In the Shadow of Iris 2017

In 1988, several people simultaneously hemorrhage to death in Philadelphia, their brains disintegrating and causing massive blood loss. Police officer Thomas Lockhart (Boyd Holbrook) and his partner, Maddox (Bokeem Woodbine), investigate the case with Lockhart’s brother-in-law, Detective Holt (Michael C. Hall). Lockhart concludes that the deaths are connected when he finds similar puncture wounds on each victim. Toxicology reports indicate an unstable isotope injected into the vertebrae.

Lockhart and Maddox find an assault victim with the same wounds; before dying (from the same hemorrhage as the previous deaths), she describes her assailant as a black woman with a wounded hand. Lockhart and Maddox find the suspect and chase her into a subway, where she subdues Maddox. When Lockhart confronts her, the suspect reveals details about his life, including that his wife will give birth that day. She predicts her own death just prior to a struggle, which ends with a train striking and killing her. Although confused about the many unexplained details (The girl had a bullet in her left hand, and it was fired from a police revolver. but during the chase, nobody fired a single shot at her), the police close the case. Meanwhile, Lockhart’s wife dies in childbirth.

Nine years later in 1997, an apparent copycat begins another killing spree. Lockhart, now a detective caring for his young daughter Amy (Quincy Kirkwood), can find no apparent motive or connection between the victims. Lockhart traces keys retrieved from the dead assailant in 1988 to an aircraft manufactured in 1996. Camera footage of the 1997 attacks reveals the same woman who was shot dead in 1988, but the detective think it is a copycat.

Naveen Rao (Rudi Dharmalingam), a physicist, insists this is proof of time travel, but Maddox and Lockhart ignore him. After tracking the copycat to an airfield, Lockhart is shocked to find the same suspect from 1988, who is alive and has not aged. She unintentionally kills Maddox and takes Lockhart hostage, again revealing knowledge about his life she could not know. After warning him off, she disappears.

In 2006, Lockhart is a private investigator obsessed with solving the case, which he now believes involves time travel and Dr. Rao, who has disappeared. The teenage Amy (Sarah Dugdale) lives with Holt, and Lockhart maintains only occasional contact with her. Lockhart discovers a previously unrecorded victim from the 1988 murders and visits the victim’s wife Arlene (Philippa Domville), who reveals her husband ran a white nationalist militia group. from Arlene, Lockhart receives a mailing list of people that the victim was mailing his propaganda material to. Lockhart finds that many addresses on the list matched the addresses of the victims in the last 2 batches of murders in 1988 and 1997.

Lockhart meets Holt and advances the theory that the suspect is moving back in time as they are moving forward, killing each terrorist group member, but Holt dismisses the theory and insists Lockhart get psychiatric help. Lockhart steals Holt’s badge uses it to impersonate a police officer, and tracks down the former girlfriend of the white nationalist leader, arriving at her home to find she has been murdered by the suspect. Lockhart chases the suspect and wounds her hand with a bullet before she disappears in a time machine (hidden inside a sewer network near a beach). Lockhart is arrested by Holt as an unseen Rao watches. Lockhart says that they need to wait 9 more yrs for the woman to resurface.

In 2015, while waiting for the woman on the beach, Lockhart listens to a voice message from Amy asking him to come to the birth of her child. Suddenly, he is kidnapped by Rao. Rao admits to developing the technology the woman uses to kill her victims, an injection whose effects can be remotely triggered through time. He says he now believes her cause is justified, and that she is actually killing those whose future actions are going to cause a horrific event. However, Lockhart, still convinced the woman needs to be stopped, manages to escape. He returns to the beach and confronts the woman. To his horror the woman produces his daughter’s charm bracelet, explaining that it belonged to her mother. She is Rya (Cleopatra Coleman), Amy’s daughter and his granddaughter who is due to be born that very day.

Rya explains that in 2042, Lockhart convinced a 27-year-old Rya to take the mission after the militia group’s terrorism triggered a new civil war in 2024. With the help of Rao and his future company, they were able to determine the group of people who caused the militia’s actions. Rya is traveling backwards in time, appearing every nine years in reverse chronological order. From her perspective, the events of 2006 have yet to occur, and her hand is not yet wounded.

Overcome with guilt over causing his own granddaughter’s death, Lockhart confesses that he killed her in 1988. He tries to get her to go back, but she sadly informs that there is no way to go back, and she knew when she volunteered that it was a one-way trip. Convinced that her cause is just, he lets her complete her mission. Rya briefly comforts a now sobbing Lockhart before departing leaving behind the charm bracelet.

In 2042, an elderly Rao triggers the injections, killing Rya’s targets and erasing her time-line from existence. A voiceover by Rya explains that when she was 9, a man parked a van with explosives on a busy city street and detonated it, killing 11,000 people. This caused a chain of events that resulted in a Civil War that killed millions of people and left the entire country broken. However, through Rao’s invention and Rya’s sacrifice the bomb is never detonated, and the war never breaks out. Back in 2015, Lockhart arrives at the hospital and reunites with his family. The film ends with Lockhart holding an infant Rya, who is wearing the charm bracelet, smiling and telling her that everything is going to be okay. The same words he said to Amy when she was born.