
The weight of Fred’s past is evident in his alienated persona; maybe once dreaming of becoming an artist as he sketches away in his notebook, now he works in a typical corporate environment and returns home to a lifeless looking apartment. At the same time, his mother (Liisa Repo-Martell) has lost all memory, doesn’t recognize his face and has only been given a few days to live. McBride begins to construct his Pandora’s box, presenting the usual image of an individual who’s been on auto pilot for the past 15 years and has only now jerked himself back into reality. The jerks are presented in the form of blackout moments or sudden bursts of Proustian-like memory which jolt the narrative back into the past. One of the most entertaining visual elements of the film comes in the execution of these unexpected relapses. Several times it will be an action or sound off-screen that acts as the trigger – most impressive is the use of a screwed-up paper ball being thrown at Fred in the present and landing on his desk 15 years in the past.
The plot thickens when these regressions introduce the central question: what happened to Cindy (Maika Monroe), an unconventional rebel who disappeared after an incident involving a mysterious drug, Mercury? Straight away, Fred is hooked, compulsively drawing pictures of her and beginning to revisit old ground. The blackouts are all linked to his last days at high school, where he is reminded over and over again by his teacher (A.C. Peterson) and his mother how important his final exams are. In the present, he gets in touch with two of his former classmates, drug dealer Sebastian (Emory Cohen) who supplies the “Merc” and Andre (Keir Gilchrist). Any attempt to find Cindy or ask around fails, and his memory is left to do the work. Much like his role as an information analyst he must mine his memory, identify his own behavioral trends and quantify the disappeared image of Cindy.
As Fred falls deeper down the psychedelic rabbit hole the jump cuts escalate. The nauseating strobe lighting and muffled screams result in a quite convincing time-slippage. It is clear the more Fred discovers about Cindy, the more his own reality begins to disintegrate. McBride takes the distressed feeling to the next level when time-slippages are literally presented as lagging images of Fred throwing up. The sense of a clear quantifiable past and future is thrown out the window, and the repercussions of “Merc” burst open a realm of simultaneous points in time.
Having been filmed and produced around the same time it is impossible not to draw comparisons with the recent release of “Synchronic”, a time-travel thriller in which a drug allows passageways between time periods. Another interesting observation about “Flashback” is its contextual opaqueness when it comes to the recreational drug. No one ever answers the question: what does it do to you? The audience are left to decode its physical and psychological effects that are depicted like the determined paths appearing from the chest in “Donnie Darko”.
The film does begin to unravel its mystery when Fred slowly remembers the times he spent with Cindy. It is Cindy who also informs us of the possibilities of “Merc” and becomes the mouthpiece for the film’s philosophical insights. In the past, Cindy seems to predict Fred’s future entrapment. “I don’t want to be like them. Locked in a prison that they forgot that they were in,” she tells Fred. Hinting at the futility of an artificial life, Cindy argues that people are only “giving things labels. Giving inaccurate names to things that are infinite and unknowable.” For all its complexity as both an exploration of interwoven timelines and a critique of a saturated information age, “Flashback” doesn’t have the payoff it deserves. Its conclusion even seems to contradict its own message about breaking free of society’s “labels”. While reminding us of the “power of choice”, the film never escapes its own critique, concluding in a cyclical manner with Fred’s acceptance of the corporate life.
Style over substance is a term that’s thrown around a lot, but “Flashback” is a little too heavy with both: overindulgence in high conceptual ideas and endless aesthetic graphics that never really find the right balance. On top of this, its characters function as mere chess pieces in a grand conspiracy of time. O’Brien gives a quite compelling performance as the neurotic lead, but he’s only swallowed up by the elaborate apparatus that holds the film together. Cohen, Gilchrist and Monroe are all underutilized, to the point that they may only be projections of Fred’s fragmental reality. One could argue that this adds to the whole premise. Individuals around Fred are supposed to be comparative to patterns that he draws between past and present. However, it may leave audiences frustrated with the potential of this young cast, especially given what we saw from Monroe and Gilchrist in “It Follows” or the Brando-esque manner of Cohen in “The Place Beyond the Pines”.
Narrative flaws aside, “Flashback” marks a leap forward for writer-director MacBride. His approach is much more ambitious and technically daring, fueled by an air of risk-taking. Propped up by Brenan Steacy’s murky cinematography and some fine work in the cutting room by Matt Lyon, the difficult subject-matter flows surprisingly well. Be it the parallels drawn between Fred’s major board presentation and his high school finals, or being chased by the cops in two separate timelines, MacBride and company create mesmerizing visual connections. “Flashback” is a concoction of time-bending delights. It digs deep into the transtemporal idea and emerges with several metaphysical statements. Questions of freewill from “Mr. Nobody”, the virtual reality of “The Matrix”, or the experience of time in “I’m Thinking of Ending Things”, are a few notable inspirations. Nevertheless, “Flashback” doesn’t fully live up to its message. In the end, it feels more like an anti-climactic comedown that is more concerned with drug awareness than really striking a blow at the sinister mechanics of data collection.