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It couldn't start out more commonly: At an otherwise rather boring
community center barbecue, Alex (Tim van den Berg) runs across Emily (Pip
Rose), and he feels encouraged to start a rather innocent conversation
with her, and the two of them seem to get along well enough, until she's
called away by a person unknown - and that should have been it, really,
but later that day, Alex finds Emily stabbed, and she cuts short all his
efforts to help her, so he eventually decides to track down her assailant,
a guy with a grey hoodie, instead - but seems to arrive a little too late
everytime he almost catches him. He eventually runs into Emily again, but
Emily is changed, thinks he wants to attack her and ultimately attacks him
- and in the fight that ensues, he stabs her. Running off, he finds a grey
hoodie and decides to disguise himself - to realize he's in a time loop,
and he's now the guy in the grey hoodie whom he has been chasing. He tries
to make things right again, but fails mostly - and it might just be that
Emily's caught in the same time loop ... Now I have to admit,
this is not a movie that's terribly easy to follow, as it's labyrinthine
in structure, returns to the same plot points again and again to shed a
different light on them, and their repetition only gradually reveals more
and more of the truth, a "truth" that we actually never get in
full, as the film leaves many things open to interpretation, and quite
intentionally so. But what really makes the movie is how well it's
structured, and that despite all of its going through the same plot points
again and again, it never drops in tension, thanks to a level-headed and
genre savvy approach to things. And of course a couple of relatable leads
giving grounded performances only help to make this one cool yet a bit
other-worldly movie experience.
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