Directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead want you to see their new movie starring Jamie Dornan and Anthony Mackie, but not in a theater.
While other filmmakers pushed to get movie theaters to re-open while the United States creeped towards and recently crossed 200,000 deaths from COVID-19, the Spring duo released a statement warning potential viewers to avoid Synchronic in indoor spaces. “At the time of writing this, we personally wouldn’t go to an indoor theater, so we can’t encourage you to,” Moorhead wrote on Instagram. “To us, this isn’t only about feeling safe in a theater, this is also about the scientific community indicating that enclosed spaces like movie theaters are still a hazard for spreading COVID-19 to others.” Luckily, there are other ways to see the science-fiction horror film: Synchronic will play in select drive-in theaters, followed by a video-on-demand release “in a few months.”
Here’s the official plot synopsis:
When New Orleans paramedics and longtime best friends Steve (Anthony Mackie) and Dennis (Jamie Dornan) are called to a series of bizarre, gruesome accidents, they chalk it up to the mysterious new party drug found at the scene. But after Dennis’s oldest daughter suddenly disappears, Steve stumbles upon a terrifying truth about the supposed psychedelic that will challenge everything he knows about reality — and the flow of time itself.
Synchronic comes to drive-ins on October 23.