While 6:45 has an interesting (if somewhat borrowed) concept with a decent payoff, the majority of the movie is tedious and rather bland. There’s a better movie in here somewhere, but what we get is a movie that thinks it is far smarter than it actually is.
Bobby and Jules have travelled to a small, island town hoping a romantic vacation will help their strained relationship. The island seems almost deserted though, and the ferry to leave will not be running again for a few days. And oh yeah, Bobby and Jules are killed every day, only to start the day over again at 6:45 am. Fun vacation, am I right? Jules seems to have no memory of the day repeating, and with no immediate way off the island, Bobby must find a way out of the time loop and to prevent Jules’ death.
Clearly, the notion of this time loop borrows heavily from Groundhog’s Day, and from a horror-movie perspective, Happy Death Day. But unlike those movies, 6:45 does very little with the concept of the repeating day. Bobby does get more and more frazzled and irritated with each loop, but other than that, not much changes. The couple may do different things within each loop, but it’s not substantially different to be entertaining. After a while you’ll begin to wonder if it’s a time loop in the movie, or if you’re stuck in one of your own, forced to watch the same 10 minutes for the rest of time.
With a movie like this, a lot does depend on the payoff and the reason for the time loop. Fortunately, 6:45 delivers in this aspect. I did like the explanation behind everything. Unfortunately, like the rest of the movie, the ending runs on too long, wanting to spend too much time ensuring you understand what’s happening. And that takes what could be a shocking realization for the audience and turns it into more tedium. It does help to elevate the movie a bit, but not nearly enough.
In terms of horror, there just isn’t any. Bobby and Jules death may be unexpected and jarring the first time, but after that it is just the same thing repeatedly. The location may change, but the method of death remains consistent. It’s not particularly gory, and certainly isn’t inventive. It’s always sudden too. The killer suddenly shows up and within seconds, Bobby and Jules are dead. To be fair, there is a reason for the consistency of their deaths, but it doesn’t help the movie be entertaining.
6:45 needed something more to build some tension that is sorely missing. Instead, you know the death is coming and, as it is so mind-numbingly consistent and sudden, after a couple of times you’re bored with it. It may be allegorical for the death of a clearly doomed relationship, but that doesn ’t make it scary. Honestly, the posters for the movie are far scarier than the movie itself. Don’t be fooled by them.
6:45 wastes its concept in a seemingly never-ending tedium of watching a struggling relationship live out a day. This either needed to be a short film or needed to provide more scares or thrills through its runtime. Or maybe marketed as a sci-fi drama instead of horror/thriller. Instead, it relies on the ending being enough for the viewer. It does make sense of everything that came before, and you’ll either accept that it makes the whole movie worthwhile, or you won’t. I fall into the latter camp. It’s an interesting attempt, but just doesn’t cut it as a horror movie. So, if you want my recommendation, when that 6:45 alarm rings, hit the snooze button.
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