Nyles, who has fallen in love with Sarah, is initially reluctant to go along with her plan, fearing they could end up dead or somehow eternally separated on different timelines. And come back when you’ve seen it.Īs the film nears its end, Sarah tells Nyles she has learned of a way the two might finally break out of the endless loop - by detonating an explosion at the very moment they cross the time horizon that normally resets them back to the day’s beginning. If you haven’t yet seen “Palm Springs” we suggest reading this review or interview with stars Samberg and Milioti instead. At every turn, director Max Barbakow and screenwriter Andy Siara toy with expectations and upend the usual romantic-comedy conventions, climaxing in an ending that may leave audiences wondering what exactly they just saw. you know the rest.īut “Palm Springs,” which is now available for streaming on Hulu and playing at select drive-ins, is decidedly not that movie.įrom the moment Sarah follows Nyles into a mysterious cave and becomes stuck with him in an infinite time loop, forced to relive the same day again and again, the film jumps the familiar rom-com rails and veers into “Groundhog Day”-style, genre-scrambling sci-fi-comedy. Liberato is great, allowing us to believe Emily’s mounting horror over the world around her, and Brown knows to place most of the film’s weight on her shoulders.For the first 12 or so minutes of “Palm Springs,” you could be forgiven for thinking the film was just a slightly edgier, R-rated take on a fairly cookie-cutter romantic comedy premise: Two lost souls - sad-boy Nyles (Andy Samberg) and cynical Sarah (Cristin Milioti) - meet cute at a wedding and. "The Beach House" reminded me of one of the reasons I love indie horror, in that Brown understands how much can be done with a performer who conveys terror instead of just a gruesome plot twist or CGI. Most of the shots are of Emily or Randall’s face, or the fog outside. There are moments of unforgettable imagery, especially in a scene involving Emily’s foot that will send the squeamish running for the door (wear a mask if you have to run all the way outside), but “The Beach House” is a wonderful example of lo-fi horror. He keeps things impressively tight, focusing on his four actors largely in slightly shaky close-up, allowing their reactions to what’s going on around them to produce the tension. As someone terrifyingly says later in the film, “It’s not fog.”įilms about the fragility of the human condition have taken on different energy since March, with works like “ Sea Fever,” “ Relic,” and now “The Beach House” earning unintended layers, but Brown’s direction here would have been effective in 2019 too. Everyone goes on different degrees of bad trips, but they wake up to something much worse. There’s a fog in the air that appears to be coming off the water, moving toward the house, spreading particles of light. When they run out of booze, Randall pulls out the edibles he picked up on the way there, and everyone takes a bit, essentially passing out as they notice … something strange outside. The couples get along, discussing life over dinner and a few bottles of wine. Jane has health issues severe enough that this is probably their final trip, and Brown almost digs into the concept that both of these couples likely won’t be together at this time next year, although for very different reasons. It turns out that the young couple isn’t alone, as an old friend of Randall’s dad named Mitch ( Jake Weber) and his wife Jane (Maryann Nagel) have come to the beach house too for a different kind of vacation. How can they stay together when they’re headed in very different directions?Īfter arriving at the beautiful house on what appears to be a literally empty shore-Randall mentions that it gets more crowded after Memorial Day, so they must be early for vacation season-Emily notices some signs of recent habitation in the kitchen, including fresh groceries. Randall has dropped out of college Emily is talking grad school. They’re at a classic crossroads for young couples, where it appears that two sweethearts may want different things out of life. Emily ( Liana Liberato) and Randall ( Noah Le Gros) are a young couple of college kids who go the beach home of Randall’s father to get away and work on their relationship.
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