Madelines

By: Maggie Stankiewicz

Brea Grant and Parry Shen shine in this low-budget romp through time, space and the tumults of marriage. Directed by Jason Richard Miller and written by Brea Grant, Madelines explores the implications of mixing business, pleasure and time travel.

Scientific entrepreneurs Owen (Parry Shen) and Madeline (Brea Grant) are on the brink of cracking the code to successful time travel. After a positive test run, Owen pressures Madeline into replicating the experiment on a live test subject. Madeline opts to try it on herself. It doesn’t take long for Madeline and Owen to realize their test run wasn’t quite ready for human trials.

Each day after the experiment is run a new Madeline is brought into existence. To avoid breaking the time-space continuum, Owen must kill every new version of Madeline. Their marriage, already on unstable ground, takes a hit after Owen kills dozens of Madelines. With each new day, and each new Madeline, Owen begins to notice slight variations. Some come into existence with self-inflicted wounds. Some have slightly different personalities. It all comes to a head when a new Madeline murders a version of Madeline with whom Owen had grown especially fond.

This new Madeline is different from the others. She is the antithesis of the Madeline that Owen had grown to love – aggressive, homicidal and conniving. Owen tries to make it work with this new Madeline, but tensions continue to rise. It isn’t until new Madeline engages investor Rory Devonshire (Richard Riehle) in hopes to exploit him for more money that things truly come to a head. It soon becomes clear that the rigors of time travel have changed the constitution of Madeline. This is bad news for Owen.

Brea Grant impressed critics and audiences alike as a director in the horror-comedy 12 Hour Shift and proves herself to be a formidable writer, actor and director the longer her filmography becomes. For a film with a seemingly ultra-low budget and a cast of three, Madelines is every bit entertaining as it is engaging. The film doesn’t get tangled up in the web of time travel minutiae and instead uses its run time to explore the potential implications of time travel and the multiverse gone wrong. The result is a surprisingly grounded story that exposes the way that changing for others can change us in even more unforeseen ways. Parry Shen and Richard Riehle round out this small but mighty cast and fill their roles perfectly. The two men are compelling on-screen figures that perfectly contrast with, and complement, the many versions of Madeline they meet. 

Madelines is a wonderfully self-contained film that deftly navigates the waters of the world and universes beyond it. You’ll laugh, you’ll cheer and lose yourself in eighty minutes of good old-fashioned fun – and science gone wrong. If you have the opportunity to watch Madelines, don’t let its budget to independent vibe throw you off. The acting and storyline are enough to pull your attention away from any potential budgetary constraints.