The acting was ok. The writing was ok. The idea is kinda neat. But the lack of internal consistency and explanation...frustrated me. Some examples:
- When the loop resets for the gun nut tweaker, his previous body is still there? Why isn't his body there from every loop? Shouldn't there be hundreds of corpses? Why aren't anyone else's bodies there from their previous loops?
- Do people have an awareness of their loop? The cult people seem to. The gun nut tweaker does. But the protagonists don't seem to, despite clues that they are looping. The handcuffed drug addict and his friend talk about knowing about their loop, and yet, when it resets, they seem to carry on repeating their previous loop like their memory has been reset. The guy in the tent with a 10 second loop speaks like he knows he's looping but acts like he doesn't by doing the exact same thing every time. I don't understand the rules.
- So the monster in the sky has complete control of time, and is omnipresent, but it can only communicate by taking pictures on a polaroid camera?! And why does it leave media in such random locations? Sometimes it's mailed to you, sometimes dropped at your feet, and sometimes delivered to the bottom of a lake. What?
- Why is the cult so secretive about information regarding their loop while people in other loops aren't secretive about it? They come right out and say it. It seems like they're in a predicament, and they would want to explain it to others and ask for help.
- And what is the sky monster that controls time? Oh sorry, not only can it communicate by taking polaroid pictures, but it can play tug of war. And you know it doesn't like you if it tugs real hard.
- What are the clumpy, gnarled sticks? I get that they are somehow a sign of the presence of the monster...but what else? Sometimes you can walk next to one and walk through a loop boundary, but other times you walk next to one and nothing happens.
- When a loop resets, what happens to the sun, to daylight, to things outside your loop boundary that can still affect you? When your 3 hour loop resets, does the position of the sun also reset, or does it continue from where it was at the end of your previous loop?
- How do you escape your loop? Or alternatively, what is keeping people in their loop? The protagonists just have to drive outside it and then apparently they're free. Why doesn't everyone just do that?
- What do the swirling birds in the sky have to do with anything?