TIME ADDICTS ** Australia 2023 Dir: Sam Odlum. 92 mins
Desperation, drugs and time travel paradoxes in the house force Denise and Johnny to battle the past the future and themselves in Sam Odlum’s Time Addicts. Dialogue and scene-chewing screechy voices abound in this Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? (1966) by Mike Nichols crossed with a lovely horror comedy by Steve Miner called House (1985).
The Mike Nichols film comparison surfaces since the main force in Time Addicts (2023) is bickering, swearing and looking comically tough. Denise (Freya Tingley) and Johnny (Charles Grounds) are drug buddies living in Melbourne. When they’re not getting high, they spend their time mooching about, bickering, sitting on roofs of buildings, riding stolen pedal bikes and arguing about whether some of the fancier words Johnny uses are real. Naturally, they want to get high so when they don’t have the money, they must do some dirty work of retrieving a bag from inside a house for the local supplier Kane (Joshua Morton).
Kane warns them not to try the supply, but of course, Johnny does resulting in him disappearing right before Denise’s face. He finds himself in the same house 25 years or so in the past when the home was better and occupied by former undercover cop Tracey (Elise Jansen). In the present, meanwhile, Denise meets her future self who is also using the time-travel meth and has come back to give her a warning. The rest of the movie skips back and forth, using the same location and four actors until it gradually reveals the fundamental relationships between the characters and periods.
Time Addicts (2023) concerns itself with lost relatives, secret identities and people stuck in magically enchanted locations. Budget wise the film is shot within confined sets making good use of corridors, little rooms and lights coming from windows. The most effective moments occur in the washroom scene with a face that changes expression in the mirror.
Performance wise it is just idiotic logic and banshee tones that frankly make one want to go “Just kill these two and be done with it” or turn them into contents of a bowl, imprison them in a baggie and have them smoked to death. This style of film is made for a market that enjoys their ‘kush’ while picking out moments of dialogue and situations that they find funny. Not that that it’s a bad thing but it limits your audience, and this is not Trainspotting (1996) or anything approaching Irvine Welsh. I have been and am a gigging musician and we had a caveat for those who play ‘stoned’ that your performance only sounds good to you, not the audience.
One wonders if these pictures glamourize drug use in some making it fun. Whether it is drinking, hallucinogenic material or anything that gets you through the day or as Steppenwolf once said in the song ‘Snowblind Friend’ : “Spent it all on comfort for his mind” you will enjoy this. If you like rapid dialogue bordering on stream-of-consciousness style a plot that moves rapidly yet not anywhere alone with the cryptic logic of a quest to get out of a house, then Time Addicts (2023) is your style of entertainment. Just watch the drug dogs and residue.
Review by Terry Sherwood
TIME ADDICTS is available to rent/buy on Amazon Prime Video in the UK
TIME ADDICTS is also available to rent/buy on Amazon Prime Video in the USA and also available to buy on DVD