Flashback review – confusing but compelling multiverse thriller

An IT drone's daily grind meshes with his druggie high-school past in a Canadian brain-teaser that is somewhere between schlock and genius

If Slaughterhouse-Five and Donnie Darko had a baby, and that baby grew up in the 2000s, became a teenager and then developed a bit of a substance abuse problem, went partying with Denis Villeneuve's Enemy and that Ashton Kutcher movie The Butterfly Effect, developed memory loss and depression, then it might look something like this interesting but rather muddled Canadian science fiction film.

Dylan O'Brien, an actor in his late 20s who is fortuitously baby-faced enough to be cast as a high-school senior, stars as Fred, a guy who seems to have come a bit unstuck in time. At first, things seem normal as he goes about his life as an IT office drone, working under tough boss Evelyn (Amanda Brugel, looking more glam here than she usually does in The Handmaid's Tale) and living with his nice but somewhat dull partner Karen (Hannah Gross). But the increasing dementia of his mother (Liisa Repo-Martell) and memories triggered by old photographs gets Fred thinking about his wild teenage years.