Flashback 2023 Movie Review

An ominous force with a clock attached to its chest reading 08:26 hovers outside Jess’s yoga class in 2022, which then snaps her back to a park bench conversation with a friend. She explains the strangely haunting comfort of the skeletal figure Dr. Bones, who always seems to be hanging around her peripheral vision.

Later, Jess and her partner Scott are shot by an armed intruder in their flat, prompting a whirlwind journey back through her past. Once she controls her breathing, she can take an active role in the moments she’s reliving. The opportunity presents her with a tough choice about whether to intervene to save the ones she loves from making the same decisions that lead to the timeline she just saw coming to a bloody end.

lashback clearly feels like a proof-of-concept for a feature version of this plot conceit. Writer/director Jed Shepherd seems to have a lot on his mind with the idea about the ability to change the course of our lives in the replay we see when we die.

Yet a duration this brief does not give him the ability to adequately develop more than one idea. There’s something here, and Netflix would be wise to expand it into a full feature. Shepherd has ably demonstrated the strength of the idea within the limitations of the format. The value of watching this project in its infancy, though, is debatable.