Every day, Nyles wakes up, has meaningless sex with his girlfriend, drinks beers by the pool, watches his girlfriend cheat on him and attends a wedding he’d really rather not be at. … But he also doesn’t have a choice, because some indeterminate number of days ago (could be months, could be years) he stumbled into a mystical cave that put him in a perpetual time loop.
“This is today. Today is yesterday. And tomorrow is also today,” he tells Sarah (who, after following him into the cave, gets stuck right alongside him).
Sarah is willing to do whatever it takes to escape. She tries genuine acts of selflessness; she stays awake for hours on end in an attempt to beat the loop; she even takes her own life. Of course, Nyles has already tried all of those strategies. Nothing works.
So, the two decide to live out their days doing whatever suits their fancy. They drink, party, steal airplanes, prank Nyles’ girlfriend and ruin Sarah’s sister’s wedding, among other things.
But deep down, Sarah doesn’t want to just keep suffering through their existence. She wants her life back. And if that means leaving Nyles behind while she figures out how to make that happen, then so be it.
Roy, a man who got stuck in the time loop with Nyles sometime before Sarah arrived, is angry at Nyles for bringing him there. However, after he dies and comes back to life within the loop, he realizes that he doesn’t want to torture Nyles anymore, he just wants to spend time with his family. He took them for granted before he entered the loop. But now that he won’t get to see his kids grow up, he just wants to savor every moment with them, even if it’s the same moments every day.
We hear stories about Tala, Sarah’s little sister, who donates her time and money to charities. She also donated bone marrow to save her brother’s life and comforted Sarah after her nightmares when they were little.
Before Sarah gets stuck in the loop, she is unprepared to give a speech at Tala’s wedding. So, Nyles steps in and gives a speech for her so she won’t be embarrassed. We later learn that he lied to her about events within the time loop, but he apologizes for not telling the truth and she forgives him.
The cave that propelled Nyles, Sarah and Roy into the time loop appears every day after an earthquake causes rocks to shift. Whenever someone gets close to it, an invisible force pulls them inside. Nyles and Sarah speculate that the loop could be a form of purgatory or karma, since the clock resets every time they die or go to sleep. Nyles tells Roy that he will find either his ancestors or answers in the cave.
Nyles jokes that he is the Antichrist before stating that he doesn’t believe God exists. A man says he isn’t a Puritan. Someone says the “gods” approve of a marriage, and another person calls it “sacred.”
Nyles and Misty (his girlfriend) have sex after he sees her putting lotion on her legs. Nothing critical is seen, but Nyles is shirtless. Later in the scene, movements suggest that he masturbates.
Misty cheats on Nyles in a scene that involves oral sex. During one of the time loops, Nyles and Sarah trick another man into walking in on this incident wearing nothing but a t-shirt (which only just covers his lower half).
We see Nyles’ naked rear end as he runs through the desert. We also see flashes of his sexual encounters with random people while in the time loop. There’s no nudity, we do see movements, groping and two same-sex experiences. (Nyles also graphically explains one of those encounters.)
Sarah and Nyles make out several times. On one of these occasions, they are prevented from having sex because Sarah can’t remove Nyles’ clothing (although he later opens his shirt and pulls his swim trunks off to reveal boxers). On another, Sarah removes her shirt and we see her bra before they have sex (offscreen).
A couple kisses at their wedding. We see the top half of a man in the shower. We see Nyles shirtless and in his underwear on several occasions. There is some cleavage on women’s dresses. A woman walks around in her bathrobe. A man jokingly spanks another man while dancing. Two people give each other tattoos of male genitals. We hear a story about someone having an affair.
We hear a fake story about a man having a child out of wedlock after losing his virginity. Another man said his wife had twins late in life because he failed to use protection. Misty talks about “sexual attachment” during her bridesmaid speech, causing several wedding guests to become uncomfortable. A woman freaks out when she thinks her boyfriend cheated on her. A man cries after admitting he cheated on his fiancée just like his dad before him. Tala insisted on no sex before marriage.
Because staying dead is impossible in the time loop, Nyles and Sarah haphazardly risk their lives and “die” several times. Some of these are accidental—such as when Sarah falls out of a moving vehicle or the two crash an airplane—but others are purposeful attempts at suicide—such as when Sarah crashes a car into a semi-truck or steps in front of a truck on the highway.
Roy tortures and kills Nyles several times for getting him stuck in the time loop. He shoots Nyles with arrows (and we see Nyles limping and bleeding from the wounds), electrocutes him, waterboards him, whips him and sets a pool filled with gasoline on fire with Nyles in it.
Sarah crushes Roy with a police car, and we later learn that he had a slow and painful death in the ICU before the time loop reset. Nyles gets tasered by a cop and falls to the ground, cutting his eye. Two people get into a fight at the wedding, and one stabs the other in the cheek with a fork. Nyles also gets physically thrown out of bar, scraping his face in the process.
A woman slips and hits her face on the pavement, causing her to lose several teeth and bleed heavily. Nyles and Sarah set a bomb off at her sister’s wedding. They also shoot pictures of a man who ran off with another man’s wife. People smash glasses on several occasions. A woman says she once hit a man with her car and he never walked again. Sarah blows up a goat (offscreen) while trying to find a way out of the time loop. She and Nyles later blow themselves up (again, offscreen) in a similar fashion.
The f-word is used about 65 times (once preceded by “mother”), and the s-word is used 40 times (twice written on a sign). “H—” is used six times; “b–ch” three times; “d–k” and “d–mit” are each used twice; and “a–,” “douchebag,” “p-ss,” “p–ck” and the c-word are all used once. God’s name is misused 30 times. People make crude hand gestures on two occasions.
Nyles and Sarah both admit early on that they have drinking problems and even joke about being alcoholics. We see them drinking beer, wine and liquor throughout the film. They get drunk on several occasions and drive while inebriated. This is a point of contention for Sarah’s family, since they think she drinks too much and worry that she might be doing drugs.
The reason Nyles took Roy to the cave was because they were high on cocaine (we see the powder on their noses and their erratic behavior beforehand). Tala’s husband and his groomsmen use cocaine after the wedding. Nyles and Sarah hallucinate and see dinosaurs after using mushrooms. Nyles tells a story about smoking crystal meth. We see a man light a cigar.
A man tries convincing a woman to dance with him after seeing that she has had too much to drink. Another man says his children were conceived because of alcohol.
Sarah and Nyles are both very broken people. Sarah admits that she married a man even though she knew the marriage wouldn’t last because she didn’t want to be alone. Nyles tries to convince Sarah to stay in the time loop because he doesn’t want to be alone either, but he also doesn’t want to return to the real world because things won’t be easy anymore.
They do increasingly selfish and stupid things while in the loop—such as littering, lying and stealing—since their actions are essentially erased the next day. However, it all culminates when Sarah purposely injures Roy in an attempt to get arrested. She is angry that the time loop reminds her of her mistakes every day, that nothing she does to remedy those mistakes matters since it all gets reset the next day. Nyles is appalled by her actions and tells her that what they do to other people does matter. Because even though those people won’t remember the next day, he and Sarah will remember, and they’ll be the ones who have to deal with what they did (which could also be seen as a redemptive lesson).
A woman vomits. We see a man zipping his pants after apparently urinating in some bushes. A child waters dog excrement in his yard. A woman nearly dozes off while driving. Someone makes a mean, “your mom” joke. We learn that Sarah’s mom died when she was very young.
Ever since Groundhog Day came out in 1993, the idea of a person being stuck in a time loop, forced to live the same day over and over, has been a popular film trope. Of course, most of those other films require the stuck person to fix the events that happened that day or to have some sort of moral epiphany. Not so with Palm Springs.
It turns out that good ol’ quantum physics is the answer here (not that Nyles or Sarah has ever studied the subject before). There’s no spiritual awakening. There’s no great moral lesson to be taught. There’s no selfless action that will help these two people escape this world they’re trapped in. In fact, the only good thing to come out of their predicament is the realization that they’d rather die together than live apart.
Admittedly, the film has some sweet moments. But they don’t make up for the fact that this movie is rife with problems. Language is a serious issue; so is sex. And although we don’t see any nudity (barring a scene where we see Nyles’ naked behind as he runs through the desert), casual sex plays a major role in Sarah’s self-loathing. Both Nyles and Sarah admit to having drinking problems, and their attitude toward death and violence within the loop (since they can’t die) is more than a little messed up.
I guess we can all count our blessings that we’re not stuck in a time loop in Palm Springs. In some ways, I suppose it makes for a compelling plot device in this story. But I don’t think this is the kind of movie most folks are going to want to loop through repeatedly—if at all.
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
