By now we all know the Groundhog Day Drill. Someone for some reason gets stuck in a time loop. The same day is played out for them over and over again. To stop it they must do something – make a life change, find a killer, stop a war, etc. whatever. There were time loop films before Groundhog Day, but that film perfected the concept and countless films have tried to repeat its success in various ways.
Re/Memory takes the basic concept and mixes it with a slasher horror film (something that has become something of a sub-sub-genre in itself) and a Japanese high school melodrama. Results are very mixed.
One of the many strange things the film does is that it kind of pushes many of the time loop elements to the side in order to focus on the relationship of its characters.
Set in a typical Japanese high school six students find themselves reliving the same day over and over. Eventually, they realize their task is to find the mutilated body parts of a young girl who was murdered many years ago. The ghost of the girl haunts them every day at midnight, stalking them until they are all dead, and the day resets.
But it only happens after midnight. The day begins in the morning and they each go about their regular day – attending school, having lunch, playing sports, etc. Then at midnight, they are transported to the chapel inside the school where they must find those body parts before getting killed. Apparently, the various arms and legs aren’t available during the day.
It is so strange to see them acting like normal high school kids with all of their romances and social clicks only to find them at night running for their lives. The film never deals with the fact that being murdered every night and watching your friends get killed would be incredibly traumatic for these kids.
These six kids are all lonely in one way or another. Our main protagonist, Asuka (Kanna Hashimoto) is considered a loner. No one at school talks to her and they act like she’s some sort of freak. Some of the others are outcasts as well, but some seem to be popular kids. They have friends, but deep down they are just as lonely.
Through battling a vengeful ghost every night they become a tight group of friends. It is like The Breakfast Club, but with a vengeful, murderous ghost. This is handled fairly poorly. For the first two days, all the other kids still shun Asuka, but suddenly on the third morning, they treat her like a bestie. And she’s suddenly no longer this super shy kid, but outgoing and friendly.
The horror aspects aren’t handled any better. The film tends to skip over the hunting for the body parts scenes. The kids do eventually learn to handle the hunt systematically, but there is very little actual searching for anything. In the same way, it skips over most of the real terror of the situation. There are maybe one or two moments where the kids are hiding from the monster, hoping to escape its clutches, but mostly the film focuses on the capture. There is plenty of violence and (poorly rendered) CGI gore.
I was more interested in the daytime scenes, but I’ve always been a sucker for high school movies. If you are looking for a horror take on the classic Ground Hog Day scenario there are many other better choices. I recommend Happy Death Day.
themidnightcafe.org 