Deutch, with her dainty features and soft eyes, presents a very sympathetic lead, and demonstrates range.ĭP Michael Fimognari, well-versed in the ways of horror films after shooting the likes of Oculus and Ouija: Origin of Evil, deploys slightly cantered angles and eerie backlighting to create a sense of vague unease throughout without overdoing it. Sam and her friends may be bullies, but they’re not cardboard hate figures, and backstories are deployed to explain why Lindsay in particular feels such a need to hurt others to hide her own vulnerability. Indeed, the film offers a pretty right-on moral lesson but without feeling preachy. It’s especially refreshing to see that like several other recent films that target young women ( Frozen, for instance), the key to undoing the magic spell lies not in some “heteronormative” (to quote Liv Hewson’s feisty lesbian character) pair bonding between the heroine and the right boy, but in performing an act of sisterly empathy.
As with Groundhog Day, the adaptations of William Dean Howells‘ 1892 short story, “Christmas Every Day” and other variants on the subgenre, it’s only after the protagonist finally learns some moralistic lesson about love, sacrifice or the true nature of Christmas that they can escape the temporal treadmill that entraps them.Īlthough it’s quite likely that many of the film’s younger viewers will never have heard of Groundhog Day and the like, Oliver, Russo-Young and screenwriter Maria Maggenti playfully tease viewers who might be aware of the time-loop device’s antecedents.
It’s only once she realizes that her fate might be tied to that of another person in danger that night that some hope appears of ending the Sisyphean grind of eternal recurrence. Whether she’s rude to everyone or nice as pie to friends, family and the other kids to whom she’s hitherto been dismissive, it still happens. If she keeps all her buddies home from Kent’s party, she still ends up back in her own bed on the morning of the 12th. The cycle keeps repeating no matter what steps Sam takes to avoid the car accident.
But thanks to some strange magic that’s never explained, per time-loop-story tradition, Sam wakes up again back in her own bed and discovers it is once again Feb.
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