A smaller sub-genre of film that is rarely explored is the reliving events genre. Probably the most classic example is Groundhog Day with  Bill Murray, and a modern version would be Edge of Tomorrow with  Tom Cruise. What is rarely explored in the genre, if at all, is a romance that is caught in a time loop. That, along with the mystery of trying to solve the time anomaly, is exactly what we get in The Fare.

Late one cloudy night Harris finds himself in the middle of the desert looking for the fare he was scheduled to pick up. His fare turns out to be a pleasant young woman named Penny that he strikes up a conversation with. Mid conversation though the storm his cab is near starts to intensify and Penny disappears without a trace. After calming down from the shock Harris resets the fare meter and unknowingly resets time leading to him picking up Penny again. After repeating the process many time Harris finally begins to realize what is happening and along with Penny, who has remembered every pick up, tries to solve the mystery of the time loop.

One of the dangers of reliving events/ time loop movies is, ironically, they can come off as tedious if the care isn’t taken to make each reset interesting. The Fare set itself a daunting challenge when it decided all of its resets would take place in a taxi in the middle of the desert. Surprisingly though the location works incredibly well given the setting and the story is one of claustrophobia and mystery. The tight nature also makes the romantic scenes feel very intimate because by the nature of the taxi and the framing they seem so close together. In terms of using a single location to the best of its abilities, the film conveys so much with so little and capture the confusion and underlying terror of being in a repeat situation well.

Without getting into serious spoilers one thing that didn’t end up working for me was the reveal of why the time loop is happening. While it could be argued that the film is taking a consistent fantasy approach, for a good long stretch it seems to be leaning towards a science fiction approach. There are plenty of hints as to what is going on through the course of the film but the reveal still comes across as a bit of a blindside. Regardless, in the great scheme of what is going on in the story, the reveal doesn’t take away from a fun romance that the audience experiences.

While there are some speed bumps and some hiccups in the story the film comes off as an enjoyable romance in a genre where they are infrequent at best. Often I talk about stories that reach far beyond they’re scope and means only to become boring messes. The Fare takes a simple, tight, concept and explores it to its full potential in a respectable way. Though romance is not my wheelhouse, and I found some of the moments sappy, I couldn’t help but get choked up in some of the sweeter moments.