A DIY science fiction oddity, Michael Felker’s Things Will Be Different is an uneasy handshake between metaphor and mechanics. It recalls the lo-fi genre stylings of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (the directors of Something In the Dirt, who also executive produced this film), but in his feature debut, Felker makes the movie his own — synthesizing highly specific influences while filtering them down to their fundamentals.

While it wraps up too quickly and a little too literally, Things Will Be Different marks the arrival of a unique new independent voice, who uses the spare parts of his mainstream influences to weave something new. Its atmospheric, reflective approach strips the time travel sub-genre to its bare essentials, resulting in a work where drama takes precedence, and even the most confounding worldbuilding works in the movie’s favor.

Budding horror filmmaker Damian McCarthy is quietly assembling a rich cinematic universe over on Shudder. McCarthy’s 2021 feature debut Caveat stunned audiences with its beguiling approach, cementing a love-it-or-hate-it style that many critics seemed to adore. His follow-up Oddity doesn’t break form, and smuggles in fan-favorite artifacts as not-so-hidden cameos that link back to McCarthy’s prior works.

Caveat fans will notice the decrepit toy bunny sitting in a creepy antique shop, while one-eyed Olin Boole (played by Tadhg Murphy) has his origin explained in McCarthy's black-and-white short How Olin Lost His Eye. It’s a nifty continuity that brings even more allure to the filmmaker’s macabre fantasy world, making Oddity worth more than its plunge into a melancholic story about slain wives, lost sisters, and a distressing mannequin assembled from wood.