After a chance encounter with a man forgotten from his youth, Fred literally and metaphorically journeys into his past.
Director Christopher MacBride set out with an interesting idea for his film “Flashback,” unfortunately, it’s not long before it suffers the dizzying effects of repetitive bewilderment and perplexing agitation. The movie stars Dylan O’Brien, Maika Monroe, Keir Gilchrist, and Emory Cohen as a group of twenty-somethings who are suffering from nightmares of their time spent in high school. O’Brien’s Fred seems to have it all, a new job, a loving girlfriend, and a spacious apartment but when his mother ends up in the hospital, dying from a rare but fatal disease, Fred’s life begins to slowly unravel.
He begins having flashbacks of his two best high school friends, Andre (Keir Gilchrist) and Sebastian (Emory Cohen), and their last year of high school where they all experimented with a new drug called Mercury, which caused them to question their own existence and everything, and everyone, around them. He reaches out, having not spoken to either one of them since they graduated many years ago but he is unable to locate Cindy (Maika Monroe), the only female friend in the group.
After checking with his old high school as to her whereabouts and told that she never turned up for her finals all those years ago, Fred knows that something happened to her but the use of Mercury has clouded his memories so he, Andre, and Sebastian, between them, try to remember what happened the night before finals, where all four of them descended on a crack house they were told possessed a new variation of Mercury, one more powerful than the one on the streets. After ingesting the pill, their lives all turned upside down, and Fred gradually begins to recall the events of that fateful night.
The film focuses on the possibility of alternate timelines but it fails to deliver anything even remotely factual because we are never told if it is a side effect of the drug, or if it is real, and as a result, it is not just the characters onscreen who suffer from a lack of perception. Our four central protagonists are gloomy, somber, and seem miserable with their everyday existence, especially Fred, who apparently has a good life, while others around them struggle just to survive. In order for the audience to relate to these characters, we need to first care about them, to be able to connect with them but we are not allowed to do so because director Christopher MacBride insists on making them as monotonous and uninteresting as possible, a death sentence to any movie and its narrative. Maybe next time, Mr. MacBride will direct a comedy or a rom-com, where he will have the opportunity to create a story and characters that are worth investing in.
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