Do you ever get that feeling at work where you feel like you’re just doing the same ol’ thing over and over again? Like you’re stuck in your own version of Groundhog’s Day? This is what happens in The Fare, only it’s not just a boring routine: Harris (Gino Anthony Pesi) and his rider Penny (Brinna Kelly) are actually trapped in a time loop.
Written by Brinna Kelly and directed by D.C. Hamilton, The Fare gives us a creepy twist on the concept of the main characters being stuck in a time loop. Here is the synopsis from Epic
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When a charming woman named Penny (Kelly) climbs into his taxi, Harris (Pesi) finds himself entranced. That is, right up until she disappears from the back seat without a trace. As he desperately tries to make sense of what happened, he resets his meter and is instantly brought back to the moment she first climbed into his cab. He and Penny find themselves trapped in an endlessly looping ride that changes their lives forever.
There is a bit of a slow start to this film as the viewer watches Harris and slowly realizes, as Harris does, that he and Penny are stuck in a time loop. They go through the usual tasks that stuck people do: try to get out, try to change things, try to do things to pass the time. And although their reality is repeating itself, it is not boring for the viewer.
The idea of a time loop and the characters’ reactions are not much different when one looks at other films or shows that feature this trope (Groundhog’s Day, “Here I Go Again” Legends of Tomorrow, for example), yet Kelly wrote the characters to keep the viewers attention, writing a mystery that has been done before, but adding splashes and dashes of her own flair that are more unique, including a twist that I did not fully see coming, making this film a fun ride.
The Fare captured my attention with its concept and held it with solid acting and interesting characters. There is not a lot of action, but the storyline moves, and the cause of the time loop is one that is well-explained, making the ending a satisfying one.
If you can’t see it during its limited theatrical release, be sure to pick it up on Blu-Ray or VOD on November 19th.