by Eden
For the last movie for In the Loop, I decided to go with the earliest one I could find — Repeat Performance from 1947. It’s also a slight cheat since there’s really only one time loop, but it still counts. (I’m not claiming this is the first time loop movie — just the earliest one I could find.)
For the majority of The Fare, there are two characters — Harris (Gino Anthony Pesi), a cab driver; and Penny (Brinna Kelly, who wrote the movie), his mysterious passenger. The set is the inside of Harris’ cab. That’s it. That’s essentially the movie.
Most time loop movies follow the Groundhog Day formula — a “bad” person becomes “good” through trial and error, repeating things until they manage to get it right. But would that always be the case? In Timecrimes, if there’s a wrong choice to be made, Héctor is going to make it. And he’s going to keep making it over and over.
Christmas time loop movies are a thing. I have a list of at least 10 holiday-themed movies or TV episodes that feature a time loop. And it kind of makes sense — Christmas is all about traditions that repeat year after year. And in a practical sense, a time-loop movie allows for a limited setting and a limited number of characters as well as wardrobe changes. Christmas movies do need to be cheap.
Let’s be clear: Very little of Source Code holds up to any scrutiny and I tend to be charitable with how I rate time loop movies. The way the Source Code project works is fairly nonsensical and the major plot reveals are so clear early on that they almost feel like a disappointment when they come true. But none of that is to say Source Code is a bad movie.