Instances of the "Groundhog Day" Loop in live-action films.
- The 1973 short story "12:01 PM" (mentioned below) was adapted for film twice:
- The 1990 short film, also titled 12:01 PM, is the more direct, and much darker than most time-loop stories: Myron Castleman's loop only lasts an hour (greatly limiting what he can do during it), and he starts each iteration standing on a traffic island in the middle of crossing a busy street, hungry, carrying his lunch in his briefcase, and the film ends with Myron learning that nothing can stop the loop, and that even death is no escape.
- The 1993 made-for-cable movie is a looser adaptation using a 24-hour loop: the hero was given an electric shock at exactly 12:01, just as a nuclear device comes on line that causes time to loop. He's the only one who realizes this, and when he's not being killed each day, he tries to figure a way to prevent the nuclear device from going on-line.
- In the movie version of 1408, the evil room tortures its victims for an hour. If at the end of that hour they still haven't killed themselves, it begins all over again. "You can choose to repeat this hour over and over again, or you can take advantage of our express checkout system".
- About Time: While the setup would lend itself to this, Tim doesn't replay many events repeatedly. But he does loop over his choice of best man quite a few times, with each candidate giving a worse speech than the last.
- An American independent film, And Then Came Lola, takes the Groundhog Day Loop concept and toys with the What If? aspect. In this one, Lola has to rush a folder of photos to her girlfriend, Casey, to secure Casey's promotion; unfortunately, the photos are being developed by Lola's ex, and Casey is wining and dining with an old flame in the meantime.
- The Egyptian comedy film "Alf Mabrook الف مبروك" is about a man who dies on his wedding day at exactly 12:00 A.M. and has to relive the day all over again.
- ARQ has one being generated by the titular ARQ device, which was designed as a source of unlimited energy and accidentally traps its creator and the home invaders assaulting his house in a series of time loops. Complicated somewhat when the home invaders begin to remember the time loops too. Eventually, the creator realizes that the source of unlimited energy is actually the machine discharging itself — it's not unlimited energy, but rather the same energy used over and over. The loop began when one of the invaders accidentally killed themselves by touching the machine and ended when he was first killed, falling onto the machine.
- The film Before I Fall, as in the novel, deals with a teenage girl stuck in one for seven days after she is killed in a car accident.
- The movie Boris and Natasha, a live-action Rocky and Bullwinkle movie, has a device which prevents accidents by reversing time by a few seconds any time it is destroyed. This allows sequences in the movie to be repeated until things change. The film ends with several hundred being activated at once. As Natasha notes, "Boris, ve haf been blown back to beginink of movie!"
- Boss Level: The film is about an ex-special forces soldier who is stuck in a time loop where assassins are trying to kill him from the very moment he wakes up in the morning. He has to survive the assassins, figure out why they're trying to kill him, stop the time loop and save his family in the process.
- In Camp Slaughter, the protagonists from 2005 find themselves stuck in a summer camp straight from 80s which itself is stuck repeating the same day in 1981 when a mysterious killer murdered everyone, over and over again.
- The film A Chinese Odyssey has a sequence where a bandit discovers the magic words of the Monkey King which allow him to travel a short distance backwards in time. He uses them to go back and try to avert the multiple tragedies that have befallen himself and his friends. He winds up having to make multiple trips and run around like mad to keep everyone alive.
- Christmas...Again?! features the protagonist Ro not having the perfect Christmas as she hoped and wishing to a Mall Santa that she could "have Christmas again", stranding her in a time loop where she relives Christmas Day over and over until she learns the True Meaning of Christmas.
- Despite pre-dating Groundhog Day by five decades, the British horror Anthology Film Dead of Night (1945), starring Mervyn Johns and Michael Redgrave, uses this trope. The main character, Craig, is stuck in a country house with people he recognises from his nightmares and is compelled to kill everyone, just like he does every time in the nightmares. He then wakes up, relieved that this was All Just a Dream, but receives a phone call from one of the persons in his nightmare to drive over to the very same country house, where the same sequence of events starts to play out once again.
- Edge of Tomorrow (based on the light novel All You Need Is Kill) has Cage, an Army media relations officer who has never seen combat, get stuck in a loop during a hopeless battle against invading aliens. During one iteration of the loop, Cage meets Rita, a famous soldier known as "the Angel of Verdun", who is aware of what's happening and is willing to train him. This leads to moments of Black Comedy because if the Training from Hell or the aliens don't kill Cage outright, Rita shoots him in the head in order to reset the loop. It's revealed that the time loops are caused by the alien Mimics and that they have weaponized this trope: their "Alphas" reset to the previous day whenever they are killed and use their foreknowledge to defeat the humans when they replay the battle, which explains the Mimics' string of unstoppable victories against humanity. Cage killed an Alpha in his first iteration of the battle and accidentally absorbed the time looping ability. Rita once went through a similar experience and had the same ability, but lost it after she was wounded and received a blood transfusion; she refuses to let Cage cure himself, instead training him to destroy the nexus of the aliens' Hive Mind and end the war.
- The Italian film È già ieri (Stork Day) is adapted from Groundhog Day, though as there is no Italian Groundhog Day, the loop is set during an ordinary day (August 13, in this case). The main character is still a jerkass, the location is still (to him) a backwater, and pretty much the same issues are covered, almost scene for scene.
- The Endless: Two brothers who escaped from a "UFO death cult" a few years previously decide to pay a return visit after receiving evidence that the members had not all killed themselves. The cultists all look remarkably unchanged. We gradually find out that the commune is in a loop of unstated length, probably a few weeks, and that the members know and accept this. Some people on the fringes of the zone, however, are in much shorter loops, and are not happy about it.
- 2017 Horror Comedy short film Great Choice is framed around a looping 30-second-long Red Lobster commercial, with one of the women in it becoming increasingly aware that she's in a loop. She becomes increasingly frightened of not knowing how she got there and why, and things go off the rails violently once she stops sticking to the script. She eventually manages to escape by attacking the increasingly hostile waiter, suddenly finding herself in the space of a support group for recovering addicts, who all congratulate her on her recovery... all while the waiter is still banging outside the windows, screaming at her to make a "great choice!"
- The trope-naming Bill Murray comedy Groundhog Day is the most commonly known version of this trope, in which Jerkass weatherman Phil Connors (Murray) wakes up every day at 6 A.M. on 2nd February (Groundhog Day) in Punxatawney, PA. One thing not noticed by most people is just how long the time loop goes on for — when he eventually stops using the loop as a means to jerk around in a consequence-free environment, Phil has time to learn the complete backstory of every person in the town, learn to speak French, become an accomplished pianist and ice sculptor, and go from being a self-centered ass to universally beloved... all this with only 24-hour increments to work with before everything resets to square one again. An early version of the script suggested that the loop runs for 10,000 years, but in a DVD special feature the director states it's closer to ten years, which then got amended to a general estimate of between 30 to 40 years given the amount of time needed to accomplish just one of Phil's feats.
- This article
goes into possibly excessive detail to declare, with some authority, 12,395 days — or in other words, 33 years and 350 days. - A Super Bowl Jeep commercial based on the film has an older Phil wake up to discover he's somehow back inside the loop, but then notices the latest Jeep model that wasn't there last time. The rest of the commercial has him kidnap the groundhog again as they go for a drive to various places.
- This article
- In Happy Death Day, a college student named Theresa "Tree" Gelbman keeps reliving her birthday where she is murdered by a masked stranger. She attempts to use this to counter him and survive, but he keeps killing her in a different way. Notably, her injuries transfer between loops, and she's soon totally exhausted with internal damage. She finally breaks the loop by defeating her killer, but the next morning, her boyfriend (who she was able to convince her story was true) trolls her by repeating his dialogue to make her think she's still in the loop, causing her to hit him when he reveals the joke. It's never explained what caused the loop...
- Happy Death Day 2U reveals that the loop from the first film was caused by time-space continuum. experiments done by a group that includes Tree's boyfriend. The reactor responsible ends up sending Tree to an alternate timeline where she is caught in a loop of being killed by a different killer. Like before, she breaks the loop by defeating the killer, then manages to use the reactor to return to her own timeline. However, angry at her classmate Danielle for being a bitch, Tree volunteers her as a test subject for the reactor, trapping her in a time loop.
- Haunter: The movie begins with Lisa repeating the same day in her house. It's soon revealed to be because Lisa is stuck in the afterlife by the evil ghost who killed her and her family.
- It's implied at the end of Hellraiser: Inferno that this happens to Joseph, forced to relive the same sequence of events forever.
- In High Spirits, a comedy by Neil Jordan, two ghosts, Mary Plunkett and Martin Brogan (played by Daryl Hannah and Liam Neeson), suffer through this: Martin repeatedly killing his wife, Mary, because he believes her to have cheated on him because she doesn't love him and thus, doesn't show any affection towards her. Making it even worse is the fact that she didn't cheat on him when she was alive.
- I Do I Do I Do, a Hallmark Original Movie, has an architect repeating her disastrous wedding day over and over until she discovers what she really wants in life.
- In the Mouth of Madness: When Hobb's End really goes to hell and people start mutating into monsters all around John Trent, he decides to get the hell out of dodge and jumps in his car. Each time he tries to leave town, however, the godlike horror writer Sutter Cane resets Trent to just before he left. The only option left to him is to go right through the ax-wielding mob of townspeople.
- Jagged Mind: Alex can do this using magic, resetting the day briefly to change things so she can manipulate Bille to be/stay with her. This causes increasing harm to Billie.
- The Nickelodeon film The Last Day Of Summer has a plot like this. The main character, scared of his first year of middle school, wishes it could be summer forever. He then ends up repeating the last day of summer over and over again. Each reset is actually set off by him getting hit in the head and losing consciousness. Memorizing the day doesn't do him any good, as something else hits him, culminating in him avoiding everything possible, only to be struck by a meteor.
- The German Made-for-TV film Liebe in der Warteschleife is about a guy with not much of a life who inherits a house but ends up arguing with his girlfriend about what to do with it. The next day is mostly just terrible, starting with his girlfriend having moved out. And this day repeats over and over for the protagonist. However, he knows Groundhog Day (which doesn't even seem to exist in most time loop stories), so he's Genre Savvy enough to at least believe he knows how to handle a personal time loop. His creativity is at least on par with Phil Connors': One day, for example, he ends up in a robbery while at a jewellery. A few rounds later, he brings a 2x4 to the jewellery and knocks the robber over the head as soon as the latter enters the bank — because he needs the robber's gun.
- In the Australian indie horror Lost Things, Gary, Tracey, Brad and Emily are doomed to endlessly relive their fateful camping trip to the beach and subsequent murder by Zippo.
- Maanaadu not only has the usual protagonist who learns to navigate the same day ever better, but also a villain who becomes equally loop-aware and does his damnedest to stop the hero from stopping his plot (without killing him, of course).
- The Map Of Tiny Perfect Things features a teenager who keeps repeating the same day who finally meets a girl going through the same thing. They end up trying to find all the perfect little moments that particular day has to offer.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- Weaponized by the title character in Doctor Strange, where he traps Dormammu in an infinite time loop of him killing Strange in all manner of ways that only get more brutal and creative as his patience wears thin until he finally gets sick of the stalemate and agrees to a bargain.
- Implied in Avengers: Infinity War. Dr. Strange uses the Time Stone to relive the battle against Thanos more than 14 million times in an attempt to discern a path to victory. He finds only one, which is implied to be the thread that carries on to Avengers: Endgame.
- Mondays: See You 'This' Week!: Office workers slowly find out that they are trapped in the week of the 25th of October. They work super hard the whole week, then they wake up and it's Monday, the 25th again. Those who are aware of the time loop seem to remember many things, while those who are unaware don't remember anything. If asked whether they feel like the week keeps repeating itself, they will take it as a joke about their work being repetitive. An important part of the plot is that those who are aware of the time loop have to convince the others that a time loop is happening.
- Meet Cute: Enforced by Sheila, who uses a time machine to return to the same day over and over again to play out the same first date with Gary. She goes through a straight year of that day before she starts to experience Time Loop Fatigue.
- Naked 2017 is Netflix remake of the 2000 Swedish film Naken about a man who gets blackout drunk the night before his wedding and is then trapped in an hour-long loop in which he wakes up the next day naked in an elevator in the wrong hotel, already late for the wedding.
- Freddy Krueger traps Alice and Dan in a looping dream in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master so that he can kill their friend Debbie undisturbed. They eventually catch on, but it's already too late by then.
- The Italian sci-fi movie Nirvana revolves around Solo, the character of a video game which goes through the same events again and again each time he dies. His creator Jimi eventually puts him out of his misery by hacking and deleting the whole game.
- Open Graves is a film about a group of friends who obtain a cursed board game in which that if you lose in the game, you die in the fashion determined by the card you drew, whilst the victors are entitled to one wish. The game's sole victor at the end wishes that he could go back in time a week before this all happened, and he is sent back — but the irony is that he has no memory of what happened, so he and his friends are forever doomed to be stuck in that passage of time.
- Palm Springs: A Romcom that sees two people get stuck in a loop together. While at her sister's wedding, the main character enters the loop by accident, to find another person already in there, and who has been looping for quite a long time. After her initial attempts to break the loop fail, she becomes as disaffected as he is.
- Premature features a high school student in a time loop in which he wakes up in the morning in his bed after he (prematurely) ejaculates.
- Repeaters is about three recovering addicts whose "Groundhog Day" Loop happens to occur on the day that they're given a day pass out of rehab to do the "make amends" step.
- Run Lola Run has a meta example: the eponymous Lola runs through a madcap twenty minutes, attempting to get 100,000 marks to her boyfriend before the mob kills him. We the viewer see three possible ways these twenty minutes can play out, which diverge from each other depending on whether her start is fractionally delayed or fractionally faster, with her displaying minor recollections of the previous times (for example, her boyfriend has to show her how to turn the safety off when he gives her a gun in the first loop, then in the second loop when she gets a gun a different way she turns the safety off by herself). The third and final iteration is the happy one.
- Salvage has Claire reliving, in variations, her death at the hand of Duke Desmond, with every change just resulting in a different death, bringing her closer and closer to the truth, that she is Duke Desmond, suffering in Hell for Claire's murder.
- Source Code has an eight-minute-long loop. It's simulations of the last eight minutes of a dead person's life, repeated as necessary until the person experiencing them manages to complete his mission to find certain information. Actually, that's what the creators of the system believe, but it's really an Alternate Universe.
- Following multiple Real Life instances of police brutality, a subgenre of Groundhog Day Loop stories was created in which black protagonists must repeat a day which always ends in them being killed by police. In addition to the The Twilight Zone (2019) entry below, these include:
- Groundhog Day For A Black Man: A nameless black guy is trapped in a loop in which, every time he leaves his apartment, he is killed by police for no apparent reason. (Notably, in one of the loops where he just decides to stay home all day, he lives through the day... but he's still stuck in the loop, so it's not a permanent solution).
- Two Distant Strangers: Carter, a young black man in New York City, is stuck in a particularly horrifying version of this trope in which, every time he leaves the apartment of the young lady he just had sex with, he is murdered by the NYPD beat cop on the street outside. Unlike the previous example, Carter is killed even when he decides to stay inside all day. It is eventually revealed that Merk, the violence-prone cop in question, is also stuck in the loop… and he couldn't be happier.
- Groundhog Day For A Black Man
- The psychological horror movie Triangle features a variation with overlapping loops-within-loops, complete with disturbing reminders to the protagonist that she has been doing — and causing — this way more times than she is aware of.
