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In the first few minutes of In the Blink of an Eye, director Andrew Stanton’s long-gestating, epoch-spanning sci-fi epic, a Neanderthal man (Jorge Vargas) explores a perilously rocky beach 45,000 years ago. For some reason, he decides to climb one of the larger, steeper rocks – for food? For a view? But he loses his grip and falls backward, landing on the sharp stones below with a sickening, visceral squelch.
That moment is, I think, supposed to convey the fragility of early human existence – one second you’re foraging, the next you’re impaled and/or imperiled – though I couldn’t help but think of the film’s own cursed journey. Shot all the way back in 2023, In the Blink of an Eye is just now arriving on Hulu about three years later after many delays – not unheard of in the relatively glacial world of movie production, though never a good sign, especially considering that Stanton is the creative force behind such sentimental juggernauts as Wall-E and Finding Nemo (as well as several other Pixar movies, plus John Carter). The protracted timeline suggested that it was either going to be tricky and ambitious, a hard-fought journey of space and time, or, more likely, a complete mess.
Unfortunately, this awkwardly interwoven tale of long past, present and parodic future goes down about as well as that Neanderthal stroll on the beach. Written by Colby Day, In the Blink of an Eye attempts no less than the sweep of life from big bang to unknown verdant planets, with the emotional depth of a tide pool and the complexity of a cave painting. The only sparks here are the literal ones forged with flint by the Neanderthal family, whom we meet along with a Sylvia Plath quote: “Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now.”
With just a bit more self-seriousness, perhaps we could’ve made it to camp. It is unintentionally comedic, for one, that prosthetics and museum exhibit-styling of the prehistoric family – Thorn (Vargas), Hera (Tanaya Beatty) and Lark (Skywalker Hughes), their names provided via title card, as their language is unintelligible to us – recall that of the Geico caveman. Nearly laughable that, in the present timeline, anthropology professor Claire (Rashida Jones) justifies her academic research in Neanderthal remains to her mom, in a phone call rife with continuity errors, as “kinda a big deal”, because “like, I could publisher a paper”. Cut to Saturday Night Live veteran Kate McKinnon as a task-oriented “longevity” pilot sent to colonize a distant planet in a distant future with nothing but an AI companion (also voiced by Jones) and, well, you’ve almost got a comedy.
Which is not to say that In the Blink of an Eye is funny, per se, though I did laugh out loud when McKinnon, a master of the wacky once infamously abducted by horny aliens (at least, in a skit), ran her finger down a literal table of contents in a paper instruction manual titled “Settlement Preparations” with a straight face. In fact, for all its baffling transitions, bald statements (“the antivirals aren’t working!”) and bizarre ideas (such as hatching babies in spaceship drawers), In the Blink of an Eye remains tediously boring – too limp, uninspired and barren to conjure any of the requisite wonder for the persistence of life, the equivalent to watching paint dry on the cave wall.
If, by now, you are still unclear on the thrust of this 94-minute film, you are not alone. It’s difficult to describe a common narrative thread, because there isn’t really one besides the most basic motivators of love, companionship and survival, somehow stripped of any earthiness. Humans and Neanderthals get sick, they problem-solve, they do what they can in tough situations. They form relationships, as Claire does with statistics professor Greg (Daveed Diggs, bravely making vacancy sexy), with nothing in common other than a one-night stand (I have to imagine several scenes were cut). They endure, which in presentation resembles more History Channel simulation than sci-fi epic.
Ironically enough, it is the cavemen – the farthest removed in time, language and relevance to everyone else – that get the closest to suggesting the awe the film so strenuously seeks to evoke in its rush-speed, ludicrously techno-optimist ending. Halloween costume-esque fur dresses aside, there’s something tantalizingly compelling in this chapter’s brutal simplicity, its barest imagination of primitive survival. I have as little idea as anyone about how Neanderthals and humans coexisted, how it must have felt to hear a bone flute for the first time, what life was like with so little understanding of what was out there. I can imagine an overwhelming sense of wonder – but that’s for a different movie.
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In the Blink of an Eye is out on Hulu in the US and elsewhere on Disney+ on 27 February
