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Deja-view: The best time-loop movies and shows for one lifetime
So many films and TV shows have trod the path laid by Groundhog Day that now, 28 years on, the time-loop plot has become a genre of its own.
Even Bill Murray couldn’t have known what he’d set in motion. When he woke up on February 2, 1993, and realised that he was reliving the same day over and over, it first felt like an absurd coincidence. A joke, even. But eventually, no matter what he did or how long he stayed awake, the weatherman seemed trapped within February 2, Groundhog Day.
His eyes would open in that dinky room at the Cherry Tree Inn, facing the same breakfast, meeting (or avoiding) the same folk, stepping into the same icy puddle, unable to escape.
Murray ultimately wrests free. But in the 28 years since that little film’s release, his character has become something of an archetype. More than 20 movies and countless TV episodes have been dedicated to time-loops — situations in which someone on screen is deliberately or inadvertently stuck in the same day. They’re such a popular trope now, they’ve spawned subgenres of their own.
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Many just go with the classic “What’s happening to me?” mystery. I enjoyed Lauren Oliver’s 2010 young-adult novel Before I Fall, in which Samantha Kingston, a rich and popular high-schooler, is stuck reliving Valentine’s Day over and over. But the 2017 movie is less corny, better told. It’s an unusual look at female friendship and cruelty, with an ending that has lessons for grown-ups too.
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Netflix’s 2019 time-loop series Russian Doll stretches that puzzle out over eight lavish episodes. Natasha Lyonne plays a game developer who keeps reliving the last day of her life, her 36th birthday, until she figures out she must stop being a jerk to herself and those who love her.
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Time loops are so commonplace now that some stories don’t even bother taking us through the first disorienting (and probably horrifying) days. Amazon’s recent film The Map of Tiny Perfect Things starts with our young-adult hero, Mark, already having a blast with predictability — pranks, averted accidents, no consequences, no homework. The loop itself is merely the backdrop for a love story, all of spacetime bent out of shape so Mark can meet a cute girl stuck in a loop of her own.
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Perhaps that’s what it takes to find love these days? Palm Springs streamed right in the middle of lockdown last year. At a time when one day seemed indistinguishable from the last, it seemed perfectly believable that Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti were falling for each other as their friends’ sham destination wedding played out over and over.
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When Tom Cruise gets involved, you know the films ambitions are loftier. In 2014’s Edge of Tomorrow, Cruise teams up with a warrior woman (Emily Blunt) to save the planet from aliens. He keeps dying and retracing his steps, much like in a video game — all the better to show off his stunts over and over too.
In 2017’s The Endless, two brothers go back to their childhood camp to find that no one there has aged, and they may or may not be stuck in a UFO death cult.
You’ll need a laugh after that one. Try Happy Death Day, the 2017 slasher comedy in which a university student must not only relive the same day over and over, but also try to figure out who’s managing to murder her no matter how hard she tries to escape. There’s a moral here, and it somehow involves cupcakes.
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Among the foreign films that have taken a stab at the time-loop plotline is Naken, a 2000 Swedish comedy about a groom-to-be who wakes up to find himself naked inside an elevator with no idea of how he got there. It seems, at first, like an average nightmare, until he realises that the day will repeat itself until he learns some lessons about maturity and commitment. Luckily, he looks good naked. His counterpart in the 2017 American remake, Naked, now on Netflix, is similarly easy on the eye.
All these stories, even Groundhog Day, have a common ancestor: the 1983 Japanese film The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, based on a 1965 Japanese science-fiction novel of the same name. The tale of Kazuko Yoshiyama, a school student who relives the same day after gaining time-travel powers, has been remade into three films and a TV series. It’s so beloved, the 2006 anime version is getting a 4DX treatment for this summer.
It’s the one I’m hoping to watch soon. As for the others I haven’t, I need a time loop of my own to catch up with them all.
