The main theme of the film is how people relate to time. “Time is a lie,” we see in one of the opening scenes, and this phrase reflects everything that follows. But not all of us treat time the same way — age decides everything.

The older generation turns more often to the past: those “over thirty” sadly recall their youth, when every door lay open, and they look with envy at the younger ones. Directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead convey this idea masterfully in a single brief scene: Steve chats with the teenage daughter of his best friend — brushing off the thought of how quickly eighteen years have flown by, he glances at a group of laughing young girls in the background.

As for the young, the future is what matters most. They rush to live, eager to gather as many emotions and impressions as possible, so they turn to all sorts of “enhancers”: alcohol or drugs. That’s why Dennis’s daughter, at eighteen, already knows how to tell good beer from cheap stuff; a young ambulance driver steals morphine; and someone experiments with the synthetic drug Synchronic.

Spoiler warning!

Yet both the young and the older have something in common: none of them value the present. It may seem like a banal idea, but the directors present it so that the viewer can recognize themselves in many of the situations the characters face in their personal lives. That’s why the film begins so simply — with a demonstration of an ordinary working day of two paramedics.

And in this present, both generations behave in completely different ways. The young, taking their first steps in understanding themselves and their place in the world, constantly mess up. Rookie driver Tom keeps annoying Dennis; an inexperienced dispatcher nearly gets Steve shot by a responding police officer; another rookie cop reports a burn victim when, in fact, there’s a corpse at the scene.

The older characters either live with the consequences of their mistakes — like Steve, who is alone — or complain about a present that many might envy, like Dennis. Only a personal tragedy will change the friends’ attitude toward the present and make them look differently at their past. That’s why, after his daughter disappears, Dennis keeps recalling bright moments of family life he never valued before. The same happens with Steve: his tragic past (the death of loved ones) and an unfulfilled present push him toward self-sacrifice for a friend who still has something to lose.

The film’s main conclusion is voiced, as expected, by Steve: “The past sucks,” he says on camera, shaken after another time jump that nearly cost him his life. Later, sitting in a bar while an ad for Back to the Future plays in the background, he adds that the best thing the past can offer is personal memories — about music, about friends.

By the way, the color of Steve’s skin played no small role in how his experience of traveling into America’s past unfolded — the theme of racism is woven into the story naturally and becomes an integral part of his dangerous adventures.

Another important aspect of the past that the directors explore is its ability to damage. We are talking, of course, about memories. For example, Steve complains that he has forgotten four years of French lessons, and the present keeps reminding him of this: in the very first call, a drug-addicted girl mentions French, and during Steve’s last jump, he himself encounters a Frenchman with a broken leg.

A metaphor for all this is the literal damage done to objects that the characters, under the influence of Synchronic, bring back with them from their travels into the past.

The film contains quite a few different symbols and images, but almost all of them lead to the same central element — the stone with the inscription “Allways,” which plays a key role in the story. The word “Always” (“forever,” “eternally,” “constantly”) is spelled incorrectly, but if you divide this inscription into two words, you get all ways, or “all directions.”

The first option echoes the idea of eternity (stars and the Milky Way appear on screen more than once), while the second points to the heroes’ main conclusion about the strength of the present. And that conclusion is this: as long as we are alive, we have an infinite number of options, opportunities, and paths to realize ourselves or try to fix something in our lives.

That’s why, standing by that very stone, Dennis calls his wife and tells her how much he needs her. And Steve, saving his friend’s daughter and sacrificing himself, gives meaning to his own life. Everything ends with a shot of the two friends’ handshake — a symbol of reconciliation between the present and the past.

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