Time Cut's Complaints About Ripping Off Last Year's Critically-Acclaimed Time Travel Slasher Horror Movie Don't Make Any Sense

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Time Cut

Time Cut and Totally Killer obviously share several important elements in common, but Time Cut was not a copy for several reasons. In 2023, Amazon Prime released their critically acclaimed time travel slasher film, Totally Killer. The film starred Kiernan Shipka as a young woman who is accidentally transported back in time, and is presented with an opportunity to stop the infamous serial killer who caused havoc in her small town.

Over the course of the movie, she finds and connects with her mother and a group of friends who were set to be murdered in 1987, who she tries to warn about the imminent dangers. After three people are killed in a single heinous attack, others begin to believe her and she is able to work together with her peers from the past in order to take down the most notorious monster from their community.

Why Time Cut Is Being Criticized For Copying Totally Killer Explained

Time Cut And Totally Killer Do Have A Lot In Common

One year later, in 2024, Netflix released a time travel slasher of its own, Time Cut. Once again, a young girl is transported back in time by accident, where she finds herself arriving just in time to try and stop a series of heinous murders among high school students. She connects with students of the 2000s era where she is now located, and after a couple of students are killed, she is able to convince others to help her fight back against this mysterious serial killer.

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The thing is, there are more than just a few commonalities shared by these films. With some of the most obvious and apparently egregious being the mask worn by the killer, which depicts a stern, smiling figure with blonde hair and hollow eyes. So, of course, on the face of it, these movies appear to have a lot in common, and it would make sense for Time Cut, being the last one to be released, to be the rip-off. But despite the apparent copying of ideas and concepts, this is unequivocally not the case.

Time Cut Began Filming In July 2021, Nearly A Year Before Totally Killer's Production Started In May 2022

Time Cut Was First, Despite Being Released Last

Time Cut has actually been a work in progress from Netflix for years. The movie had a completed script back in 2021, and in the summer of that year, Time Cut began filming in various locations, wrapping up the shoot a month after it started. Totally Killer, on the other hand, didn't begin filming until 2022, as reported by In Production. So, while the two movies shared a lot of details in common, much of the development for both projects was simultaneous, and Time Cut had long wrapped on the filming prior to its release, which limits how much the movies could have influenced and impacted each other.

Time Cut has actually been a work in progress from Netflix for years.

However, Amazon Studios seemed to have gotten through all the elements of making their film in good time despite the challenges that impacted the industry across the board. Meanwhile, Time Cut lagged far behind, with several elements of the production taking years, when they would normally only take months to complete. Despite this, there were some clear reasons for why Time Cut took so long to cross the finish line and eventually get its own release on Netflix.

Why It Took 3 Years For Time Cut To Finally Be Released On Netflix

Time Cut Took Years Stuck In Development

With Time Cut being filmed during the lockdowns and aftermath of COVID, there were likely some people involved in the project who moved on to other work while the movie was in limbo. As lockdown settled and people returned to work, the schedules may have conflicted, causing the movie to be delayed and final touches to be put off waiting for the right people to be available. Then, in 2023, there were writers' strikes, which meant that the project was potentially knocked back again due to shifting schedules, protests and other delays.

Antonia Gentry as Summer in Time Cut and Christopher Lloyd as Dr Emmett Brown in Back to the Future

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Within that window, Totally Killer was able to be written, filmed, and edited, because it simply got lucky in terms of time. It was written, filmed, and finished within the typical timeframe that a movie would be expected, and then released the following year. Time Cut seemed to fall back with every new delay, and potentially more behind the scenes that was never made public. So ultimately, while Time Cut appears similar, the timeline and release of Totally Killer mean that it couldn't have been a copy of that movie.