some years ago after a night on the mysterious new drug mercury. i don t take it to be like them. as fred struggles to remember what happened that night, so his ordered adult life is overtaken by life is overtaken by the half remembered dreams of youth and high school of the lives he could have lived and it may indeed be living. fred. written and directed by christopher macbride, flashback lifts a central riff from the matrix, brushes shoulders with the recent time travel drug movie synchronic, which was shot around the same time, and owes passing debts to everything from rianjohnson s brick to richard kelly s cult classic. yet despite being derivative, it s also better than you d expect with macbride pulling off some impressive visual coups, while o brien does a convincing job of portraying a man caught in a quarter life crisis, drawn back constantly into the past. i m not even here right now!