One movie that many of you know that I have used as a metaphor for a long while is Groundhog Day starring Bill Murray as Phil Connors. I discussed it in my book Falling For Truth about the awakening process, of how the process includes much more trauma and less fun along the way than most think. However, I may have been fooled by the underlying message of the movie. The real message here is about soul-reincarnation traps that Exit the Cave is all about. One thing all can agree on is Phil Connors is in hell, Schopenhauer’s prison. Actually he behaves in a very Schopenhauer like way. The questions are who put him in this prison, and does he actually get out?

What most have come to think of this movie can be summed up as: weatherman Phil Connors is a jerk, and goes to Punxsutawney to cover the February 2 Groundhog festival, something he hates. Along with him goes new producer Rita, whom he wants to add to his bed conquests. When the event ends a storm does not allow the group to leave the town after covering the story, Phil winds up getting up each day still being Feb. 2. He goes through attempts to force reality to give him what he wants, hits nihilism and tries killing himself over and over, then tries to win the love of Rita- but nothing advances. After a final rejection from Rita, Phil changes his attitude and being to find ways to see how much he can learn so he can become the perfect helper for everyone in the town he is in prison with (even if none of them are aware of the loop). By the end of the movie he becomes a wonderful perfect self, wins the love of Rita, and the loop seems to end and they goes on to live a wonderful life in that town. The change happens from him going from a selfish person to a selfless person, and that changes not only him but his entire life.

That i how it is has always been considered. I think this is an incorrect view of what is really going on.

Phil’s loop did not end because of how he became a better person, or improved, or became a nice guy. It ended because he sold his soul to the Devil, the very one who put the loop in place to begin with. And the Devil is Ned Ryerson!

The background behind this move and script is a bit strange. Writer Danny Rubin said that the inspiration for the movie was his reading the book The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice and wondered about a character who could not die. Yet I think that the novel Replay by Ken Grimwood was the likely book of inspiration, and for some reason Rubin wanted to hide that connection. Just a feeling. Oddly, after such a breakthrough movie, Rubin only wrote a couple of other very strange movies over the next decade. Also strange for coming off such a successful script and movie.

Rubin’s initial script was much more dark apparently, but was then picked up Harold Ramos who wanted a more romantic comedy and began to change the script. When Bill Murray became cast as the lead character, Murray wanted a more philosophical story and began working somewhat secretly with Rubin to re-sculpt the script again. There had been various ideas presented as to why the time loop was occurring, including a scene in the final script that was never put in the movie about an ex girlfriend of Phil’s putting a curse on him. However I feel quite certain that there is no mystery at all. Ned Ryerson is Satan, and he is the one who has set the whole thing up to get Phil to give over his soul.

This theory first came out in 2017 from a Redit poster named SuperConductiveRabbi. I want to give credit to him/her. Others have posted articles¹ and short YouTube videos along the way about this theory, but it seems no one has gone into great detail because they do not understand the soul trap prison we live in, thus can not take this movie to the deep level that it exists at. I intend to do that now.

When one understands what the character of Ned Ryerson really represents, the movie gets explained. Ned is presenting himself as an insurance salesman. However, there is only one paper that he really wants Phil Connors to sign, that would be the one where he gives up his soul. And Ned is going to make Phil’s life a living hell in order to do it.

Ned’s identity is clarified on the very first meeting. His initial greeting for Phil is “Now Hey, hey! Don’t you tell me you don’t remember me, because I sure as heckfire remember you.” If he said “Hellfire” it would be more obvious. In a future meeting he also responds when Phil knows who he is and what he does, “you’re on fire today!” And on the third day when Phil is speeding up his day Ned is in the perfect spot on that day as if he is one step ahead of Phil all the while.

They supposedly knew each other from high school, but Phil doesn’t recognize him. Even with Ned providing a whole bunch of data points, including throwing in the correct name of Phil’s sister (which of course the archons all know) Phil relents to acknowledging him, yet it is clear on Phil’s face he has no real memory of him. He pretends to know Ned hoping that the conversation will just end. My assumption here is that the Ned character is fully lying about having been to High School with Phil. This will get mirrored later in the movie, when Phil decides he is going to seduce the attractive Nancy Taylor he sees in the cafe, so asks where she went to high school and the name of her English teacher. The next day Phil finds her at the Groundhog festival and pretends to have known her from that English class. She does the same as Phil with Ned, she relents that she must know him because he knows so much about her. He is tricking Nancy into sex, Ned is tricking Phil into selling his soul.

At the first meeting, Ned immediately goes right on the rampage to sell him insurance. “Do you have life insurance, Phil? Tell me, have you ever heard of Single Premium Life, because I think that really could be the ticket for you.” The word Single Premium Life is a big clue, being Devil-slang for soul. The mass of insurance is all a cover to get Phil to sign the one document he really wants. And since he can’t get it right there on the street, Ned resorts to a very nasty trick, he plunges Phil into a time loop hell.

This happens the moment Phil steps into the giant puddle. Two things are seen, first is Ned’s response, “Watch out for that first step, it’s a doozy!” This first step is of course, the first step on the creation of the time loop. On the window behind Ned when he makes this statement is a red coffee cup with steam coming off of it. Again the idea of heat and steam associated with Ned- Devil.

Once this step has been taken, the challenges begin, from the not expected snow storm, even the cold shower in the evening. The snow storm is actually a trap in the town. It is not just that he is just living the same day over and over in a time loop, he has to keep living the same day in Punxsutawney (a city with a strange name and history). The whole groundhog festival should be examined as well for its very strange symbolism, including everyone in top hats (the sign of the 1800s controllers). But again I can leave that part of the story for you to look into yourselves. His day would have more varied possibility if he could have just got in the car in the morning and driven back to Pittsburgh. The original script had showed him trying various things to leave the town, but all of them failing. Punxsutawney is symbolically the material realm, his constant death and rebirth is reincarnation (whether it is into a time loop type scenario of the same body or another is not that significant) and just as the earth seems to have various physical barriers (such as an ice wall in the Antarctic and the Plasma dome above) there also are barriers in the small reality Phil is a part of.

Each morning Phil will be awakened at 6 AM (really you can think of it as three 6 AM’s) to the Sonny and Cher song “I Got You Babe.” This is the Devil speaking to Phil every morning telling him that he has no escape from him. Subtle yet sick at the same time.

There is much to the movie in detail from this point to the conclusion, but for the sake of time I will jump to the ending to sum up this entire movie.

The day the loop comes to an end, most focus on the fact that he has spent perhaps 100,000 days and has removed all of his egoic urges, and replaced “nice” urges to become a musician, help with people in distress, and thus win over Rita to loving him. It is presented like he has become some sort of saint, and that is why the loop ends so he can live “happily every after” with Rita. Again this is another trick of the movie. Granted he has fully taken Schopenhauer’s philosophy to heart, that by first seeing one lives in a prison word, thus the best action is not to try and chase happiness, but find ways to reduce suffering (for oneself and others). That is pretty much what Connors has done. But none of that has anything to do with the loop ending.

The loop really ends when Phil finally relents to Ned and signs the papers to take all of his insurance policies- one of which will have (either openly or in fine print) Phil’s Soul. That’s the key to the ending, not saving anyone or any act of kindness. It’s that transaction. To do so Ned literally plunged Phil into an endless hell.

The meeting with Ned after the bachelor auction addresses this. While Ned explaining to Rita that Phil has bought all of his life insurance policies, Phil’s head is framed in the center of four groundhogs that make a cross on the wall. Phil nailed himself to the cross, while Ned explains “this is the best day of my life,” (in the body of NPC Ned Ryerson).

We have yet to come to Rita, for I feel she is a part of the entire game with Ned, and are likely both working together on Phil. To begin with the first time we are introduced to her, she is playing with a green screen in the TV studio in which she is sort of “merging in and out with” with only her head and hands visible, making her seem like a type of hologram. Next in the van she admits that she “likes blood sausage.” Is it the sausage or blood that she likes?

Phil however sees her as special and calls her an angel, while Rita describes the sticky buns as “heaven.” We are seeing both sides of the Devil, Ned and Rita, both sides of the pendulum at work. After the bachelor auction (where Phil is bought by Rita) and Ned has says it is the best day of his life, Rita agrees with him. When Ned asks to join Phil and Rita, Rita says, “Let’s not spoil it.” Why would she make such a comment? Perhaps she was reminding our deal is done. Rita might have made a deal as well.

In the morning when the loop seemingly has been broken, and Phil is in bed with Rita he asks, why she wasn’t gone. She responds, “I bought you, I own you.” Has Rita made some sort of side deal with Ned? Ned gets the soul and Rita gets the rest of him. That is why she says “lets not spoil it,” to Ned, not referring to the night but “their private deal.” The deal could have happened before Phil ever even got to the town, Rita might have been employed as a key tool to break Phil down, by an endless series of rejections

As the movie ends and Rita and Phil walk out of the inn, one believes they are in some sort of heaven. The image is that he has become a perfect person, learned hundreds of skills, and got the woman he had been chasing. Dream like? Or is it?

Again like the Good Place, looks can be deceiving. To begin with there are no other people around, just one van backing out of a driveway. Ok, you might say, it is not Groundhog Day anymore so people are not up early. But there is no sign of anyone. I would suggest that a new type of dream or loop has been started. This is suggested in the bed when Rita claimed “why are you like this now, last night you just fell asleep.” My guess is that one way or another, they still can not leave Punxatawny². And more importantly, how fast will Phil become bored with his new reality?

One thing that I have not yet decided is how much the movie is like the Good Place. That the ending Phil finds himself in, is not really a “real” place but another simulation. That the repeating Punxatawny was a simulated construct. It is possible all the people he meets in the town are a similar idea to the Good Place as NPC or archons in disguise, all with the purpose of messing with Phil long enough to get him to crack. Modeled on the original people of the real town, as Phil has been going there for several years so the model of it would have to be rather exact for him not to notice something out of the ordinary.

This level of NPC can even include Rita and Larry. All can be part of it, because no matter what Phil does, no one else ever comes to the same realization, that a time loop is occurring. You would think that one or two of them should as well come to the same realization, but not if they are all NPC’s. Thus the town that Phil and Rita find themselves in when the film ends might just be a new simulation, now designed to be doing something else to Phil.

Secondly, and more important for all of us working on exiting the cave, is that there had to be another way to end the loop and leave. Remember we don’t see Phil leave at the end, he jumping over the fence in front of the inn and heading down the street with Rita. So the real question becomes how could Phil have ended the loop? He got to the point of totally nihilism and suicide, and even death from every possible means did not work. Recalling that in our own reincarnation cycle, dying is not an escape from anything, just perhaps a short break from the hell life we have now before the next hell life begins. So what is the answer, for Phil? Under the circumstances, what could Phil have done to break out of the loop without signing over his soul to the Devil? What is the direction that Phil should have taken? Because what would have worked for Phil, is likely what will work for us.

I will be discussing the options in the new Exit the Cave book being written.

Footnotes

1. “Groundhog Day’s Most Sinister Theory Casts Ned Ryerson in a Devilish Role” By Robert Vaux; “Does Phil sell his soul for his freedom?” by Simon Gallagher; “Have you ever thought about it like this? This Groundhog Day fan theory might change how you see the film forever.” By Joe Ellison ↩

2. Apparently the original ending of Rubin’s first script had quite a twist in it, with Phil’s loop broken and his professing his love for Rita, she declines it. She then gets caught in a new time loop for herself. ↩