Review: ‘Time Now’ confronts grief with a soft poignancy

Grief and guilt are moral fibers often braided as one. Horror filmmaking has a way of confronting these most uncomfortable of human experiences with a jagged-toothed ruthlessness. The weight of the latter often relies squarely on the former, driving the tension and narrative forward while also tossing the protagonist into a pit of their own self-inflicted filth. The parts of themselves they’ve long left for dead and buried reemerge to wreak havoc and conjure up even more unimaginable horrors. In the case with writer/director Spencer King’s latest feature film Time Now, a character study in grief, guilt, and retribution, Jenny (Eleanor Lambert) is in for a rude awakening when her brother Victor dies in a tragic car crash, and she finally addresses dark truths about her own life.

Jenny has a tendency to shut people out of her life, particularly when it comes to her family. Tenuous threads barely keep her relationships with her parents and aunt Joan (Claudia Black) together. In all honesty, it’s a marvel those ties have held as long as they have. The real impetus for the story goes back a bit, back to the birth of a set of triplets — you guessed it, Jenny, Victor, and Andrew. So, familial obligations here are more than performative gestures; they run deep in their blood and bones. When Jenny returns to pay her respects to her brother Victor, the house of cards comes crashing down as she attempts to repair the damage of the past and the many ill feelings still harbored in the family, trying to also make sense of Victor’s untimely demise. Jenny suspects something is off with a few details surrounding the car crash, from which close friend and rising pop artist Kash (Xxavier Polk) walked away without a single scratch.

Time Now is the definition of a slow burn, and unfortunately, the middle act meanders and treads water, buying time until the gut-wrenching finale. As Jenny struggles to put the pieces together, slotting character reveals and backstory context into place ever-so slothfully, she begins having the most terrifying nightmares and hallucinations, including beholding a dark, ghostly figure in her late brother’s loft space. One could argue the film is a slice out of real life, and real life, if we’re being honest, is quite boring and often a slog to get through. Only life’s most brilliantly brutal moments seem to flash across the sky with a poetic brightness, charging through the body like a lightning strike. Such is the case with Time Now. And sadly, it doesn’t make for much of a compelling cinematic experience.

Time Now fits somewhere between the soft crackle of Unquiet Grace and When I Consume You, decorated with a sort of scruffy Death Trip twinge. But it never quite reaches those same levels of DIY mastery. When the story locks into place, and the ending is all but inevitable, that’s when Lambert absolutely dazzles. Lambert plays well in the quieter, more sobering moments, gentle ripples cascading across her face, but her real power rises to the surface in the nick of time to totally embody the entire emotional journey into and through and out of grief. The very last scene is award-worthy on her part — but I’m not quite sure it’s enough to carry the film.

Time Now is out on VOD everywhere now.