Submitted by Indonesia: Sore, Wife from the Future

Jonathan Riady is single, but he is romancing a married woman. Yet, she is not being unfaithful, thanks to the paradox of time-travel. The titular Sore wants to reform all her future husband’s bad habits that contributed to his early demise. However, she eventually realizes the drinking and smoking were only symptoms of a deeper issue. Ironically, considering she is a time-looping time-traveler, Sore might be running out of time to help the once-and-future love-of-her-life heal himself in director-screenwriter Yandy Laurens’ Sore: Wife from the Future, Indonesia’s official best international feature submission.

When Sore arrives, Riady is an Indonesian expat in Croatia, engaged to the very wrong Elsa. He has not yet met Sore, so he is understandably surprised to wake up next to her. Blowing up his relationship with Elsa is always the first and easiest thing he does. Then she picks the right pictures out of his archive for a proposal that jumps starts his career as a fine art photographer. However, getting him to stop drinking and smoking are always trickier.

Unfortunately, each loop inevitably reaches a point when Sore realizes she has failed once again to “save” Riady. At that stage, her nose starts to bleed, she passes out, and wakes up back at the start of the loop again. At least that is how it always seems to work. The future Ms. Riady doesn’t really know the rules and principles of time travel any better than we do. This is definitely more of a magical realism time travel, in the tradition of Somewhere in Time, which is also a good tonal comparison. However, Laurens’ cleverly makes a connection to the North Pole, which has no time zone.

Wife from the Future was a big hit domestically, maybe because local audiences were familiar with Laurens’ web series that his film was adapted from. While Dion Wiyoko reprised his original role of Riady, Sheila Dara Aisha replaced another thesp as his time-traveling wife. That is bad luck for the previous Sore, but there is no denying Aisha has a heck of a screen presence throughout the film. It is a quiet performance, but she definitely conveys both passion and angst.

Manor of Darkness

Time loops are always scary, but the ones in horror movies are always the worst. That is because the people looping usually need to be brutally murdered to restart the cycle. This one is one of those. Unfortunately, lucky Laura is the only one who remembers she and her companions are looping in director-screenwriter Blake Ridder’s Manor of Darkness, which releases today on digital VOD.

Laura is the responsible sibling caring for her ailing mother, while her negligent brother Chris has been shirking his duties. The last time she helped Chris pull off a job, it cratered into disaster, but she needs the money, so here she is. He also recruits his girlfriend Lisa, who everyone else can tell is pregnant and Andy, whose pickpocketing and hustling skills caught his eye in the bar.

According to vague rumors, there is some great treasure hidden in Lucas’s manor house. Supposedly, Chris conned him into thinking they are a documentary crew, so they can search for the loot, but instead it was Lucas who lured them to the manor house. He claimed he intended to warn them of the loop, but Laura had already opened the evil pandora’s box, letting loose whatever the evil entity might be. As a result, only she remembers each time Lucas stabs them to death for a restart. He also tries to give them helpful advice for dealing with the loop—so yes, you could describe their relationship as complicated and stormy.

Despite Ridder’s obvious budget constraints, he managed to serve up a relatively fresh take on the horror movie time loop that does not feel like a transparent rip-off of either Happy Death Day or Until Dawn. The rewinding gamesmanship works pretty well, especially since the 82-minute film does not have time for many go-rounds.

Careless Crime, on OVID.tv

The 1978 Cinema Rex fire in Abadan, Iran was sort of like the frequently misreported Gaza hospital bombings. In reality, it was committed by Islamist militants, but the Ayatollah and his fellow revolutionaries successfully blamed the Shah’s SAVAK. Even though the Shah was not responsible, it turned public opinion against him. Forty-some years later, history might repeat itself in Shahram Mokri’s Careless Crime, which premieres today on OVID.tv.

Time loops in very strange ways throughout Careless Crime. Visibly disturbed Takbali needs embargoed anti-depressants to medicate his anxiety stemming from his role in a notorious theater arson case that killed 400-some people. To meet a black-market contact, he visits the cinema museum, where he encounters an exhibit dedicated to the Cinema Rex tragedy. However, his pharmaceutical dealer connects him with three malcontents, whom the penniless Takbali must aid in their plans to burn down a local cinema, in lieu of payment.

Meanwhile, the theater staff takes every measure possible to create fire hazard conditions. Extra rows are added to the theater and the beverage overstock barricades the fire doors. It just gets worse and worse, despite the many repeated references to the Cinema Rex, from both patrons and employees.

However, the film-within-the-film, Careless Crime, is a bit of a puzzle. Supposedly, it depicts a senior Iranian military officer, who accidentally runs over his own daughter—hence the title—but from what the real-life audiences sees, it is an absurdist story about unexploded ordinance. Perhaps it was originally set during the Iran-Iraq War, but time has a way of jumping and slipping, throughout both Careless Crimes.

Admittedly, there are sequences that suggest Mokri and co-screenwriter Nasim Ahmadpour are trying to deliberately confuse the audience. However, each instance when time loops back around in the presumed-modern day theater, Mokri produces foreboding chills, palpably suggesting the terror on the verge of exploding. It is not exactly a traditional time-loop movie, but the tight construction of each coil will hold viewers attention like a vice. The choreography of entrances and exits is also just as meticulous as the most inventive sf loops, if not more so.

Japan Cuts ’23: Mondays

If you were stuck in a time loop while at work, but you never noticed, your job probably kind of sucks. That is pretty much where Shukai Yoshikawa and her office mates are. To break the loop, they will have to work together, but that is always harder than it sounds in office-place comedies, very definitely including Ryo Takebayashi’s Mondays [See You ‘This’ Week], which screens tomorrow as part of this year’s Japan Cuts Festival of New Japanese Film.

Yoshikawa was hoping to jump ship to the bigger, more prestigious advertising company that often subcontracts Nagashige’s rag-tag firm, but that will never happen while she is stuck in a loop. Two of her junior coordinators managed to awaken her consciousness to the time loop and they have developed some theories as to what their next course of action should be—because they have had time think on the problem and watch a few movies.

They need her to awaken her direct superior, so he can awaken his, and so on, working their way up to Nagashige. If they go straight to the boss, he will not take them seriously. This might be an outlandish situation, but this chain-of-command mentality definitely strikes a chord, doesn’t it? They also have a theory as to how the manga-loving Nagashige can break the curse that has befallen all of them, but he will take some serious convincing.

Apparently, the Japan film industry has a massive competitive advantage when it comes to producing original time loop movies. Just like Junta Yamaguchi’s The Infinite Two Minutes, Mondays takes a somewhat familiar premise and turns it inside out. In this case, Takebayashi and co-screenwriter Saeri Natsuo also add sly workplace humor just as funny or funnier than any episode of The Office (either of them).

Koko-di, Koko-da, on Shudder

This could be the worst Groundhog’s Day camping trip ever. Yet, as bad as it is for Tobias and Elin to be repeatedly brutalized and murdered by a sadistic band of sideshow performers, the grieving couple’s not-so-passive, more-often-aggressive mutual resentment and hostility is probably harder to watch. Time loops reach their maximum level of uncomfortableness in Johannes Nyholm’s Koko-di, Koko-da, which premieres tomorrow on Shudder.

Elin and Tobias were once happily married—until the unexpected, freak death of their daughter Maja. Three years later, they are still together, but definitely not happily so. This ill-considered camping trip was supposed to be a chance to heal their marriage, but the constant arguing and recriminations suggest it is too late. Suddenly, a creepy ringmaster-like character in a white suit (the credits call him “Mog”), a strong man, a psycho woman, and their rabid dog beat, bite, and kill Elin when she steps out of the tent for a nature call, before moving on to Tobias. Then Tobias wakes up from the nightmare, minutes before the attack, knowing full well it is about to happen again—and again.

Koko-di, Koko-da (which takes its title from the unsettling earworm refrain Mog sings) is a dark, uncompromising film, but beneath the surface cruelty, there is a deep, humanistic empathy for everyone who has endured heartbreaking trauma. Any parent would much rather endure the brutality of the sideshow gang, rather than lose a child.

That still doesn’t necessarily make some of its scenes any easier to watch. Nevertheless, Nyholm has an extraordinarily keen eye for visuals, especially the two expressionistic interludes featuring paper cut-out puppetry. Clearly, this is nothing like your typical killers-in-the-woods horror movie. In fact, it is debatable whether Koko-di, Koko-da, really is a horror movie, even though it is often quite horrific.

Boss Level: Frank Grillo Tears It Up

Pretty soon there will be a movie about an actor who gets stuck in a time-loop while making a film about someone stuck in a time-loop, so we can’t be sure whether it is the time-loop or the script repeating itself. That day is not today, but believe it or not, the time-loop gimmick can still feel fresh, if it involves enough action and attitude. That is exactly what happens in Joe Carnahan’s Boss Level, which premieres today on Hulu.

Roy Pulver is a bit confused by the motley crew of assassins that keep killing him, but even more so when he continues waking-up at 7:00 AM, to repeat the experience over and over again. He is former Special Forces, so he pretty formidable himself, but the constant grind of it all is starting to wear him down. Eventually, he realizes his genius scientist ex-wife Jemma Wells (whom he still loves, despite his frat boy behavior) may have put him into the mad science Macguffin  to right some kind of wrong.

Sadly, he cannot ask her about it, since she was just murdered while working late in the lab. However, he can still protect his son Joe, who only knows him as a family friend, at least until the world ends each evening, sending him right back to 7:00 AM again.

Boss Level wears its vintage video game inspiration on its sleeve, but it is much more than a nostalgic tribute to Streetfighter and the like. There is a whole lot of humor, heartfelt family values, and old school action baked in. As Pulver, Frank Grillo looks and acts like grittiness personified and he has really satisfying chemistry with Naomi Watts and Rio Grillo (maybe that one shouldn’t be too surprising) as Wells and young Joe, respectively.

The Fare: Love and Time Loops

This must be a Twilight Zone kind of story, because the characters call for taxis rather than Ubers. This particular yellow cab will not get very far. The cabbie’s customer keeps disappearing after he takes her down a lonesome stretch for twenty minutes or so. Then everything resets. Time sure seems to be looping in D.C. Hamilton’s The Fare, which releases today on VOD.

Harris (don’t call him “Harry”) and Penny (like the coin) keep having the same chit-chat over and over—until he starts to remember. It turns out she always did. Finally, their conversation can advance into deeper territory. Unfortunately, they are unable to find a way to break the cycle, but they are clearly developing serious feelings for each other. Regardless, she still disappears and as soon as Harris resets his meter, they are back to where they started.

Obviously, we can’t say too much about a film like this, because it would be spoilery. However, we can almost guarantee you won’t see the twist coming, even though hints are deviously dropped in the early going. Hamilton and screenwriter-co-lead Brinna Kelly engage in some truly masterful misdirection. On the surface, this is a shrewdly simple-to-stage two-person science fiction film that requires virtually no special effects, but the real story is much more complex.

The Fare also happens to be the best genre romance since maybe Benson & Moorhead’s Spring. Kelly and Gino Anthony Pesi are absolutely terrific together. Their chemistry is truly the key. We really care about them as a couple, which is an even greater trick to pull off in this case, because the film must be so cagey about their back-stories. Yet, their mutual affection deepens organically and never feels forced.

Fantasia ’19: The Incredible Shrinking WKND

In most time-loop movies, the looper gets to start fresh with each reset, but Alba will carry her cuts and stains with her. Fortunately, she is in okay health, despite drinking like a fish, unlike the easily winded Bill Murray. However, her relationship with Pablo is in a sad state. Alba must heal their bond to get back to forward-moving regular life, but she is running out of time and chances in screenwriter-director Jon Mikel Caballero’s The Incredible Shrinking WKND, which had its North American premiere at the 2019 Fantasia International Film Festival.

Lately, Alba has exhibited behavior typically observed in aging frat boys with Peter Pan syndrome. For Pablo, it just isn’t cute anymore. Yet, it is really her insensitivity to his needs that finally prompts him to break-up with her. This catches her completely off guard, largely spoiling the weekend trip to her childhood vacation cabin she had planned with their friends. Suddenly in a ruminative mood, she wanders past the mysterious old abandoned weapons factory that is presumably the cause of the time-loop she finds herself in.

Of course, Alba is utterly baffled by the situation. She then responds by preemptively dumping Pablo. However, as she resolves to prevent the breakup and heal their relationship (presuming that will break her out of the repeating cycle), Alba figures out each loop lasts exactly one hour less than the one before. Tick-tock.

The glut of time-loop movies could give a science fiction fan Groundhog’s Day Deja vu, but Caballero makes it fresh again, starting with the gender reversal of his hard-partying, irresponsible protagonist. He dexterously reveals more and more revelations regarding Alba’s relationships with Pablo and their friends in each loop, springing new complications that make each successive go-round even trickier for her to navigate. It really is quite a clever script and he stage-manages all of Alba’s rushing about quite effectively.

Iria del Rio is compulsively watchable as Alba, going all in, in a hot mess kind of way. Viewers will get annoyed with her, but remain sympathetic to her predicament. In fact, she shows tremendous range, showing a flair for almost farcical comedy, but also dialing it down for a few surprisingly poignant moments. Frankly, Adam Quintero is mostly underwhelming as Pablo, but Jimmy Castro and Adrian Exposito definitely stir up the pot as two of their noisy, discontented friends.

“Clever” really is the right word to describe WKND, because in addition to all the new twists and tweaks Caballero gives the time loop movie, it also engages in some wickedly droll visual gamesmanship that will sneak up on you if you are not alerted to it beforehand. Probably the best loop movie since the Korean film, A Day (granted, that was just from 2017, but there have been a lot of them since then), The Incredible Shrinking WKND is highly recommended for time-themed science fiction fans, after its North American debut at this year’s Fantasia.

Inoperable: Time Loop Horror

It is yet another storm of the century, but this one might be the real deal. Amy Barrett would know. She keeps reliving the approach of a class five hurricane from a macabre slasher hospital. Time loops get distinctly sinister in Christopher Lawrence Chapman’s Inoperable (trailer here), which opens this Friday in select cities.

One minute, Barrett is stuck in traffic. Then she suddenly wakes up in a hospital bed. At first, it is a disorienting experience, but she will get used to it as it repeats over and over. Initially, the skeleton staff of the mostly evacuated hospital does not seem to notice her, but they will during her next “cycle,” in a violently menacing kind of way. However, unlike other time loops movies, she is not in this by herself. Ryan, a sheriff’s deputy, and Jen, an accident victim, are also fully cognizant of the horrors unfolding around them.

Each time she reconnects with them, they will try to figure out how to escape the madness. Based on the couple’s past experience, Barrett might have a slim advantage over them. Since she entered the loop alone, she can most likely leave alone, but because they came in together, they must also exit together.

Just when we thought the time loop movie had been driven into the ground and left for dead, Chapman figures out a way to breathe new life into the sub-sub-genre—and he manages to do it on a budget that looks like twelve cents. Frankly, it sort of works to his benefit. This has to be the grimmest, grayest, most Spartan hospital you have ever seen, but if you woke up in a bed there, you would want to skedaddle as fast as your feet would carry you. There is a fair amount of gore, but Inoperable is as likely to appeal to fans of science fiction and Twilight Zone-style ironic mind-benders. In any event, Chapman definitely redeems himself for producing and co-starring in the lame ClownTown.

Inoperable’s star Danielle Harris has a genre following, but it is Katie Keene and Jeff Denton, who really elevate it to the next level, as Jen and Ryan. Granted, there is not much time for character development here, especially as Barrett’s cycles accelerate, but they give us the feeling they are more fleshed out than they really are. Frankly, we really want to see them get back together and out of there—and whenever a film inspires a strong response like that, it must be onto something. Harris does not quite connect like they do, but you have to give her credit for keeping the energy level up as she constantly runs down corridors and keels over in cycling convulsions.

Alas, films like this often end in a frustrating, unsatisfying manner, which is particularly true of Inoperable. Nevertheless, it is the ride that matters, not the awkward dismount. Genre fans should be impressed by the extent to which it exceeds expectations. Recommended with surprising enthusiasm, Inoperable opens in limited release this Friday (12/1).

Fantasia ’17: A Day

Dr. Kim Joon-young is caught in the worst Groundhog’s Day ever. Like clockwork, he keeps waking up on his Seoul-bound flight, knowing he will scramble in vain to save his daughter from a fatal car accident. It is a horrible thing to experience over and over again, but he eventually learns he is not the only one repeating these painful hours in Cho Sun-ho’s A Day (trailer here), which screens during the 2017 Fantasia International Film Festival.

Dr. Kim is a famous humanitarian doctor, but pretty clueless as a dad. He really wants to patch things up with his twelve-year-old-ish daughter Eun-jung, but by the time he reaches their rendezvous, he finds her dead in crosswalk. Soon thereafter, the cycle repeats. He tries to pick-up time, but he can never get there quick enough. Much to his shock, ambulance driver Lee Min-chul is in the same position. No matter how hard he tries, he cannot rescue his wife Mi-kyung, who perishes in the back seat of the yellow cab that plows into Eun-jung. They will team up to save their loved ones, but they are in for at least one more nasty surprise.

It is time to retire the repeating time-loop concept for a while, because no film will be funnier than the original or manage to top the intensity of A Day. Unlike other Groundhog homages, just about every go-round in Cho’s film turns into a tense race against the clock. It also gets a little weepy during the climax, but it is a Korean film, so we can’t be too dismayed by that.

Kim Myung-min is terrific as the driven Dr. Kim, quietly radiating anguish and Sisyphean determination. Young Jo Eun-hyung is quite charismatic as the daughter, whom Cho never even gives a chance to become annoying. Byun Yo-han is maybe a bit wooden as Lee the EMT, but you could argue he is supposed to be emotionally distant. Regardless, the scenes in which he and Kim start to put it all together really raise the hair on the back of your neck.

That’s maybe already saying too much, but Cho’s breakneck pacing will hold even the most skeptical and resistant viewers rapt until the final day closes. The Broadway version of Groundhog Day is a super-satisfying show, but the thought of someone trying to stage this film as a book musical is almost too deliriously crazy to contemplate. Very highly recommended, A Day screens tonight (7/22) at this year’s Fantasia.