Sci-fi thrillers are everywhere you look these days, and have been for decades, so it’s going to take a hell of an elevator pitch or high concept logline to draw in curious viewers who already think they’ve seen it all before. 2:22 definitely boasts a premise that comes bearing plenty of potential, but the execution left a whole lot to be desired.
Director Paul Currie’s ambitious-if-unwieldy tale follows Michiel Huisman’s air traffic controller Dylan Branson, who finds himself temporarily paralyzed by a brief ray of light, causing him to lose his job after the momentary lapse in concentration almost ends in a disastrous midair collision.
With more time on his hands than ever before, our intrepid protagonist begins to experience unexplainable repetition at the exact same time, every single day. Along the way, he finds himself introduced to Teresa Palmer’s Sarah – a passenger onboard one of the planes that barely avoided catastrophe – and she seems to know a great deal more about what’s going on than she’s willing to admit.
Unfortunately, 2:22 topping out with Rotten Tomatoes scores of 20 and 38 percent from critics and crowds hammers home just how badly the ball was dropped, when the potential was evidently there a thought-provoking existential genre thriller with a unique twist on familiar tropes and trappings.
Nonetheless, the undercooked escapade has conspired to turn back the clock and become a Top 10 streaming sensation, with FlixPatrol outing 2:22 as one of the 10 top-viewed features on Prime Video among customers in the United States.
