Week Ending 6/12/26

The scene that ushers us into the world of Mia Moore Marchant's Again Again (co-directed with Heather Ballish) is one we're used to seeing in time loop films. Aggie (Moore) is explaining what it's been like to live the same day for almost ten years to her best friend and love Tessa (Aria Taylor) after already proving the veracity of this impossible phenomenon. They laugh. They cry. They brace for the inevitable when they wake up and only one remembers what happened.

It's a moment that's usually saved for the end of a time loop script by setting the stage for its imprisoned character to finally escape after having found peace with the scenario and learning whatever life lesson had kept them in stasis. As a result, we rarely get to experience what it means to reckon with the aftermath. The PTSD inherent to fearing being trapped again. The horror in realizing whatever happens next is permanent. Needing to remember you aren't the sun.

For all the big emotions that prove unavoidable in a dynamic wherein two people are suddenly forced to confront the fact that they might not want the same things anymore since "yesterday" was a decade ago for one of them, it's the small details that resonate most. Tessa's pained looks when having no clue about a thing Aggie excitedly talks about like it's common knowledge. Aggie's panic when imagining innocuous situations ending in inevitably violent tragedy.

We're watching two women in love suddenly coping with a fractured idea of what's next. The plan was for Abbie and Tessa to run away in their RV and be happy removed from their hometown and its religious bigotry. Tessa's mother didn't like Abbie before she transitioned and likes her even less now, but it still took a lot for Tessa to fight back. So, what does she do now that Abbie says she wants to return because she's been away too long?

It's therefore a lot to process for them both. Yes, this is ultimately Abbie's story wherein we only really ever interact with Tessa in tandem with her, but she's been affected too considering the person she left with is no longer the person with her now. Tessa wants to understand and be there for Abbie, but she's no longer any different than anyone else. Abbie has learned just as much about everyone in this town as she knew about Tessa. They just don't recall meeting her at all.

Marchant conceived the film as a way to exorcise the demons of escaping life in quarantine during the initial wave of COVID. The strangeness of re-entering a world that looks the same yet has been very deeply changed. Priorities shifted, loved ones passed away, and a lot of problems faced by those living on the poverty line were exacerbated even further. And the threat of it happening again or becoming one of the dead continues to loom today.

So, we don't get the happy and smiling people at the end of Groundhog Day once Abbie breaks free. We get Tessa's pain from Abbie lashing out after spending so much time not having to worry about anyone else's wellbeing beyond her own. We get Abbie's torture from still caring for people like Naomi (Abigail Thorn) while only getting a blank stare back. We watch as these women are unmoored from reality and struggling to get back.

More than that, however, we also experience heavier emotions like betrayal. This Tessa doesn't need to be told about Abbie's exploits with other women inside the loop to know by the way she looks at them. Is her anger justified? Definitely. Is it deserved? Probably not. But the same goes for Abbie once new revelations tease that the time loop wasn't random. It wasn't intentional either, but it was created by someone. So, how does she reconcile that truth? Can she?

All the while Abbie and Tessa deal with this newfound tension separating them, Marchant and Ballish take us backwards to better understand how these women got to this point and whether they might find a way through it. Today is presented in a standard color 16:9. The loop is shown in 4:3 black and white with the number written on Abbie's hand in marker revealing how many repeats she's gone through. And pre-loop memories unfold via color widescreen.

Every glimpse into the past proves necessary for the events of the present. They teach us why the largest number on Abbie's hand only adds up to around seven years despite them always saying ten. They introduce Tessa's ex Jason (Jon Meggison). They reveal how the loop-affected romance shared by Abbie and Naomi is almost identical to the one Abbie kept alive with Tessa. They provide us hints for the origin of the whole's science fiction conceit.

And they ensure that both Abbie and Tessa become three-dimensional women enduring a lifetime of stress and introspection in a single day that one didn't think would come and the other assume would. The anger. The resentment. The love. The forgiveness. Some scenes can give you whiplash with how quickly the tone shifts from volatile to heartfelt, but there's an honesty to it because these aren't normal circumstances. They're both treading new existential territory.

As such, the trans inclusion of it all is intrinsic to its success both as a showcase of trans characters simply existing in the world without it being the impetus (a coming out story) or conflict (enduring abuse) and an authentic portrait of the complexity inherent to trans romance. Is a trans woman like Naomi a better fit than a self-described straight woman like Tessa? These mirrors are intentional—like the dysmorphia of the world replacing that of the body.

Again Again has a lot to say within its uniquely fresh take on the time loop genre that ultimately touches on themes of nostalgia and anxiety when confronting the past, present, future, and impossible. Yes, its micro-budget crowdsourced production is unavoidably felt, but it never detracts from the messaging and humanity at its core. A shared experience in quarantine might bond us through fear, but our conversations within can still galvanize us through hope.

7/10

"Sure, there’s not much substance beneath the style, but that doesn’t detract from the entertainment. Plot takes a backseat to performance with each actor relishing the opportunity to shine."

– Full thoughts at jaredmobarak.com.

Inspired by her own trauma while partying with friends and being chased by a group of guys in a road rage incident, writer/director Izabel Pakzad wields the revenge fantasy at the core of Find Your Friends to expose the toxic masculinity women face every day of their lives as well as to subvert the final girl trope from innocent survivor to violent arbiter of justice. She's crafted a drug-fueled rager in Joshua Tree that shows the patriarchy is about more than just men.

We meet Amber (Helena Howard), Lavinia (Bella Thorne), Zosia (Zión Moreno), Lola (Chloe Cherry), and Maddy (Sophia Ali) having fun aboard a friend's yacht the day before they head out to the desert. They're drinking heavily and dancing to their hearts content while flirting with the men trying their hardest to get inside their pants. Amber is looking for an escape from a bad relationship only to discover her ex is there. So, she seeks out a means to make him jealous.

The quintet is loud and vulgar as they objectify the men surrounding them. They push Amber towards one of them having heard rumors about his sexual prowess and assuming a little fun might clear her mind of past demons. While she's all for a good time, however, we can see the situation is a bit more complicated than that. Seeing the ex. Drinking more. Throwing herself at this other guy. Amber is using him to perform for the crowd and her friends should realize it.

Well, the result leads to a traumatic moment that leaves Amber suffering from PTSD throughout the rest of their vacation. When she inevitably acts impulsively out of anger and fear, Lavinia and the others chalk it up to her getting trashed and going too far. They believe that she simply "cannot handle" the excess like they can. That she's "ruining" the vibe. They're so self-consumed by their own need to drown out the noise that they don't realize Amber exited the train.

Here's a woman who's ready to grow up and leave this life of dangerous inhibition behind with college graduation looming. Amber is spiraling and calling out for help only to find them all plying her with more drugs. They still want to lose control. They want to stay in this space of zero consequences despite the very real consequences their actions face. So, Amber pulling away starts to feel like a threat to their own entertainment. She's dismissed as a killjoy.

We know differently, though. Pakzad is continuously putting us into Amber's mind to see how her trauma is affecting present situations. We see the flashbacks and understand the weight of her reactions even if they might seem too strong from the outside. Her friends should know better. Since they don't, however, the moments where Amber's reactions are definitely warranted start to feel like she's "crying wolf." Rather than implicitly believe her fears, they turn their backs.

It's an intriguing dynamic not just because it causes us to wonder if these women are actually good friends or just kindred spirits where it comes to drug use, but also because it reveals how ingrained dealing with toxic masculinity is to their everyday lives. Lavinia has literally trained herself to think of sexual abuse as "not that bad" so she can continue enjoying the sexual lifestyle she craves. Maddy aggressively provokes men believing they're all too chicken to act.

And all the while Amber cannot help but have her eyes opened to the truth—that they should be afraid of what these men might do. Men they know on the yacht who tell women not to be a "tease." Men like Russell (Chris Bauer) threatening them to keep the noise down at their Airbnb because some people actually live in this desert. Men like a trio of predators stalking them with ill intent and a fearless ambivalence to getting caught.

It leads to a second act that feels somewhat redundant as it perpetually reminds us of Amber's trauma while letting her friends ignore it and a wild third act that embraces the bloody vengeance women the world over dream about inflicting upon their abusers. And Pakzad makes good on her reinvention of the "final girl" in the process by letting the carnage unfold with zero interest in the aftermath. Those last screams are just primal releases now instead of pure relief.

Find Your Friends doesn't always therefore work, but it does effectively get its point across. My biggest issue is the way it ignores its dead women as quickly as its men considering the former consists of the two who most readily throw themselves into the fire. One could argue it skirts with victim blaming, but those victims also victim-blamed Amber ... so maybe that's intentional? They're the women propping up the system? Intent and execution sometimes struggle to mesh.

6/10

I'm honestly not sure what I just watched. Sure, it has a flimsy conceit wherein a new law makes it necessary for a single school's graduating class from 2008 (due to a tornado) to repeat senior year in two weeks to reaffirm their diplomas, but it's also got a plethora of non sequiturs like a serial killer, a Lloyd Christmas, a Blade who kills aliens, and an Arab man who's the butt of terrorist jokes.

Never Change! feels like director Marty Schousboe and writer/star John Reynolds held a brainstorm session to figure out what they would have loved to seen when they were twelve—like a sex-ed teacher desperate to have sex with a student. Then they loosely tied it all together via an absurd premise, aged their teenage-brained characters into thirty-somethings, and hired their funny friends to have fun.

Shot on the high school campus that serves as Jeremy Garelick's American High production studio, the whole feels like a high school project scaled up to the modest budget of the shingle's other (better) Hulu originals (Big Time Adolescence and Plan B). The cast is game and the filmmakers are earnestly proficient, but it's a mess of a time capsule of the type of low-bar comedy we should forget.

Micah Sterenberg throwing a rager while his parents are "gone" was objectively hilarious, though.

3/10