This review is based on a screening from the Sundance Film Festival. In the Blink of an Eye will be available to stream on Hulu starting February 27.
For a film about disaster and how we deal with it, there is something tragic about how In the Blink of an Eye becomes such a frequently disastrous disappointment of its own making. Spanning thousands of years though somehow feeling painfully small in scope, it has plenty of big ideas about life, death, and how we endure. Unfortunately, this feeble sci-fi film does little with them, ensuring whatever thematic or philosophical ambition it has fades away into nothing. Just as the title refers to how fast time can pass, leaving us struggling to remember what came before, the film itself feels destined to be utterly forgotten the moment you finish watching.
This latest attempt at live-action sci-fi from Pixar veteran and John Carter director Andrew Stanton is one of sincere intentions, though woefully sporadic execution. At least John Carter, for all its flaws, felt like it was taking some bigger swings; no such luck here, as In the Blink of an Eye is much more modest and mundane, half-heartedly poking at the poetic existential realities of life without genuinely grappling with them. Stanton has been a key part of some of the more moving animated films of the 21st century, especially the sci-fi wonder that is WALL-E, but with In the Blink of an Eye, he can’t inject this robotic, rote, and reductive story with any life.
Written by Colby Day, who previously penned the similarly disappointing Adam Sandler-starring Spaceman, the film follows three storylines. The first, and weakest, follows a Neanderthal family trying to survive in a harsh world they can’t come close to comprehending. Sadly, we as the audience are not invited to comprehend anything they’re saying, as their grunts are not translated. This leaves us having to rely on already one-note performances that are further hampered by prosthetics, which mostly just bring to mind old GEICO cavemen commercials.
The second and strongest part takes place in the present day, where we get to know Claire (Rashida Jones). She’s an anthropologist who, wouldn't you know it, is studying ancient remains from the era in the first part. Without spoiling anything, these first two parts will soon connect in a way that’s less surprising than it is stiff and obligatory. For now, Claire is starting up a halting relationship with a sweet fellow student, Greg (Daveed Diggs). There's a sex joke that initially ties the first part to the second that’s cheeky yet broad, but the more the film goes on, the more the cutting between the different timelines starts to feel not just even broader, but forced and abrupt. The film never remotely trusts us as an audience, insisting on holding our hand through each and every “twist” just as it awkwardly tugs on the heartstrings, earning few of its emotional payoffs.
In the third and more middle-of-the-road part of the film, we observe a lonely space traveler named Coakley (Kate McKinnon), who is on a mission to a faraway planet. She’s meant to colonize it with babies she’ll grow with only the ship’s onboard AI-esque computer system to help her. But when a mysterious disease starts to kill off the ship's oxygen-producing plants, threatening the mission that may be humanity’s last hope, Coakley will begin to contemplate making the ultimate sacrifice to save it. At least, she’ll do so for a moment, but the film soon lets itself off the hook, writing its way out of what could’ve been a more complicated, compelling moral dilemma. After already feeling like it was in the shadow of a film like Duncan Jones’ magnificent Moon, In the Blink of an Eye just shrinks even further into a dull darkness.
In the Blink of an Eye is a sci-fi “epic” of little ambition and even less genuine wonder.“
As all these timelines start to connect, the film shifts from being merely superficial to downright insulting in one particular parallel it draws. In the present, Claire’s career and budding romance are disrupted by a looming loss that will require her to move back home; in the distant past, the poor Neanderthal family experiences loss after loss due to not having any medicine to treat the illnesses that befall them. These two are not the issue, as Jones makes what are increasingly rushed scenes into something more impactful. The insulting bit comes in the parallel drawn between these two pasts, where real lives are actually at risk. It’s something I not only didn’t feel anything for, but grew quite frustrated with, as it takes up far too much oxygen in an already empty story.
In the Blink of an Eye repeatedly insists that it’s doing something grand or profound; in actuality, it’s a sci-fi “epic” of little ambition and even less genuine wonder. Though it has drawn comparisons to something like the captivating yet divisive Cloud Atlas, those overly flatter what ultimately looks and feels more like a bad episode of a streaming show. More than anything, it ends up playing as one laborious montage of half-baked ideas and forced connections rather than a truly moving sci-fi film. Blink and you’ll miss it? Even if you’re watching, there’s just nothing to see here.
