New Orleans paramedics Steve (Anthony Mackie) and Dennis (Jamie Dornan) stumble upon a bizarre plot involving a series of drug-related deaths, in Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead's (Spring, The Endless) stylish and genre-bending new film.
When New Orleans paramedics and close friends Steve (Anthony Mackie, also at the Festival with Seberg) and Dennis (Jamie Dornan, also at the Festival with Endings, Beginnings) arrive on the scene for what seems like a typical overdose, they end up stumbling upon a bizarre plot that will take them down a most unexpected path.
The common denominator in a series of grisly, drug-related deaths is a synthetic narcotic known as synchronic, which has some extreme side effects that don't just alter consciousness. When Dennis' teenage daughter (Ally Ioannides) tries synchronic and goes missing, Steve, who was recently diagnosed with terminal cancer, aims to discover the truth behind the killer drug and inadvertently sets off on a journey to find her — one that leaves him reckoning with his own identity. In what is either a bad trip or a breakthrough, Steve dives deeper and deeper, coming face to face with his place in history as well as the present.
Directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (Spring, The Endless) mix mindbending set pieces with a dark, neo-noir tone to create this stylish, original, impeccably crafted thriller. Balancing a serious treatment of character with a playful approach to popular genres, SYNCHRONIC is both suspenseful and subversive. Here is a complex and humanistic story about how easily we can lose our grip on reality — and about one man's intense battle to come back from the brink.
MICHAEL LERMAN