How Groundhog Day opened the door, again and again, for time-loop films

“Life can only be understood by looking backward,” the famed 19^th Century existentialist Søren Kierkegaard opined, “but it must be lived looking forward.” Then again, the venerable and dynamic film genre we know as the “time loop movie” had yet to be invented, so it’s no wonder the philosopher hadn’t embraced the singular joys of watching characters experience periods of their lives over and over again, making alterations both subtle and significant in a frequently laborious attempt to set things on a more desirable course and maybe even experience a little personal growth along the way.

We’ve been unabashedly loving time-loop films for the last 30 years, ever since 1993’s Groundhog Day cemented the concept of the endlessly repeating but potentially fixable chronology in the pop cultural consciousness (following a few decades of TV table-setting with episodes of sci-fi classics, from The Twilight Zone’s “Judgment Night” in 1959 through Star Trek: The Next Generation’s “Cause and Effect” in 1992).

Groundhog Day director and co-writer Harold Ramis’ brilliant exploration of the myriad comedic and dramatic possibilities of reliving the same period ad infinitum, bolstered by Bill Murray’s perfectly modulated journey from self-absorbed boor to epiphany-attaining, romantic humanist. The film became the gold-standard for what the time-loop format was capable of (that it all works with a decided lack of sci-fi justification for the loop is an additional triumph).

And what’s not to love about the set-up, which pings various points on the radar scope of universal experience, including living an existence so routine that the desperate need to break away from it becomes inevitable, and the desire to replay moments we blew the first time around—like delivering the perfect comeback you didn’t think of until 10 minutes later or making a life-changing choice at a crucial juncture to avoid a tragic misstep.

The desire to roll back the clock and course-correct your life is something just about anyone can relate to, and Groundhog Day finds equal shares of hilarity, poignancy and pathos in the setup. Watching Murray’s often ingenious, frequently foolhardy efforts to turn his dilemma to his advantage, we wonder what we’d do with a similar opportunity. And the notion that Murray’s Phil Connors can actually achieve some much-needed personal growth while escaping the increasingly numbing loop, effectively “unsticking” himself in his own life, is downright transcendent.

And thus, a genre was born. Before long, movies began to explore and expand the time-loop notion. In 2011’s Source Code, director Duncan Jones fuses the format to an action thriller, with Jake Gyllenhaal repeatedly reliving the same eight minutes of another person’s life in an urgent bid to identify a train bomber; not only does the film add an exciting ticking-clock element to the time-loop concept, the sacrificial nature of Gyllenhaal’s mission provides a redemptive personal twist that offers hope for a happier ending.

In another action-centric take, director Doug Liman’s Edge Of Tomorrow (alternately known by its evocative tag line, Live, Die, Repeat), Tom Cruise’s non-combat military officer finds himself in a repeating loop of death and reawakening as he seeks to thwart an alien invasion. He recruits Emily Blunt’s heroic solider—again and again with increasing efficiency—to launch a constantly failing and reworked series of stratagems. The film uses its mutable timeline to tweak the bond of trust that Cruise must repeatedly forge with Blunt, only to have their personal connection undone when they emerge victorious.

Filmmaker Max Barbakow’s Palm Springs reframes the concept in rom-com terms when, after a weekend wedding, Sarah (Cristin Milioti) finds herself trapped in a time loop with her one-night stand Nyles (Andy Samberg), who’s already been stuck for some time. Forced to repeatedly relive the same day—and contend with Nyles’ similarly trapped nemesis Roy (J.K. Simmons)—the couple cycle through literalized pitfalls of honesty and responsibility in a deepening relationship, until commitment leads them to finally try to escape the loop. Even more poignantly and audaciously than Groundhog Day, the film uses its high concept as a metaphor for facing the risk of real, sustained change to escape a destructive and hurtful routine.

There are ever more entries in the time-loop genre: 12 Monkeys, building on the promise of one of the grandaddies of the form, the 1962 French film, La Jetée, posits a distinctly nihilistic prospect that time loops may feed the problems they hope to correct; Happy Death Day fuses the format to both horror and pitch-black comedy as the heroine must solve her own murder and confront some of her questionable life choices; Doctor Strange adds a superheroic element as the sorcerer endlessly rewinds time to frustrate Dark Dimension invader Dormammu into defeat; Looper plays a longer game with its rebounding than most, to great effect; Netflix’s Russian Doll, one of the most direct descendants of Groundhog Day, brought the concept to limited series TV, where it could be explored in detailed, nuanced terms.

In almost all of its disparate forms, the time-loop film genre leans on one consistent element: the optimistic notion that, no matter how challenging and seemingly doomed to failure the situation, it’s never too late to effect meaningful and lasting change. And with the right sci-fi plot device at hand, even Kierkegaard might be tempted to look back with an eye towards making his life better.