6:45 Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.0

6:45 Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 23, 2022

Happy Death Day took the general premise of Groundhog Day, but tweaked it slightly so as to offer a focal character who wasn't intent on suicide as a way out of a seemingly endless time loop, but who kept getting killed as part of that time loop. Happy Death Day had a so-called "log line" which read:

Get up. Live your day. Get killed. Again.

Perhaps the fact that 6:45 has a log line reading "Vacation. Die. Repeat." may be enough to indicate that aside from the fact that this is most decidedly not played for any laughs and/or whimsy, it is in its own way stuck in a time loop, revisiting ideas and tropes that have been doled out in any number of other productions through the (non repeating) years. In this case, there are actually two characters reexperiencing the same day over and over, although only one of them is actually aware of that fact. Bobby (Michael Reed) and Jules (Augie Duke) are introduced in flagrante delicto having some almost comically overheated sex in a variety of positions. That then segues to the couple arriving at a vacation spot with the unlikely name of Bog Grove, which frankly may describe the general ambience of the film as well as anything. The two are a bit unsettled by the fact that this supposed island getaway seems completely devoid of other visitors, aside from their truly creepy bed and breakfast manager, Gene (Armen Garro), a bug eyed dude who seems to delight in informing Bobby and Jules that years ago another couple was viciously murdered in Bog Grove and that the culprit was never apprehended. Spooooky.

Despite Bog Grove seeming to be more or less abandoned, Bobby and Jules cavort around the place for a day, and Bobby ultimately drops to one knee and proposes, at which point a hooded and masked figure appears out of nowhere, slashes Jules' throat and snaps Bobby's neck. Cue time loop music as long as it's not Sonny and Cher, because immediately after that, Bobby wakes up in bed at 6:45 in the morning and soon enough discovers that no matter what he tries to do to forestall "fate" (or the overheated imagination of a screenwriter), he and Jules end up getting slaughtered by this mysterious figure.

The one thing that might have set 6:45 apart from some of its time loop kin, namely the fact that the film seems to be a "two hander" with only a pair of focal characters, is jettisoned almost immediately when it turns out Bog Grove is of course not completely abandoned, and there is in fact a rather busy bar where Bobby and Jules end up having several perplexing showdowns with various characters. Some of them, like bartender Larry (Thomas G. Waites), seem at least relatively friendly and helpful, while others, including a really drunk woman (Sasha K. Gordon) who keeps making a pass at Jules, are probably best described as being a bit on the "trashy" side. It's all deliberately disjunctive and confusing, and once scenarist Robert Dean Klein and director Craig Singer start trotting out their supposed "twists", it turns out it's completely (as in completely) irrelevant as to what's "really" going on.

Things amble along more or less predictably despite a few attempts to throw viewers off the scent of what turns out to be an arguably less than intriguing "reveal". There are some kind of peculiar presentational aspects the film indulges in, including a kind of bizarre series of quasi-montages that just start showing up and which are the 21st century equivalent of the split screen technique utilized (much better) in the original version of The Thomas Crown Affair. It slowly becomes evident that despite not actually being the "narrator" of the film, Bobby is "unreliable" in his own way, and the story just ends up devolving in an almost ridiculous fashion. The fact that the whole underlying "reason" for all the time looping (that's a correct term, I insist) is so unbelievably rote and even tawdry makes the entire narrative kind of pointless. But in "wait, you also get" fashion, even after the denouement has apparently wrapped everything up, the film continues for several more minutes, ostensibly offering even more "surprises" (which, trust me, aren't very surprising at all).

6:45 really doesn't stand up to any kind of scrutiny, not that "time loop movies" would do that, anyway, though this is a particularly preposterous and illogical entry into this often intriguing subgenre. Just one of many questions the film never bothers to answer is why the "loop" doesn't start happening until the second day the couple is on the island. Maybe the Uber delivering the hooded, masked killer to Bog Grove got lost.

6:45 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

6:45 is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.34:1. There's no technical data that I could find anywhere online, and per my standard operating procedure I'm assuming this was sourced off of a 2K DI from a digital capture. The results are nicely detailed for the most part, with a naturalistic accounting of the palette, aside from a couple of obvious grading choices that start figuring in once some ostensible "answers" begin to be doled out. The bright and sunny if kind of wintry environment of the island offers some nice pop, and a number of extreme close-ups feature excellent detail levels (see screenshot 1 for one example). There are a number of supposedly "arty" touches that are thrown in, with a variety of skewed framings, anamorphic weirdnesses (for want of a better term, see screenshot 19), and superimpositions (see screenshot 17), along with the split screen technique mentioned above in the main body of the review (see screenshot 13). All of these stylistic choices can affect detail levels, sometimes materially. There is a brief bout of banding on some of the production mastheads, something I commendably haven't experienced recently on Well Go USA releases after a series of such issues, but I noticed no major compression issues with regard to the actual feature.

6:45 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

6:45 features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track that can intermittently offer some decent immersion, especially in some of the outdoor material, as well as the repeated visits to the bar, some of which become relatively raucous. That said, large swaths of this film play out in relatively more tamped down environments from a sound design perspective, though even these scenes can offer good placement of ambient environmental effects. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English subtitles are available.

6:45 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (HD; 1:40)

Note: As tends to be the case with Well Go USA Blu-ray releases, the disc has been authored to automatically move on to trailers for other Well Go USA releases after the trailer for this film plays. Those trailers for other Well Go USA releases also play automatically at disc boot up.

Additionally, packaging features a slipcover.

6:45 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Fans of a certain legendary singer and her latter day "signature" song may, upon getting to the "big reveal" of this film, suddenly be thinking of Miss Peggy Lee and "Is That All There Is?" What's so completely odd about this supposed mind blowing "twist" is that scenarist Robert Dean Klein seems to almost intuit that it's not enough and doesn't really explain anything, and so continues on with another lackluster series of supposed "surprises". There's occasional moodiness in some of the island material, and splatter fans will at least have the pleasure (?) of watching Jules' throat slit every couple of minutes, but this is pretty monotonous, and not simply because it has a built in structural repetitiveness. Technical merits are solid for those considering making a purchase.