Although it quickly climbed to No. 1 on the Netflix top 10 movies chart following its release last week, the time-travel horror movie “Time Cut” has not exactly been a hit with people who watched it. Critics have torn it apart, with a 19 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and the RT audience rating (34 percent) isn’t much better. TG’s Alix Blackburn called it “lacking in intensity and emotional depth.”
“Time Cut” features stars from two of Netflix’s biggest series, with Madison Bailey of “Outer Banks” as a high school student who inadvertently travels back to 2003, when a mysterious killer is about to take out several teens, including her sister (Antonia Gentry of “Ginny & Georgia”). Director and co-writer Hannah MacPherson takes a bland, lifeless approach to the material, with watered-down, nearly bloodless kills and a mostly incoherent understanding of the rules of time travel.
If you were disappointed with “Time Cut” or have been avoiding it altogether, here are five better horror movies with similar hooks to check out instead.
‘Totally Killer’
The most obvious alternative to “Time Cut” is this entertaining movie from last year that has essentially the same premise. Kiernan Shipka plays a teenager who accidentally travels back in time from 2023 to 1987, where she meets up with the teenage version of her mom (Olivia Holt) and tries to stop a serial killer who’s about to strike their previously peaceful small town.
“Totally Killer” has a much livelier tone than “Time Cut,” with stronger pop-culture references and a good-natured, self-deprecating sense of humor. It’s colorful and fast-paced, with Shipka and Holt playing out a sort of buddy-comedy dynamic as the earnest teen and the mean girl she barely recognizes as the person who will become her mother. The central mystery is a bit underwhelming, but the comedy and the sweet mother-daughter relationship are sharp and endearing.
Watch on Prime Video
‘Happy Death Day’
The time travel element in this horror comedy from director Christopher Landon (who’s a producer on “Time Cut”) is a little different, as protagonist Tree Gelbman (Jessica Rothe) is stuck experiencing the same day over and over again, like Bill Murray in “Groundhog Day.” It’s her birthday, but it’s also the day that she’s murdered by a masked killer stalking her college campus.
After getting killed a few times, Tree decides to solve her own murder, while also making other positive changes in her life along the way. Rothe gives a confident, charismatic performance as the snarky but likable Tree, and Landon finds creative approaches to familiar elements from both the slasher and time-loop subgenres. The movie covers the same events multiple times, but it always feels fresh.
‘The Final Girls’
There are multiple layers of self-awareness in this horror comedy, which involves teenage protagonist Max Cartwright (Taissa Farmiga) traveling both back in time and into the world of a horror movie, a 1986 slasher called “Camp Bloodbath,” starring her late mother Amanda (Malin Åkerman). Max and her friends know exactly what happens in “Camp Bloodbath,” but attempting to avoid the movie’s villain just creates new dangers.
“The Final Girls” delivers smart satire on the heyday of slasher movies, along with some tender mother-daughter bonding, even if Max is actually bonding with a fictional character that her mother once played. Director Todd Strauss-Schulson balances the style of low-budget 1980s horror with a modern sensibility, offering a fun and rewarding contrast between the past and the present — and between reality and the movies.
Watch on Peacock
‘Scream’
There are no journeys between time periods or dimensions in horror legend Wes Craven’s classic film, but the characters in “Scream” are still well-aware of the horror-movie rules that seem to apply to them. Craven and writer Kevin Williamson kicked off an era of meta horror — as well as a long-running franchise — with this clever and genuinely scary small-town slasher.
The costumed killer known as Ghostface has a penchant for pestering his victims with horror trivia before offing them, which means that video-store employee and movie geek Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy) may hold the key to defeating him. Ghostface mainly targets traumatized teen Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), which makes everyone in her life a suspect. “Scream” is an expertly constructed murder mystery that also intelligently skewers horror clichés and features some of the most memorable performances in horror history.
Watch on Max
‘The Cabin in the Woods’
Most horror-movie characters are just hoping to survive as long as they can, but the characters in director and co-writer Drew Goddard’s horror comedy discover that their survival is part of a much bigger plan. Goddard literally deconstructs the genre by gradually pulling back from the overused title location to reveal a grand conspiracy that connects back to primal human rituals.
If it feels like horror characters are often just going through the motions, “The Cabin in the Woods” creates an overarching explanation for why things have to be that way. It’s more than just an academic exercise, though — it’s an amusing, intricate subversion of multiple horror plot devices, with energetic performances and an epic finale that ties those plot devices to the survival of humanity itself.
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