Time Warp

October 14, 2019
A deranged man builds a nonfunctional time machine in this half-baked psychological thriller from Pinkerton (The Gemini Experiment). Danny DeCastro has fallen into a depression after two divorces, an estrangement from his son, and the death of his brother. When Danny receives a windfall from his dad’s business, he decides to rewrite his life by building a time machine. Readers expecting a time travel element, however, will be disappointed by the early reveal that the machine’s a fake. Danny actually constructs stage sets of important places in his life, writes corrective scripts of painful moments, and hires actors to reenact his altered life. He drags his high school crush, Lisetta, into this “role-playing therapy” and convinces her to rekindle their romance. When Lisetta’s husband, Martin, finds out about their affair, she fatally stabs him. Consumed by guilt, Lisetta leaves Danny, and his already shaky grip on reality fractures completely. Pinkerton’s psychological portrait of an unstable and unreliable narrator is well done, but there’s very little suspense in the story and the ending lacks twists. This fails to deliver the chills readers will crave.