Overlook Film Festival 2024 – While Things Will Be Different may be a screwy, mind-bendy type of film, ultimately, it’s about two siblings trapped in an impossible situation. Each is forced to reconcile with past choices they’ve made over and over again, including their mistakes. They’re essentially stuck within their troubled existence. This grounds a film that sometimes feel a bit too opaque and raises a few too many head-scratching questions.

This film was written and directed by Michael Felker, who worked as an editor on a few of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s features, including The Endless and Something in the Dirt. Benson and Moorhead also served as executive producers on this project, and it makes sense, not only because they’ve had a working relationship with Felker. Some of the concepts Felker toys with will be familiar to Moorhead and Benson fans, including alternate dimensions and time travel.  This particular film stars Adam David Thompson as Joseph and Riley Dandy as Sidney. After a botched crime, they need to lay low. They head to a farmhouse that somehow defies reality and concepts of space and time. Essentially, it keeps them in a metaphysical space where the law can’t reach them. However, leaving has serious consequences.

The siblings can talk to a duo that somehow controls their trapped reality. These conversations are held using a tape recorder that’s chained to a metal safe. To return home, Joseph and Sidney are told they have to kill an unwanted visitor. This certainly ups the stakes and makes for a few intense cat and mouse sequences, especially once the masked intruder arrives. It also grounds the film in something other than this strange dimension concept.

There are moments, too, where Felker spends just the right amount of time exploring Joseph and Sidney’s very complicated relationship. Prior to their crime gone wrong, they weren’t exactly the closest of siblings. Some flashbacks are sprinkled throughout the runtime that flesh out their characters. These are very human moments that also work to anchor the film to characterization that’s relatable more than some of the high-end concepts Felker plays with here. In fact, the film would have benefited from one or two more of such sequences.  The siblings also have an increasing fear that they’ll never escape. As Joseph puts it at one point, they may face a lonely, sad death. These very human fears elevate the sci-fi film.

Things Will Be Different has plenty of moments that shine and solid performances by Thompson and Dandy. The flaws are more in the script than anything else. The film works best when it’s rooted in its tangible aspects, like fears of dying alone or feeling trapped, destined to repeat the same mistakes. Felker’s film shows a lot of promise for his future as a filmmaker.

7 Out of 10