As a writer or director of finley crafted, first-rate animated entertainments, Andrew Stanton (Finding Dory, WALL-E, Finding Nemo) has few, if any, equals. Stanton’s only foray into live-action filmmaking, however, John Carter, an adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' titular character and his Martian-based adventures, met with critical disinterest and commercial disappointment more than a decade ago.
Since then, Stanton returned to Pixar as part of its senior creative team, helping to mold and guide younger filmmakers to animated success. Aside from the long-mooted Toy Story 5, Stanton has remained in a behind-the-scenes role at Pixar, but time and an obvious interest in returning to live-action filmmaking led him to direct In the Blink of an Eye, an underwhelming science-fiction drama based on an original screenplay credited to Colby Day (Spaceman).
Closely reminiscent of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Interstellar, and Clan of the Cave Bear (among others, including most closely, structurally and thematically, Cloud Atlas), In the Blink of an Eye interweaves three vaguely related stories, one following a struggling Neanderthal family 45,000 years ago, another unfolding in the present and centered on an academic couple, and the third and last in the 25th century aboard a generational, sub-light spaceship headed towards humanity’s new home, Keppler 22-b in the constellation of Cygnus.
In the Neanderthal storyline, Thorn (Jorge Vargas), his wife, Hera (Tanaya Beatty), Lark (Skywalker Hughes), their daughter, and an infant daughter, struggle to eke out a subsistence existence near a vast, unknowable shoreline. A simple slip-and-fall on a mossy rock poses grave risks to Thorn’s life and, with it, his family’s survival.
Pregnancy and birth pose an even greater risk to Hera, while later, as their over-familiar story slowly winds down toward its inevitable conclusion, encroachment from a tribe of Homo sapiens. The same tribe of Homo sapiens threatens both the Neanderthal family’s food source and, as expected, their lives.
In the present day, for Claire Robertson (Rashida Jones), an anthropologist working on her dissertation, her focus shifts from the bones and possessions of a Neanderthal under her university’s care to her mother dying from a terminal illness and a budding romance with Greg Greene (Daveed Diggs), a statistics professor at the same university. Claire faces the usual challenges of a modern career woman, balancing her professional and personal lives, life events (a parent’s passing, a pregnancy of her own, scientific discoveries), and the natural limits of a lifespan presumably well spent.
The third and final storyline unfolds aboard a generational spaceship carrying humanity’s last, best hopes, frozen embryos, to an extra-planetary system. The ship’s pilot and captain, Coakley (Kate McKinnon), works closely with Rosco (voiced by Rhona Rees), a benevolent, non-rogue AI, to keep the ship on course and its life-sustaining systems at optimal levels. Challenges arise, obstacles appear, and throughout, Coakley calmly uses her intellect, wits, and an indomitable spirit that Stanton and Colby want to celebrate to find the solutions necessary to complete the mission.
Colby’s undernourished script relies on multiple forced symmetries that link the three interwoven storylines (births, deaths, and other related challenges) along with a subtext-free acorn passed between Neanderthal generations. Later, it’s found in the hand of Claire’s specimen, becoming a totem kept and passed to her children. Even later still, the same acorn finds itself aboard the generational seed ship sailing between the stars toward their final destination, Keppler 22-b.
Stanton’s surprisingly unstylish direction fails to elevate Colby’s otherwise sketchy screenplay. In theory, interweaving the three stories should expose thematic and subtextual linkages, but instead, the constant shifting between the three stories and their respective time periods adds little and subtracts much.
Individually, the stories can’t — and don’t — hold up on their own. Collectively, they don’t either. Hopping haphazardly between the three stories adds a frustratingly arbitrary element meant more to keep otherwise inattentive audiences engaged than any real narrative or thematic purpose.
In the Blink of an Eye premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. It is now streaming on Hulu in the U.S., and Disney Plus in Canada and elsewhere.
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