Any movie that involves the space-time continuum and the laws of physics is bound to be a trip and a half—and Netflix’s slasher horror film Time Cut is no exception. But figuring out the logic, and making sense of the timeline, is all part of the fun of time-warpy films! And it’s what gives this mystery thriller its unique twist.
We follow Lucy Field (Madison Bailey), a high school student at Sweetly High School. Having just been accepted for a summer internship at NASA, her future is looking bright! But her family’s past looms over her life like a storm cloud. Summer (Antonia Gentry), the older sister she’s never met, died 20 years ago from a series of brutal murders. On the anniversary of Summer’s death, she accidentally finds a time machine that sends her back to 2003. While trying to find her way back to 2024, she realises she has the power to change her and her sister’s fates.
It can be tricky to wrap up a story like this and tie it up with a neat little bow. But somehow, this movie was able to find its ending. So how does Time Cut end? Warning: major spoiler ahead!
Does Summer survive?
In the end, Val Vaughn (Sydney Sabiston) and Brian Palmer (Kataem O’Connor) still meet their doom. But Lucy, her newfound friend Quinn (Griffin Gluck), and Summer manage to save Emmy Golden (Megan Best).
Summer herself was ready to give up and surrender to fate. This is because she finds out that if she doesn’t die, her little sister Lucy would never be born. She kisses Emmy (who turns out to her girlfriend and not just her best friend) one last time before confronting her murderer-to-be. But, in the end, Lucy risks it all and swoops in to save her sis from the Sweetly Slasher. So, yes, Summer lives on!
The Sweetly Slasher gets unmasked
Not all slasher films tend to unmask their killer. Thankfully, we get to the bottom of this mystery. Warning: major spoiler ahead!
We find out that the true identity of the serial killer, dubbed the “Sweetly Slasher,” is none other than Quinn himself — that is, the version of him that’s from the future. Though the Quinn in 2003 is a sweet and innocent physics nerd who is head-over-heels for Summer, his life changes after a series of events in high school. Future Quinn blames all his life’s misfortunes on Summer and her group of friends. So when he invented a time machine, and with nothing left to lose, he decides to go back in time and get his revenge.
Wait, so how many timelines are there?
Technically speaking, there are an infinite number of alternate realities in this film; but in terms of what we’re meant to focus on, we are working with not one, not two, but three different timelines. There’s Lucy’s tragic timeline, where all four students from Sweetly High get murdered. There’s the main timeline of the movie, with Summer still alive. And then there’s the timeline that the Sweetly Slasher is from.
As Lucy points out in the film, Future Quinn’s time travel murder spree resulted in the creation of her timeline. Future Quinn unknowingly made Lucy come into existence which, in turn, created another timeline (the main timeline) when Lucy traveled back in time. This, of course, ultimately leads to Sweetly Slasher’s demise.
Lucy saves the day!
With the help of Quinn and Summer, Lucy is able to wrangle the Sweetly Slasher back to the future. Initially, it looks like it’s possible that it might be the end of the road for our main protagonist. But, at the end of the struggle, Lucy comes out on top. She stabs the Slasher with his own knife.
Does Lucy go back home?
All the events that transpired altered the reality of Lucy’s 2024, and she could no longer make her way back to the way things were. After killing the Sweetly Slasher, she spent some time looking around and found out that she was never born, her parents don’t recognise her, and she essentially no longer has a place in that time.
In the end, Lucy decides that this new timeline she created is her new home. She stays in 2003, gaining a sister and a friend. Flashing forward, we see that the Fields raise her as their own. She enjoys life at school, and with her family — and so does Summer who is able to come out to her parents and date Emmy openly. The best part is that Lucy still gets accepted into the NASA summer internship, but just a couple of decades earlier.
OK, but does that ending make sense?
The twist of having a time-traveling killer makes it so that the murders weren’t supposed to happen in the first place. This way, Lucy’s interference with the timeline that she thought was the “correct” one didn’t matter as much. By killing the Sweetly Slasher, she actually might have set the timeline back on its original track.
All of this to say, yes, there might be some timey-wimey loopholes in this logic. Only a space-time continuum expert can say for sure. But all’s fair in horror and fiction!
Will Lucy continue on her time traveling adventures?
The ending doesn’t really suggest that Lucy will go on to be a frequent time traveler. She’s pretty happy where she’s at, and it doesn’t seem like she’d want to risk creating a hole in the space-time continuum. There are also no hints at a Time Cut 2, but who knows? Anything’s possible!