This article includes plot details of 2024. “Time Cut” and “Sleepover” from 2004.
“Spend a day in 2003!” ” A Netflix social media account »wrote at the end of October. In an accompanying clip from the nostalgic new slasher “Time Cut,” a high school hallway is dotted with velor tracksuits, Heelys, Ugg-style boots and low-rise jeans.
Gen Z teenager Lucy Field (Madison Bailey) accidentally traveled back in time to April 2003, giving her the opportunity to rewrite history and save her millennial sister, Summer (Antonia Gentry). , murder by a serial killer. Lucy walks down the school hallway and sees the sister she never knew. Hilary Duff’s “So Yesterday” (which had not yet been released in April 2003) invaded the stage. The 2000s-themed soundtrack is overall fantastic, with Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated,” Michelle Branch’s “All You Wanted,” Vanessa Carlton’s “A Thousand Miles,” “What’s Luv?” by Fat Joe. and “Teenage Dirtbag” by Wheatus.
Netflixpublishing on social networks makes headlines and has been shared thousands of times. Observers claimed that the costumes and style of “Time Cut” were historically inaccurate and incomplete depictions of the social groups of 2003. These complaints came from at least some people who lived through that era. I wasn’t yet a teenager in the early 2000s, but I spent that time watching teen celebrities in movies like “What a Girl Wants,” “Freaky Friday,” “The Lizzie McGuire Movie,” “A Cinderella Story” and “The Princess Diaries.” As I pondered the meaning of “Time Cut,” I turned to my well-worn DVD of 2004’s “Sleepover,” a comedy that was outperformed has the ticket office by “A Cinderella Story” but is nonetheless also linked to my pre-adolescence.
I often write about nostalgia and enjoying the elasticity of a familiar film – taking me back to my childhood while simultaneously expanding my understanding of the film through adult eyes. Where “Time Cut” lets its characters redirect their paths in 2003, the teenagers in “Sleepover” remain as frozen in time as my childhood memories of glitter gel pens and feather boas.
Alexa PenaVega (then Alexa Vega) stars in “Sleepover” as Julie Corky, a teenager with a 2000s girl’s dream bedroom — swirls of purple, pink, yellow and green on a wall ; coordinating paper lanterns hung around the room; magazine scraps in a quintessential wall collage; an Apple computer with AOL services ready to use.
It wasn’t until 2006 that “Sleepover” began to profoundly shape me. At the end of sixth grade, two of my friends came over for a sleepover. I’m pretty sure I wrote a fan letter to Miley Cyrus – which I (sadly) never sent – and we listened to Aly & AJ’s debut album.
Before going to bed, we also watched “Sleepover” and I wondered what it would be like to have a night like Julie’s. She and her three guests sneak out of the house to complete a scavenger hunt that involves stealing a pair of boxers from her crush. Emerging freshmen compete for the “lunch spot” next to a fountain, where the popular kids at the high school sit.
An enemy named Staci (Sara Paxton) leads an opposing camp with her best friend Liz (Brie Larson) and two groupies. Staci and Liz reinforce the film’s central social dichotomy: there are those who eat instead of the coveted lunch and those who dine next to dumpsters.
“Cool, not cool. Staci and Liz, me,” Julie says to her best friend Hannah (Mika Boorem) as they walk past the school.
“Sleepover” features music from Yellowcard, the Spice Girls, No Secrets, Jump5, Hope 7 and pop-punk band Allister. The cast includes Jane Lynch and Jeff Garlin as the parents, Steve Carell as a disgruntled mall cop, and Evan Peters as an eccentric knight in shining armor. There are triumphant moments of female friendship, snapshots of 2000s childhood, glimpses of first love.
But there’s also a big joke at the expense of Yancy (Kallie Childress), a girl Julie invites at the last minute when Staci isn’t interested. Staci’s boyfriend is supposed to take her to a high school dance, but tries to force her to hook up in his car instead – his efforts not letting up until she physically resists him three times. Julie disguises herself and accidentally goes on a blind date with her teacher. He is at first appalled but then laughs at the situation and lets Julie take a photo with him for the scavenger hunt, remembering his own plight in high school.
I wish these weaknesses of the film weren’t realistic, but they mostly were. Feeling excluded is what affects me the most.
“We live in a sucky universe where wearing bad sneakers can make us outcasts,” Hannah tells Julie when convincing her to take up hunting in the first place.
As a middle school student, I was also concerned about the shoes I wore. Efforts at individualism stood out against my school uniform of plaid skirts and white Oxford shirts.
Julie realizes at the end of the film that sitting at the fountain isn’t everything.
“Wherever we sit, it will be be the lunch place,” she said before Hannah walked away. Presumably, high school will be fine for Julie and her sleepover friends. But what about those for whom it is not so easy?
“Time Cut” not only ponders this question, but imagines a world in which kindness prevails as the answer. The time travel element of the film reveals that the slasher is from the future, but he was once a student in 2003 and was ridiculed. Lucy changes her timeline by standing up to bullies.
“One person who reaches out and becomes a friend where there was none can make a difference,” said director Hannah Macpherson. told Netflix Tudum site.
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Lucy saves Summer from the slasher’s revenge with Emmy, one of the other victims. Once her life returns, Summer comes out and embraces a public romance with Emmy. As happens at the end of the film, the challenges they might face aren’t explored, but we at least see that Summer’s parents are supportive.
“Sleepover” and “Time Cut” are apples and oranges in terms of genre, with the former being a teen comedy and the latter a mix of thriller and sci-fi. Yet I always come back to the idea that one is a relic from the early 2000s and the other is a modern imagining of that period. “Time Cut” gives 2003 the benefit of the wisdom and progress of the 2020s, and I think it’s a productive exercise.
Perhaps a new iteration of “Sleepover” could explore the lessons we are still learning in today’s society about human relationships and emotions. PenaVega celebrated its 20th anniversary meeting with Childress and co-star Scout Taylor-Compton this year, leaving fans hoping for an on-screen sequel. I would like to see a movie where the girls having a sleepover take a break from work or with their kids to enjoy a night out, like Julie’s mom did when she went clubbing in the movie original. As always, I hope entertainment continues to convey messages of acceptance that affirm human dignity.
I identify with Branch, the artist of “All You Wanted”, when she sung, “So lonely inside, so busy outside, and all you wanted was someone who cared.”
“Sleepover” and “Time Cut” signal that I’m not the only one who felt this way. Behind our flip phones and Walkmans in the 2000s, we became the people we are today. Nostalgia is nuanced but has such power to connect people. I want to continue to use it as a tool to better understand myself and others.