Kill Me Again (2025) by Keith Jardine

Charlie — the Midnight Mangler — stops at a roadside diner after a murder, intending to lie low. Instead he finds himself trapped: the same violent night, reset and reset, every exit sealed. At first he leans into it — more killing, less consequence. Then the repetition starts to corrode him. Then he starts looking for the reason. Written, directed, and produced by former UFC light heavyweight Keith Jardine in his feature debut. Roswell co-stars Brendan Fehr and Majandra Delfino reunite as the killer and the waitress. Shot at a single location. MMA fighters Donald Cerrone and Michelle Waterson appear in supporting roles. Available on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Fandango At Home, Google Play, and YouTube.

The Groundhog Day time-loop formula has been applied to horror with Happy Death Day and its sequel — but Kill Me Again identifies the one variation nobody had tried: making the serial killer the protagonist trapped in the loop rather than the victim trying to survive it. That inversion is the film’s most commercially distinctive choice and its primary discovery mechanism. Jardine — formerly known as “The Dean of Mean” in UFC — wrote, directed, and produced his debut while also appearing in a supporting role. Film Threat called it “a slick and cool time at the movies.” MMA Mania gave it 7/10, calling it “a violent, thoughtful, and unexpectedly touching debut.” The Roswell reunion casting — Fehr and Delfino last sharing a screen in 1999-2002 — generates nostalgia discovery for viewers of that generation independently of the genre premise. Available on major VOD platforms simultaneously.

• The protagonist inversion — watching a predator unravel rather than a victim survive — gives the time-loop formula its most formally original variation since Happy Death Day’s slasher riff in 2017.

• Jardine’s neon-drenched noir visual style and tight claustrophobic framing make the single-location diner feel like its own character — a production choice that conceals the budget and sustains the atmosphere.

• The practical effects are consistently cited as a highlight — blood and gore with tangible weight that CGI rarely achieves, giving the film an old-school horror physicality consistent with its director’s physical background.

• The dark humour — most memorably the sequence where Charlie repeatedly attacks the cook because breakfast stops being served at noon — gives the repetition comedy relief that prevents pure horror fatigue.

• The Fehr-Delfino Roswell reunion is the film’s most effective secondary discovery hook — a specific and active nostalgia community that will find the film through that connection independently.

• Jardine’s MMA background gives the film a crossover audience across combat sports media — MMA Mania reviewed it enthusiastically, reaching a demographic that wouldn’t normally encounter single-location horror.

• Film Threat — slick and cool, perfect tonal balance between dark humour and horror, Delfino excellent, Jardine makes a strong impression in his supporting role.

• MMA Mania — 7/10, visually bigger than its budget, practical effects a highlight, unexpectedly touching debut, drags slightly in the opening act.

• Just for Movie Freaks — ambitious and memorable debut, first 30 minutes gripping, middle overstays, final reveal shocking and poetic.

• IMDb 5.7 from 1,400 viewers; RT consensus: interesting concept, uneven execution, ending divisive.

• No awards. Release date January 9, 2026 (Sweden). VOD: Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Fandango At Home, Google Play, YouTube.

• Keith Jardine — retired UFC light heavyweight, “The Dean of Mean” — writes, directs, produces, and appears on screen in his feature debut. His physical background informs the practical violence aesthetic; his script demonstrates genuine understanding of the time-loop structure’s narrative logic.

• Brendan Fehr (Charlie) — Roswell, The Forsaken — anchors the film with a performance that balances menace and vulnerability across multiple loop iterations, giving the audience just enough humanity to sustain investment in a serial killer protagonist.

• Majandra Delfino (Anna) — Roswell — runs the full gamut from dismissive to sweet to terrified across the loop repetitions, playing each reset with fresh precision.

• Raoul Max Trujillo (Dr. Lovato), Donald Cerrone and Michelle Waterson (both UFC veterans) round out an ensemble that gives the film credibility within the combat sports community that constitutes a significant portion of its discovery audience.

The concept inversion is the film’s most commercially durable asset — it identifies the one time-loop variation nobody had tried and executes it with enough formal confidence to be recommended in the genre. The pacing problem is real and consistent across reviews. The ending either lands or doesn’t depending entirely on the viewer’s tolerance for the journey that precedes it.

Kill Me Again belongs to the time-loop horror tradition — Happy Death Day, Triangle, Edge of Tomorrow adjacent — but its specific contribution is the protagonist inversion: the killer trapped rather than the victim. That inversion generates a fundamentally different set of dramatic questions. Happy Death Day asks: who is killing the protagonist and how do they stop it? Kill Me Again asks: why is the universe punishing a killer who feels no remorse — and what would have to happen inside him for the loop to end? The second question is both more philosophically interesting and more difficult to sustain over 108 minutes.

• The time loop as punishment rather than mystery is the film’s most formally interesting structural choice — the loop isn’t a puzzle to solve but a sentence to serve, and the question is whether Charlie can earn his way out.

• The single-location constraint — a diner, one night, the same people reset — gives the horror comedy its Groundhog Day intimacy while allowing the practical gore to operate in a contained and controllable environment.

• The dark humour emerges organically from the protagonist’s specific predicament — a serial killer who cannot die and cannot leave eventually runs out of victims to kill and has to find other ways to occupy his time.

• The ending’s revelation — whether the loop is psychological or external — is the film’s most genre-specific formal decision and its most divisive audience-splitting moment.

The time-loop slasher’s most reliable commercial model is Happy Death Day’s victim-protagonist. Kill Me Again’s killer-protagonist variation is formally more ambitious and commercially less certain. The concept generates strong discovery; the execution determines whether it delivers.

• Happy Death Day established that the time-loop slasher has a commercial audience willing to engage with the format’s specific pleasures — Kill Me Again targets that audience with a more formally original variation.

• The single-location horror model — one night, one building, one cast — is the most commercially efficient format for micro-budget horror, allowing production value to concentrate in atmosphere and practical effects rather than locations.

• Jardine’s MMA background gives the film authentic physical violence credibility that trained action directors often simulate — the gore has weight because the director understands what physical impact actually looks and feels like.

• The time-loop horror comedy has sustained commercial viability since Groundhog Day established its pleasures — Happy Death Day proved the slasher variation works; Kill Me Again tests whether the killer-protagonist variation does.

• The sports-to-film pipeline — athletes directing their own feature debuts — is an irregular but consistent micro-genre that generates crossover discovery from sports media to film media.

• The VOD-first distribution model for micro-budget genre horror has established a reliable commercial pathway that theatrical release no longer provides for films at this budget level.

• Jardine’s UFC profile gives the film discovery access to combat sports media — MMA Mania, fight community social networks — that no horror marketing budget could purchase.

• The Roswell reunion casting activates a specific and active 25-45 demographic with nostalgia investment in Fehr and Delfino’s on-screen chemistry.

• The VOD availability across all major platforms simultaneously maximises the impulse-discovery audience that micro-budget genre horror relies on.

The core audience is 25–45 — time-loop horror fans who follow the Happy Death Day lineage, MMA community viewers who follow Jardine’s post-fighting career, and the Roswell nostalgia demographic that will seek out any Fehr-Delfino reunion. The pacing problem in the middle section will test all three demographics equally. The ending either converts casual viewers into advocates or loses them at the finish line — the review split confirms this precisely.

Kill Me Again found three separate discovery audiences with one film. The concept inversion is its most durable commercial asset. Whether Jardine’s second feature resolves the pacing problems that the debut’s ambition created is the question the MMA-to-film pipeline will answer next.

Jardine delivers a debut of genuine formal originality — the killer-in-the-loop inversion is the time-loop slasher’s most interesting unexplored variation, and the practical effects, neon-noir atmosphere, and Fehr’s performance give it the execution the concept deserves for most of its runtime. The middle section’s pacing problem is real and consistent across every review. The ending is the film’s most divisive single element — either the most satisfying payoff the concept generates or the most frustrating destination for 108 minutes of circular violence.

Works best for viewers who engage with time-loop horror as a formal puzzle — who respond to the specific pleasures of watching the same night from different angles and tracking what each repetition reveals. Less suited for viewers expecting conventional slasher pacing or a likeable protagonist. The concept inversion requires accepting a serial killer as the character whose interiority the film explores.

The time loop is the film’s moral architecture — Charlie is not trapped by accident but by design, and the design has a specific purpose. Whether he can discover that purpose requires him to become something other than what the loop reveals him to be. That question is the film’s most interesting dramatic engine. Whether it delivers a satisfying answer depends on the viewer’s relationship to the ending.

Beneath the practical gore and dark humour, Kill Me Again is asking whether the capacity for change exists in a man who has never experienced the consequences of his actions — and then engineering a scenario in which consequence is the only thing left. That question connects the genre mechanics to a genuine dramatic argument. It doesn’t always sustain the argument across 108 minutes, but the argument is real.

Jardine’s background is the film’s most specific social contribution — a man who spent his career inside physical violence making a film about violence’s consequences gives Kill Me Again a credibility about what violence actually feels like that most horror directors simulate. The practical effects are the most visible expression of that credibility.

Fehr’s most impressive achievement is sustaining Charlie’s psychological deterioration across the repetitions — the weariness compounds genuinely rather than being reset with the loop, giving the film its emotional accumulation. Delfino plays each reset as if it were the first time, which is technically accurate and dramatically demanding. Their Roswell chemistry — inverted into predator and target — gives the film its most interesting relational dynamic.

Kill Me Again will be remembered as the film that found the time-loop slasher’s most formally original variation and built a debut feature around it with enough craft to recommend. The pacing problem is the film’s most instructive creative failure for Jardine’s next project. The concept is the legacy; the execution is the lesson.

• No awards. January 9, 2026 release. VOD: Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Fandango At Home, Google Play, YouTube.

• IMDb 5.7 from 1,400 viewers. 5 critic reviews. Runtime 108 minutes.

The concept inversion drove discovery. The MMA and Roswell crossover audiences extended it. The ending split them.

Kill Me Again proves that the time-loop slasher had one great unused variation left — and that a UFC fighter making his directing debut was the right person to find it.

The loop eventually breaks. Whether the man inside it deserves to escape is the question the ending asks — and the one each viewer answers differently.

• Movie themes: Violence as cycle and as punishment, the possibility of change in a man defined by destruction, moral consequence as architectural design, and the specific dark comedy of a serial killer who runs out of people to kill and has to find other ways to fill the time.

• Movie director: Keith Jardine — retired UFC light heavyweight, feature debut — writes, directs, produces, and appears on screen. His physical background gives the practical violence a credibility that simulated gore cannot replicate. His debut demonstrates formal instincts that pacing discipline will sharpen.

• Top casting: Fehr carries the film’s psychological accumulation across every loop with genuine craft. Delfino resets without repeating — technically demanding and dramatically precise. Their Roswell inversion (lovers to predator-and-target) is the film’s most interesting relational choice.

• Awards and recognition: No awards. VOD release January 9, 2026. Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Fandango At Home, Google Play, YouTube.

• Why to watch: The time-loop slasher variation nobody had tried — the killer trapped instead of the victim — executed with practical gore credibility, neon-noir atmosphere, and a Roswell reunion that delivers exactly the chemistry it promises, in the least romantic possible context.

• Key success factors: Concept inversion plus Fehr-Delfino Roswell nostalgia plus Jardine’s MMA crossover audience plus practical effects register plus neon-noir single-location atmosphere — a combination that gives a micro-budget genre debut three separate discovery pathways simultaneously.

• Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Fandango At Home, Google Play, YouTube.