“Whenever a clock stops, they’re coming.”

Justin’s rating: The Butterfly Groundhog is not a script that Hollywood’s picking up

Justin’s review: If anything’s going to flag your attention with this movie, it’s the letter “s” at the end of “deaths” in the title. It made me pause long enough to go, wait a minute, is this a time loop movie like Happy Death Day? And then when I looked at The Deaths of Ian Stone, I realized that this might well be a cool little cross-genre flick that’s gotten very little press over the years.

Ian (Mike Vogel, Cloverfield) is an American hockey player in England who’s got a nice girlfriend named Jenny (Christina Cole, Jupiter Ascending). Y’know, the whole package. Yet there must’ve been a hidden clause on his life contract, because Ian’s also being hunted by strange figures who kill him again and again — always presaged by clocks that stop working.

Indeed, every time Ian dies, he’s not dead for long. He awakens in a new life (same body, though) with some sort of semi-amnesia. He’s still being hunted, though, but there’s a glimmer of a chance to come out on top. For one thing, Jenny keeps showing up in his orbit, although not necessarily as his girlfriend, and it becomes clear that she’s important somehow. For another, he encounters an old man who exists to dribble out explanations and exposition at the same pace as the writers making it up.

Because there’s a slight mystery at the core of this movie, I’m going to dance around what’s happening. This really isn’t so much about gore and kills as it is a sort of whodunnit or amnesia detective flick. I can say that there are certain rules in place, a cycle that needs to be broken, and an enormous leap in believability that’s required of the audience.

Yes, The Deaths of Ian Stone is playing a few typical horror trope cards. It really wouldn’t mind if it managed to make you jump or creep you out, but that probably won’t happen. It’s simply not a scary movie, just a thriller flick with a horror overlay. I didn’t mind that personally, but expectations might be jarred because this film doesn’t really lay its cards on the table right away.

It’s an odd flick with a whole lot of ideas, maybe too many of them, producing an interesting if not always logical product. I could toss out a half-dozen other movies that this is sort-of-but-not-really like, such as The Butterfly Effect, The Assignment Bureau, or Dark City, but this is its own mixture that’s got to be taken on its own.

Is it good? Let me ask you this. Have you ever cracked into a book, started a TV series, or began a film and been impressed with its promise and potential… then become increasingly disillusioned when it becomes clear that the creator had no idea how to connect these ideas and bring the product to a satisfying conclusion? I call it the “JJ Abrams Effect,” and it’s all too common.

The Deaths of Ian Stone suffers mightily from this, going further off the rails as it continues. Just about nothing really makes sense with the bad guys once you learn about them, but hey they’re wearing leather-and-sunglasses Matrix getups, so they’re cool, right? His multiple lives don’t make sense. The “rules” don’t fit. Jenny is held up as this vital puzzle piece, but it’s never clear why. The mystery leads you to anticipate a great conspiracy when the actuality is more like, “Huh, that’s it? OK. That’s fine, I guess.”