by Eden
“I don’t know. I think maybe we’re supposed to become, like, better people,” Margaret tells Mark when he’s saying they should spend their time loop days trying to discover all the “tiny perfect things” in the title. Then she adds, as an aside, “Though I don’t know how that could even be possible.”
If you’ve seen a time loop movie before, you know Sam will end up being a better person at the end. If you’ve seen a YA movie before, you know Sam will end up rejecting her jerky boyfriend for her sweet, sensitive childhood friend, Kent. Not much here is a surprise, but the larger issues and Deutch’s appealing performance allow this to rise above the generic beats of the material.
Haunter too often feels like a collection of ideas — a time loop movie, a reverse haunted house movie, a meditation on generational curses and lingering evil — Brian King’s script never quite brings it all together. There are some neat touches and Breslin’s Lisa, in her Siouxsie and the Banshees T-shirt, is a heroine to root for, but it never feels like it can fully stick to one concept and see it through.
Unlike the previous few movies, Happy Death Day is definitely “Like Groundhog Day but only with murder!” Tree’s arc from vapid, bitchy sorority girl to someone who is willing to be open and generous is obvious from the get-go but it’s effective. She even becomes someone who will give the cute boy with cool movie posters in his room a chance.
Is it still a time loop movie if there’s not actually a time loop? Or at least not the ones we typically think of when we think of time loop movies? What if the clearest time loop relates to another movie? And is that movie a time loop movie if you never actually see the loop in it?