Vague Visages’ One More Shot review contains minor spoilers. Nicholas Clifford’s 2025 movie on Amazon features Emily Browning, Aisha Dee and Sean Keenan. Check out the VV home page for more film criticism, movie reviews and film essays.

Nicholas Clifford’s One More Shot relies on a formulaic and familiar structure to support a paper-thin plot. Set on New Year’s Eve in 1999, the Australian dramedy stars the lovely Emily Browning as Minnie Vernon, a 36-year-old anesthetist who struggles with personal insecurities while reuniting with pals and her ex-boyfriend, Joe (Sean Keenan). As the protagonist drinks mezcal called Orina del Diablo aka The Devil’s Piss, she repeatedly enters a time loop, a la Groundhog Day (1993), allowing her to re-play various situations upon learning details about her friends’ personal lives. Browning delivers a strong lead performance as Minnie, who dreams of being married with a child, but One More Shot’s lack of character depth makes every main player feel like an archetype.

Minnie “re-entry” experiences in One More Shot position her at the front door of a house party. Before the big tequila surprise, she jealously keeps a close eye on her ex-boyfriend’s American girlfriend, Jenny (Aisha Dee), and then becomes more stressed when Joe makes a move during a bathroom scene. There’s plenty of atmospheric flavor and ambience via era-appropriate needle-drops and fun dance sequences, yet the inciting incident is quite boring and simple, as Minnie genuinely believes that she’s destined to stop Joe’s engagement to Jenny. Unsurprisingly, the protagonist’s behavior intensifies during each timeline, which makes her somewhat messy while running boozed-up psyops on her fellow partygoers. For example, Minnie learns how to manipulate a horny doctor (Hamish Michael as C-Word) to her advantage, and also discovers that Joe is an alcoholic. A minor twist emerges when Browning’s character finds out that a close friend is all too familiar with The Devil’s Piss, thus injecting some heart and soul into the picture as the two characters try to correct behavioral issues on the night in question.

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One More Shot could be described as a chamber piece production, since most of the action takes place inside a luxurious home on New Year’s Eve. Ideally, Minnie’s dilemma would be complemented by mini-dramas involving the supporting characters, though the writers — Alice Foulcher and Gregory Erdstein, working from a story by Heather Wilson — mostly focus on the protagonist’s point of view. Unfortunately, Minnie’s motivations seem severely underdeveloped. The dialogue heavily implies that Browning’s character misses her party days with Joe (they both share “It’s Party Time” tattoos), but there’s little evidence to suggest that the duo had a Great Romance. In fact, Minnie gets the most upset after learning that a different ex-boyfriend named Cameron (Oliver Coleman) now has a wife and children. Just like Kyle Mooney’s 2024 comedy Y2K — another film that takes place on New Year’s 1999 — the drama wildly intensifies as the protagonist’s life spirals out of control while trying to process the chaos, which in turn builds to some laugh-out-loud moments involving a sliding door and a dance number set to 9Tendo and Mr. President’s 1996 single “Coco Jamboo.” These sequences liven up One More Shot and distract audiences from a recurring use of the 1993 song “Laid” by the English band James, which accompanies the start of Minnie’s re-entry experiences and becomes a bit tiresome. The musical interludes also spotlight Dee’s movie star potential.

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Browning keeps the ship afloat in One More Shot with her physical humor, and also by conveying Minnie’s slow descent into temporary madness; however, the film’s premise doesn’t afford her any big moments to truly stand out in dramatic sequences. And so Ashley Zukerman arguably receives the best material as Rodney, a doctor who genuinely seems devastated by his inability to please his annoyed partner, Pia (Pallavi Sharda). I think One More Shot would’ve been much more entertaining from the start if viewers knew that one of Minnie’s party friends had past experiences with The Devil’s Piss. In that narrative scenario, Clifford and his writers could play around more with the chamber piece premise and also work through some of the time traveling rules, along with the potential consequences of consuming a glowing worm from a mezcal bottle. One More Shot is entertaining yet forgettable.

One More Shot released digitally on December 12, 2025.

Q.V. Hough (@QVHough) is Vague Visages’ founding editor. Thank you for reading film criticism, movie reviews and film essays at Vague Visages.

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