If you know me, you know I absolutely loved Happy Death Day, a slasher film that came out this past October. You also probably know how much the film was inspired by the 1984 comedy classic Groundhog Day, and that I simply love that premise when it’s used in other films and entertainment. Happy Death Day is out on Blu-ray and DVD today, so I couldn’t help but to revisit the film and others like it.
Shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Star Trek: The Next Generation used the premise to incredibly great effect, bringing us two of the finest episodes during the ’90s. In fact, the time loop episode of TNG – “Cause and Effect” – aired a year before Groundhog Day hit theatres. Maybe I’ll end up stuck in my own time loop until I figure out the origin of this premise.
Anyway, before my day runs out, here are the five films that best utilize this classic trope:
1) Source Code – 2011
Army pilot Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) awakens to find himself part of a top secret project being experimented now – the day a commuter train into Chicago exploded inexplicably, killing everyone aboard. We follow him as he is forced to relive the increasingly brief window of the past in order to discover the culprit and where they planted the bomb on the train. Stevens finds himself in someone else’s body with partial amnesia. His only contact from home is Colleen (Vera Farmiga), a voice in his head he can only see when he returns from each “leap to the past”. Setting right things which once went wrong, Stevens leaps back to the beginning of the day, hoping each time that he will figure out their problem, as well as his own. Why is he stuck in this experiment? Can he save the people aboard this train, including Sean Fentress, the man he’s leapt into? While this may sound familiar just because of the Groundhog Day situation, it also sounds eerily reminiscent of another favorite show of mine, Quantum Leap. Director Duncan Jones even finds the chance to sneak a Scott Bakula cameo in there, so keep an ear out for him. Including incredible supporting work from Jeffrey Wright as the scientist bent on manipulating the Source Code machine he’s developed, as well as Michelle Monaghan as Sean’s love interest (who Stevens of course romances), this is one of the sharpest sci-fi films of the last decade, let alone one of my favorites of all time. You’re in for a treat of the senses if you rent this next.
Interjections 