6:45

6:45
Starring Michael Reed, Augie Duke, Armen Garo, Thomas Waites
Directed by Craig Singer

The time loop movie subgenre is very unique and rare, consisting of only a handful of films (and even less that are any good). The classic "Groundhog Day" is the go-to film for time loop films, but there's also incredibly well-done films like "Triangle," "Happy Death Day," "Source Code," "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time," "Edge of Tomorrow," and "The Final Girls" that you can explore to get your fix. Yet for every one of these, there's several lesser-done films that maintain the traditional trope of a time loop movie that become stale after the first repetition, and "6:45" is one such film - a movie that follows the formula but then seems to realize it got stuck in its own loop and can't find a decent way out.

Bobby Patterson (Michael Reed) and his girlfriend Jules Rable (Augie Duke) decide to go on vacation after an intense fight, and Bobby takes her to his hometown of Bog Grove, where they find that they pretty much have free reign on the island due to it being the off season. They check into a nice bed and breakfast run by Gene (Armen Garo), and are the only guests in the hotel. The next day their bedside alarm goes off at 6:45, and even though it's earlier than they wanted, they decided to start their day. After exploring some, Bobby proposes to Jules, and soon after Jules is attacked and killed by a masked man, before Bobby also succumbs to the man's attack.

Bobby then wakes up, and finds that it's 6:45 again. He thinks it was just a dream, even though he experiences deja vu, but he brushes off his concerns. Upon hearing from Gene that a young couple was murdered on the island and there was no ferry service, they decide to spend their day together on the island before the masked man again strikes and kills both of them. Bobby again wakes up and it's 6:45, but this time he knows something is wrong. He tries to change the outcome, but every day ends with their brutal murders before they wake up again, and only Bobby seems to know something is going on. Will he be able to find the way out of the loop and save Jules in the process?

"6:45" is one of those B-rated slower time loop films that feels like it just drags and drags, with no possible way of offering any logical solution. Most films like this consist of the main character investigating ways to find their way out of the loop, and that sort of happens here, but the character of Bobby is incredibly inept at his job. He does the traditional thing that frustrates me like crazy: he doesn't tell the whole story. When Jules asks him what's wrong - because clearly something is - he never tells her everything. Even if she doesn't remember it the next day, at least having someone else knowing the basic information can help you find a way out of it, but Bobby is so certain of his own idiocy that he tries to man up and solve it himself, and of course he can't seem to do that.

This goes on frustratingly through most of the film's short (yet feeling incredibly long) runtime, before the director seemed to realize that the movie was literally going nowhere so he decided to flip the script and provide something totally out of left field that leaves everything that happened through most of the movie pointless and confusing if you want to dedicate even one brain cell to try to understand it. By the time the movie ended, I was left wondering what the heck I had just seen, and not in a good way. It didn't make sense, it didn't deliver any compelling or even closely likable characters, and its ending upended everything that preceded it.

Michael Reed is infuriating as Bobby, a character who's stuck in the olden days where women aren't as smart as men and where he needs to mansplain everything (well, mostly everything) to his girlfriend in insulting language that makes him wholly unlikable. He is harboring a secret that's not really a secret because it's obvious from the get-go, but his character is so mind-numbingly self-absorbed he thinks he's doing everyone a favor. He doesn't try to solve the mystery with his girlfriend, but uses her as a blind pawn to try to find a way out of the loop without letting her into the loop. Likewise, Augie Duke is given absolutely nothing to work with as Jules, except for repeating the same lines over and over and getting frustrated at Bobby for not telling her everything (a sentiment I can get behind). She is pretty much wallpaper in the movie, offering nothing because she's given nothing to work with, much like the majority of this film.

Retreading old tropes of the time loop subgenre, "6:45" doesn't offer anything new or exciting, or provide any compelling characters or a story that even makes sense, leaving the viewer with a confused, angry feeling for wasting their time watching this dreck.

The Score: D-