After evading police following a robbery, two estranged siblings lay low at an abandoned farmhouse. But when a mysterious force emerges, it makes the pair question everything about themselves – and each other.
Shaun: Billed as a lo-fi, high-concept science fiction tale, Things Will Be Different rather surprised me because I hadn’t expected a work that, from a film perspective, was so polished. From shot selection thanks to director Michael Felker to the cinematography from Carissa Dorson to the editing by Felker and Rebeca Marques to the music by Jimmy LaValle and Michael A. Muller, this is well-designed film — and that without the VFX expectations of your modern blockbuster (again: lo-fi). Immersing myself into the story — and into growing complexities of that story — was a fluid process almost from the opening credits and certainly by the opening shots in the diner.
Daniel: Yes, I really enjoyed the glacial build of this and uncertainties regarding the plot and what was going on because of the careful mise-en-scène and strong acting by Adam David Thompson and Riley Dandy. Despite a crime having occurred, with main characters being on the run from the law, everything about the start of this film is just focused on the mundane: the scenery, eating at a diner, family talk, living quiet lives holed up on an isolated property/safe house. But amid these prosaic elements are the odd little details that pop up in conversation and their actions. And of course they then adjust the clocks, step into that room, dial the phone, and step back out to a changed house and countryside. You’re held by the mystery of all the unexplained strangeness, and the general tensions formed by things being just not right.
Shaun: It dawns on me that much of the film’s runtime is also dedicated to comparatively mundane matters. This comes across as quite deliberate: we don’t need a filmed backstory for these siblings because their relationship (and troubles) will become clear to us either through what they say or how they act. Thus, the strength of those performances are essential here. Without Thompson and Dandy to build a mountain of character upon, we’d be left with either a story with poorly developed stakes or a bloated film that spends more time on its science fiction premise than necessary. Things Will Be Different is, I think, well-paced and invites a second viewing to uncover more of the subtle character details in the first half’s montages and snippets of sibling conversation — plus all that whiskey! It might also be a film hiding clues about the strangeness to come later on (and you just know there will be strangeness because their escape from the law using weird time-manipulation is entirely too clean).
Daniel: For reasons of my schedule and then streaming issues with the site where the screener was hosted, I ended up watching this movie restarting twice. So I had that chance to rewatch the beginning and pick up on more of those details, which I then also remembered more clearly upon finally getting through the end of the movie and its call-backs to its start. I’ll echo what you said about the strengths of acting by Thompson and Dandy. Their performances are indeed essential to the pacing and narrative uncertainties for the viewer. And those performances are just stellar. Also as you mentioned in your intro above, the cinematography and the music go a long way to accompany those performances in creating the creepy otherworldly atmosphere of the sibling’s predicament.
Shaun: I agree completely that the music does a phenomenal job supporting the film’s otherworldly atmosphere. The score by Jimmy LaValle (also known for The Album Leaf) and Michael A. Muller is deliciously electronic, with grinding and whining synths and, at times, pounding and intense. It reminded me of Ben Frost’s work on Dark and likewise ended up on my horror writing playlist. I’m glad we get a chance to talk about scores here because I think this is a sometimes neglected aspect of film, yet without LaValle and Muller’s work on Things Will Be Different, I think the film’s slow and almost methodical move towards its first major twist and its shocking conclusion would have less impact. Film is about everything: character and story, acting, cinematography, and the score. And this is a great score (I’m listening to it as I write this and enjoying every second).
When you combine this soundtrack with the cinematography, you get a film that builds its strange premise into an unsettling experience. The location shots (filmed in Indiana instead of the originally-intended Michigan location) of an overcast, semi-secluded farm — presumably dim and drab because most of the film occurs in some kind of alternate dimension — conveys that tone remarkably well. It is well shot film indeed!
Daniel: We’ve spent most of the time here talking about all the things that Things Will Be Different does so well, but I think we both agree that there are aspects to it that miss the mark. For me they’re things that keep the movie in the realm of ‘good’ where it otherwise might have reached ‘exceptional.’ And what’s a bit frustrating is that I think many of those issues could have been fixed with some minimal additions or alternate editing on the part of the director Michael Felker. The issues boil down to character and plot development, but I do want to make clear that I’m fine with the film having unresolved elements after its conclusion. I don’t want to spoil with details here, so we’ll have to tread lightly, but I appreciate the open questions and room for interpretation that Felker provides the audience both in terms of the estranged siblings (Joseph and Sidney) past and future, as well as the exact nature of the group controlling or at least overseeing ‘passage’ to this safe house. However, watching the film it is very hard to decipher how things are working, who characters and voices are, and how they exactly relate. It’s meant to be a puzzle, but stronger connections are needed to help the audience navigate without confusion and frustration. How we are told and shown information, or when we are introduced to characters (for instance Sidney’s daughter) are essential keys to following the film. But they’re not always given at what I would say are the clearest fashion or use of editing. It’s great that you mentioned Dark, because that show deals with similar issues of quantum reality, universes, time (including loops) just as Things Will Be Different Does. But Dark very effectively made all that chaos comprehensible even while remaining a puzzle and leaving some details mysterious. This is Felker’s debut, and for all he succeeds with it, I think we see that he’s still not quite at the top of what he might be capable of in film to match his ambitions.
Shaun: Generally, I agree. While I commend Felker (and Marques) for opting for a bit of obfuscation in this story, there are moments here where I think clarity would benefit the overall production. For me, there’s a bit too much obfuscation for a story that already involves things that don’t quite make sense because they’re not supposed to make sense. There’s some sort of weird dimensional/time travel here, and the main characters and the audience are trying to figure out what it is, how it works, and what impact it will have going forward. When you layer more fuzzy edges on top of that, the whole production becomes more fuzzy. I think this veers a smidge over the line, but not so far as to make a film that I would call unintelligible or full of itself. However, I have to say that I will take a film that tries for something clever or avoids holding the audience’s hand that misses the mark a bit over a film that is overly obvious and perfectly competent. I’ll remember the first, but I’m not likely to remember the second because it never invites me to think about anything.
I suspect that part of what you’re also talking about are elements in the plot that aren’t fully resolved. It’s hard to talk about these without spoiling, but I’ll note that the underlying mystery of this weird alternative dimension / time travel-realm are the people who happened to live there. The film reveals them to us as more than voices, but it does so in a way that raises additional questions. Given that ending we’re presented, I wondered if we might benefit from having clearer answers to those questions, in part because I think the film doesn’t quite resolve the sibling conflict (quite the opposite, really) nor the mysteries of this “realm.” Maybe that was the goal, though I think you and I would both agree that a small adjustment to at least one of these major plot points to give us a stronger resolution would bring this story to another level.
Daniel: Completely. There is the nature and unknown agenda of the people and organization who run this ‘realm.’ There is the mechanism and ‘rules’ of the phenomenon. There is the relationship between siblings Sidney and Joseph. And finally there is the relationship between Sidney and her daughter Steph. All of these major elements have significant unresolved questions to them by the movie’s end. Though I’d actually say that the sibling arc is the best resolved of them all, even if some elements of the past remain unexplained. The characters develop in their love for one another and just how hard they will try to right mistakes of the past. And when it seems futile, they embrace having the support of one another even if all else is lost. Like Children of the Pines, Things Will Be Different really centered on the message that the past cannot ultimately be changed, one must learn to accept it. Things Will Be Different takes a really dark look at that.
I liked the ambiguity of the mysterious people/organization behind the curtain (that then are partially revealed), and am fine with not completely grasping the rules of spacetime strangeness. It’s how Steph fits into this all (and to go into more details would spoil too much) that I felt most frustrated with. That element to the movie could have been made much clearer through rewrites/editing and should have been more clearly explained.
Shaun:Things Will Be Different does, however, handle the sibling relationship with a great deal of nuance. While I think the reason Sidney and Joseph’s falling out is a tad confusing, their efforts to patch things up give the film a welcome emotional center (with whiskey). I found this to be the most compelling part of the film beyond its visual and audio stylings. Some of the best writing is found in those quiet moments of introspection about family, parents, and their hopes and fears for life. Other than the strange communication safe, these were the scenes that stuck with me the most after watching it for the first time — and I did watch it more than once.
Overall, I think Things Will Be Different is a compelling and well-shot film that doesn’t quite stick the landing of its main plot (or some of its subplots). But if this is how good Michael Felker is in his first feature length film (written and directed), then he’s one to pay attention to in the coming years. I sure will be.
Daniel: Each time while watching Things Will Be Different I was drawn into its pace, the visuals, and the sounds. As you say, it doesn’t hit all its landings, but has so much going for it that I’d also be eager to see what Felker directs in the future. This is a movie that I thought I was pretty much done with after the screenings (and going to write this with you.) I didn’t think of it as something I’d necessarily need or want to watch again; it wouldn’t be something to get a physical copy of. But then. Things Will Be Different has just stuck in my mind beyond thinking about it for writing this. I’m ending up being more captivated with the passage of time and thinking about those open-ended elements. I think I’ve reconsidered, and this is something I would like to watch again. It’s been released in the UK on Bluray (Region B) through Lighthouse Film Distribution. I don’t see it currently on Diabolik, Orbit, or Atomic Movie Store, but it is available on pre-order right now through Grindhouse Video.
Poster for Things Will Be Different
Disclosure: We received a complimentary screener for this film from its distributor, Strike Media.
Dr. Shaun Duke is an instructor at DMACC and the Director of the Portolan Project at the Speculative Literature Foundation. He received his M.A. and Ph.D in English from the University of Florida and a B.A. in Modern Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He studies science fiction, digital fan cultures, Caribbean literature, literary canons, postcolonialism, and digital rhetoric.
In addition to his academic work, he wears many hats. He is a writer of genre fiction and a freelance editor at The Duke of Editing. His fiction has appeared in Curiouser Magazine, Stupefying Stories, and elsewhere. He also hosts and produces The Skiffy and Fanty Show, a four-time Hugo Award finalist podcast dedicated to examining the literary, cinematic, and cultural world of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. His podcast work has sent him around the world to participate in conventions, conduct interviews, and more. When he's not podcasting, he can be found on his Twitch channel, AlphabetStreams, or Bluesky, Threads, Mastodon, and other social media places.
