Omni Loop trailer introduces dream scenario: Getting stuck in a Groundhog Day with Mary-Louise Parker and Ayo Edebiri

If you could choose to be in a Groundhog Day scenario with any two actors, who would you choose? You could certainly do a lot worse than Mary-Louise Parker and Ayo Edebiri, the stars of the new time travel dramedy Omni Loop. To lean into millennial parlance, this is a duo we never knew we needed. We may have seen so many Groundhog Day scenarios at this point that watching one feels kind of like its own Groundhog Day, but at least the Omni Loop trailer features the new, unique chemistry of Edebiri and Parker. 

According to a synopsis from Deadline, Omni Loop “follows Zoya Lowe (Parker), a quantum physicist who finds herself in a time loop, with a black hole growing in her chest and only a week to live. But what the doctors and her family don’t know is that she has already lived this week before; so many times, in fact, that she doesn’t even know how long it’s been. Until one day, Zoya meets a gifted student named Paula (Edebiri). Together, they team up to save her life—and to unlock the mysteries of time travel.”

The Omni Loop trailer itself is somewhat hampered by having to get the Groundhog Day time loop conventions out of the way. Zoya has a pill that helps her travel a week backward in time (which is actually a generous amount of time for a Groundhog Day scenario, which, as evidenced by the name, is usually just a day-long loop). She explains all this to an old woman on a bench, which takes up a portion of the trailer, and then she has to do the classic “convince a person outside of the loop that I’m from the future” conversation with Paula, which takes up another portion of the trailer. There’s also a lot of figuring out the science of the time loop, which fans will recognize from other Groundhog Day successors like Palm Springs or The Edge Of Tomorrow. Then the whole thing takes a pivot towards the multiversal, as Zoya contemplates “all the other versions of me” out there that could’ve made different choices or might not have ended up with a fatal black hole in her chest. We’re all too familiar with these concepts by now. 

Omni Loop debuted at the SXSW Film Festival to warm reviews, so you can expect that director Bernardo Britto handled these familiar concepts with care. In addition to the delightful partnership of Parker and Edebiri, the film also stars Hannah Pearl Utt, Chris Witaske, Carlos Jacott, Harris Yulin, Steven Maier, and Eddie Cahill. Omni Loop premieres in theaters and on digital on September 20.