The King of Netflix

Last December, Pedro Pascal established himself as the king of streaming after topping the most-watched lists across three separate platforms by appearing in Netflix’s We Can Be Heroes, HBO Max’s Wonder Woman 1984 and Disney Plus’ The Mandalorian. And while he might not be dominating the rankings of multiple services simultaneously, Anthony Mackie is nonetheless gunning for the crown. Not content with his starring role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s Synchronic has nabbed the top spot on the Netflix most-watched list today despite only being added to the library yesterday, making it the second sci-fi movie this year where Mackie takes top billing that’s managed to reach the summit of the viewership chart, following hot on the heels of January’s Outside the Wire.

Synchronic sees the actor co-star with Jamie Dornan as longtime best friends and paramedics, who show up to a series of grisly and unexplainable crime scenes. The latter’s daughter soon goes missing, and it turns out everything is connected somehow via time travel. It’s another uniquely fascinating journey into the world of existential genre filmmaking from Benson and Moorhead, and Synchronic is finally finding an audience having initially premiered in September 2019 before being released onto VOD last October to little fanfare.

When Did Synchronic Release On Netflix?

But in the meantime, Mackie’s been honing his craft in some under-the-radar science fiction films — and one of his best just showed up on Netflix. Synchronic released in theaters in October 2020 — so not a lot of people saw it. That’s a shame because this time-travel thriller with noir influences has something interesting to say, both about the genres it dips into and the history of America.

From indie moviemaking duo Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, Synchronic stars Anthony Mackie as Steve, a late shift paramedic in present-day New Orleans who encounters an increasingly bizarre series of drug overdoses sometimes involving old swords (yes, this is a time travel movie about swords). The drug is spreading across New Orleans, and Steve decides to buy up all of this over-the-counter fake DMT to keep it out of the hands of local kids. However, he soon discovers that synchronic isn’t just a knockoff drug, it’s a time-travel pill.

XYZ Films Beyond the fun of time travel, Synchronic has something important to say about America and Hollywood. Pretty much every time Mackie travels back in time he encounters a violent racism we rarely see in science fiction. At the same time, the science in Synchronic sci-fi is laughable.

XYZ Films If you enjoy Synchronic, we have good news. You don’t have to watch any of those films to enjoy or even understand Synchronic, just know there’s plenty more where this came from — and don’t expect Anthony Mackie to show up in any of Benson and Moorhead’s other movies.