The 25 Best Time Travel Movies to Whisk You Away from Reality

Who wouldn't love a time machine right about now?

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Meet Cute (2022)

Kaley Cuoco and Pete Davidson co-star in Peacock's Meet Cute , a delightful and often dark rom-com based around time travel. Feeling suicidal, Sheila (Cuoco) finds a time machine in a nail salon and decides to go back in time 24 hours. While re-living her first date with Gary (Davidson) again and again, Sheila loses touch with reality and might have destroyed any chance she had with him.

A Wrinkle in Time (2018)

High schooler Meg Murry travels through time and space in search of her missing astrophysicist father (Chris Pine). On her journey, Meg meets Mrs. Which (Oprah Winfrey), Mrs. Whatsit (Reese Witherspoon), and Mrs. Who (Mindy Kaling), as well as a whole host of dangerous beings.

The Time Traveler's Wife (2009)

Based on Audrey Niffenegger's 2003 novel of the same name, The Time Traveler's Wife tells the story of Henry (Eric Bana), a librarian who is able to randomly travel through time. After meeting Clare (Rachel McAdams) as a child, Henry later develops a romantic relationship with her. HBO's recent adaptation starring Theo James and Rose Leslie has reignited the debate regarding whether or not the story promotes grooming , or if it's a timeless romance.

Back to the Future (1985)

'80s classic Back to the Future has stood the test of time, and spawned two equally entertaining sequels. In the first film, Marty McFly is sent to the 1950s in his friend Doc Brown's time machine, a super cool DeLorean. Marty meets his parents as teenagers, and his presence risks changing history forever.

See You Yesterday (2019)

Netflix's See You Yesterday follows science prodigy C.J. (Eden Duncan-Smith), who invents time traveling backpacks. Along with her best friend Sebastian, C.J. uses her invention to go back in time to stop her brother from being murdered by a racist police officer. However, she's also forced to face up to the limitations and consequences of time travel.

About Time (2013)

Tim (Domhnall Gleeson) inherits the ability to time travel from his father, and decides to use the gift to find love. After a failed attempt at romance, Tim meets Mary (Rachel McAdams), but due to several time travel-related mishaps, romance isn't instantaneous for the pair. Written and directed by rom-com aficionado Richard Curtis.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

James Cameron's follow-up to 1984's The Terminator was a smash-hit that cemented the franchise's popularity. In the sequel, a killer T-1000 Terminator is sent back in time by Skynet to kill the future leader of the resistance, the son of Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), John (Edward Furlong). At the same time, the resistance sends a reprogrammed T-800 Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) back to protect Connor.

Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)

Four miserable friends reunite after one of them nearly dies. To cheer themselves up, they decide to spend some time together at a ski resort. Unfortunately, the resort's hot tub isn't what it seems, and they accidentally end up traveling back to 1986. The four friends scramble to find a way back to present day. Starring John Cusack and Craig Robinson.

12 Monkeys (1995)

After a deadly virus destroys humanity in 1996, survivors are forced underground. Decades later, prisoner James (Bruce Willis) agrees to go back in time to find the original virus, so that scientists can work on a cure. However, he arrives too early in 1990, and is promptly institutionalized, where he meets Jeffrey (Brad Pitt), an anti-corporate environmentalist. From there, the mystery only gets more intriguing.

Looper (2012)

In the future, time travel is used by the mob to assassinate people, who are sent back in time and killed by assassins known as "loopers." Joe's (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) older self (Bruce Willis) is sent back to be eliminated, but manages to escape before he is killed. Thus begins a twisty time travel epic, that also stars Emily Blunt.

Tenet (2020)

The Protagonist ( John David Washington ), a former CIA agent, is tasked with stopping World War III. Learning to bend time, he attempts to prevent the destruction of the world. Robert Pattinson and Elizabeth Debicki co-star.

Last Night in Soho (2021)

Aspiring fashion designer Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie) manages to travel back to the 1960s, where she meets singer "Sandie" ( Anya Taylor-Joy ). What starts as a glamorous encounter with the past soon becomings a horrifying nightmare. Co-starring Matt Smith.

Déjà Vu (2006)

A top secret organization has developed the ability to see four days into the past, in order to catch criminals. While hunting a terrorist, ATF agent Doug (Denzel Washington) realizes that this new technology might allow him to stop crimes from happening altogether.

Source Code (2011)

An unusual riff on the time travel movie, Source Code stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Army Captain Colter, who is trying to identify the person responsible for bombing a commuter train. Re-living an eight minute re-creation of the moments leading up to the explosion, Colter is stuck in a terrifying loop, until he can solve the mystery.

Mirai (2018)

A young boy called Kun runs away from home, as he feels neglected by his family after the arrival of his little sister, Mirai. Kun accidentally discovers a time travel portal in a magic garden, and is transported into the past, where he meets his mother as a child. Later, he travels to the future, where he finds his sister as an adult, and completely changes his outlook in the process.

Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)

Aubrey Plaza stars as an aspiring journalist whose latest assignment involves a mysterious classified ad about time travel. "You'll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. I have only done this once before. SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED," the ad reads. Mark Duplass co-stars.

Groundhog Day (1993)

Although Groundhog Day is technically a "time loop" movie, it wouldn't feel right to leave it off the list. Phil (Bill Murray) is a disgruntled weatherman sent to cover the annual Groundhog Day event in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. When he wakes up the next day, he realizes that he's re-living February 2, which happens again and again, until he figures out how to stop it.

Needle in a Timestack (2021)

The wonderful Cynthia Erivo stars alongside Orlando Bloom, Leslie Odom Jr., and Freida Pinto in this romantic sci-fi flick. In the future, the wealthy are able to partake in "time jaunting," but the ripples from these changes often cause timelines to warp and change. Needle in a Timestack focuses on a happily married couple whose relationship is jeopardized by an ex intent on changing history.

The Lake House (2006)

Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves star in this completely cheesy but endlessly loveable rom-com that defies time. Architect Alex (Reeves) and doctor Kate (Bullock) write letters to one another via a mailbox at a lake house where they both live at separate times. Despite the time difference, they're able to communicate with one another and forge a relationship via this magical postal system that transcends time.

Predestination (2015)

Ethan Hawke stars as an agent tasked with stopping a deadly attack before it happens, via time travel. Traveling back to 1975, he attempts to find and stop a bomber in New York, but his mission is far from simple. When he returns to the future, his life only gets more complicated.

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The 25 Best Time Travel Movies of All Time, Ranked

time travel mystery movies

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Time travel movies have been done to death, and many time travel movies suck because they rehash the same old predictable tropes and cliches. But there's still a lot of potential left to be mined in the genre!

Despite the vast number of lackluster time travel movies, there have also been many notable films that came out in the past few decades—and that's on top of the sci-fi classics that still hold up.

At the end of the day, all movies are meant to deliver an entertaining experience for the viewer. With that in mind, here are what I consider to be the best time travel movies of all time.

Warning: I hate spoilers as much as anyone, so I've taken care to exclude spoilers from all movie descriptions in this article. However, knowing that a movie involves time travel could itself be a spoiler! Read on at your own risk.

25. Project Almanac (2015)

time travel mystery movies

Directed by Dean Israelite

Starring Jonny Weston, Sofia Black-D'Elia, Virginia Gardner

Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi (1h 46m)

6.3 on IMDb — 38% on RT

Project Almanac is an underrated time travel movie that probably flew under your radar. Don't let the fact that it seems like a teen drama deter you from checking it out.

A group of high schoolers find something strange in an old home video, which spurs them to investigate—and uncover secrets plans for a time machine. They build it, of course, and that's when the trouble starts.

time travel mystery movies

24. ARQ (2016)

time travel mystery movies

Directed by Tony Elliott

Starring Robbie Amell, Rachael Taylor, Shaun Benson

Action, Sci-Fi, Thriller (1h 28m)

6.3 on IMDb — 43% on RT

A strange energy-providing device causes a couple to be stuck in a time loop while being forced to defend the device against a group intent on stealing it. The setup is strange, the ending is stranger.

This low-budget film is really nothing more than a popcorn flick, but it's a fun ride as long as you don't think too deeply about it. Compared to other thought experiment-type time travel movies, this one's pretty good.

23. Click (2006)

time travel mystery movies

Directed by Frank Coraci

Starring Adam Sandler, Kate Beckinsale, Christopher Walken

Comedy, Drama, Fantasy (1h 47m)

6.4 on IMDb — 34% on RT

Using a magical universal remote, a workaholic finds himself able to skip ahead or rewind back to various points in his life. During those skipped times, his body continues to live on autopilot.

Don't be turned away by the fact that this is an Adam Sandler movie. In one of his best performances ever, Sandler effectively carries this funny-but-heart-wrenching story on his back.

time travel mystery movies

22. Time Lapse (2014)

time travel mystery movies

Directed by Bradley King

Starring Danielle Panabaker, Matt O'Leary, George Finn

Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi (1h 44m)

6.5 on IMDb — 74% on RT

When three friends discover a machine that can take photos 24 hours in the future, things take a dark turn as each photo reveals more than they could've anticipated.

Smart writing makes up for the mediocre performances in Time Lapse . If you go into this indie film without much in the way of expectations, you'll be pleasantly surprised.

time travel mystery movies

21. The Endless (2017)

time travel mystery movies

Directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead

Starring Aaron Moorhead, Justin Benson, Callie Hernandez

Drama, Fantasy, Horror (1h 51m)

6.5 on IMDb — 92% on RT

Sci-fi horror done well tends to be pretty rare, but The Endless is a shining example of when it goes right.

The film centers on two brothers who used to belong to an alleged UFO death cult when they were young. Years later, after they'd escaped, they both have different memories of what the cult was like—so they agree to return for one day to set the record straight.

What they find is that the supposed UFO death cult is nothing like how either of them imagined, and they end up embroiled in all kinds of mysterious happenings, including a time loop.

20. The Adam Project (2022)

time travel mystery movies

Directed by Shawn Levy

Starring Ryan Reynolds, Walker Scobell, Mark Ruffalo

Action, Adventure, Comedy (1h 46m)

6.7 on IMDb — 67% on RT

The Adam Project stars Ryan Reynolds as Adam Reed, a man from the future who goes back in time to save his wife. He's injured and takes refuge in his childhood home, but is accidentally discovered by his younger self. They work together to complete Adam's mission of saving his wife.

It's a simple story with Ryan Reynolds basically playing Ryan Reynolds—which is great, if you're into that—but what sets The Adam Project apart is the deeply moving emotional threads that undergird the characters and weave together into a surprisingly cathartic climax.

time travel mystery movies

19. Primer (2004)

time travel mystery movies

Directed by Shane Carruth

Starring Shane Carruth, David Sullivan, Casey Gooden

Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller (1h 17m)

6.8 on IMDb — 73% on RT

Four entrepreneurs accidentally invent a time travel machine, which ends up ruining their lives when they decide to give it a spin. Primer is the quintessential time travel film and a must-see movie for time travel fans who love poring over the tiniest details.

It's short (only 77-minute runtime) but insanely dense—the kind of movie you have to watch multiple times to really understand what actually happened, and even then you may not fully get it.

time travel mystery movies

18. Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)

time travel mystery movies

Directed by Colin Trevorrow

Starring Aubrey Plaza, Mark Duplass, Jake Johnson

Adventure, Comedy, Drama (1h 26m)

6.9 on IMDb — 91% on RT

Safety Not Guaranteed is a comedy romance film centering on three magazine staffers who go out to interview a strange man who's looking for a partner for his upcoming time travel mission. They think it's all a joke, but the truth slowly shows itself to be something more.

While the actual act of time traveling doesn't play a huge role, Safety Not Guaranteed is a must-watch for anyone who's looking for a heartfelt drama that's well-written and infused with depth by a solid cast.

17. Triangle (2009)

time travel mystery movies

Directed by Christopher Smith

Starring Melissa George, Joshua McIvor, Jack Taylor

Fantasy, Mystery, Sci-Fi (1h 39m)

6.9 on IMDb — 80% on RT

In the wake of a yachting accident, a group of friends are rescued by what appears to be a mysteriously empty cruise ship. As they further explore the ship's interior, they encounter horrors unknown.

Again, well-done science fiction horror films are hard to come by, and Triangle stands out for its premise and execution, particularly in how time travel is revealed and incorporated. There's nothing groundbreaking here, but it's certainly interesting and memorable.

16. The Time Traveler's Wife (2009)

time travel mystery movies

Directed by Robert Schwentke

Starring Eric Bana, Rachel McAdams, Ron Livingston

7.1 on IMDb — 39% on RT

In The Time Traveler's Wife , Henry is a man who has a genetic anomaly that causes him to time travel. The thing is, he can't control when or where he travels to, and thus struggles to keep his marriage alive.

Based on the novel by the same name, The Time Traveler's Wife may not be able to capture the full magic that made the book so great—there's just too much content to fit into one movie—but it's still a stirring romantic drama with several twists and moving moments.

15. Timecrimes (2007)

time travel mystery movies

Directed by Nacho Vigalondo

Starring Karra Elejalde, Candela Fernández, Bárbara Goenaga

Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi (1h 32m)

7.1 on IMDb — 90% on RT

In the Spanish-language Timecrimes , an average man accidentally travels back in time one hour, unleashing a series of disastrous events. That's all you really want to know about this film before diving in.

More to the tune of mystery than action, Timecrimes is a flawless example of a "What actually happened?" narrative that asks you to puzzle things together as events unfold before you. The twists are plentiful here.

14. Palm Springs (2020)

time travel mystery movies

Directed by Max Barbakow

Starring Andy Samberg, Cristin Milioti, J. K. Simmons

Comedy, Fantasy, Mystery (1h 30m)

7.4 on IMDb — 94% on RT

Palm Springs takes place at a wedding in Palm Springs, California. Two guests inadvertently get stuck in a time loop, reliving the same exact wedding day over and over, and try to find a way to escape.

The premise may not seem like anything special, but the performances by Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti elevate this film to new heights. Infused with comedy, drama, and romance, Palm Springs makes full use of its time loop situation to tell an impactful story.

time travel mystery movies

13. Predestination (2014)

time travel mystery movies

Directed by Michael Spierig and Peter Spierig

Starring Ethan Hawke, Sarah Snook, Noah Taylor

Action, Drama, Sci-Fi (1h 37m)

7.4 on IMDb — 84% on RT

A time-traveling agent's final assignment is to track down the one criminal who he's never been able to capture. But the further down the rabbit hole he goes, the more mind-bending the truths become.

Predestination isn't just a time travel film. What sets this film apart from most sci-fi movies is how deftly it handles its deeper themes, how deep it's willing to go with its characters, and how expertly the narrative unfolds. It's truly one of the most complex time travel movies ever made.

12. The Butterfly Effect (2004)

time travel mystery movies

Directed by Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber

Starring Ashton Kutcher, Amy Smart, Melora Walters

Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller (1h 53m)

7.6 on IMDb — 34% on RT

A man discovers he has the ability to change the present by traveling back into the mind of his younger self, but around every corner await unintended consequences.

You've heard of "the butterfly effect" before, and The Butterfly Effect effectively takes that concept and turns it into a dark thriller. Ashton Kutcher stars in this film against type and delivers a surprisingly great performance in this gripping film about regret and control.

time travel mystery movies

11. About Time (2013)

time travel mystery movies

Directed by Richard Curtis

Starring Domhnall Gleeson, Rachel McAdams, Bill Nighy

Comedy, Drama, Fantasy (2h 3m)

7.8 on IMDb — 70% on RT

A man who can travel through time decides to use his power to woo the girl of his dreams, but things aren't as easy as they seem—and the limits of his power cause him to make a tough and important decision.

With Domhnall Gleeson and Rachel McAdams taking the lead, About Time ends up being a romantic comedy that's far better than it has any right to be, complete with a superbly moving ending that's completely earned.

time travel mystery movies

10. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)

time travel mystery movies

Directed by Alfonso Cuarón

Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint

Adventure, Family, Fantasy (2h 22m)

7.9 on IMDb — 90% on RT

It's Harry Potter's third year at Hogwarts and this time Lord Voldemort isn't his main concern. Instead, Sirius Black—the one who was suspected as betraying his parents—has escaped from Azkaban Prison and rumor has it that he's coming to finish Harry off.

Often praised as the best film in the Harry Potter franchise—thanks to impeccable direction by Alfonso Cuaron— The Prisoner of Azkaban isn't just a standout for its time travel subplot but also for its cohesive narrative that combines numerous themes with stellar cinematography.

9. Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

time travel mystery movies

Directed by Doug Liman

Starring Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton

Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi (1h 53m)

7.9 on IMDb — 91% on RT

In the face of an alien invasion, a soldier somehow ends up reliving the same day over and over every time he dies. He must somehow use this to his advantage and defeat the invading aliens while also finding a way to escape the endless loop in which he's trapped.

As far as time loop movies go, Edge of Tomorrow is one of the better executed ones. Not only is the tight story well-paced, but stars Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt put in excellent performances that carry the narrative forward from start to finish.

time travel mystery movies

8. The Man From Earth (2007)

time travel mystery movies

Directed by Richard Schenkman

Starring David Lee Smith, Tony Todd, John Billingsley

Drama, Fantasy, Mystery (1h 27m)

7.8 on IMDb — 100% on RT

During a retirement party, an aging professor reveals that he's been alive longer than his colleagues can imagine.

The Man From Earth is best described as a "play caught on camera," delivering an engaging mystery that's built on the foundation of an interesting thought experiment.

Not many dialogue-only films are this riveting, which is why you should definitely give this one a watch.

time travel mystery movies

7. Arrival (2016)

time travel mystery movies

Directed by Denis Villeneuve

Starring Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker

Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi (1h 56m)

7.9 on IMDb — 94% on RT

When aliens arrive on Earth, a linguist is brought to the frontlines to decipher their language and establish communications.

Easily one of the most cerebral science fiction movies ever made, Arrival takes things to the next level by exploring deep themes and ideas that few other films have dared to touch. You won't ever forget this one.

time travel mystery movies

6. 12 Monkeys (1995)

time travel mystery movies

Directed by Terry Gilliam

Starring Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, Brad Pitt

Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller (2h 9m)

8.0 on IMDb — 88% on RT

In the year 2035, a convict is sent back in time to 1996 with one mission: to investigate the cause of a man-made virus that decimated the world. But his mission is sidetracked when he's sent back to the wrong time period and ends up in a mental hospital.

Featuring one of Bruce Willis's best performances, 12 Monkeys starts off slow but ends with a bang. There's a lot to love about this mind-bending movie if you can get through the slow but necessary setup.

time travel mystery movies

5. Donnie Darko (2001)

time travel mystery movies

Directed by Richard Kelly

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, Mary McDonnell

Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi (1h 53m)

8.0 on IMDb — 87% on RT

A high schooler begins to see visions of a man in a deranged bunny suit who warns him that the world is going to end in a few days—and convinces him to commit all sorts of crimes and unsavory deeds to prevent the oncoming apocalypse.

Donnie Darko is a strange film with time travel elements that aren't as overt as in other time travel films. But if you're itching for a uniquely surreal film experience, it doesn't get much weirder than Donnie Darko .

4. Groundhog Day (1993)

time travel mystery movies

Directed by Harold Ramis

Starring Bill Murray, Andie MacDowell, Chris Elliott

Comedy, Drama, Fantasy (1h 41m)

8.0 on IMDb — 94% on RT

An insufferable weatherman finds himself caught in a time loop, reliving the same mundane day over and over again with seemingly no way out of it—and after thousands of repeats, it starts to take its toll on him.

Groundhog Day is a hilarious comedy that's also surprisingly deep if you're willing to unpack it, acting as a lesson in what really brings about happiness and self-improvement. If you're a fan of Bill Murray and haven't seen this yet, what have you been waiting for?!

time travel mystery movies

3. Your Name (2016)

time travel mystery movies

Directed by Makoto Shinkai

Starring Michael Sinterniklaas, Stephanie Sheh, Kyle Hebert

Animation, Drama, Fantasy (1h 46m)

8.4 on IMDb — 98% on RT

One day, a high school boy in Tokyo and a high school girl in the countryside start swapping bodies, seemingly at random but only when they go to sleep. But then the swapping stops. The boy is compelled to find the girl, but investigating leads to a heartbreaking answer.

Your Name isn't just one of the best animated movies of all time, nor simply one of the best Japanese movies of all time, but one of the best, period. It's incredibly heartfelt with a climax that'll hit you in the gut.

2. Back to the Future (1985)

time travel mystery movies

Directed by Robert Zemeckis

Starring Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson

Adventure, Comedy, Sci-Fi (1h 56m)

8.5 on IMDb — 93% on RT

A teenage boy from 1985 accidentally goes back in time thirty years with his mad scientist friend. Not only does he need to find a way home, but he accidentally puts his own existence in danger and must make sure his future parents end up falling in love.

Back to the Future is a classic time travel movie and you owe it to yourself to make it the next movie you watch if you've never seen it. Look past the 1980s cheesiness and you'll see an engaging story beneath it all.

time travel mystery movies

1. Interstellar (2014)

time travel mystery movies

Directed by Christopher Nolan

Starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain

Adventure, Drama, Sci-Fi (2h 49m)

8.7 on IMDb — 73% on RT

With Earth on the brink of extinction, a team of astronauts must travel through a wormhole to find a new planet for humans to colonize. But journeying through outer space comes with all kinds of complications, and finding a habitable planet isn't going to be so easy.

For all its flaws, Interstellar packs a thrilling story on top of dazzling visuals and one of the most moving soundtracks of any film, period. This is the kind of film that'll have you thinking long after the credits roll, and for many reasons beyond just time travel.

time travel mystery movies

The Cinemaholic

22 Best Time Travel Movies of All Time

Anantha Krishnan of 22 Best Time Travel Movies of All Time

After centuries of rapid advancements in science, time travel still remains a mystery that continues to fascinate people, especially science geeks, world over. But the question remains: what is it about time travel that makes people so curious? Is it because time travel opens up endless possibilities, including giving people a second chance to fix their mistakes? Or is it because time travel could allow people to personally experience a part of history that they so longingly have just either seen in photographs or read in books? Or is it like any other “unknown” that by virtue of being unknown evokes curiosity inside people. Whatever it might be, there is no question that filmmakers have certainly been more than willing to delve into the idea and create some fantastic pieces of work.

I have assembled a list of movies about time travel from the best of filmmakers. Each of these movies have a wildly different take on time travel, but each in their own way manage to intrigue and entertain. With that said, why not directly jump into the list and take a look at the top time travel movies ever made. You can watch several of these best time travel movies on Netflix, Hulu or Amazon Prime.

22. The Time Traveler’s Wife (2009)

time travel mystery movies

Henry DeTamble is a librarian who can travel in time due to a genetic anomaly but cannot control the moment or destiny of these travels. After meeting Clare Abshire in a Chicago library, they fall madly in love and get married. However, this won’t be an easy because of his unexpected travels. ‘The Time Traveler’s Wife’ is a heartbreaking movie that reflects on the meaning of life and love. It is a fantastic adaptation of the book of the same name and has a terrific cast. Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams give incredible performances and light up the screen with their great chemistry.

Read More: Best Inspirational Movies of All Time

21. Timecrimes (2007)

time travel mystery movies

A Spanish -language sci-fi thriller from director Nacho Vigalondo (who later directed ‘Colossal’ in 2016),  ‘ Los Cronocrímenes’ is the story of Hector, a man trying to evade a killer by traveling back in time. ‘Timecrimes’ stands out as a piece that manages to find comfort in convention before mining it to the fullest of its cinematic potential. The assured direction, nuanced sense of humour and compelling visual language sets it apart from countless stories in the exact same mould- and this strong direction saves a story that just keeps extending and extending from collapsing under the weight of its own ambitions.

‘Timecrimes’ is one of the “not made in Hollywood” movies that proves there’s no need for a star cast to get the job done. A strong competitor to Shane Carruth’s ‘Primer’, this Spanish thriller is full of paradoxes and mysteries that you’d never be able to predict where the story will go, right up until the end.  With an 88% rating at review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, ‘Timecrimes’ is highly recommended, and it will surely leave you amazed, despite the low budget on special effects and overall production.

Read More: Best Psychopath Movies of All Time

20. About Time (2013)

time travel mystery movies

‘About Time’ is probably the most complete film on the list. Its well-roundedness touches upon all the core emotions and requirements of a story which makes the film perfect for the top spot. While ‘About Time’ minimizes on the comic part, it certainly amplifies human emotion and relationship. One fine day, Tim Lake, a young, unassuming man, is told by his father of a special ability he possesses, much like all his male ancestors.  With this revelation, he also warns Tim about the repercussions that he could have to face permanently if he isn’t careful. Poignantly acted and beautifully scored, ‘About Time’ represents a special category of films which go on to define genres and are remembered for centuries to come.

Read More: Best Murder Mystery Movies of All Time

19. Sleeper (1973)

time travel mystery movies

‘Sleeper’ is a film that is delightfully silly. One of the two Woody Allen films to find their place on this list, ‘Sleeper’ is among the most relaxing films I’ve ever seen, because it doesn’t ask its audience to do the hard work of understanding the differences and hardships that time travel has bestowed upon the protagonist, mostly because everything is explained to us in typical Allen fashion, with existential, subtly Freudian dialogues that are played for effective humor, thereby not coming off as expositional.

The film carries a playful nonchalance in its attitude, with events going overboard at times, though nothing ever seems too obnoxious. You’ve got to show how the future works somehow, now, shouldn’t you? Woody Allen plays a man who is finally unfrozen from a state of cryogenic encapsulation (really, don’t bother yourself with the big words) after some 200 years, and has to plan an escape in the world of the future when he learns that the scientists who’ve brought him back to life wish to conduct tests on him that he is skeptical about.

Read More: Best Teen Movies of All Time

18. Looper (2012)

time travel mystery movies

‘Looper’ is a story of contract killers working for crime syndicates to kill victims sent through time. A Looper is paid with silver bars strapped on to the victim and the final contract involves the contract killer himself sent through time to be killed by his younger self and paid in gold bars, thus ending his contract. Bruce Willis and Joseph Levitt Gordon are well cast and shine throughout the movie. Emily Blunt sounds convincing in her southern accent and delivers with what she’s given. Overall, Looper is a thought-proving, dark and entertaining, and is quite different from the other time travel movies out there.

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17. Donnie Darko (2001)

time travel mystery movies

‘Donnie Darko’ , in its own little way, is a masterpiece from the aboriginal writer-director Richard Kelly, which flopped at the Box Office so stupendously, it made people stretch out on the country road, with hoardings “Middlesex ahead.” Released only a few weeks post 9/11, the conspicuously cerebral sci-fi warded off it’s audience with a passenger jet-disaster scene in the movie, but made headlines with critics who symbolized the rise of sci-fi and religion through ‘Donne Darko’ . Since then, it has garnered a huge cult following . The movie is full of twists and turns, where time travel is not just a mere concept but a tool used by Kelly to construct a elaborate puzzle that only he knows how to solve. Love it or hate it, I can guarantee that you are not going to forget ‘Donnie Darko’ once you have seen it.

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16. Midnight in Paris (2011)

time travel mystery movies

The film knits together time travel and romance as closely as it can. We see two characters – Gil ( Owen Wilson ) and Inez (Rachel McAdams) in a relationship and a few weeks away from marriage, but they can hardly understand that they are not slightly like each other, Gil being more romantic, who is satisfied by subtle feelings and long night walks, and Inez more materialistic, being attracted to rich men and extravagant things. After then, what happens is way beyond what we could have imagined. Gil travels back in time to the era where Fitzgerald and Hemingway lived and gets addicted to it, whereas Inez goes to parties and makes merry with other men. Gil and Inez slowly get separated and they call off their relationship. And we are left to think that perhaps, this has been good for both of them. Allen writes, directs, films and makes a movie, which has nothing to be disliked in it.

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15. La Jetee (1962)

time travel mystery movies

I’d been fighting with myself regarding the inclusion of this film since it is a 28 minute short, but considering that literally everyone who has ever talked about it following its release seems to regard it with as much respect and priority as a feature-length film, I’ll be doing the same here (that is not to disregard the truth in the public opinion that this film isn’t just some ordinary short).

‘La Jetee’ is a breathtaking original film that takes place in the aftermath of a hypothetical third World War, where Paris is left in ruins, as the Germans succeed. Scientists of the time conduct an experiment with time travel, using the protagonist of the film as their guinea pig (because of the strong connection he claims to have with a vivid memory from his childhood), and he ends up falling in love with a woman after he is transported to the past. It’s incredible to even think that a film like this was possible in the year that it came out. It was ahead of its time then, and I’m sure it would be considered the same several years later were it to come out now. I mean, which other film do you know of that presents a narrative using only photographs and narration?

Read More: Best Thriller Movies of All Time

14. Predestination (2014)

time travel mystery movies

‘Predestination’ is a narrative that boldly emphasizes on the pun; time travel never gets old. Born of German, the young directors, Spierig brothers constructed a timeless in the form of Predestination which garnered ridicules, but not before being called zeitgeists. The extent to which the Germans were willing to risk their careers bore so high to them that they created an almost surreptitiously magnificent examinee. Adapted from the 1959 short novel by Robert Heinlein, the film bares impeding resemblance to Spielberg ’s ‘Minority Report’, based on a 1956 Philip Dick story. It’s venerably interesting to note how both movies drew timeline from the 1960’s. One of the underrated but top time travel movies.

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13. Planet of the Apes (1968)

time travel mystery movies

If it weren’t for ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ , this film would easily have been the greatest sci-fi release of 1968. It is set in the year 2500, when a scientist and his team travel faster than the speed of light to a sister planet to Earth, where almost everything about the place feels identical to our world, save for the creatures who have become the dominating race. The apes reign supreme here, and their go-abouts seem both strange as well as sinister to the alien figures who are our protagonists.

Rather than delving into the emotional side of things (though it doesn’t exactly lack too much of the same), ‘Planet of the Apes’ caters to the geeks, and is often considered to be one of the most fascinating as well as thought-provoking films ever made. What’s additionally surprising (to me, at least) is the fact that they were able to come up with as fresh a story as this for a sci-fi film at the time, part of the credit going to Pierre Boule. The film has developed a massive cult following after its release, and is still appreciated in film circles today.

Read More: Best Sport Movies of All Time

12. Source Code (2011)

time travel mystery movies

From Duncan Jones, who previously directed ‘Moon’, ‘Source Code’ is such a science fiction movie which leaves us more than perplexed at the end. Jake Gyllenhaal ‘s Colter Stevens is a pilot and a part of secret program of the government, by which he is given to relive the last few minutes in the life of another man, who died in a train explosion. Stevens is needed to learn the identity of the bomber, but when he takes up the task, he sees many things are at stake, the least available being time. ‘Source Code’ gives a new twist to the time travel movies we are used to seeing, and does so brilliantly.

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11. Interstellar (2014)

time travel mystery movies

In the era of Nolan worship and appreciation, I feel as though I have little to add to the conversation with my write-up of what has since become one of the genius filmmaker’s most renowned films (then again, literally everything he’s ever made falls under that category). ‘Interstellar’ was the first Christopher Nolan film that I saw in theatres, and I’m glad I did, because if anything, the 2014 film is a visual masterwork. It isn’t just the homages made to sci-fi films of the past, it is also the uniqueness of the concept as well as the distinctive yet calculated approach to the time-traveling concept executed by this film that makes it an exceptional experience. I have my problems with the picture, mostly to do with the script and the addition of a surprise character halfway, but it redeems itself with a glorious third act, that feels like it is taken from the most scientific of dreams.

Read More: Best World War II Movies of All Time

10. The Butterfly Effect (2004)

time travel mystery movies

Chaos theory is such a mind-boggling theory when it comes to Mathematics, which tells us that a small event at some place could lead to influential events far away. And when Eric Bress and Mackye Gruber made this theory into a film, obviously that was going to be something we hadn’t seen before. We see Evan ( Ashton Kutcher ), a teenager, who frequently blacks out due to unbearable headaches and is transferred to the past, where he can make alterations to his life and of others too. But when he finds out that small changes in the past can drastically change the present, Evan finds himself in macabre parallel realities. It is not a perfect film, but it is a damn interesting one.

Read More: Movies Like Primer

9. Pleasantville (1998)

time travel mystery movies

Topics like societal beliefs and the inability to adapt to changes are the major concerns of ‘Pleasantville’, and the film goes a masterfully low-brow path to connect with its audience. To me, the experience of watching this film was like going blind, and then being able to see again, and that’s mainly because of how exceptionally the picture uses colors to communicate not just the shift in time, but the shift in ideologies, and the long walk towards societal progress.

There’s a particular scene with a rose that I’ve re-watched over and over again, simply because I couldn’t comprehend at the time how effective a moment that was! ‘Pleasantville’ tells a mostly humorous tale of two siblings from the present day who, as a result of a silly conflict, get transported into a TV show from the ’50s, becoming two of its primary leads. The rest of the picture is about how they attempt to blend into the atmosphere of an era they were previously never part of, while also figuring out how to get things to go back to normal. It is one of my favorite films of all time.

Read More: Best Philosophical Movies of All Time

8. The Time Machine (1960)

time travel mystery movies

What do you see happening in the future? Are there flying cars all around? Do people have easier lives, as they are given the option of moving less for more comfort? What if the world didn’t end up being that way? What if what awaits us humans in another 20 years time is a dark, twisted, dystopian planet of nothingness and misfortune? Such a world is what is discovered by George, the protagonist of this cinematic adaptation of an HG Wells novel, completely shattering what he’d envisioned for the future.

This film is known and respected today for its groundbreaking special effects, which I will not take anything away from for the purposes of this write-up, though I’ll keep it short by saying that the Oscar it won for the same was very well-deserved, as the effects still have the power to stun even today. The way the plot has been handled is what I love most, because added to the brilliant visuals to the film is this amiable filmmaking style, presenting a horrific image in a lighter tone than is to be expected from films of this kind, making ‘The Time Machine’ one of the most re-watchable mentions of this list.

Read More: Best Cult Movies of All Time

7. Twelve Monkeys (1995)

time travel mystery movies

Featured two superstars of Hollywood,  Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt , ’12 Monkeys’ centers around James Cole (Willis) in the 2030s, who is a prisoner, and is recruited for a mission and is sent back to the 1990s to gather information about a fatal plague, which has wiped a large part of population. The thing, which is to be noticed throughout, is the relation of him with the manic Jeffrey (Pitt) and subtle and desperate romance with Dr. Katherine Railly. Directed by Terry Gilliam and co-written by David Peoples, who previously authored Blade Runner, ’12 Monkeys’ explores the subjective nature of memories and their effect upon perceptions of reality through the concept of time-travel.

Read More: Best Neo-Noir Movies of All Time

6. Peggy Sue Got Married (1986)

time travel mystery movies

I’ve become something of an ambassador for ‘Peggy Sue Got Married’ in my circles ever since I first watched the Francis Ford Coppola classic following a recommendation from a friend. It’s never ranked among the director’s best in popular film lists, though I feel it very well deserves such recognition. Time travel is used as a fuel for Peggy Sue’s understanding of the girl she once was, after she goes back in time, into her high-school body, but with her 40-something year old brain, given the chance to relive it all: the romances, the heartbreaks, the lifestyle, the entertainment, and best of all, the ignorance. I haven’t been this moved by many pictures, and the fact that I’ve seen it over ten times already should act as some kind of guarantee from me to you, I think. The score by John Barry is simply otherworldly.

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5. Groundhog Day (1993)

time travel mystery movies

One of the best comedy movies of the last 25 years, this film can also not be denied as a science fiction classic, where the protagonist, Phil, a weatherman, finds himself in a continuous time loop and caught in a blizzard in a town where he went to report about the weather. The film is fascinatingly comical and romantic and heartwarming — all at the same time. An amazing performance from Bill Murray and wonderful direction by Harold Ramis make this film genuine, precise and a jewel in modern cinematic history.

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4. Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)

time travel mystery movies

Also considered to be an action classic (featured in our Best Action Movies of All Time ), ‘Terminator 2’ not only provides engaging action sequences, but a surplus plot which involves labyrinthine uses of time-travel. T:2 continues the storyline of ‘Terminator’ and tells us about John Connor, who is being saved by a revamped T-800 robot from a shape-shifting T-1000 robot, both of whom have come from the future, one to save and one to kill John Connor, because he is the key to the victory of human race over a robot uprising. ‘Judgement 2’ may be remembered more for its action sequences, but let’s not deny the fact that it is an equally good time-travel film.

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3. The Terminator (1984)

time travel mystery movies

My first viewing of ‘The Terminator’ is one I’ll never forget, because up until then, no other film had frightened me out of my wits like it had, with Arnold Schwarzenegger ‘s menacing facial expressions haunting me for quite some time following the film’s release. It isn’t difficult to notice the film’s major connections to the fictional concept of time travel, though there’s so much going on here that people rarely bring it up in conversations about the picture these days, and this plot point lays in the background as a set-up for all the important events that take place in the picture to actually happen.

The film manages to meld the present with the past, as two opposing entities travel back in time, one of them to make sure certain events do not take place in their version of the future, and the other in attempts to stop the former from committing such an act. That’s about all I can say about ‘The Terminator’ without spoiling it, so I’ll leave the rest to you to check out. It’s one of my favorite James Cameron film ever, which is really saying something, because the genius director’s filmography is mostly filled with stunning works.

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2. Back to the Future (1985)

time travel mystery movies

A film doesn’t get preserved in the AFI for no reason. Claimed to be one of the most profitable franchises of cinematic history, it all started with Marty McFly, when he is suddenly delivered to the past after an experiment by his scientist friend Doc Brown goes awry. The film doesn’t take the the normal course of science fictions and introduces a feel-good plot, when McFly strives for his parents to fall in love when they were younger, to make sure he is born. But after that, he also has to leave the past and return to the present to help out his friend Doc Brown. With Michael Fox and Christopher Lloyd in lead roles and directed by Robert Zemeckis, this film is worthy of the cult status it has gained over the years.

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1. Primer (2004)

time travel mystery movies

Directed by Shane Carruth, who formerly was a mathematician turned software engineer, ‘Primer’ is the most authentic time-travel movie ever made. Period. There have been research papers   written on the film and many experts claim that the science shown in the film can theoretically be used as the basis of time-travel.  How many time-travel films can claim to be actually based on provable science?  The film revolves around two friends, who accidentally invent a time machine, and as the film progresses, we, along with them, see how time traveling can irreparably mess up things.

‘Primer’ is not for the faint-hearted. it requires multiple viewing to fully understand the film. Even then, you might be left with few questions. And yet, over years, not only has it developed a cult following, but science-geeks worship the film. A film made on a meagre budget of $7000 manages to win Sundance Film Festival’s award for Best Film. That in itself speaks a lot about ‘Primer’ and its director, Carruth, who also performed the duties of actor, writer, cinematographer, editor, music composer, producer and distributor for the film. [Fun fact: He also helped Rian Johnson with time-travel in ‘Looper’ ].

Read More: Best Science Fiction Movies

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The 25 Greatest Time-Travel Movies Ever Made

time travel mystery movies

It must say something, surely, about humans, how often time-travel movies are about returning to the past rather than jumping to the future. As Mark Duplass’s forlorn character says in Safety Not Guaranteed , “The mission has to do with regret.” With all the potential to explore the unknown world of the future, so often when our minds conspire to bend the rules of time it’s instead to rehash the old. It’s compelling to watch a character in a movie do what we cannot — right past wrongs or uncover the reason for or meaning behind the events in their lives, whether they be emotionally catastrophic or merely geopolitically motivated.

So absent is the future from the canon, in fact, that when it is involved, typically future dwellers are leaving their own time to come back to the present. Back to the Future Part II aside, it seems as if there’s something about going forward in time that just doesn’t track for humans. (Of course, you could argue that this is because the present-day concept of bidirectional time travel would infinitely multiply or change beyond recognition any future that may occur, but that’s a knot for another article.)

In any case, the time-travel stories deemed worthy of Hollywood budgets aren’t always straightforward in their mechanics. Some films on this list barely qualify as time-travel movies at all; others could hardly qualify as anything else. There are movies about trips through time but also ones about the bending and fracturing and muddying thereof; then there are those about, as Andy Samberg aptly puts it in Palm Springs , “one of those infinite time-loop situations you might have heard about.” There’s even a movie in which we get only 13 seconds’ worth of time travel, when it functions more like a joke whose punch line hits at the film’s climax.

What these films all do have in common is a fascination with changing the way time works. That being said, the list leaves out movies in larger, more extended franchises in which time meddling is a one-off dalliance thrown into a sequel with little by way of foreshadowing: think Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban , Avengers: Endgame , and Men in Black III . (It also leaves off perhaps the Ur-time-travel movie, Primer , and the quite good Midnight in Paris because their directors don’t deserve the column inches.) We’re looking at self-contained stories using time mechanics from the start, with preference given to those that involve themselves more intently with the ins and outs of time travel; that ask questions about time, aging, memory and so forth; and that try to succeed at it in new and interesting ways. So let’s get to it.

25. Galaxy Quest (1999)

Does Galaxy Quest really count as a time-travel movie? Some compelling reasons argue that it doesn’t: Time travel isn’t a major factor in the plot, and the time traveling that does occur is, yes, only a 13-second jump. But its use of time travel is meaningful insofar as the movie itself is a loving spoof of Star Trek , which makes use of time travel in three films ( one of which made this list ), not to mention dozens of episodes across its various TV iterations. Tacking on time travel as a deus ex machina for the actors in a Star Trek– like show pressed into service as an actual space crew by an endangered alien race is the exact right amount of ribbing in a movie that’s as on point as it is hilarious.

Galaxy Quest is available to rent on Amazon .

24. Happy Death Day (2017)

Pick away at the surface of a time-loop movie and you find a horror movie. Most of the entries on this list are covered in enough feel-good spin to land as comedies, but Happy Death Day stares the horror of the time-loop phenomenon right in the face. (It’s also quite funny.) Reliving the same day over and over is an unimaginably potent form of psychological torture, and adding murder to the equation does little to dull that edge. The film follows a college-age protagonist struggling to escape from a masked slasher hell-bent on killing her again and again while she tries to solve the mystery of how she got stuck in a time loop.

Happy Death Day is available to rent on Amazon .

23. Back to the Future Part II (1989)

Seriously, this may be the only good movie in which the film’s whole focus is using a time machine to travel into the future. The fact that it’s a sequel is telling — the characters already traveled into the past in the first movie , and the filmmakers decided to save “traveling even further into the past“ for the third film in the trilogy. Still, Back to the Future Part II is a fun time that makes great use of sight gags and references, recasting scenes from the first film in the distant future year of 2015 with all its hoverboards and self-lacing Nikes.

Back to the Future Part II is available to rent on Amazon .

22. See You Yesterday (2019)

It’s a dirty little secret of time-travel movies that they tend to be, well, pretty white. Tenet ’s Protagonist aside, if Hollywood’s sending someone through time, they’re almost certainly not a Black person, and for obvious reasons: Most of post-contact North American history is deeply unfriendly to people of color, and the problems a person running around out of time and place is going to encounter are deeply compounded if they’ll likely be the target of racist abuse or violence — which makes See You Yesterday all the more compelling. Produced by Spike Lee and featuring one of filmdom’s most famous time travelers in a cameo role, it follows a Black teenage science prodigy who uses a time machine to try to save her brother from being killed by a police officer.

See You Yesterday is streaming on Netflix .

21. Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)

No offense to the Back to the Future franchise, but time travel never looks more fun on film than it does in the first Bill & Ted movie. It’s a concept that feels distinctly of a different era, so pure is its zaniness, that it’s hard to imagine anyone concocting it today. The titular duo, Californian high-school students in the ’80s, travel through the past looking for historical figures in order to ace a history project, then bring them all back to the present. High jinks ensue! We get Genghis Khan in a sporting-goods store and Mozart on an electric keyboard. What more could you want?

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure is streaming on HBO Max .

20. Source Code (2011)

Time-travel-film aficionados know this won’t be Jake Gyllenhaal’s only stop on this list, but no matter. Source Code finds him repeating the same eight minutes over and over as he struggles to find the culprit in a train bombing — with each replay ending in his own death by explosion. For some reason, a romantic subplot is shoehorned into this, along with a bunch of frankly unnecessary technical mumbo-jumbo, but the core idea is a compelling mix of the time-loop movie and the train whodunit that Gyllenhaal is a perfect fit for.

Source Code is available to rent on Amazon .

19. 12 Monkeys (1995)

Some sort of law of nature dictates that every genuinely good idea and/or piece of true art has to at some point be turned into a Hollywood movie. Thank God La Jetée was adapted into something that can stand on its own feet artistically. 12 Monkeys may not retain its source material’s black-and-white look or stripped-down, static-image presentation, but it is a rollicking good time nonetheless. That’s in no small part due to director Terry Gilliam getting the best out of Bruce Willis and a young Brad Pitt, and recasting World War III as a planet-decimating virus. Which, like at least one other movie on this list , “speaks to the present moment,” or whatever.

12 Monkeys is available to rent on Amazon .

18. Run Lola Run (1998)

Unlike almost all of the other films on this list, the terms time travel and time machine don’t show up anywhere in Run Lola Run . Rather, it’s a sort of de facto time-loop scenario in which the protagonist tries repeatedly to pay a ransom to save her boyfriend’s life. In fact, if not for a few key details, it could easily be characterized (and often has been) as an alternate-endings movie rather than a time-travel film. But the fact that Lola seems to be learning from her past attempts with each successive one suggests that she is, indeed, using knowledge gained from previous loops to bring a satisfactory end to this situation.

Run Lola Run is available to rent on Amazon .

17. Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

One of the most striking things about Groundhog Day is the mutability and replicability of its core conceit. Perhaps the best case in point is Edge of Tomorrow , sometimes known as Live. Die. Repeat. after its original tagline. It’s the kind of physically grueling movie only an actor as genuinely unhinged as Tom Cruise could pull off. A noncombatant thrust into a war against invading aliens, Cruise’s character finds himself reliving day one of combat over and over, slowly but surely refining his techniques in order to survive the extraterrestrial onslaught. Like the central twosome in the much less violent Palm Springs , he winds up with a partner in (war) crime, teaming up with the similarly time-trapped Emily Blunt, and the explanation for the replay glitch here is actually pretty satisfying.

Edge of Tomorrow is streaming on Fubo TV .

16. Star Trek (2009)

If you could create some sort of an advanced stat to measure controversy generated per unit of interesting filmmaking decisions, J.J. Abrams would have to be near the top in terms of his ability to rig up movie drama from almost nothing. This is a guy whose filmography is like Godzilla rip-off, Spielberg homage, safe reboot of cherished IP, repeat. Star Trek may be his best film, though, a sure-footed reinvention of a dorky sci-fi franchise that made it, well, cool. Somehow, the beauty of Spock and Kirk’s bromance being woven through chance encounters with future selves kind of … works?

Star Trek is available to rent on Amazon .

15. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006)

There’s a relative dearth of time travel in animated film, which perhaps is a function simply of the fact that it’s less impressive to stage in a world that’s already unreal. If you can Looney Tunes your way through physics, what’s so special about grabbing the flow of time and tying it into a bow? Still, the original Girl Who Leapt Through Time deserves mention here. It’s a beautiful story that interlaces the complexity of time leaping with the intensity of teenage emotion and the thorny process of growing up where the opportunity to redo things leads, over time, to growth — a less shitty Groundhog Day , in a way.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is available to rent on Amazon .

14. Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)

She may not be the most famous, decorated, or emulated actress of her generation, but Aubrey Plaza is someone whose personality spoke to the irony-soaked 2010s in a way that simply could not be denied. Her character on Parks and Recreation , April Ludgate, was, by all accounts, created specifically to channel Plaza’s real-life personality to the screen, and she plays essentially the same character in Safety Not Guaranteed . Here, she’s a sarcastic intern at a magazine working on a story about a would-be time traveler and using her feminine wiles to slowly gain his trust. The chemistry between Plaza and Mark Duplass is probably the film’s high point; the subplot about the FBI feels like it was clipped out of a bad X-Files episode.

Safety Not Guaranteed is streaming on Tubi .

13. La Jetée (1962)

At only a 28-minute run time, La Jetée is arguably too short to merit inclusion on this list. However, what it lacks in content (and in, well, moving images; it’s almost exclusively a collection of static black-and-white shots set to voice-over), it more than makes up for in inventiveness and influence, and it would be a travesty to leave it out in favor of more recent by-the-book fare. Tracing the tale of a man held prisoner in post-WWIII Paris being used in time-travel experiments as his captors seek to remedy the postapocalyptic state of the world, he’s sent into both the future and the past and ends up unraveling a lifelong personal mystery while he’s at it.

La Jetée is streaming on the Criterion Channel .

12. Planet of the Apes (1968)

Unlike the worse but more straightforwardly time-traveling Tim Burton remake, the relationship between the original Planet of the Apes and time travel is inexact — technically, the astronaut crew that lands on the titular planet does travel forward 2,000 years, but it’s not done via a time machine. The travel isn’t instantaneous: It literally does take them 2,000 years to get there; they’re just unconscious and on life support. Still, the way the film’s ending handles the iconic reveal is exactly in line with the best of the time-travel canon, the telescoping, mise en abyme feeling of the world shifting in front of your very eyes without your moving an inch.

Planet of the Apes is available to rent on Amazon .

11. Groundhog Day (1993)

The famous Bill Murray vehicle essentially invented the infinite-time-loop genre (and it’s hardly a movie that succeeds on the strength of its concept alone), but the idea at its core is so steeped in the casual misogyny of late-’80s and early-’90s cinema that it’s hard to watch today without cringing. Murray’s character employing what amounts to PUA-style techniques over and over and over in a desperate bid to fuck his hapless co-worker just doesn’t hit the way it did back then. If the story arc didn’t present a guy detoxifying himself of the worst aspects of masculinity in order to be worthy of a woman’s love as the primary way for a 20th-century white man to achieve full personhood, this would be much higher on the list.

Groundhog Day is streaming on Starz .

10. Predestination (2014)

This is probably the most complicated film on the list. Following a “temporal agent” (played by Ethan Hawke) who’s trying to prevent a bombing in 1970s New York, it’s based on a Robert A. Heinlein short story and features Shiv Roy herself, Sarah Snook, in a star-making turn as someone with a complicated backstory and a secret. Like the best sci-fi, the film’s premise raises all kinds of fascinating questions about the titular concept and throws in some interesting musings on sex, gender, and the self in the process.

Predestination is streaming on Tubi .

9. Looper (2012)

Wes Anderson gets a lot of flak for his overwrought twee visuals, but Rian Johnson has a knack for making movies that feel and function like dioramas even if they don’t look it. Narratively speaking, everything here is constructed just so — and there’s a certain beauty in that — but who ever had a profound experience of art by looking at a diorama? Looper was probably Johnson’s least precious pre– Star Wars film, which is nice because the temptation to drastically overmaneuver the mechanics of a time-travel story can lead to disaster. The tech used to Bruce Willis–ify Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s face is distracting, and the third act’s retreat from the postapocalyptic city of the future to the postapocalyptic corn farm of the future is a brave choice that the film struggles to land. Still, Johnson’s vision of a future in which organized crime runs time travel is compelling and well worth a watch.

Looper is streaming on Netflix .

8. Donnie Darko (2001)

Donnie Darko is a bit of a genre mash-up. Part high-school movie, part sci-fi flick, part bleak meditation on the soullessness of late-’80s America, it’s nevertheless a weirdly successful piece of filmmaking that makes fantastic use of a young Jake Gyllenhaal, a great supporting cast (Maggie Gyllenhaal, Drew Barrymore, Jena Malone, and Patrick Swayze among others), and an absolutely iconic haunting cover of Tears for Fears’ “Mad World.” Watching high schoolers navigate parallel universes, wormholes, and time travel is a dicey proposition, but director Richard Kelly makes it work, somehow.

Donnie Darko is streaming on HBO Max .

7. Back to the Future (1984)

While it’s clearly superior to the sequel (and leagues ahead of the final film in the trilogy), the original Back to the Future is a bit of a mess (John Mulaney was right , to be honest). Its racial and gender politics are cringey, and the incest subplot is weird (“It’s your cousin Marvin. Marvin Pornhub . You know that new plot element you’ve been looking for?”), but there’s a clear interest in time travel beyond its shimmering surface: the very real addressing of the “grandfather problem” in time travel via the slow disappearance of Marty from his family photo, the accidental invention of rock music, and a genuine curiosity about the nuts-and-bolts mechanics of time machines. Ahh, what the hell. It’s a romp.

Back to the Future is available to rent on Amazon .

6. Palm Springs (2020)

No offense to Gen-Xers and boomers, but the best time-loop movie of all time is Palm Springs . The film isn’t without its missteps, but it’s much more curious about life than Groundhog Day was through the eyes of Murray’s misanthrope. Cristin Milioti and Andy Samberg‘s characters, stuck in the loop together, are a perfect comedic match, and their shared humanity makes for a beautiful arc. The film raises questions about what’s worth doing in life when nothing lasts and how to stay sane when every day is the same. Of course, as a sort of polar opposite of Tenet , it benefited from coming out during the pandemic by speaking, as it does, to the experience of lockdown.

Palm Springs is streaming on Hulu .

5. Tenet (2020)

Interstellar wasn’t enough for Chris Nolan, apparently. Tenet ’s legacy may end up being little more than that of the COVID action movie no one saw — a bloated thriller that Nolan fought to get into theaters and bar from home viewing reportedly to swell the size of his own pockets. It really did suffer from bad timing, though, because this is genuinely a quintessential big-screen popcorn movie whose absurdity is all the more palatable when it’s given the audiovisual bombast it deserves. Ambitious in scope as it traces a war on the past by the future (yes, you read that right), Tenet is as enamored of action tropes as it is in bucking them, and its investment in rendering visible the brain-bendingly knotty mechanics of moving through time is laudable, even when the movie itself remains opaque — as impenetrable as the future, as hazy as the past.

Tenet is streaming on HBO Max .

4. The Terminator (1984)

A partner to Blade Runner in the mid-’80s invention of sci-fi noir, The Terminator is a stunning film in many ways, despite the third act’s now-iffy visual effects. While it’s not James Cameron’s debut, and it would go on to be bested by its sequel , it functions as an incredible showcase for an emerging young director who would exclusively make big stories for the rest of his career. Arnold Schwarzenegger is perfectly cast as the relentless, unemotional killer cyborg sent back from the future to terminate the mother of the eventual resistance leader, and the film’s romantic subplot has just the perfect amount of time-travel-induced cheesiness for it to work.

The Terminator is streaming on Amazon Prime Video .

3. Interstellar (2014)

It’s not inaccurate to say Christopher Nolan is a director who’s more interested in scale and scope than in expressing the minutiae of the human experience in its purest form. But in Interstellar, a Nolan movie in its titular ambitions, there’s a core element of time travel wrought not as sci-fi fireworks but as a paean to the sheer force and will of the power of love. It both does and doesn’t work, depending on your capacity for cheese in space, but even besides that, Nolan’s use of time as story arc — the way Miller’s planet functions, in particular — is conceptually masterful in the best kind of time-travel-movie way.

Interstellar is streaming on Paramount+ .

2. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Whereas the franchise’s first movie spends more time on the question of time travel, in the second it takes a bit of a back seat to the action itself. It’s hard to fault director James Cameron for this decision; T2 remains one of the best action movies of the ’90s and — along with Jurassic Park and The Matrix — one of the decade’s best when for special effects. The groundbreaking T-1000 would honestly be enough to get this movie on the list; a tween John Connor grappling with questions of predestination and the fact that he is vicariously responsible for his own conception feel almost like icing on the time-travel cake. Much as in 12 Monkeys , time travel here is mistaken for delusion, as valiant Sarah Connor, in a Cassandra-esque nightmare, has to battle against the future only she knows is coming. Of course, Cassandra never had access to any firepower stored in underground desert arsenals.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day is streaming on Netflix .

1. Arrival (2016)

It’s fair to wonder whether Arrival really is, in fact, a time-travel movie. The Ted Chiang short story it’s based on isn’t about time travel per se; rather, it’s an exploration of alternate forms of temporal understanding. The linguist protagonist, played by Amy Adams, doesn’t travel through time so much as come to experience it differently. Still, the plot ends up hinging on foreknowledge that she is granted not via visions but by actually experiencing her future simultaneously with her present and past. For our purposes, though, that’s time fuckery enough to merit inclusion, and boy howdy does the film deliver in overall quality. Partly, that’s simply a question of the source material. Chiang is arguably the most talented (and possibly the most decorated) American sci-fi writer of his generation. But the source story is not especially Hollywood friendly, and director Denis Villeneuve has adopted it lovingly, borrowing a plot device from another of Chiang’s stories, the more straightforwardly time-travel-based “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,” in order to add some third-act blockbuster flavor. The result is a beautiful meditation on love, choice, and courage that packs art-film ethos into a genuine sci-fi blockbuster.

Arrival is streaming on Hulu and Paramount+ .

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The 15 Best Time Travel Movies of All...Time

Terminators, teens, and every time-hopper in-between..

Matt Fowler Avatar

Science fiction offers up so many realms to explore. So many ideas. And one of the most probing and prevalent themes, usually always rich with creativity and concern, is time travel. It's a topic we can only theorize about but it's one that has ushered in some of the best sci-fi movies of all time. Ones that expand the boundaries of imagination and, often, chase us down some very cool rabbit holes.

Whether it's the story of a killer cyborg sent back in time to wipe out the future leader of a rebellion, the tale of some poor soul forced to relive the same day over and over in a time loop, or the fable of an investigator playing with time in order to solve a mystery, this particular sci-fi terrain is always fruitful. Here are the top 15 time travel and time loop movies of all time!

The Top 15 Time Travel Movies of All...Time

Whether it's the story of a killer cyborg sent back in time to wipe out the future leader of a rebellion, the tale of some poor soul forced to relive the same day over and over in a time loop, or the fable of an investigator playing with time in order to solve a mystery, this particular sci-fi terrain is always fruitful. Here are the top 15 time travel films ever!

15. Palm Springs (2020)

time travel mystery movies

We kick things off with a joyous, playful "time loop" flick from 2020 starring Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti. Palm Springs features the headlining duo as strangers who attend a wedding out in the California desert and get stuck in a day they can't escape. It's a funky and fresh spin on the format featuring two characters who run the gamut of emotions and experiences involved with being able to live forever, but never being able to move forward in time. J. K. Simmons co-stars.

Check out IGN's review of Palm Springs .

14. Predestination (2014)

time travel mystery movies

Ethan Hawke joins Succession’s Sarah Snook and Preacher's Noah Taylor in this mind-bending thriller movie from The Spierig Brothers (Daybreakers, Jigsaw. It's about a temporal agent (Hawke) who embarks on a final time-traveling assignment to prevent an elusive criminal from launching an attack that kills thousands of people. Predestination is a twisty, turny timecop treat that keeps you guessing until the very end.

Check out IGN's review of Predestination .

13. Looper (2012)

time travel mystery movies

Rian Johnson's Looper stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis as the same character from different times. As the young Joe, Gordon-Levitt is a mob assassin who kills victims that get sent back in time for him to dispose of while Willis' Joe is old Joe, who, fulfilling a "Looper" contract, is supposed to be sent back and killed by his younger self. But old Joe, upon his arrival in the past, has other things in mind - namely stopping the future from being destroyed by an entity known only as The Rainmaker. Looper is a thrilling, fascinating ride. Emily Blunt, Jeff Daniels, and Paul Dano also star.

Check out IGN's review of Looper .

12. Happy Death Day (2017)

time travel mystery movies

Happy Death Day takes the "time loop" concept and wickedly infuses into slasher horror movie as Jessica Rothe's Tree finds herself being killed over and over again by the same masked maniac. Once realizing she only has a few "deaths" left in her, she takes matters into her own hands and tries to figure out who's behind the mask. Happy Death Day is bleak and hilarious...and also happens to have a sequel, Happy Death Day 2U , that plunges wildly into sci-fi!

Check out IGN's review of Happy Death Day .

11. The Time Machine (1960)

time travel mystery movies

The classic 1960 film adaptation of H. G. Wells' landmark 1865 novella tells the time-honored tale of a Victorian-era inventor, here actually named H. George Wells (and played by Rod Taylor), who uses a machine of his own design to travel to the far-off future, discovering that humanity is now become two new species - the enlightened Eloi and the monstrous, underground-dwelling Morlocks. The Time Machine is a dazzling, family-friendly slice of pioneering imagination.

10. Source Code (2011)

time travel mystery movies

Sleeper hit Source Code, from Moon's Duncan Jones, unspools a unique spin on "time loop," following a U.S. Army Captain, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, who's sent, over and over, into the digital recreation of a real-life train explosion, his mission being to find out who the terrorist culprit is. It's a clever, devious mystery that also stars Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, and Jeffrey Wright.

Check out IGN's review of Source Code .

9. Time After Time (1979)

time travel mystery movies

Time After Time 's bonkers hook -- that being Malcolm McDowell's H.G. Wells using his time machine to track a fleeing Jack the Ripper (the late David Warner) to 1979 San Fransisco -- actually makes for an entertaining, oft emotional film. This playfulness with both sci-fi and real history forms a fun, irresistible yarn that has to be seen to be believed. Wrath of Khan's Nicholas Meyer directs while Mary Steenburgen co-stars.

8. The Terminator (1984)

time travel mystery movies

This entry is a bit of a cheat since we're also lumping T2: Judgment Day into the mix. Hey, same continuing story, same director! That being said, James Cameron's gritty, great sci-fi bloodbath, The Terminator largely popularized the idea of going back in time and killing someone to change the present (along with larger, dystopian concepts of a world-ending A.I. uprising). Arnold Schwarzenegger's T-800 and Michael Biehn's frazzled future freedom fighter use our present era (okay, 1984) like a battleground in this sci-fi firestorm.

Check out our guide on how to watch the Terminator movies in order .

7. About Time (2013)

time travel mystery movies

Domhnall Gleeson and Rachel McAdams star in this delightful time-tinkering rom-com from Love, Actually's Richard Curtis, as Gleeson plays a young man with the ability to time travel who tries to change his past over and over in order to improve his life, and also win the girl of his dreams. Bill Nighy co-stars in this beautifully sincere film featuring phenomenal chemistry and an intriguing take on hereditary time-hopping abilities that make About Time worth watching.

6. Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

time travel mystery movies

The "time loop" concept went big with alien apocalypse flick Edge of Tomorrow (confused so much with the film's tagline "Live, Die Repeat" that Blu-ray box art waaaay emphasized the latter). Mr. & Mrs. Smith's Doug Liman directs this terrific Tom Cruise vehicle, about humanity losing war against an invading alien army that always seems to be several steps ahead. Once Cruise's over-his-head army public affairs officer gets a taste of their cosmic precognitive power, he finds himself dying over and over in battle, unable to escape the day. Emily Blunt and Bill Paxton co-star in this keenly-crafted, funny alien actioner.

Check out IGN's review of Edge of Tomorrrow .

5. Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)

time travel mystery movies

Two teenage metalheads from San Dimas, California recklessly, and hilariously, mosh through time, collecting (okay, mostly kidnapping) famous historical figures from in order to ace a crucial test in one of the most entertaining movies from the '80s, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure . Smart and dumb collide in fabulous ways in this roller-coaster of sublime idiocy. Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter embodied these dense-but-sweet wannabe rockers to a "T," fast forming an iconic comedy duo.

Check out our guide to the best Keanu Reeves movies of all time for more.

4. Primer (2004)

time travel mystery movies

Shoestring budget indie film, Primer, which acts as a no-frills psychological thought experiment about the accidental discovery of time travel, is one of the most cerebral takes on temporal tampering ever. It's a stimulating, challenging chronicle of two engineers who dabble in time travel, testing its limits, only to discover the awful ramifications and consequences of fourth-dimensional meddling. It's twisty, math-y, and full tilt fascinating.

Check out IGN's review of Primer .

3. Groundhog Day (1993)

time travel mystery movies

There were certainly "time loop" stories -- in film, TV, and literature -- before Harold Ramis' Groundhog Day , but this early '90s hit popularized the concept to the degree of being considered the "Grandaddy" of the subgenre. Mercilessly funny and surprisingly endearing, Groundghog Day pushed the format in new directions. All of this is accentuated by Bill Murray's exceptional performance as a shallow TV weatherman, Phil Connors, who gets stuck in a repeating February 2nd nightmare with no true explanation (other than perhaps the universe forcing him to become a better human). Andie MacDowell, Chris Elliott, and Scooter the Groundhog co-star.

2. 12 Monkeys (1995)

time travel mystery movies

Director Terry Gilliam's insane, lavish visuals stuck mainstream pay dirt with the inventive, star-studded 12 Monkeys (which also became a pretty great TV series 20 years later, by the way). Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt (who received an Oscar nomination) headlined this warped, serpentine tale of a future prisoner, from a wasteland world all but wiped out by a virus, sent back in time to track the plague's origins. "Science ain't an exact science" Willis' Cole is told as he clumsily, and harshly, arrives in both the right and wrong times, piecing together the puzzle, thinking the disease may have begun as the brainchild of a mental patient (Pitt) from a wealthy family. 12 Monkeys is freaky, funky, and full of surprises.

1. Back to the Future

time travel mystery movies

Robert Zemeckis' Back to the Future is not only considered one of the best front-to-back movies of all time but it laid the groundwork for time travel in a way that's influenced just about every sci-fi property since. And yes, we're cheating here again, like we did with Terminator, and also including the film's two sequels in this entry too (same story, same director!).

All the ingredients came together in all the right ways for this pivotal pop-culture milestone, tracking young Marty McFly's adventures through time as he tries to set things right for himself and his family (lest he and his siblings wind up erased or his own future kids wind up delinquents). Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd create a time-hopping team for the ages (inspiring the gruesome guffaws of Rick & Morty) as Marty and local disgraced inventor (every town's got one, right?) Doc Brown. Back to the Future is the apex of witty, exciting sci-fi.

Upcoming Time Travel Movies

Time keeps slipping into the future, just like time travel movies will always be a thing. There are a few upcoming time travel movies of note, and we went ahead and listed some of the most exciting ones below, along with their release dates.

  • The Flash (June 16, 2023)
  • Kung Fury 2 (November 17, 2023)

Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN, a member of the Television Critics Association, and co-host of We Enjoy Wrestling . Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at Facebook.com/MattBFowler .

In This Article

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Most Complex Yet Well Executed Time Travel Movies

12 Most Complex Time Travel Movies Executed Well

Hi, this is Barry, and welcome to my site. How a time travel movie is conceived and executed establishes how complicated it can become. Some filmmakers avoid the complexities, others attempt it and make a mess of the timeline(s), but a few embrace the convoluted nature of time travel and do a fantastic job with the execution. Before we go into the list, let me be clear on how I define a time travel movie. So long as there is one person experiencing time in a non-linear fashion, the film makes it into the category. Here is my list of the most complex time travel movies that are well-executed (in no particular order).

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Where To Watch?

To find where to stream any movie or series based on your country, use This Is Barry’s Where To Watch .

Oh, and if this article doesn’t answer all of your questions, drop me a comment or an FB chat message, and I’ll get you the answer .  You can find other film explanations using the search option on top of the site.

For the complete list, do check the 50+ Best Time Travel Movies of all times.

Back To The Future: Part 2

complex time travel Back to the future part 2

I’m talking specifically about the second part. And why is that? Because a significant portion of the film’s events happens on the same date as the first movie. You see two of Martin and Doc Brown, and they have to make sure they achieve their objective without disturbing any of the events from the first film. This complexity does nothing to affect the film’s humour and quirky characters.

The timeline diagram that Doc Brown draws on the blackboard is iconic and is used by almost everyone to explain complicated time travel movies today. Watching many of the scenes from the first part in the backdrop of this sequel is what makes it extraordinary. Many other time travel movies have emulated this idea in their plots.

Durante la tormenta vera nico

Oriol Paulo’s films are a pleasure to watch. He’s got a real talent for non-linear storytelling in the genre of murder mysteries. Mirage combines a crime-thriller with science fiction and time travel in one movie. This time travel movie follows a multi-timeline approach and keeps you on edge with multiple plot twists. A mysterious storm causes a TV to become a bridge across 25 years, enabling characters to communicate with the past. Information that is shared with the past results in different decisions and thereby creates an alternate timeline. Facts and events from each timeline are aggregated to solve the case of murder. It’s enjoyable to watch other subtle pieces of information getting unearthed due to the altered timeline and how they feed into the plot.

The ending of the film wraps up all the time-complications very well, leaving almost no plot holes. Placing a murder mystery within the container of time travel and the movie’s non-linear narrative really make Mirage quite unique.

You can find a detailed explanation with a timeline diagram here – Mirage Explained .

The Infinite Man

infinite man dean vs terry

You have probably not heard of this low budget Australian film, but it’s a pretty wicked time travel movie. A man wants his girlfriend and himself to relive their anniversary of the previous year. When they do so, they end up encountering multiple versions of themselves travelling back various times into the past. You really need to not blink when you watch this film, as the same events are revisited time and over from different perspectives. The Infinite Man follows a single timeline model and handles the time-complexities superbly. Each character loops back a different number of times. The execution challenge then becomes how to let the who is who and what the reason was for travelling back in time. This complexity was handled excellently in the film.

Infinite Man really deserves more attention considering something this complicated was achieved in a tiny budget with three actors and no special effects. Oh, did I mention some scenes are damn funny too?

For a detailed breakdown of the film and a timeline diagram, read this – The Infinite Man Explained .

Avengers: Endgame

Avengers Endgame Time Travel Mechanics

The fate of 20+ films was riding on Avengers: Endgame. We had already witnessed X-Men: Days Of Future Past, which was otherwise a good film, mess up the timeline so badly it erased the events of the original movies and left the fate of future films in the dark. Endgame needed to revisit multiple films of the MCU to temporarily borrow Infinity Stones. To achieve this, the multiple timeline approach was strategically adopted. Meaning travelling to the past of the prime MCU timeline cannot alter it, and all past events occur in alternate timelines. This ensured that all of the prior 20+ movies were preserved. It also provided a clear direction for future MCU films which will be set in the prime MCU timeline. Using this setup, they took the liberty to mess around with the events of previous movies to introduce repercussions of time travel. Examples of this are when we see two Caps fighting and Loki disappearing with the Tesseract.

The best part of this is if future directors choose, they can explore tinkering with plots set in any of the five alternate timelines created in Endgame. Considering the time travel movie wrapped up revisits to older movies in a smart way, learning from the small mistakes in Back To The Future, Endgame definitely deserves mention in this list.

For an extensive analysis of the time travel, plot and characters with a timeline video, go here – Avengers: Endgame Explained .

primer main characters

Primer is centred on two guys who discover time travel accidentally while experimenting with gravitational effects on objects. While the first couple of trips to the past make the film look easy, it soon escalates into a web of timelines folding onto themselves in an extremely convoluted manner. Primer also sports one of the most creative mechanics of time travel using the simple logic that you cannot travel back to before the time machine was switched on or  primed . The movie smartly uses this limitation to show how the characters need to come up with ingenious ideas to travel back multiple times. The fascinating bit is that the reason for time-travel comes from pure scientific curiosity and not to achieve a grand purpose. While there might appear to be a few loose ends, the film wraps it up nice and tight. Do pay close attention to everything in this film, and yeah, you’ll need to watch it twice.

No time travel movies’ list is complete without the mention of Primer. The film was produced within a teeny tiny budget of $7000 and yet presents one of the most complicated sets of timelines one can imagine.

Here’s a detailed timeline-wise explanation of this movie – Primer Explained .

asylum 12 monkeys

12 Monkeys is too close to the COVID-19 virus epidemic for comfort. This time travel movie sees a dystopian future trying to identify the original strain of a virus that took out most of the living beings on the planet. The scientists of the future rely on time travel to identify the source of the infection. The film sports a single faultless timeline with every event tying up beautifully at the end. Small pieces of apparently isolated incidents begin connecting and come together as a whole to reveal the planned solution for the epidemic.

Wading through the misdirections, and the way Cole slowly narrows down and locates the source and how his actions affect the timeline (or rather don’t) makes this film an excellent piece of time travel thriller.

Here’s a detailed plot analysis and explanation of the film – 12 Monkeys Explained .

Predestination

predestination barkeep

Predestination is the mother of all time complexities that one can witness in a time travel movie. When you try to mentally visualize this single timeline’s flow of events, you will have a couple of nosebleeds. Based on the short story All You Zombies, Predestination extrapolates the book brilliantly. The character development, their interaction and how their stories merge into a larger scheme of events is intriguing and surprises you continually. Every time you think you are getting a hold on what’s happening, the film takes it up a notch and in the end, brings it all together and leaves you talking to yourself. 

Predestination is perhaps the most flawless execution of an extremely complex time travel plot while establishing that everything about the movie is one giant paradox.

Here’s everything you need to understand and untangle this film’s plot (yes, there’s a timeline diagram) – Predestination Explained .

complex time travel deja vu

Déjà Vu is the classic tale of hunting down a bomber before he strikes again. The catch, however, is that the team uses a time device to follow the life of one of the victims to get the bomber. While the folks of science, who believe in paradoxes, believe that the victim’s fate is sealed, Agent Doug finds it impossible to ignore the obvious that apart from nabbing the bomber he can save the lives of many, but this requires messing with time and rewriting history as they know it.

Though the execution of the film does introduce mild plot holes, the timelines in the movie are wrapped up pretty convincingly at the end. The really innovative sequence is the car chase taking place between two vehicles in entirely different times.

bandaged man girl timecrimes

Timecrimes is a fun Spanish time travel movie happening over the duration of one day and a single timeline. What’s unique about this film is that the lead character who travels through is an average Joe. Typically the person travelling through time intends it and is well versed with the science behind it. Not in Time Crimes though. Héctor fumbles his way through most of the plot, and it’s the nature of time that seems to iron things out automatically. The entire film is a giant series of accidents complicating matters for the central character as he gets through his extra-long day.

Multiple Hectors cluelessly running around and amplifying time complications provides for a good deal of humour. Timecrimes is well-executed, and the end of the film wraps up any loose ends and maintains the timeline integrity beautifully.

To read a detailed explanation of this movie, go here – Timecrimes Explained .

Butterfly Effect

complex time travel The Butterfly Effect

Butterfly Effect toggles back and forth, repeatedly creating multiple futures based on small yet significant actions. The story is thought through well and lays out the prime timeline with strategically placed voids in the first half. The latter half revisits these pockets of missing memories, offering a choice to the protagonist to execute a different action.

The protagonist making a small change to a single event causes a cascading effect over years leading up to a drastic and unexpected change to the future. True to its name, Butterfly Effect plays off on Chaos Theory fantastically.

Last Pic time lapse explained

This is a low budget film showcasing an innovative angle to non-linear events via the means of a mystical camera that takes pictures of the future, of the next day. Time Lapse lacks quality characters but makes up for it by executing a single timeline well. At the beginning of the film, we are shown one picture weeks into the future, while the remaining photos are 24hrs into the future. The characters witnessing the pictures of their future creates a chain of events leading up to that final photograph. What’s more, is that the camera possibly takes photos as close as 12 hrs into the future. Regardless of the characters’ intentions and actions, they keep feeding into their fate which refuses to get altered. 

Despite a complicated chain of events, the film manages the timeline accurately. It leaves no room for flaws in the execution and hence Time Lapse finds its way into this list despite its poor character development.

Here’s a detailed plot analysis for the film with each of the pictures from the camera – Time Lapse Explained .

jess vs Jess triangle explained

Triangle is not strictly a time travel movie. But as I mentioned before, as long as one character experiences time non-linearly, the film qualifies. The film contains time loops that have three versions of the lead at any given moment on a abandoned ship. The film is quite complicated and yet manages to deliver an airtight sequence of events looping on itself wonderfully.

Placed in the slasher genre, Triangle has brilliantly conceived time loops. The cherry on top really is the ending which discloses the reason why the loops have come into existence.

Here’s a complete numbered loop-wise detailed breakdown of the movie – Triangle Explained .

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Barry is a technologist who helps start-ups build successful products. His love for movies and production has led him to write his well-received film explanation and analysis articles to help everyone appreciate the films better. He’s regularly available for a chat conversation on his website and consults on storyboarding from time to time. Click to browse all his film articles

The Most Underrated Time Travel Movies You Need To Watch

Michael C. Hall looking stern

Time travel stories have a long history, with H.G. Wells' classic "The Time Machine" being published in 1895, and stories of travelers from the future having existed in folklore for centuries . Some of the most fascinating real-life mysteries and urban legends have involved stories of time travel , too. So it should come as no surprise that time travel movies have long been a favorite of the sci-fi genre.

Over the years, some of sci-fi's best movies have involved time travel, be they family adventures like "Back to the Future," thrillers like "12 Monkeys," action movies like "The Terminator," or even comedies like "Groundhog Day." While audiences are well-acquainted with time travel through these big blockbuster films, there are a lot of other, lesser-known movies that employ the same sci-fi concepts. Many of these films have gone under-appreciated, whether because they got lost on streaming, were given initially bad critical scores, or simply weren't marketed well. 

Well have no fear, temporal explorers, because even if you can't go back to see them when they were first released, you can see them now, with our helpful list of underrated time-travel movies .

A Netflix original, the unusually titled "ARQ" came and went with little fanfare in 2016. This isn't your ordinary time travel adventure though, like the straightforward thrillers that send heroes back and forth through time. Instead, the film is centered on a young couple who become inadvertently trapped in a repeating loop of time. But unlike "Groundhog Day," they're not stuck in a pleasant little midwestern village — they're stuck in the throws of a robbery gone wrong.

The film stars Robbie Amell ("Upload") and Rachael Taylor ("Jessica Jones") as Renton and Hanna, a husband and wife living in a dark future where oil has become scarce and energy supplies are dwindling. Renton once worked for one of the world's major corporations and made off with his greatest invention, the ARQ — a powerful device capable of generating infinite energy. But when agents of his company's rival come to steal it from him, he switches it on and they become trapped in a deadly time loop.

A gripping thriller and borderline horror movie, "ARQ" is a time loop story done right, where despite events repeating, you're still left guessing what will happen next. Though it did spur some amount of discussion  upon its initial release, the film has sadly faded into obscurity since.

A low-budget indie movie that's become a cult favorite among sci-fi cinephiles, the highly experimental 2004 film "Primer" has remained largely unnoticed by those who don't go digging for hidden gems. Written, directed by, and starring Shane Carruth , the film follows a pair of friends who unwittingly invent a time machine that allows them to return six hours into the past.

At first, their trips backward in time are for little more than experimentation, but they quickly escalate to interference as the friends use the box to invest in short-term stocks that they already know the outcome of. The more they use their machine, though, the more they see the rapid deterioration of their physical and mental states. Repeated experiments soon lead to terrifying consequences when they discover that someone else has been using — and is going to use — the box to irrevocably alter the timeline. But an attempt to activate a fail-safe and end the experiment before it ever started leads to a fateful confrontation with their future selves.

A haunting time-travel tale unlike any other, "Primer" won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival and made Carruth one of the most talked-about emerging filmmakers in the industry.

Time After Time

In the mid-1970s, author Karl Alexander approached filmmaker Nicholas Meyer with an early draft of his next book, "Time After Time," and the director was so impressed he snatched up the feature film rights before it was even published. In 1979, the film hit theaters starring Malcolm McDowall ("Clockwork Orange"), David Warner ("The Omen") and Mary Steenburgen ("Back to the Future Part III").

Set in the latter half of the 19th century, the film tells a fictional story centered on real-life sci-fi author H.G. Wells, the man behind the all-time classic "The Time Machine." Here we learn that the time travel contraption from Wells' book was no mere fiction, and is in fact very real. But when serial killer Jack the Ripper steals his machine and escapes to the 'present day' of 1979, it's up to Wells to follow him and prevent him from continuing his murder spree in the 20th century. While there, Wells is equally amazed and horrified by the world he witnesses, where he finds technologies beyond his wildest dreams but a society that's far from the utopian future he'd always imagined.

A satisfying crime drama with a moral message and plenty of time-travel hijinks, "Time After Time" has been mostly forgotten, though it was the subject of a  short-lived TV spin-off in 2017.

Starring the MCU's own Anthony Mackie and Jamie Dornan ("Fifty Shades of Grey"), "Synchronic" is more than just a time-travel thriller. It's a story of love, friendship, and redemption — a powerful tale that uses time travel to prop up a deeply personal character story. With a pair of big-name stars, there's no reason it should have gone overlooked, but while reviews were strong , the film didn't elicit the wider recognition it deserves.

The movie follows Steve and Dennis, a pair of EMS partners and best friends troubled by a recent rash of fatal overdoses of a new designer drug gripping their city. When Dennis' daughter Brianna becomes involved and disappears, it leads him down a road of despair, while Steve decides to look for answers. When he finally tracks down the illegal drug called Synchronic, he learns that it has the power to send users into the past. Determined to find Brianna, he embarks on a harrowing journey through time that he may never return from.

A brilliant sci-fi thriller with time travel that uses its own unique set of rules, "Synchronic" succeeds at being both an engrossing, mind-bending roller coaster and a moving character drama.

Starring Emilio Estevez ("The Mighty Ducks"), Anthony Hopkins ("The Silence of the Lambs"), Rene Russo ("Lethal Weapon 3"), and Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, the 1992 sci-fi action flick "Freejack" is a long-forgotten relic, overshadowed by bigger sci-fi movies of the era. But with a twisted time-travel premise and a strong cast, it's also an underrated adventure that needs to be revisited.

In the dystopian future of 2009, society has found a new way of achieving immortality, with those wealthy enough hiring time-traveling agents to steal victims from the past to become host bodies for their brains. One such future mogul in need of a new, more vital body is Ian McCandless (Hopkins), who hires a time tracker named Victor Vacendak (Jagger) to find him one. Arriving in 1992, Vacendak spirits away Formula One driver Alex Furlong (Estevez) seconds before he was to die in a devastating race crash. But when he escapes Vacendak he becomes a Freejack — a time-displaced fugitive with nowhere to go. With the help of his former fiancee Julie (Russo), he must fight powerful forces to stay alive. 

Though the film has a fair amount of schlock and low-budget goofiness, it's also a heck of a lot of fun. It's a movie that almost nobody seems to remember despite its big-name cast and high-concept premise, and it's definitely still worth revisiting today.

Just two years after winning an Academy Award for his performance in the World War II biopic "The Pianist," Adrien Brody appeared in a small indie sci-fi film called "The Jacket." Co-starring Kiera Knightley, the film also features Daniel Craig, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Kris Kristofferson (whose 1989 time travel adventure "Millennium" narrowly missed this list). Inspired by a 1915 short story called "The Star Rover" by "White Fang" author Jack London, the film takes the premise of a convicted murderer who learns how to send his consciousness through time and space and turns it into a compelling thriller.

Brody plays Jack Starks, a Gulf War veteran who's implicated in the death of a police officer after returning home. Deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial due to amnesia, Starks is placed in a psychiatric hospital where he's abused by the staff. After being given an experimental serum, Starks is strapped into a straitjacket and sealed in a morgue drawer. He then discovers that the horrific treatment has sent him 15 years into the future, where he meets Jackie — a young woman from his past. After earning her trust, Starks and Jackie work together in an attempt to manipulate time and get him released from his bizarre captivity.

Gut-wrenching and truly strange, "The Jacket" got mixed reviews upon release, but there's no time like the present to check it out.

Star Trek: First Contact

The "Star Trek" franchise needs no introduction, and even the most casual fans may be aware that time travel is a common trope for "Trek" stories. In addition to "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home," which sees Kirk and the Enterprise visiting the "present day" of 1986 to rescue a pair of whales, another time travel "Trek" film released a decade later has been a bit forgotten by time.

"Star Trek: First Contact" sees Captain Picard and the crew of the Enterprise-D out to stop the Borg from destroying Earth. On the verge of defeat, the cyborg conquerors travel back in time more than 300 years in an effort to change history. Picard follows them and discovers that the Borg have taken them to 2063 in the aftermath of World War III, where they try to stop Dr. Zefram Cochrane (James Cromwell) from making the first warp drive flight that leads directly to Earth's first contact with Vulcans.

While critics and fans have lauded "First Contact" for its high-stakes adventure, it rarely gets its due for also being one of the best time travel stories in the franchise. When you're done, be sure to check out the "Star Trek: Enterprise" Season 2 episode "Regeneration" too, as it serves as a direct sequel that adds even more layers to the time-travel fun.

Fetching Cody

A romantic drama of love and obsession, "Fetching Cody" might remind you of the better-known time-travel thriller "The Butterfly Effect." But as a super-low-budget indie movie that blends sci-fi with teen romance, it went mostly unseen in 2005 and only gained some attention later after its star, Jay Baruchel, became a bigger name. If you're only familiar with Baruchel from his more comedic roles like in "Knocked Up," though, seeing him here might take a bit of time to get used to.

"Fetching Cody" follows a small-time drug dealer named Art (Baruchel), who lives on the streets with his girlfriend Cody (Sarah Lind). But when she overdoses and winds up in a coma, Art decides to do whatever it takes to make things right — which just so happens to include travelling back in time with a makeshift time machine that takes the form of a living room recliner. Determined to alter her past so that the tragedy never occurs, Art attempts to undo her overdose but only makes things worse, until he's finally forced to do the unthinkable.

"Fetching Cody" wasn't well-received , with critics unhappy with its mish-mash of tones. But the premise is a good one and the cast is terrific, so if you can overlook its rough edges, you'll find a strong story about true love and how all of our fates intertwine.

When it premiered in 1994, "Timecop" was seen more as a sci-fi action movie vehicle for Jean-Claude Van Damme — perhaps even a direct answer to Arnold Schwarzenegger's "Total Recall" – than the clever time travel adventure it really is. In some ways, though, the intriguing mystery at the heart of the film is more similar to 2002's "Minority Report," even if it lacks that film's style and flare. 

Set 10 years into the "future" in 2004, the film follows Van Damme as Max Walker, an agent of the Time Enforcement Commission tasked with stopping time-traveling criminals. His latest case sends him back to 1994, the same year his wife was killed in a deadly bombing. While there, he uncovers a dark conspiracy that leads directly to a politician from his own time who may be using time travel to orchestrate his rise to power. When he returns to 2004 and discovers history has changed, he realizes he's the only one who can restore the timeline. But his plans are complicated when he encounters his wife in the past, and he has the opportunity to prevent her death.

To be sure, "Timecop" is every bit the action movie it was originally billed as, but it's always been undersold for its suspenseful thriller elements and clever temporal twists. It may never be a true time travel classic, but it's definitely worth a watch.

Receiving just a limited European release in theaters in 2009, "Mr. Nobody" has gotten a bit more attention via streaming in the years since. Nevertheless, it's remained mostly a cult favorite and under-the-radar movie that's been sorely underrated. What most people do know of it stems from its cast, led by controversial thespian Jared Leto  and featuring Sarah Polley, Diane Kruger, Rhys Ifans, and Linh Dan Pham.

The film centers on the titular Nemo Nobody (Leto), the last mortal man living at the end of the 21st century when humanity has achieved immortality. At the ripe old age of 118 he faces his final days, and with the help of a psychiatrist, he's able to recall the many forgotten events of his life. As he looks back and reflects, Mr. Nobody explores different possible routes his life could have taken. In each timeline, Nemo makes different choices that affect the outcome of his long life in different multiversal realities. 

An esoteric film about choice and family, "Mr. Nobody" isn't a time travel movie in the traditional sense, but it operates under the same basic rules. By showing the many timelines in Mr. Nobody's troubled life be affected by each decision he makes, the film builds out an interesting world and a unique nonlinear story . 

The Last Mimzy

Before "A Wrinkle in Time" adapted a beloved time-traveling children's book for the big screen, another kids' adventure made its way to theaters but was largely overlooked. Starring Rhiannon Leigh Wryn, Chris O'Neil, Kathryn Hahn, Timothy Hutton, Rainn Wilson, Joely Richardson, and Michael Clarke Duncan, "The Last Mimzy" hit theaters in 2007 but was swallowed up by bigger family-friendly blockbusters like "TMNT" and "Meet the Robinsons" that released around the same time.

Based on a sci-fi short story from the 1940s, the film makes changes to the original version but retains its core concept, with a scientist in the far future testing a time machine by sending what appear to be children's toys into the past. The film ups the stakes a bit, with the world of the future in dire peril and the time travel having a much bigger mission: To recruit children in the past to help save the future. The "toys" — actually complex futuristic tools — are discovered by siblings Noah and Emma Wilder, who gain incredible psychic powers thanks to their special properties. Once discovered, however, they become the targets of government agents.

A story with a powerful message, "The Last Mimzy" might not be the best sci-fi family film out there, but it's a fun and underrated one that's worth checking out.

Idaho Transfer

Another indie movie filmed on a shoestring budget, the 1973 science fiction film "Idaho Transfer" is only known thanks to being directed by Hollywood great Peter Fonda ("Easy Rider"). Filmed with a cast of mostly unknowns and non-actors, it was only released for a few weeks in theaters before the movie's distributor went bankrupt  and has since fallen into obscurity.

The film stars Kelly Bohanan as Karen Braden, a disturbed young woman who's taken to a research facility in Idaho by her father. There, a team of government scientists working on an unrelated project have inadvertently discovered time travel. Peering into the future, they learn that mankind will be mostly wiped out by an ecological disaster, prompting them to send Karen and other young men and women forward in time to help repopulate the planet. 

Driven more by an interesting story than by any stunning visual effects or standout performances, "Idaho Transfer" is an under-seen, under-appreciated time-travel tale that deserves better than to be lost to the dustbin of history. Reviews at the time were mixed, but Time Magazine praised its "slow, severe beauty that makes its quiet edge of panic all the more chilling." With a "Twilight Zone" style twist ending , it's also a startling story that explores mankind's worst impulses.

In the Shadow of the Moon

Just a few years before helming the hit Netflix fantasy series "Sweet Tooth," filmmaker Jim Mickle directed the time-travel movie "In the Shadow of the Moon," starring Boyd Holbrook, Cleopatra Coleman, Bokeem Woodbine, and Michael C. Hall. A seriously underrated sci-fi adventure, the film has unfortunately been glossed over in most discussions of the genre.

The film opens in 1988 with Detective Thomas Lockhart (Holbrook) investigating a series of connected but unexplainable deaths that appear to have been caused by a mysterious woman. Nearly a decade later in 1997, an apparent copycat killer surfaces, and in 2006, Lockhart puts the pieces of the puzzle together and realizes he may be tracking a time-traveling serial killer with a personal vendetta. But Lockhart may be tempting fate by looking for answers, as his investigation brings him face-to-face with a ghost from his own past, and future.

A grizzly crime drama with a time-hopping premise that spans more than six decades, "In the Shadow of the Moon" is distinct and affecting. Receiving mediocre reviews , it escaped notice when it was released to Netflix in 2019, but if you're looking for a diamond in the rough, look no further. 

Many renowned films have toyed with non-linear storytelling, with director Christopher Nolan's movies being particularly famous for the use of such devices in recent times. Time-travel stories are especially perfect for playing with nonlinearity, and the 2020 sci-fi horror movie "Intersect" does just that. 

At the fictional Miskatonic University, a group of researchers cracks the code for time travel using a system called Q42 (a computer voiced by renowned evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins). Their experiments with sending material into the past yield startling results, with one of the scientists realizing that the project may be connected to unusual occurrences in his own childhood. But none of them anticipate the truth about the dark forces who've orchestrated their work, or the terrifying ends of their experiments.

The film does have its issues. It's a tad too long, a bit more of a melodrama than it's billed as, and its low budget shows. But "Intersect" is still a fresh take on time travel, mixing in downright Lovecraftian elements that make it something else entirely and a final act that's not to be missed. It won't win any awards, but it works as a nice diversion after you've cycled through the best that the sub-genre of time-travel movies has to offer.

The 15 Best Time Travel Movies of All...Time

Terminators, teens, and every time-hopper in-between..

Matt Fowler

Science fiction offers up so many realms to explore. So many ideas. And one of the most probing and prevalent themes, usually always rich with creativity and concern, is time travel. It's a topic we can only theorize about but it's one that has ushered in some of the best sci-fi movies of all time. Ones that expand the boundaries of imagination and, often, chase us down some very cool rabbit holes.

Whether it's the story of a killer cyborg sent back in time to wipe out the future leader of a rebellion, the tale of some poor soul forced to relive the same day over and over in a time loop, or the fable of an investigator playing with time in order to solve a mystery, this particular sci-fi terrain is always fruitful. Here are the top 15 time travel films ever!

15. Palm Springs (2020)

time travel mystery movies

Where to Watch: Hulu

We kick things off with a joyous, playful "time loop" flick from 2020 starring Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti. Palm Springs features the headlining duo as strangers who attend a wedding out in the California desert and get stuck in a day they can't escape. It's a funky and fresh spin on the format featuring two characters who run the gamut of emotions and experiences involved with being able to live forever, but never being able to move forward in time. J. K. Simmons co-stars.

Check out IGN's review of Palm Springs .

14. Predestination (2014)

time travel mystery movies

Where to Watch: Roku Channel (w/ ads), or rentable on most platforms

Ethan Hawke joins Succession’s Sarah Snook and Preacher's Noah Taylor in this mind-bending thriller movie from The Spierig Brothers (Daybreakers, Jigsaw. It's about a temporal agent (Hawke) who embarks on a final time-traveling assignment to prevent an elusive criminal from launching an attack that kills thousands of people. Predestination is a twisty, turny timecop treat that keeps you guessing until the very end.

Check out IGN's review of Predestination .

13. Looper (2012)

time travel mystery movies

Where to Watch: Hulu, Peacock, Fubo, or rentable on most platforms

Rian Johnson's Looper stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis as the same character from different times. As the young Joe, Gordon-Levitt is a mob assassin who kills victims that get sent back in time for him to dispose of while Willis' Joe is old Joe, who, fulfilling a "Looper" contract, is supposed to be sent back and killed by his younger self. But old Joe, upon his arrival in the past, has other things in mind - namely stopping the future from being destroyed by an entity known only as The Rainmaker. Looper is a thrilling, fascinating ride. Emily Blunt, Jeff Daniels, and Paul Dano also star.

Check out IGN's review of Looper .

12. Happy Death Day (2017)

time travel mystery movies

Where to Watch: Rentable on most platforms

Happy Death Day takes the "time loop" concept and wickedly infuses into slasher-horror as Jessica Rothe's Tree finds herself being killed over and over again by the same masked maniac. Once realizing she only has a few "deaths" left in her, she takes matters into her own hands and tries to figure out who's behind the mask. Happy Death Day is bleak and hilarious...and also happens to have a sequel, Happy Death Day 2U , that plunges wildly into sci-fi!

Check out IGN's review of Happy Death Day .

11. The Time Machine (1960)

time travel mystery movies

The classic 1960 film adaptation of H. G. Wells' landmark 1865 novella tells the time-honored tale of a Victorian-era inventor, here actually named H. George Wells (and played by Rod Taylor), who uses a machine of his own design to travel to the far-off future, discovering that humanity is now become two new species - the enlightened Eloi and the monstrous, underground-dwelling Morlocks. The Time Machine is a dazzling, family-friendly slice of pioneering imagination.

10. Source Code (2011)

time travel mystery movies

Sleeper hit Source Code, from Moon's Duncan Jones, unspools a unique spin on "time loop," following a U.S. Army Captain, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, who's sent, over and over, into the digital recreation of a real-life train explosion, his mission being to find out who the terrorist culprit is. It's a clever, devious mystery that also stars Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, and Jeffrey Wright.

Check out IGN's review of Source Code .

9. Time After Time (1979)

time travel mystery movies

Time After Time 's bonkers hook -- that being Malcolm McDowell's H.G. Wells using his time machine to track a fleeing Jack the Ripper (the late David Warner) to 1979 San Fransisco -- actually makes for an entertaining, oft emotional film. This playfulness with both sci-fi and real history forms a fun, irresistible yarn that has to be seen to be believed. Wrath of Khan's Nicholas Meyer directs while Mary Steenburgen co-stars.

8. The Terminator (1984)

time travel mystery movies

Where to Watch: Prime Video, Fubo, Showtime, AMC+, or rentable on most platforms

This entry is a bit of a cheat since we're also lumping T2: Judgment Day into the mix. Hey, same continuing story, same director! That being said, James Cameron's gritty, great sci-fi bloodbath, The Terminator largely popularized the idea of going back in time and killing someone to change the present (along with larger, dystopian concepts of a world-ending A.I. uprising). Arnold Schwarzenegger's T-800 and Michael Biehn's frazzled future freedom fighter use our present era (okay, 1984) like a battleground in this sci-fi firestorm.

Check out our guide on how to watch the Terminator movies in order .

7. About Time (2013)

time travel mystery movies

Where to Watch: Starz add-ons, or rentable on most platforms.

Domhnall Gleeson and Rachel McAdams star in this delightful time-tinkering rom-com from Love, Actually's Richard Curtis, as Gleeson plays a young man with the ability to time travel who tries to change his past over and over in order to improve his life, and also win the girl of his dreams. Bill Nighy co-stars in this beautifully sincere film featuring phenomenal chemistry and an intriguing take on hereditary time-hopping abilities that make About Time worth watching.

6. Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

time travel mystery movies

The "time loop" concept went big with alien apocalypse flick Edge of Tomorrow (confused so much with the film's tagline "Live, Die Repeat" that Blu-ray box art waaaay emphasized the latter).  Mr. & Mrs. Smith's Doug Liman directs this terrific Tom Cruise vehicle, about humanity losing war against an invading alien army that always seems to be several steps ahead. Once Cruise's over-his-head army public affairs officer gets a taste of their cosmic precognitive power, he finds himself dying over and over in battle, unable to escape the day. Emily Blunt and Bill Paxton co-star in this keenly-crafted, funny alien actioner. 

Check out IGN's review of Edge of Tomorrrow .

5. Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)

time travel mystery movies

Where to Watch: Prime Video, Cinemax Go, Fubo, Roku Channel (w/ ads), Pluto TV (w/ ads), Tubi (w/ ads) or rentable on most platforms

Two teenage metalheads from San Dimas, California recklessly, and hilariously, mosh through time, collecting (okay, mostly kidnapping) famous historical figures from in order to ace a crucial test in one of the most entertaining movies from the '80s, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure . Smart and dumb collide in fabulous ways in this roller-coaster of sublime idiocy. Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter embodied these dense-but-sweet wannabe rockers to a "T," fast forming an iconic comedy duo.

Check out our guide to the best Keanu Reeves movies of all time for more.

4. Primer (2004)

time travel mystery movies

Where to Watch: Rentable on Amazon, Apple, and YouTube

Shoestring budget indie film, Primer, which acts as a no-frills psychological thought experiment about the accidental discovery of time travel, is one of the most cerebral takes on temporal tampering ever. It's a stimulating, challenging chronicle of two engineers who dabble in time travel, testing its limits, only to discover the awful ramifications and consequences of fourth-dimensional meddling. It's twisty, math-y, and full tilt fascinating.

Check out IGN's review of Primer .

3. Groundhog Day (1993)

time travel mystery movies

Where to Watch: Prime Video, Fubo, AMC+, or rentable on most platforms.

There were certainly "time loop" stories -- in film, TV, and literature -- before Harold Ramis' Groundhog Day , but this early '90s hit popularized the concept to the degree of being considered the "Grandaddy" of the subgenre. Mercilessly funny and surprisingly endearing, Groundghog Day pushed the format in new directions. All of this is accentuated by Bill Murray's exceptional performance as a shallow TV weatherman, Phil Connors, who gets stuck in a repeating February 2nd nightmare with no true explanation (other than perhaps the universe forcing him to become a better human). Andie MacDowell, Chris Elliott, and Scooter the Groundhog co-star.

2. 12 Monkeys (1995)

time travel mystery movies

Where to Watch: Cinemax Go, or rentable on most platforms

Director Terry Gilliam's insane, lavish visuals stuck mainstream pay dirt with the inventive, star-studded 12 Monkeys (which also became a pretty great TV series 20 years later, by the way). Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt (who received an Oscar nomination) headlined this warped, serpentine tale of a future prisoner, from a wasteland world all but wiped out by a virus, sent back in time to track the plague's origins. "Science ain't an exact science" Willis' Cole is told as he clumsily, and harshly, arrives in both the right and wrong times, piecing together the puzzle, thinking the disease may have begun as the brainchild of a mental patient (Pitt) from a wealthy family. 12 Monkeys is freaky, funky, and full of surprises.

1. Back to the Future 

time travel mystery movies

Where to Watch: Fubo, AMC+, or rentable on most platforms

Robert Zemeckis' Back to the Future is not only considered one of the best front-to-back movies of all time but it laid the groundwork for time travel in a way that's influenced just about every sci-fi property since. And yes, we're cheating here again, like we did with Terminator, and also including the film's two sequels in this entry too (same story, same director!). 

All the ingredients came together in all the right ways for this pivotal pop-culture milestone, tracking young Marty McFly's adventures through time as he tries to set things right for himself and his family (lest he and his siblings wind up erased or his own future kids wind up delinquents). Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd create a time-hopping team for the ages (inspiring the gruesome guffaws of Rick & Morty) as Marty and local disgraced inventor (every town's got one, right?) Doc Brown. Back to the Future is the apex of witty, exciting sci-fi.

Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN, a member of the Television Critics Association, and co-host of  We Enjoy Wrestling . Follow him on Twitter at  @TheMattFowler  and Facebook at  Facebook.com/MattBFowler .

time travel mystery movies

The Top 15 Time Travel Movies of All...Time

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17 Underrated Sci-Fi Movies About Time Travel

T.W. Mitchell

Everyone and their mother knows about time travel movies like  Back to the Future  and  Avengers: Endgame , but what about the underrated time travel movies ? It's a sci-fi subgenre with plenty of room to maneuver; there have been virtually countless time travel movies since the dawn of filmmaking. Some films fare better than others - the less said about 2002's  The Time Machine , the better - but we're here to focus on some of the hidden gems and/or underrated films of the genre.

From low-budget gems like  Primer  and  Timecrimes  to big-budget blockbusters like  Men in Black 3  and  Deja Vu . From comedies to anime to the foreign arthouse, time travel keeps reliably cropping up. There's a lot of room to maneuver in this particular subgenre, so get ready to dive deep. Remember to vote up your favorite underrated films about time travel.

Frequency

Does it count as time travel if the only thing traveling back and forth in time are voices? The answer is an unquestionable yes, and though  Frequency  uses its time travel to tell a by-the-numbers murder mystery, that doesn't make it any less worthy. Buoyed by grounded performances from Dennis Quaid and Jim Caviezel,  Frequency  ends up being more than the sum of its parts. 

There's nothing wrong with a classic thriller, especially when there are time travel hijinks involved. And if you thought Quaid and Caviezel weren't enough, let's bring Andre Braugher and Noah Emmerich to the party. The fact that it was directed by Gregory Hoblit, a man responsible for two of the most underrated thrillers of the past 25 years ( Fracture  and  Primal Fear)  is just a bonus. If you're a fan of any of these Hollywood players or time travel in general, you should give  Frequency a look.

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Déjà Vu

Upon release in 2006,  Déjà Vu  was a minor hit for Tony Scott, Jerry Bruckheimer, and Denzel Washington. Critics were mixed on the film, and it has ended up as a footnote in the career of one of America's most celebrated actors. But  Déjà Vu  deserves better. Every film that comes out of Hollywood doesn't have to reinvent the wheel, and sometimes you're just in the mood for a competent, well-made drama. This one happens to be about a man who travels back in time to stop a domestic terrorist strike from decimating New Orleans.

If you keep your expectations at a reasonable level, there's a lot to admire about  Déjà Vu . With a cast that features Washington and a host of gifted performers like Val Kilmer, Paula Patton, and Bruce Greenwood as well as competent direction from Scott,  Déjà Vu  is the kind of big-budget filmmaking that has gone away in the wake of Hollywood's neverending hunt for the next blockbuster franchise. Besides, who doesn't like watching Denzel do his thing?

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Predestination

Predestination

Based on Robert A. Heinlein's 1959 short story, "'—All You Zombies—'", 2014's  Predestination  struggled to make back its minuscule budget of $5 million at the box office upon release and that is a crying shame. Starring Ethan Hawke and Sarah Snook,  Predestination  is a heady sci-fi thriller that's a bit hard to pin down. It's hard to sum up all of its twists and turns in the limited space here, but suffice it to say,  Predestination  is a hell of a trip.

This is a film that demands rewatching in order to decode what it's trying to say with its themes on gender and fate, and even then it can be difficult to decipher at times. But that's okay! The journey is fun enough to make it all work. As Richard Roeper said in his review , "As soon as the credits rolled on Predestination , I wanted to watch it again. It was even more of a mind-dance the second time around."

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Flight of the Navigator

Flight of the Navigator

It may be hard to imagine now, but there was a time not so long ago when the Walt Disney Company was floundering. Before Michael Eisner and Frank Wells came in to turn the company around in the mid-'80s, the House of Mouse was in serious financial straits and the creative side of the company wasn't faring much better. One of the first projects released during the duo's successful tenure was 1986's  Flight of the Navigator . This was a few years ahead of  The Little Mermaid  and  Honey, I Shrunk the Kids  setting the box office on fire to bring Disney back to the top, but that doesn't make  Navigator  any less worthy.

Flight of the Navigator  is more a story of accidental time travel due to time dilation more than anything else, as the 12-year-old protagonist travels to a planet 560 light years away, and back, causing him to age just over two hours in a span of eight years. He sets off on an adventure to return back to his own time, and family-friendly fun is had by all. To be frank, it's heady stuff for a kid's movie and the special effects were top-notch for the time. A remake has been rumored for years, but for now let's stick with the undeniable charm of the original, thank you very much.

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The Final Countdown

The Final Countdown

A few years before the iconic '80s song was released,  The Final Countdown  hit theaters. The film is about a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier that travels through time to the day before Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. It also stars two titans of cinema, Kirk Douglas and Martin Sheen, as they ham it up in a B-movie blockbuster.  The Final Countdown  doesn't take itself too seriously and it doesn't expect its audience to, either. 

The real star of the show is the massive amounts of actual Navy aircraft aboard the real aircraft carrier the filmmakers got to use for the production. The USS Nimitz , which is astonishingly still in use to this very day, served as a shooting location for  The Final Countdown  and it is glorious to behold. There are more than a dozen genuine aircraft vehicles that appear in the film and it lends an authenticity that is hard to fabricate. Come for Douglas and Sheen, stay for some awesome Navy realism.

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Timecrimes

It's certainly very shocking that a film called  Timecrimes  has something to do with time travel. But let's just focus on that title for a second, here.  Timecrimes ? That is an awesome title for a movie! And  Timecrimes  itself is a saucy little low-budget thriller. The Spanish film tells the story of a man who becomes part of a time loop thanks to an experimental time travel machine. That's not all, as he also must stop his other selves (who exist in the same plane of existence thanks to the time travel) from continuing to exist.

It's a bit much to wrap your head around, but it all makes sense when you're watching it. Made for under $3 million,  Timecrimes  is an effective little thriller that you can't help but admire. And if that English-language remake ever actually gets off the ground, perhaps the original will find a bigger audience than it did upon release back in 2007.

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Synchronic

Some time travel films are light and breezy, meant to delight fans both young and old with capricious tales of science fiction.  Synchronic  is not one of these films. Unless stories about cancer and missing children are "light and breezy" to you. Alas,  Synchronic  remains a criminally underseen film from Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (who are absolutely perfect choices to direct episodes of Disney+ MCU show  Moon Knight ). 

New Orleans paramedics Steve and Dennis, played by Anthony Mackie and Jamie Dornan, become embroiled in a weird mystery surrounding Dennis's missing daughter and a new drug that somehow causes its users to travel in time. Benson and Moorhead manage to keep everything dark and moody despite the odd premise of the film, and it ends up being a ride worth taking.

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Time Bandits

Time Bandits

If you're in the mood for a kooky sci-fi fantasy featuring an all-star cast,  Time Bandits  has you covered. Co-written and directed by Monty Python's Terry Gilliam,  Time Bandits  features Sean Connery, John Cleese, Shelley Duvall, Katherine Helmond, and Ian Holm in an adventure that could only be dreamed up by the man who brought you films like  Brazil  and  The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus . Seriously, Time Bandits  is nothing if not a whole mess of fun.

Made for kids (and everyone who used to be kids) with vivid imaginations,  Time Bandits follows 11-year-old Kevin as he becomes embroiled in a loopy time travel escapade. You know what kind of film this is going to be when an armored knight on horseback comes billowing out of Kevin's closet. It is so much fun. And hopefully you like dark comedy, because the ending of  Time Bandits  has a grueling fate in store for Kevin's parents.

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Primer

Primer , Shane Carruth's 2004 sci-fi debut made on an estimated budget of around $7,000 , was one of the first cult hits of the internet age. A cerebral tale of two men who accidentally discover time travel in a garage and subsequently try to exploit it to earn heaps of money, this micro-budget movie was less of a word-of-mouth success and more of a find-via-blog success. Still,  Primer  feels like an underseen classic in the age of endless streaming services.

Perhaps that has something to do with the density of both the plot and the dialogue.  Primer  doesn't try to hold your hand, and it makes no apologies for it. To do so would be a disservice to both the film and the audience. More about humankind's ethical dilemmas and less about the time travel itself,  Primer  is a movie that is both hard to explain and impossible to forget.

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Time After Time

Time After Time

At a fundamental level, using time travel as a storytelling device lets the audience suspend disbelief a little bit more than they usually would. Case in point: 1979's  Time After Time . Based on the novel of the same name, this film follows famous British writer H.G. Wells - author of timeless novels like  The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds  - as he uses a time machine to pursue Jack the Ripper into the future of 1979 San Francisco. It sounds more like fantastical fan fiction than a Hollywood studio film, yet here we are.

Though this movie has largely been forgotten to time, it actually works! Obviously, the film isn't to be taken all that seriously, and that ends up working in its favor.  With charismatic leads as affable as Malcolm McDowell and Mary Steenburgen, it's easy to see why it succeeds. It's just delightful. And it's clear to see some people have fond memories of  Time After Time  as Kevin Williamson, of  Scream  and  Dawson's Creek  fame, brought a television version to screens in March 2017.

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Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey

Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey

Bill & Ted's Excellent Excellent Adventure  is the well-regarded original, while  Bill & Ted Face the Music  is the unexpected franchise revival. This means  Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey  is the unfortunate middle child too often dismissed as inferior. In many eyes, however,  Bogus Journey  is unfairly maligned by the movie-going masses. The screenplay may not be as tight as  Excellent Adventure  and it may lack the nostalgic punch of  Face the Music , but don't go sleeping on  Bogus Journey .

It's a juvenile comedy that also spoofs  The Seventh Seal -  what more could you possibly ask for? It has something for everyone, provided you go into a viewing with the right mindset. Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter are as game as they were in  Excellent Adventure,  but it's ultimately William Sadler who steals the show as Death incarnate. Roger Ebert put it best in his positive review , saying it is for "lovers of fantasy, whimsy, and fanciful special effects. This movie is light as a feather and thin as ice in spring, but what it does, it does very nicely."

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Men in Black 3

Men in Black 3

Men in Black  will forever remain a '90s classic and, well, the less said about  Men in Black II , the better, but  Men in Black 3  has quickly become an underrated movie - even though it grossed a monstrous $624 million at the worldwide box office. The sci-fi threequel follows Will Smith's Agent J as he goes back in time to team up with Agent K's younger self to save the world from evil aliens. 

Josh Brolin is delightful as he does his best young Tommy Lee Jones impression as Agent K, and Jemaine Clement is just tons of fun as the villain, Boris the Animal. Is it a bit derivative of the first two? Yes, but sometimes you're just in the mood for some popcorn comfort food and  Men in Black 3  is certainly that. Besides, it's much better than 2019's soft reboot,  Men in Black: International .

  • # 113 of 177 on The 150+ Best Movies With Aliens
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In the Shadow of the Moon

In the Shadow of the Moon

The problem with releasing a genre picture on Netflix is that they usually get lost in the shuffle. If it isn't something Netflix thinks it can market to a wide audience, it just sort of gets released with little-to-no fanfare. This certainly was the case with 2019's  In the Shadow of the Moon . From director Jim Mickle, known for little-seen critical darlings like  Cold in July  and  We Are What We Are , this sci-fi thriller is about a cop who tries to stop a serial killer who reappears every nine years to strike again.

We don't want to give the twist away as to how this involves time travel, because doing so kind of ruins the whole point of the film. If you've got a Netflix account, it's worth a watch and is just waiting there for you.  The Detroit News ' Adam Graham puts it best : "[W]hen you least expect it, In the Shadow of the Moon  delivers a powerful message about the roots of hate and the dangers it poses to society. Don't let this one stay in the shadows for long."

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La Jetée

What is there to say about  La Jetée ? From the fact that it is a 28-minute-long French film from 1962 almost entirely made up of still images, it's safe to assume all but the most fervent cinephiles haven't seen it. Of course, if you're game for its aesthetic, all there is a lot to love about  La Jetée.  And if you're a fan of  12 Monkeys , a film it directly inspired , then you're sure to have a good time.

The film follows a prisoner in post-apocalyptic Paris right after World War III as he is used as a test subject in a time travel experiment. Throughout the events of the film, the protagonist is sent both back in time before WWIII and way out into the future, where he meets a race of technologically advanced beings. Had it been shot traditionally, it isn't hard to see an alternate timeline in which  La Jetée  became one of the most popular foreign films of all time.

  • # 89 of 97 on The Best French Movies That Are Absolute Masterpieces
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The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

Time travel and anime seem like they were made for each other - though couching the time travel in a coming-of-age story for young adults is a bit of a twist on the formula that's easy to get behind. And with a title like  The Girl Who Leapt Through Time , you kind of know what you're getting yourself into. This film is your average young adult fare with a sci-fi twist, which totally works.

There's not much else to say about  The Girl Who Leapt Through Time  without giving the whole plot away. It's a film that was pretty much universally adored by critics and audiences alike as its infectious energy can't be denied. If you recall the plights of your teenage years with any sort of whimsy, jump into  The Girl Who Leapt Through Time . You'll be glad you did.

  • # 295 of 444 on The 400+ Best Animated Kids Movies
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The History of Time Travel

The History of Time Travel

The History of Time Travel  is a 2014 movie written and directed by then-film student Ricky Kennedy. It's a mockumentary that tells the story of the men who created the world’s first time machine and the unintended ramifications it has on world events. If this were all the film was, there wouldn't be much more to talk about. But  The History of Time Travel has more up its sleeve than being a fake documentary about false events.

The brilliance of the film resides in its clever use of time travel ramifications. As the film goes on, subtle changes begin to appear on screen as more information about the time travelers' exploits is revealed. Of course, the people being interviewed don't realize these changes are happening to them because, why would they? We wouldn't be aware of changes to our past because they would just become our history (at least, in the universe of this film).  The History of Time Travel  is quite low-budget and it shows, but it is still a rollicking good time for anyone in the mood for a new take on time travel.

Je t'aime, je t'aime

Je t'aime, je t'aime

2001: A Space Odyssey  is often heralded as a film before its time - and rightly so - but there was another 1968 sci-fi film that dared to break the mold and challenge viewers to think outside the box. A supposed influence on Michel Gondry's landmark  Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind , Alain Resnais and Jacques Sternberg's  Je t'aime, je t'aime  is about a suicidal man who volunteers for an experiment that causes him to experience his past through a series of disjointed memories.

Je t'aime, je t'aime  is not a happy film. By the end, we discover that our protagonist has killed his terminally ill partner to ease her pain and he ends the film about to perish from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. We do not get to see whether he actually makes it or not, but that is beside the point.  Je t'aime, je t'aime  is a heady film about love, loss, and mental illness. It is both a relic of its time as well as highly forward-thinking in both its subject matter and its technique.

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As they say in well-written scripts, "You mean... like time travel?" + also a few bizarre stories about real people who have claimed, despite every law of physics, they have traveled through time.

Horror Movies About Time Tr...

'The Adam Project' & 9 Best Time Travel Movies on Netflix

For more mind-bending time travel adventures.

Read update

No matter the time period, time travel movies have always been popular. Whether it is the latest Ryan Reynolds and Netflix collaboration The Adam Project or the sci-fi action masterpiece The Terminator , time travel fans are spoiled for choice. Netflix in particular has plenty of great movies in the genre worth visiting, and some of the best time travel movies on Netflix will have you watching them over and over again.

In Netflix time travel movie The Adam Project , Ryan Reynolds plays a fighter pilot from the future, who crash lands in the present and meets his 12-year-old self. Together they must save the world in a journey that harkens back to Amblin classics from the 1980s while featuring some great needle drops.

Time travel stories have always been a popular narrative choice, with the highest-grossing film of all time, Avengers: Endgame , fitting in the genre. Videogames such as Mortal Kombat 11 also use time travel to great effect. But with The Adam Project being a Netflix original, there are more time travel movies on Netflix to watch after seeing Reynolds quip his way through another memorable performance.

Updated on May 28, 2023, by Ty Weinert:

10 'naked' (2017).

Marlon Wayans being thrown out of his wedding by Dennis Haysbert in Naked

Rob ( Marlon Wayans ) is about to marry the girl of his dreams, Megan ( Regina Hall ). But after a night out with his best friend results in Rob waking up naked in an elevator, he must race to the altar to make it in time. Failing that, Rob wakes up again in the elevator, realizing he is trapped in a time loop and must relive the hour over and over again.

Working like a mix of The Hangover and Groundhog Day , Naked will appeal to anyone who enjoyed those screwball comedies. While it is not one of the best time loop movies , it still offers some laughs and is a good enough way to kill an afternoon on the couch.

Watch on Netflix

9 'Captain Nova' (2021)

Kika Van De Vijver and a drone in Captain Nova

Like The Adam Project , Captain Nova follows a fighter pilot who is sent back in time to stop a catastrophe. Nova ( Kika Van De Vijver ) finds herself transformed into her younger self due to her journey through time, however, making it hard for adults to take her seriously as she warns them of the dangers to come.

Hailing from the Netherlands, Captain Nova makes for a nice change from the American movies that dominate the time travel genre on Netflix. Due to its protagonist's youthful transformation, Captain Nova is a kid-friendly take on the formula and can be enjoyed by the whole family.

8 'See You Yesterday' (2019)

Eden Duncan-Smith and Danté Crichlow in See You Yesterday

Produced by legendary director Spike Lee , See You Yesterday follows two teenage scientists, who are attempting to create a time machine. After one of their older brothers is killed in a police shooting, the pair activate their machine to travel to the past and save him.

While still following the conventions of time travel movies, See You Yesterday stands out with a plot that focuses on relevant social issues. By bringing light to matters that are still plaguing society four years after release, the film is a unique choice within the time travel Netflix catalog.

7 'In the Shadow of the Moon' (2019)

Boyd Holbrook standing closely behind Michael C. Hall In the Shadow of the Moon

Beginning in 1988, In the Shadow of the Moon follows Thomas Lockhart ( Boyd Holbrook ), a police officer determined to become a detective. When his city is plagued by a serial killer, Lockhart begins investigating, eventually discovering the killer comes back every nine years. As the case deepens, time travel eventually becomes a factor.

In the Shadow of the Moon feels like a callback to the detective thrillers of the '90s, like Se7en . While it does tend to lose focus as more outrageous plot points are introduced, In the Shadow of the Moon remains a solid choice for anyone looking to discover their next crime obsession.

6 'Synchronic' (2019)

Jamie Dornan and Anthony Mackie in Synchronic

Another quality entry in acclaimed duo Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson 's trippy shared universe , Synchronic stars Anthony Mackie and Jamie Dornan as paramedics and lifelong friends. After a new drug sweeps their city, resulting in the deaths of its users, the pair investigates after Dornan's daughter goes missing.

The film delves into time travel in ways that will not be spoiled here, but needless to say Synchronic is a trippy film with a central mystery that unravels over time. Both leads excel in their roles and share great chemistry, with Mackie, in particular, delivering a fantastic performance that shows what he can offer when given more meaty roles outside the MCU.

5 'ARQ' (2016)

Robbie Amell in ARQ

Waking up to intruders breaking into his home, an engineer ( Robbie Amell ) finds himself trapped within a time loop. With each death sending him back to the start of the invasion, he works to defeat his pursuers and escape with his lover ( Rachael Taylor ).

ARQ works as a sci-fi spin on films such as Happy Death Day , with the audience learning new information alongside the protagonist with each subsequent loop and eventual death. While not as charming as Happy Death Day , ARQ still offers an enjoyable take on the genre.

4 'When We First Met' (2018)

Adam DeVine in When We First Met

When We First Met follows Adam DeVine , of Workaholics fame, as he repeatedly goes back in time to try and win over the girl of his dreams ( Alexandra Daddario ). Being a romantic comedy, the film stands apart from other time travel movies that focus on more serious consequences.

While We First Met does not offer much new to the genre, though DeVine gives an admirable performance to help carry the film. Fans of his stand-up or the aforementioned Workaholics should have a good time watching his numerous attempts to escape the hellish nightmare called "the friend zone."

3 'Long Story Short' (2021)

Zahra Newman, Rafe Spall, and Ronny Chieng in Long Story Short

Waking up the morning after his wedding to discover that his life is jumping forward in time every few minutes, Teddy ( Rafe Spall ) is forced to use his dwindling time to stay with the woman he loves. With every jump causing them to drift further apart, time is running out for the bumbling lead.

Like When We First Met , Long Story Short uses time travel in a romantic comedy , albeit in a more urgent way. The Australian film was directed by Josh Lawson , known to audiences as Kano, the best part of the recent Mortal Kombat film.

2 'The Adam Project' (2022)

Ryan Reynolds and Zoe Saldana in The Adam Project

When fighter pilot Adam Reed (Ryan Reynolds) travels from 2050 to 2012, he is forced to work together with his 12-year-old self in order to get back home and save his deceased wife Laura ( Zoe Saldana ). The two Adams end up going on a journey full of heart and humor as they travel through time.

The latest in the long line of big-budget blockbusters on Netflix, The Adam Project is one of the best free movies you can access on the service. Reynolds is always a charming lead, and along with Saldana, they are supported by a winning cast that includes Mark Ruffalo , Jennifer Garner , and Catherine Keener .

1 'Mirage' (2018)

A poster for Mirage

When Vera ( Adriana Ugarte ) and her family move into a new home, they discover that a boy died there thirty years ago. Finding a way to communicate with the boy in the past, Vera warns him of his death and saves his life, only to change the flow of time in the process.

As the best time travel movie Netflix has to offer, Mirage is a compelling mystery thriller from Spain. As more circumstances of the boy's death emerge, greater narrative threads are pulled into this time-bending journey, with Ugarte delivering a great performance as the central character.

NEXT: The Best Time Travel Movies Ever Made, Ranked

Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, 1991.

The 20 best time-travel movies – ranked!

As Adam Driver accidentally winds up 65m years ago , facing not just dinosaurs but an asteroid, we count down the best films about going backwards, or forwards, through the ages

20. Timecop (1994)

Regardless of what anyone says, I believe in my heart that Timecop was greenlit because someone showed a studio executive a picture of Jean-Claude Van Damme and said the word “Timecop” out loud, at which point they had to throw a script together as quickly as possible. Nothing about Timecop makes sense. It is the most 90s film ever made.

19. Tenet (2020)

I have to be careful here, because Tenet might not be a time-travel movie. Certainly time passes in it and some of the people are going backwards in time in it. But I’ve seen this movie twice now, and it mainly just seems to be about people mumbling everything, except for Kenneth Branagh, who gets to shout very loudly three times. Anyway, here it is.

18. Cavegirl (1985)

Finally, a film that uses time-travel for the correct reason; to allow a horny 1980s high school student to go back to prehistory so that he can convince a smoking hot, bikini-wearing cavegirl to have it off with him. You will note I’ve ranked this above Tenet .

17. Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)

Heather Graham and Mike Myers in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.

Weird to think that Austin Powers was originally a fish-out-of-water comedy, in which the promiscuous titular character had to navigate the (then) uptight world of the 1990s. That all fell apart for the sequel, where Powers was sent back to the 60s to shout his catchphrases at people who actually appreciated them. That makes it a time-travel movie, right?

16. The Butterfly Effect (2004)

God, this film. In summary: Ashton Kutcher plays a man who experiences blackouts, only to learn some years later that he can travel back in time and inhabit his younger self’s mind during the blackouts. But in doing so, he unleashes a world of unintended consequences. He becomes a murderer and loses limbs. Seek out the director’s cut if you can, because it ends with Kutcher’s character deliberately strangling himself in the womb with his umbilical cord. No, really.

15. The Tomorrow War (2021)

Wherein Chris Pratt is drafted into a war that takes place 26 years later, because the invading aliens have already killed all the soldiers who were alive at the time. It’s a great premise for a film – we all pay the price for the actions of other generations – let down by a truly confusing ending. Admit it, you forgot this film even existed, even though it cost $200m to make and only came out 18 months ago.

14. The Time Travelers (1964)

A 1964 movie made on the cheap with genuinely terrible effects, The Time Travelers is about a group of scientists who travel to the future, fight some mutants and then return. What sets it apart, though, is its crazed ending. The film ends with the scientists venturing into the distant future, whereupon the film plays through again, faster and faster and faster until it cuts away to a still of the galaxy. Are they trapped in a loop? Is free will an illusion? Did the producers just run out of money? We may never know.

13. The Adam Project (2022)

A buddy movie where the buddies are the same person … Walker Scobell and Ryan Reynolds in The Adam Project.

In which a young boy’s life is turned upside down when he is visited by an older version of himself from the future. The good news? He grows up to be a fighter pilot. The bad news? He also grows up to have all the cadences and surface-level snarky patter of Ryan Reynolds. What follows is a buddy movie where the two buddies are the same person.

12. Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)

So seminal that it was namechecked in Avengers: Endgame . A flat-out comedy that primarily exists to allow a bunch of middle-aged men to act like teenagers, Hot Tub Time Machine is a film about an enchanted Jacuzzi that sends people back to the mid-1980s. Possibly a bit too bawdy for its own good, there’s a hint of a message about the unreliability of nostalgia here.

11. Flight of the Navigator (1986)

This family film involves a young boy who goes missing in a Fort Lauderdale ravine, only to show up eight years later having not aged. There are UFOs and rubbery little creatures and whatnot, but there’s a real emotional wallop to the moment when the boy realises that the world has moved on without him, right down to the scene (that plays out like a horror movie) where the boy realises that his parents have become unrecognisably ancient, even though they are probably only in their early 40s.

10. Primer (2004)

Some see Shane Carruth’s Primer as the gold standard of what a time-travel film should be. It’s the sort of movie that seems unnervingly realistic, from the down-at-heel engineers to the unshowy nature of time travel itself, where people in effect just get in and out of some boxes. Almost entirely unwilling to explain itself, for years Primer fans have come to rely on a series of graphs and charts to figure out what the film actually is.

9. Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)

A time-travel movie that may or may not have any actual time-travel in it, Colin Trevorrow’s Safety Not Guaranteed is a delicate wonder of a thing. A man places an ad in a magazine asking for a time-travel companion – “Must bring your own weapons. I have only done this once before” – and the respondents slowly come to realise that all is not quite as it seems.

8. Planet of the Apes (1968)

Maurice Evans and Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes.

If you haven’t seen Planet of the Apes, then the fact that I’ve put it on a list of time-travel movies is probably quite a heavy spoiler, and for that I’m sorry. But what a reveal this is – what seems at first like a silly movie about Charlton Heston being persecuted by some monkeys quickly becomes something darker and much more sinister. That new Adam Driver movie probably could have achieved something similar, if it hadn’t blabbed its big secret in the trailer.

7. Avengers: Endgame (2019)

Endgame is a lot, so much so that it is effectively a time-travel movie bookended by two entirely separate movies. And, yes, it takes a lot of liberties with time-travel, from Tony Stark’s “Huh, I did it” invention to the lazy referencing of other time-travel movies as a shorthand for what the characters can do. Nevertheless, when they get to it, the film nails it. The Battle of New York is the obvious highlight, with Captain America fighting Captain America and the Hulk embarrassed by his unreconstructed former self, but the heart of the film really comes when Tony meets his father as a man and learns to let go of the past.

6. Interstellar (2014)

Interstellar is also a lot. But at its core is a simple ethical quandary: would you try to save the world if it meant missing your children’s entire lives? Matthew McConaughey has to touch down on a planet during a space trip. The problem is that every hour he spends there is equal to seven years on Earth. Is the trip important enough for him to miss seeing the wonder of his children grow into adults? Technically, if you want to be fussy about this, Interstellar is a time dilation movie rather than a time-travel movie. But it gets a pass, largely because McConaughey sells the agony of the moment so beautifully.

5. Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)

A hilarious example of predestination … George Carlin, Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

There are times when Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure feels like it was written by a toddler off his face on pop. But that’s a deliberate ploy, a way to camouflage all the careful rigour that underpins the script. The lead characters are initially reluctant to embark on their time-travel adventure, until they’re visited by versions of themselves from the near future who compel them to do it; a beautiful and hilarious example of predestination in action. Extra points are awarded thanks to the film’s total lack of interest in consequences. Swiping Abraham Lincoln and Napoleon from their respective eras has no bearing on world history whatsoever, which is probably quite lucky.

4. Looper (2012)

One problem with time-travel movies is that the rules always need to be explained upfront. In lesser hands, this can lead to all manner of clunky, stilted exposition. But when Rian Johnson dabbled in the genre with Looper , he gave us a masterclass in “show, don’t tell”. The sequence where poor Paul Dano’s character is tortured at two different points in time simultaneously, with the older version following instructions carved into the younger version’s arm, is arguably one of the most inventive uses of time-travel in the entire history of cinema. All that plus this is Bruce Willis’s last truly great performance.

Bruce Willis as Joe in Looper.

3. The Terminator (1984)/Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

The lure of the first two Terminator movies were the killer robots running around murdering everyone. But they were very smartly built around a framework of pure time-travel. We only see the future in brief flashes, but what’s important is the present. It is very, very important that Kyle Reese (a guy from the future) has sex with Sarah Connor (a woman from the present), because only that will save humanity as we know it. It’s a hell of a pickup line, but the device also elevates what could have simply been a shonky B-movie into the realm of the classics.

2. Idiocracy (2006)

The smartest time-travel movies use the device as a mirror, telling us more about the times we live in now than the times the characters visit. Enter Idiocracy, Mike Judge’s stinging satire about modern times. An average person is cryogenically frozen and wakes up in the future, shocked to discover that the global IQ has fallen off a cliff in the intervening years. Surrounded by aggressive stupidity, he single-handedly saves the US from famine by suggesting that they use water – and not an electrolyte drink – to grow crops. We are conservatively 15 years from this happening in real life.

1. Back to the Future (1985)/Back to the Future Part II (1989)

Prescient … Michael J Fox and the Hoverboard Girls in Back to the Future Part II.

The only conceivable first choice. The first two Back to the Future films (the third, which is basically just a western, is far less imaginative) have come to define time-travel as a genre. They deliver a complex set of hard sci-fi rules about what can and cannot happen during time-travel and – miraculously – manage to do it in a way that kids can understand. Good music, cool clothes, a million catchphrases and, in the case of the second film, an unnervingly prescient prediction of how Donald Trump would turn out. Just perfect.

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'The Paradox Hotel' by Rob Hart is a trippy time travel murder mystery (exclusive)

Hart spoke with us on his old-fashioned murder mystery at a luxury hotel for time travelers.

In Rob Hart's "The Paradox Hotel," an old-fashioned murder mystery stirs up trouble in a luxury lodging for time travelers.

Ever since H.G. Wells' sci-fi novella "The Time Machine" entered Victorian society in 1895, we've been transfixed with the notion of hopping backwards and forwards via the turbulent waters of the time stream. 

Expanding upon the time travel idea of skipping through the centuries, film franchises and TV shows like "The Terminator," "Back to the Future," "12 Monkeys," "Looper" and "Doctor Who" have all explored the promise and the perils of time travel to varying degrees over the last 50 years. The result is some of the best time travel movies of all time.

Now New York Times bestselling author Rob Hart is dipping his imagination into the temporal pool with " The Paradox Hotel ," (Ballantine Books, 2022) where he introduces us to a mysterious lodging facility located beside a timeport that specifically caters to wayward time travelers.

Hart’s work has already attracted Hollywood luminaries by selling the adaptation rights to his 2019 futuristic thriller " The Warehouse " to Imagine Entertainment’s Ron Howard for his next directorial project. "The Paradox Hotel" has also been optioned to develop into a TV series. (If you're interested in more wild science fiction reads, check out our best sci-fi books guide.

The Paradox Hotel: A Novel was $28

The Paradox Hotel: A Novel | was $28 now $20.49 at Amazon.

Dive into an old-fashioned murder mystery with a time travel twist in Rob Hart's new novel "The Paradox Hotel" out now. 

This sci-fi mystery's storyline introduces the character of January Cole, a director of security at the Paradox Hotel, where a typical day finds rich tourists checking in dressed to impress for a dozen different time periods while awaiting departures for flights to the past. It's a bizarre workplace environment where clocks might tick backwards and temporal spirits roam.

There's also the conundrum of a dead body in Room 526 that, like Schrödinger's Cat, is both there and not there at the same instant. But January is the only one who can see this spectral corpse and her reality begins to unravel when VIP guests arrive as the U.S. government prepares to privatize time travel technology and a ghostly murderer is on the loose inside the hotel.

"I've always loved time travel stories, and I finally decided to give it a try with 'The Paradox Hotel' — which seemed like a good idea when I started, and then I learned that actually writing time travel is pretty complicated," Hart told Space.com. "But it was worth it! Since it was about time travel, I was pretty adamant that it needed robots and dinosaurs — because if I'm going to do it, I'm going to have fun with it. But it was also a great mechanism for exploring grief, and how hard it is for us to face ourselves." 

Hart first got the premise while searching for real-world parallels, and discovered it in the current state of space travel. 

" Something that started as a research venture by the government, and became underfunded over the years, which opened the door to private investment,."  Hart explains." And now you've got guys like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk sending tourists into space. It seems like time travel would follow a similar path. But here's the thing: space isn't just about tourism. It's about communication networks, and how zero-G would improve manufacturing and shipping, and the fact that the average meteor contains trillions of dollars in precious metals. There are a lot of ways to profit in space, and it was fun to figure out the ways people could profit with time travel."

"The Paradox Hotel" was officially optioned for an episodic TV series by Universal's Working Title, and Hart reveals that the development process is coming along great. 

"I just recently read the finished draft of the pilot episode, and it's just bonkers brilliant," he adds. "It takes a lot of liberties, but in the best way possible, really spinning out the worldbuilding and the mystery aspects, and making them work in a really visual way. At this point we move on to the next steps in the process, and sure, it's just an option, and this stuff takes forever, and it might not even get made — but I'm excited to have made it this far."

Rob Hart's " The Paradox Hotel " is available now at book stores and online outlets.

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Jeff Spry

Jeff Spry is an award-winning screenwriter and veteran freelance journalist covering TV, movies, video games, books, and comics. His work has appeared at SYFY Wire, Inverse, Collider, Bleeding Cool and elsewhere. Jeff lives in beautiful Bend, Oregon amid the ponderosa pines, classic muscle cars, a crypt of collector horror comics, and two loyal English Setters.

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The Heartfelt Aubrey Plaza Time Travel Movie You Should Stream

Posted: February 27, 2024 | Last updated: February 27, 2024

<p>Aubrey Plaza definitely has a niche. For a while, she had the indie market cornered on snarky, disaffected twenty-something cynicism. But as we’ve seen, there’s heart in there, too, and nowhere is that more on display than in director Colin Trevorrow’s low-budget time travel comedy Safety Not Guaranteed. The film is funny, inventive, and tinged with sadness, but also hope.</p>

Aubrey Plaza definitely has a niche. For a while, she had the indie market cornered on snarky, disaffected twenty-something cynicism. But as we’ve seen, there’s heart in there, too, and nowhere is that more on display than in director Colin Trevorrow’s low-budget time travel comedy Safety Not Guaranteed. The film is funny, inventive, and tinged with sadness, but also hope.

<p>Quirkiness is the word of the day in regards to Safety Not Guaranteed. Aubrey Plaza plays Darius, a depressed intern at Seattle Magazine. </p><p>When a seemingly light-hearted assignment comes down the shoot, her d-bag boss Jeff (Jake M. Johnson) grabs her and another nerdy intern, Arnau (Karan Soni), and they run with it. Someone placed a classified ad—based on a real Craigslist ad that became a viral sensation a few years ago—looking for a time travel companion.</p><p>The ad reads:</p>

Safety Not Guaranteed

Quirkiness is the word of the day in regards to Safety Not Guaranteed. Aubrey Plaza plays Darius, a depressed intern at Seattle Magazine.

When a seemingly light-hearted assignment comes down the shoot, her d-bag boss Jeff (Jake M. Johnson) grabs her and another nerdy intern, Arnau (Karan Soni), and they run with it. Someone placed a classified ad—based on a real Craigslist ad that became a viral sensation a few years ago—looking for a time travel companion.

The ad reads:

<p>The magazine team digs in to see what kind of person is behind this. Is this some sort of elaborate practical joke, or does the author actually believe he can go back in time? </p><p>It doesn’t hurt that Jeff has figured out how to use this assignment as a way to track down an old flame in the process of getting paid.</p>

Solving A Mystery

The magazine team digs in to see what kind of person is behind this. Is this some sort of elaborate practical joke, or does the author actually believe he can go back in time?

It doesn’t hurt that Jeff has figured out how to use this assignment as a way to track down an old flame in the process of getting paid.

<p>The trio’s path finally leads them to Kenneth (Mark Duplass), and Darius is sent in to investigate. </p><p>Kenneth wears a lot of denim, has a mullet, and nearly everyone has written him off, dismissing his theoretical rants and paranoia. He has an extraordinarily high level of self-confidence, seemingly without any means to back it up. </p><p>Aubrey Plaza as Darius is the only one who takes him seriously. While she doesn’t initially entertain the possibility that he can do what he says he can, she treats him like a real person. It helps that she’s a pretty girl.</p>

Taking Each Other Seriously

The trio’s path finally leads them to Kenneth (Mark Duplass), and Darius is sent in to investigate.

Kenneth wears a lot of denim, has a mullet, and nearly everyone has written him off, dismissing his theoretical rants and paranoia. He has an extraordinarily high level of self-confidence, seemingly without any means to back it up.

Aubrey Plaza as Darius is the only one who takes him seriously. While she doesn’t initially entertain the possibility that he can do what he says he can, she treats him like a real person. It helps that she’s a pretty girl.

<p>As you can predict, the two become close. As Kenneth lets Darius deeper into his world, she, in turn, does the same. He puts her through her paces to decide if Aubrey Plaza is a worthy time-travel cohort. </p><p>This is the real story of Safety Not Guaranteed, these two lonely people forming a real, honest connection. There is an affection, chemistry, and awkward easiness that makes you want to watch them together.</p>

Ready For Time Travel

As you can predict, the two become close. As Kenneth lets Darius deeper into his world, she, in turn, does the same. He puts her through her paces to decide if Aubrey Plaza is a worthy time-travel cohort.

This is the real story of Safety Not Guaranteed, these two lonely people forming a real, honest connection. There is an affection, chemistry, and awkward easiness that makes you want to watch them together.

<p>The relationship between Darius and Kenneth is nice and adorable and all that. Duplass brings an infectious sincerity to his character and is hunky enough that you believe Aubrey Plaza might want to hit that. </p><p>You don’t necessarily believe him—he definitely believes himself—but you’re really rooting for him to be right. </p><p>Darius and Kenneth drive the plot—and this is their movie completely—but the side story between Jeff and Liz (Jenica Bergere), a high school romance, might be the most earnest, moving part of the film.</p><p>There is also a funny aside between Jeff and Arnau. Arnau begins the film as a flat stereotype, but that changes as Jeff decides he’s gonna teach the kid how to live. </p><p>It starts out with Jeff trying to cling to his own youth, but he develops a sweetness that can’t be denied. Each of them discovered important truths about themselves.</p>

Rooting For Everyone

The relationship between Darius and Kenneth is nice and adorable and all that. Duplass brings an infectious sincerity to his character and is hunky enough that you believe Aubrey Plaza might want to hit that.

You don’t necessarily believe him—he definitely believes himself—but you’re really rooting for him to be right.

Darius and Kenneth drive the plot—and this is their movie completely—but the side story between Jeff and Liz (Jenica Bergere), a high school romance, might be the most earnest, moving part of the film.

There is also a funny aside between Jeff and Arnau. Arnau begins the film as a flat stereotype, but that changes as Jeff decides he’s gonna teach the kid how to live.

It starts out with Jeff trying to cling to his own youth, but he develops a sweetness that can’t be denied. Each of them discovered important truths about themselves.

<p>Safety Not Guaranteed asks questions like, why would you want to go back in time? What pain lurks in your past that you’ve never gotten over? What wrong would you right? </p><p>Everyone has regret, sorrow, loss, and things they wish they could take back and do over. </p><p>Kenneth is overtly trying to jump back in time, but so is Aubrey Plaza’s character—who uses this opportunity to cope with unresolved issues with the loss of her mother years before—and Jeff—who, no matter how many women he talks into bed, has never truly stopped thinking about Liz. </p><p>They all reach to the past in one form or another, looking for something to make sense of their present.</p>

Going Back Into Our Past

Safety Not Guaranteed asks questions like, why would you want to go back in time? What pain lurks in your past that you’ve never gotten over? What wrong would you right?

Everyone has regret, sorrow, loss, and things they wish they could take back and do over.

Kenneth is overtly trying to jump back in time, but so is Aubrey Plaza’s character—who uses this opportunity to cope with unresolved issues with the loss of her mother years before—and Jeff—who, no matter how many women he talks into bed, has never truly stopped thinking about Liz.

They all reach to the past in one form or another, looking for something to make sense of their present.

<p>Safety Not Guaranteed is a quiet, inventive approach to science fiction. The script, by Trevorrow and writing partner Derek Connolly, relies on interesting characters and a unique story rather than expensive, eye-catching special effects and flashy gimmicks. This is definitely not a film for everyone. </p><p>It’s ultra twee and overly precious at times, and that will turn some people off. But this Aubrey Plaza movie really is funny, heartfelt, and more imaginative and resourceful than most indie sci-fi out there.</p><p>GFR SCORE</p>

Funny, Heartfelt, And Imaginative

Safety Not Guaranteed is a quiet, inventive approach to science fiction. The script, by Trevorrow and writing partner Derek Connolly, relies on interesting characters and a unique story rather than expensive, eye-catching special effects and flashy gimmicks. This is definitely not a film for everyone.

It’s ultra twee and overly precious at times, and that will turn some people off. But this Aubrey Plaza movie really is funny, heartfelt, and more imaginative and resourceful than most indie sci-fi out there.

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Movies Featuring Time Loops & Time Travel

The most complete list of movies in which time traveling or time looping are a prominent plot device. Time travel is the concept of moving between different points in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space, generally using a theoretical invention known as a "time machine". Let's face it, the time traveling concept was always an preoccupation in literature and filmography. You can't find a person who didn't think about time traveling or building a time travel machine. That's why movies with those themes were and always will be interesting and amusing to watch. P.S. Although this list is about movies only, I highly recommend watching the tv show Dark (2017) . Notable mentions: Travelers (2016) and Timeless (2016) . Tags: Time Loop, Time Travel, Day Repetition, Time Traveler, Leaping Through Time, Time Machine, Chrononaut.

  • Movies or TV
  • IMDb Rating
  • In Theaters
  • Release Year

1. Donnie Darko (2001)

R | 113 min | Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi

After narrowly escaping a bizarre accident, a troubled teenager is plagued by visions of a man in a large rabbit suit who manipulates him to commit a series of crimes.

Director: Richard Kelly | Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal , Jena Malone , Mary McDonnell , Holmes Osborne

Votes: 845,207 | Gross: $1.48M

Best of its kind, hands down.

2. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006)

TV-PG | 98 min | Animation, Adventure, Comedy

A high-school girl named Makoto acquires the power to travel back in time, and decides to use it for her own personal benefits. Little does she know that she is affecting the lives of others just as much as she is her own.

Director: Mamoru Hosoda | Stars: Riisa Naka , Takuya Ishida , Mitsutaka Itakura , Ayami Kakiuchi

Votes: 70,466

Best anime movie revolving around time travel.

3. Time Traveller (2010)

Not Rated | 122 min | Adventure, Sci-Fi

A high-school girl acquires the ability to time travel.

Director: Masaaki Taniguchi | Stars: Riisa Naka , Akiyoshi Nakao , Munetaka Aoki , Anna Ishibashi

Votes: 1,717

4. Steins;Gate (2011–2015)

TV-14 | 24 min | Animation, Comedy, Drama

After discovering time travel, a university student and his colleagues must use their knowledge of it to stop an evil organization and their diabolical plans.

Stars: Mamoru Miyano , Asami Imai , Kana Hanazawa , Ashly Burch

Votes: 72,403

Best anime series revolving around time travel.

5. 12 Monkeys (1995)

R | 129 min | Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller

In a future world devastated by disease, a convict is sent back in time to gather information about the man-made virus that wiped out most of the human population on the planet.

Director: Terry Gilliam | Stars: Bruce Willis , Madeleine Stowe , Brad Pitt , Joseph Melito

Votes: 643,925 | Gross: $57.14M

Second only to Donnie Darko. Absolute time travel classic.

6. The Visitors (1993)

R | 107 min | Comedy, Fantasy

A medieval knight and his servant ask a familiar wizard to move them back in time to prevent father-in-law's accidentally killing. Instead, they fly away to the 20th century.

Director: Jean-Marie Poiré | Stars: Christian Clavier , Jean Reno , Valérie Lemercier , Marie-Anne Chazel

Votes: 37,761 | Gross: $0.70M

A pretty good comedy including time travel. It features a sequel: Les couloirs du temps: Les visiteurs II from 1998. and a third part coming in 2016. named La Terreur: Les Visiteurs III. Furthermore, there is a spin-off named Just Visiting from 2001.

7. Groundhog Day (1993)

PG | 101 min | Comedy, Drama, Fantasy

A narcissistic, self-centered weatherman finds himself in a time loop on Groundhog Day.

Director: Harold Ramis | Stars: Bill Murray , Andie MacDowell , Chris Elliott , Stephen Tobolowsky

Votes: 680,448 | Gross: $70.91M

Probably the best known movie about a time loop.

8. Looper (2012)

R | 119 min | Action, Drama, Sci-Fi

In 2074, when the mob wants to get rid of someone, the target is sent into the past, where a hired gun awaits - someone like Joe - who one day learns the mob wants to 'close the loop' by sending back Joe's future self for assassination.

Director: Rian Johnson | Stars: Joseph Gordon-Levitt , Bruce Willis , Emily Blunt , Paul Dano

Votes: 600,514 | Gross: $66.49M

9. The Terminator (1984)

R | 107 min | Action, Sci-Fi

A human soldier is sent from 2029 to 1984 to stop an almost indestructible cyborg killing machine, sent from the same year, which has been programmed to execute a young woman whose unborn son is the key to humanity's future salvation.

Director: James Cameron | Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger , Linda Hamilton , Michael Biehn , Paul Winfield

Votes: 918,078 | Gross: $38.40M

10. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

R | 137 min | Action, Sci-Fi

A cyborg, identical to the one who failed to kill Sarah Connor, must now protect her ten year old son John from an even more advanced and powerful cyborg.

Director: James Cameron | Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger , Linda Hamilton , Edward Furlong , Robert Patrick

Votes: 1,166,272 | Gross: $204.84M

11. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)

R | 109 min | Action, Sci-Fi

A machine from a post-apocalyptic future travels back in time to protect a man and a woman from an advanced robotic assassin to ensure they both survive a nuclear attack.

Director: Jonathan Mostow | Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger , Nick Stahl , Kristanna Loken , Claire Danes

Votes: 417,097 | Gross: $150.37M

12. Terminator Salvation (2009)

PG-13 | 115 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

In 2018, a mysterious new weapon in the war against the machines, half-human and half-machine, comes to John Connor on the eve of a resistance attack on Skynet. But whose side is he on, and can he be trusted?

Director: McG | Stars: Christian Bale , Sam Worthington , Anton Yelchin , Moon Bloodgood

Votes: 376,024 | Gross: $125.32M

13. Source Code (2011)

PG-13 | 93 min | Action, Drama, Mystery

A soldier wakes up in someone else's body and discovers he's part of an experimental government program to find the bomber of a commuter train within 8 minutes.

Director: Duncan Jones | Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal , Michelle Monaghan , Vera Farmiga , Jeffrey Wright

Votes: 546,975 | Gross: $54.71M

14. Sphere (1998)

PG-13 | 134 min | Action, Mystery, Sci-Fi

A spaceship is discovered under three hundred years' worth of coral growth at the bottom of the ocean.

Director: Barry Levinson | Stars: Dustin Hoffman , Sharon Stone , Samuel L. Jackson , Peter Coyote

Votes: 112,048 | Gross: $37.02M

15. Primer (2004)

PG-13 | 77 min | Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Four friends/fledgling entrepreneurs, knowing that there's something bigger and more innovative than the different error-checking devices they've built, wrestle over their new invention.

Director: Shane Carruth | Stars: Shane Carruth , David Sullivan , Casey Gooden , Anand Upadhyaya

Votes: 113,581 | Gross: $0.42M

16. Triangle (2009)

R | 99 min | Fantasy, Mystery, Sci-Fi

Five friends set sail and their yacht is overturned by a strange and sudden storm. A mysterious ship arrives to rescue them, and what happens next cannot be explained.

Director: Christopher Smith | Stars: Melissa George , Joshua McIvor , Jack Taylor , Michael Dorman

Votes: 128,570

17. Timecrimes (2007)

R | 92 min | Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi

A man accidentally gets into a time machine and travels back in time nearly an hour. Finding himself will be the first of a series of disasters of unforeseeable consequences.

Director: Nacho Vigalondo | Stars: Karra Elejalde , Candela Fernández , Bárbara Goenaga , Nacho Vigalondo

Votes: 68,398 | Gross: $0.04M

18. Dead End (I) (2003)

R | 85 min | Adventure, Horror, Mystery

Christmas Eve. On his way to his in-laws with his family, Frank Harrington decides to try a shortcut, for the first time in 20 years. It turns out to be the biggest mistake of his life.

Directors: Jean-Baptiste Andrea , Fabrice Canepa | Stars: Ray Wise , Lin Shaye , Mick Cain , Alexandra Holden

Votes: 32,090

19. Time Lapse (2014)

Not Rated | 104 min | Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Three friends discover a mysterious machine that takes pictures twenty-four hours into the future, and conspire to use it for personal gain, until disturbing and dangerous images begin to develop.

Director: Bradley King | Stars: Danielle Panabaker , Matt O'Leary , George Finn , John Rhys-Davies

Votes: 48,840

20. Project Almanac (2015)

PG-13 | 106 min | Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi

A group of teens discovers secret plans for a time machine, and construct one. However, things start to get out of control.

Director: Dean Israelite | Stars: Amy Landecker , Sofia Black-D'Elia , Virginia Gardner , Jonny Weston

Votes: 83,908 | Gross: $22.35M

21. Timespace (2014)

90 min | Drama, Sci-Fi

After successfully traveling back in time, an inquisitive up-and-coming physicist combats protesters, naysayers, tragedies, and a guilt-ridden conscience on a quest to discover the meaning of life.

Director: Daniel Ziegler | Stars: Bryan Raiton , Jessica Mirl , Ben Miller , Sarah France

22. Coherence (2013)

Not Rated | 89 min | Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi

Strange things begin to happen when a group of friends gather for a dinner party on an evening when a comet is passing overhead.

Director: James Ward Byrkit | Stars: Emily Baldoni , Maury Sterling , Nicholas Brendon , Elizabeth Gracen

Votes: 144,457 | Gross: $0.07M

23. The I Inside (2004)

R | 90 min | Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller

An amnesiac discovers himself leaping through time between 2000 and 2002 as his past returns to him.

Director: Roland Suso Richter | Stars: Ryan Phillippe , Sarah Polley , Piper Perabo , Robert Sean Leonard

Votes: 11,353

24. Retroactive (1997)

R | 91 min | Action, Crime, Drama

A psychiatrist makes multiple trips through time to save a woman that was murdered by her brutal husband.

Director: Louis Morneau | Stars: Jim Belushi , Kylie Travis , Shannon Whirry , Frank Whaley

Votes: 6,669

25. Time (2006)

Not Rated | 97 min | Drama, Mystery, Romance

To save her relationship, a woman puts herself through extensive plastic surgery.

Director: Kim Ki-duk | Stars: Ha Jung-woo , Ji-Yeon Park , Jung Gyu-woon , Jun-yeong Jang

Votes: 12,847 | Gross: $0.01M

26. Lost Highway (1997)

R | 134 min | Mystery, Thriller

Anonymous videotapes presage a musician's murder conviction, and a gangster's girlfriend leads a mechanic astray.

Director: David Lynch | Stars: Bill Pullman , Patricia Arquette , John Roselius , Louis Eppolito

Votes: 152,260 | Gross: $3.80M

Two words: David Lynch

27. Dark Country (2009)

R | 88 min | Crime, Mystery, Thriller

A couple en route from Las Vegas are forced to deal with a body in the desert, making their honeymoon one hellish ride.

Director: Thomas Jane | Stars: Thomas Jane , Lauren German , Ron Perlman , Chris Browning

Votes: 4,847

28. Repeaters (2010)

89 min | Action, Crime, Drama

Three twenty-somethings find themselves in an impossible time loop, where each day they awaken to the same terrifying day as the preceding one.

Director: Carl Bessai | Stars: Dustin Milligan , Amanda Crew , Richard de Klerk , Alexia Fast

Votes: 7,034

29. Memory Lane (III) (2012)

Not Rated | 70 min | Crime, Sci-Fi, Thriller

An orphaned war veteran routinely travels between our world and the afterlife in search of his fiancée's killer by stopping and starting his own heart.

Director: Shawn Holmes | Stars: Michael Guy Allen , Meg Braden , Julian Curi , Zac Snyder

Votes: 1,632

30. The Reeds (2010)

R | 86 min | Horror, Mystery, Thriller

A weekend boating party turns into a nightmare for a group of young Londoners when they stumble upon a terrifying secret hidden in the reeds.

Director: Nick Cohen | Stars: Anna Brewster , Geoff Bell , Daniel Caltagirone , Emma Catherwood

Votes: 2,780

31. The Butterfly Effect (2004)

R | 113 min | Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Evan Treborn suffers blackouts during significant events of his life. As he grows up, he finds a way to remember these lost memories and a supernatural way to alter his life by reading his journal.

Directors: Eric Bress , J. Mackye Gruber | Stars: Ashton Kutcher , Amy Smart , Melora Walters , Elden Henson

Votes: 518,515 | Gross: $57.94M

If you liked this movie, don't watch its sequels: The Butterfly Effect 2 from 2006. and The Butterfly Effect 3: Revelations from 2009.

32. Extracted (2012)

R | 89 min | Drama, Sci-Fi

A scientist who has invented a technology to construct virtual realities from people's memories finds himself in a perilous situation, after he reluctantly allows it to be used for a purpose he never imagined.

Director: Nir Paniry | Stars: Sasha Roiz , Jenny Mollen , Dominic Bogart , Richard Riehle

Votes: 12,490

33. 11 Minutes Ago (2007)

Not Rated | 83 min | Romance, Sci-Fi

Traveling in 11-minute increments, a time-tumbler from 48 years in the future spends two years of his life weaving through a two-hour wedding reception.

Director: Bob Gebert | Stars: Ian Michaels , Christina Mauro , Evan Lee Dahl , Taryn Reneau

34. Premature (2014)

R | 93 min | Comedy, Drama, Fantasy

A high school senior has to re-live losing his virginity over and over again until he gets it right, with the right girl.

Director: Dan Beers | Stars: John Karna , Caroline Traywick , Kate Kneeland , Steve Coulter

Votes: 10,649

Your usual teen comedy meets Groundhog Day.

35. Fetching Cody (2005)

Not Rated | 86 min | Drama, Fantasy, Romance

Art, a drug-addicted dealer and hustler, arrives at his girlfriend Cody's apartment to find that she has overdosed on heroin. He tries to fix things by traveling back in time in an attempt to prevent her death.

Director: David Ray | Stars: Jay Baruchel , Sarah Lind , Jim Byrnes , Lucas Blaney

Votes: 1,469

36. Ditto (2000)

110 min | Drama, Romance, Sci-Fi

Two students, separated in time, are somehow able to talk to each other using amateur radio, one in 1979 and the other in 2000.

Director: Jeong-kwon Kim | Stars: Yoo Ji-tae , Kim Ha-neul , Ha Ji-Won , Do-Yoon Kim

Votes: 2,214

37. The Door (2009)

103 min | Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi

A successful artist loses control of his life after his young daughter's death. A chance for a new start appears, but all is not what it seems.

Director: Anno Saul | Stars: Mads Mikkelsen , Jessica Schwarz , Valeria Eisenbart , Thomas Thieme

Votes: 6,321

38. Enter Nowhere (2011)

Three strangers arrive one by one at a mysterious cabin in the middle of nowhere only to learn they've been brought together for a reason.

Director: Jack Heller | Stars: Katherine Waterston , Scott Eastwood , Sara Paxton , Shaun Sipos

Votes: 12,517

39. Happy Accidents (2000)

R | 110 min | Comedy, Romance

New Yorker Ruby Weaver believes she has found the man of her dreams in Sam Deed, who is her best catch in some time--except that he assures her that he came from the future.

Director: Brad Anderson | Stars: Marisa Tomei , Vincent D'Onofrio , Holland Taylor , Mick Weber

Votes: 10,193 | Gross: $0.69M

40. Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel (2009)

PG-13 | 83 min | Comedy, Sci-Fi

While drinking at their local pub, three social outcasts attempt to navigate a time-travel conundrum.

Director: Gareth Carrivick | Stars: Chris O'Dowd , Marc Wootton , Dean Lennox Kelly , Anna Faris

Votes: 36,412

FAQing funny.

41. Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)

R | 86 min | Adventure, Comedy, Drama

Three magazine employees head out on an assignment to interview a guy who placed a classified advertisement seeking a companion for time travel.

Director: Colin Trevorrow | Stars: Aubrey Plaza , Mark Duplass , Jake Johnson , Karan Soni

Votes: 130,587 | Gross: $4.01M

42. Pleasantville (1998)

PG-13 | 124 min | Comedy, Drama, Fantasy

Two 1990s teenage siblings find themselves transported to a 1950s sitcom where their influence begins to profoundly change that colorless, complacent world.

Director: Gary Ross | Stars: Tobey Maguire , Jeff Daniels , Joan Allen , William H. Macy

Votes: 135,777 | Gross: $40.57M

43. The Time Traveler's Wife (2009)

PG-13 | 107 min | Comedy, Drama, Fantasy

Henry DeTamble, a librarian, possesses a unique gene that lets him involuntarily travel through time. His wife, Claire Abshire, finds it difficult to cope with it.

Director: Robert Schwentke | Stars: Eric Bana , Rachel McAdams , Ron Livingston , Michelle Nolden

Votes: 157,368 | Gross: $63.41M

44. About Time (I) (2013)

R | 123 min | Comedy, Drama, Fantasy

At the age of 21, Tim discovers he can travel in time and change what happens and has happened in his own life. His decision to make his world a better place by getting a girlfriend turns out not to be as easy as you might think.

Director: Richard Curtis | Stars: Domhnall Gleeson , Rachel McAdams , Bill Nighy , Lydia Wilson

Votes: 382,849 | Gross: $15.32M

45. Midnight in Paris (2011)

PG-13 | 94 min | Comedy, Fantasy, Romance

While on a trip to Paris with his fiancée's family, a nostalgic screenwriter finds himself mysteriously going back to the 1920s every day at midnight.

Director: Woody Allen | Stars: Owen Wilson , Rachel McAdams , Kathy Bates , Kurt Fuller

Votes: 447,988 | Gross: $56.82M

More like "visiting the past".

46. The Time Machine (1960)

G | 103 min | Adventure, Romance, Sci-Fi

A man's vision for a utopian society is disillusioned when travelling forward into time reveals a dark and dangerous society.

Director: George Pal | Stars: Rod Taylor , Alan Young , Yvette Mimieux , Sebastian Cabot

Votes: 44,520

47. The Lake House (2006)

PG | 99 min | Drama, Fantasy, Romance

A lonely doctor who once occupied an unusual lakeside house begins to exchange love letters with its former resident, a frustrated architect. They must try to unravel the mystery behind their extraordinary romance before it's too late.

Director: Alejandro Agresti | Stars: Keanu Reeves , Sandra Bullock , Christopher Plummer , Ebon Moss-Bachrach

Votes: 157,115 | Gross: $52.33M

48. The Time Machine (2002)

PG-13 | 96 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

Hoping to alter the events of the past, a 19th century inventor instead travels 800,000 years into the future, where he finds humankind divided into two warring races.

Director: Simon Wells | Stars: Guy Pearce , Yancey Arias , Mark Addy , Phyllida Law

Votes: 129,891 | Gross: $56.68M

49. La Jetée (1962)

Not Rated | 28 min | Short, Drama, Romance

The story of a man forced to explore his memories in the wake of World War III's devastation, told through still images.

Director: Chris Marker | Stars: Étienne Becker , Jean Négroni , Hélène Chatelain , Davos Hanich

Votes: 36,846

Short but epic.

50. Timeline (2003)

PG-13 | 116 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

A group of archaeologists get embroiled in an adventure where they must travel back in time to 14th Century France, to save their professor before the French battle the English at Castlegard. If they fail, they won't be able to return.

Director: Richard Donner | Stars: Paul Walker , Gerard Butler , Billy Connolly , Frances O'Connor

Votes: 65,652 | Gross: $19.48M

51. Slaughterhouse-Five (1972)

R | 104 min | Comedy, Drama, Sci-Fi

Billy Pilgrim has mysteriously become unstuck in time. He goes on an uncontrollable trip back and forth from his birth in New York to life on a distant planet and back again to the horrors of the 1945 fire-bombing of Dresden.

Director: George Roy Hill | Stars: Michael Sacks , Ron Leibman , Eugene Roche , Sharon Gans

Votes: 13,841 | Gross: $0.57M

52. Time After Time (1979)

PG | 112 min | Adventure, Drama, Sci-Fi

H.G. Wells pursues Jack the Ripper to the 20th Century when the serial murderer uses the future writer's time machine to escape his time period.

Director: Nicholas Meyer | Stars: Malcolm McDowell , Mary Steenburgen , David Warner , Charles Cioffi

Votes: 20,513

Unfortunately, the soundtrack isn't featuring Cyndi Lauper. :(

53. The Final Countdown (1980)

PG | 103 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

A modern aircraft carrier is thrown back in time to 1941 near Hawaii, just hours before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Director: Don Taylor | Stars: Kirk Douglas , Martin Sheen , Katharine Ross , James Farentino

Votes: 26,707 | Gross: $16.65M

54. The Philadelphia Experiment (1984)

PG | 102 min | Adventure, Drama, Romance

A United States Navy destroyer escort participates in a Navy "invisibility" experiment that inadvertently sends two sailors forty years into the future.

Director: Stewart Raffill | Stars: Michael Paré , Nancy Allen , Eric Christmas , Bobby Di Cicco

Votes: 16,641 | Gross: $8.10M

Not nearly as good sequel: The Philadelphia Experiment from 1993.

55. Back to the Future (1985)

PG | 116 min | Adventure, Comedy, Sci-Fi

Marty McFly, a 17-year-old high school student, is accidentally sent 30 years into the past in a time-traveling DeLorean invented by his close friend, the maverick scientist Doc Brown.

Director: Robert Zemeckis | Stars: Michael J. Fox , Christopher Lloyd , Lea Thompson , Crispin Glover

Votes: 1,296,581 | Gross: $210.61M

56. Back to the Future Part II (1989)

PG | 108 min | Adventure, Comedy, Sci-Fi

After visiting 2015, Marty McFly must repeat his visit to 1955 to prevent disastrous changes to 1985...without interfering with his first trip.

Director: Robert Zemeckis | Stars: Michael J. Fox , Christopher Lloyd , Lea Thompson , Tom Wilson

Votes: 568,962 | Gross: $118.50M

57. Back to the Future Part III (1990)

PG | 118 min | Adventure, Comedy, Sci-Fi

Stranded in 1955, Marty McFly learns about the death of Doc Brown in 1885 and must travel back in time to save him. With no fuel readily available for the DeLorean, the two must figure how to escape the Old West before Emmett is murdered.

Director: Robert Zemeckis | Stars: Michael J. Fox , Christopher Lloyd , Mary Steenburgen , Tom Wilson

Votes: 477,950 | Gross: $87.73M

58. S. Darko (2009)

R | 103 min | Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi

Donnie Darko's little sister Samantha and her best friend Corey are on a cross-country road trip, but soon find themselves entangled in a dangerous glitch in the time-space continuum.

Director: Chris Fisher | Stars: Daveigh Chase , Briana Evigan , James Lafferty , Ed Westwick

Votes: 14,426

Donnie Darko's little sister. As one critic nicely put it: "All style, no substance."

59. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)

PG | 119 min | Action, Adventure, Comedy

To save Earth from an alien probe, Admiral James T. Kirk and his fugitive crew go back in time to San Francisco in 1986 to retrieve the only beings who can communicate with it: humpback whales.

Director: Leonard Nimoy | Stars: William Shatner , Leonard Nimoy , DeForest Kelley , James Doohan

Votes: 91,034 | Gross: $109.71M

60. Star Trek (2009)

PG-13 | 127 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

The brash James T. Kirk tries to live up to his father's legacy with Mr. Spock keeping him in check as a vengeful Romulan from the future creates black holes to destroy the Federation one planet at a time.

Director: J.J. Abrams | Stars: Chris Pine , Zachary Quinto , Simon Pegg , Leonard Nimoy

Votes: 618,697 | Gross: $257.73M

61. Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989)

PG | 90 min | Adventure, Comedy, Music

Two rock-'n-rolling teens, on the verge of failing their class, set out on a quest to make the ultimate school history report after being presented with a time machine.

Director: Stephen Herek | Stars: Keanu Reeves , Alex Winter , George Carlin , Terry Camilleri

Votes: 140,948 | Gross: $40.49M

62. Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey (1991)

PG | 93 min | Adventure, Comedy, Fantasy

A tyrant from the future creates evil android doubles of Bill and Ted and sends them back to eliminate the originals.

Director: Peter Hewitt | Stars: Keanu Reeves , Alex Winter , William Sadler , Joss Ackland

Votes: 80,733 | Gross: $38.04M

63. Biggles: Adventures in Time (1986)

PG | 108 min | Adventure, Family, Sci-Fi

Daring British WWI fighter pilot James "Biggles" Bigglesworth and 1980s low-level business executive Jim Ferguson discover that they can time travel to each other's eras. They try to stop the Germans from changing the outcome of WWI.

Director: John Hough | Stars: Neil Dickson , Alex Hyde-White , Fiona Hutchison , Peter Cushing

Votes: 3,336 | Gross: $0.11M

64. Timestalkers (1987 TV Movie)

Not Rated | 100 min | Adventure, Drama, Sci-Fi

Scott McKenzie, a history professor, becomes involved with two time travelers from the year 2586 after making a discovery in an old photograph from 1886.

Director: Michael Schultz | Stars: William Devane , Lauren Hutton , John Ratzenberger , Forrest Tucker

Votes: 1,532

65. The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey (1988)

PG | 92 min | Action, Adventure, Drama

Men seeking relief from the Black Death, guided by a boy's vision, dig a tunnel from 14th century England to 20th century New Zealand.

Director: Vincent Ward | Stars: Bruce Lyons , Chris Haywood , Hamish Gough , Marshall Napier

Votes: 3,953 | Gross: $1.33M

66. Millennium (1989)

PG-13 | 108 min | Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller

An NTSB investigator seeking the cause of an airline disaster meets a warrior woman from 1000 years in the future.

Director: Michael Anderson | Stars: Kris Kristofferson , Cheryl Ladd , Daniel J. Travanti , Robert Joy

Votes: 6,916 | Gross: $5.78M

67. Grand Tour: Disaster in Time (1991)

PG-13 | 99 min | Mystery, Sci-Fi

Before they can complete renovations on their new inn, Widower (Ben Wilson) and daughter (Hillary) are visited by a woman seeking immediate lodging for her strange group of travellers. Why ... See full summary  »

Director: David Twohy | Stars: Jeff Daniels , Ariana Richards , Emilia Crow , Jim Haynie

Votes: 3,066

68. Time Runner (1993)

R | 90 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

During the unstoppable alien invasion of 2022, one man flees through a wormhole to 1992 in hope of changing the future. But attempt after attempt is made by someone there to catch and kill him.

Director: Michael Mazo | Stars: Mark Hamill , Rae Dawn Chong , Brion James , Mark Baur

Votes: 1,134

69. Magic Müller (1993 TV Movie)

Mueller is a young and unsuccessful actor who has one big problem. He does not have time. He does not have time for his little daughter Elina and he does not have time for Petra who ... See full summary  »

Director: Thomas Bohn | Stars: Ingo Naujoks , Maria Schrader , Julia Böning , Jaymes Butler

70. Run Lola Run (1998)

R | 80 min | Action, Crime, Thriller

After a botched money delivery, Lola has 20 minutes to come up with 100,000 Deutschmarks.

Director: Tom Tykwer | Stars: Franka Potente , Moritz Bleibtreu , Herbert Knaup , Nina Petri

Votes: 206,232 | Gross: $7.27M

71. 12:01 (1993 TV Movie)

PG-13 | 92 min | Comedy, Sci-Fi, Thriller

A man likes a woman at work. He sees her get murdered. He gets drunk and zapped at 12:01AM. Next morning she's back and everything is exactly like the day before. The time loops gives him chances to save her.

Director: Jack Sholder | Stars: Helen Slater , Jonathan Silverman , Nicolas Surovy , Robin Bartlett

Votes: 5,485

72. Timecop (1994)

R | 99 min | Action, Crime, Sci-Fi

Max Walker, an officer for a security agency that regulates time travel, must fend for his life against a shady politician who's intent on changing the past to control the future.

Director: Peter Hyams | Stars: Jean-Claude Van Damme , Mia Sara , Ron Silver , Bruce McGill

Votes: 63,806 | Gross: $44.85M

Timecop 2: The Berlin Decision is a 2003. direct to video sequel of this movie.

73. Demolition Man (1993)

R | 115 min | Action, Sci-Fi, Thriller

A police officer is brought out of suspended animation in prison to pursue an old ultra-violent nemesis who is loose in a non-violent future society.

Director: Marco Brambilla | Stars: Sylvester Stallone , Wesley Snipes , Sandra Bullock , Nigel Hawthorne

Votes: 191,854 | Gross: $58.06M

74. 100 Million BC (2008 Video)

R | 85 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

A scientist leads a team of Navy SEALs back in time to the Cretaceous Period to rescue the first team he sent back during the 1940s. Things go wildly when he accidentally brings a giant dinosaur back into Los Angeles.

Director: Griff Furst | Stars: Michael Gross , Christopher Atkins , Greg Evigan , Marie Westbrook

Votes: 4,753

Trashy trash but surprisingly fun.

75. Moebius (1996)

88 min | Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller

A train on the Buenos Aires subway system suddenly vanishes.

Director: Gustavo Mosquera R. | Stars: Guillermo Angelelli , Roberto Carnaghi , Annabella Levy , Jorge Petraglia

Votes: 2,153

76. Star Trek: First Contact (1996)

PG-13 | 111 min | Action, Adventure, Drama

The Borg travel back in time intent on preventing Earth's first contact with an alien species. Captain Picard and his crew pursue them to ensure that Zefram Cochrane makes his maiden flight reaching warp speed.

Director: Jonathan Frakes | Stars: Patrick Stewart , Jonathan Frakes , Brent Spiner , LeVar Burton

Votes: 131,570 | Gross: $92.00M

77. Thrill Seekers (1999 TV Movie)

PG-13 | 88 min | Action, Sci-Fi, Thriller

A reporter, learning of time travelers visiting 20th century disasters, tries to change the history they know by averting upcoming disasters.

Director: Mario Azzopardi | Stars: Casper Van Dien , Catherine Bell , Theresa Saldana , Peter Outerbridge

Votes: 2,735

78. Frequency (2000)

PG-13 | 118 min | Crime, Drama, Mystery

An accidental cross-time radio link connects father and son across 30 years. The son tries to save his father's life, but then must fix the consequences.

Director: Gregory Hoblit | Stars: Dennis Quaid , Jim Caviezel , Shawn Doyle , Elizabeth Mitchell

Votes: 115,185 | Gross: $45.01M

79. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)

PG | 142 min | Adventure, Family, Fantasy

Harry Potter, Ron and Hermione return to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for their third year of study, where they delve into the mystery surrounding an escaped prisoner who poses a dangerous threat to the young wizard.

Director: Alfonso Cuarón | Stars: Daniel Radcliffe , Emma Watson , Rupert Grint , Richard Griffiths

Votes: 686,429 | Gross: $249.36M

80. Slipstream (2005)

R | 89 min | Action, Sci-Fi, Thriller

A scientist goes to a bank to meet a pretty bank-teller. His time-machine allows him to go 10 minutes back in time and correct his approaches to her. He's shadowed by 2 FBI agents and the bank gets robbed.

Director: David van Eyssen | Stars: Sean Astin , Vinnie Jones , Ivana Milicevic , Kevin Otto

Votes: 3,499

81. Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)

R | 99 min | Comedy, Sci-Fi

A malfunctioning time machine at a ski resort takes a man back to 1986 with his two friends and nephew, where they must relive a fateful night and not change anything to make sure the nephew is born.

Director: Steve Pink | Stars: John Cusack , Rob Corddry , Craig Robinson , Clark Duke

Votes: 185,574 | Gross: $50.29M

Soon: Hot Tub Time Machine 2.

82. All Over Again (2001)

PG | 90 min | Drama

17 year old Z.T., a brilliant mind and solid athlete, dreams of a great college and a future of invention and innovation. But he still grieves over his mother's recent death, a shoulder ... See full summary  »

Director: Noah Knox Marshall | Stars: Ean Mering , Robert Loggia , Craig T. Nelson , John Amos

83. Click (2006)

A workaholic architect finds a universal remote that allows him to fast-forward and rewind to different parts of his life. Complications arise when the remote starts to overrule his choices.

Director: Frank Coraci | Stars: Adam Sandler , Kate Beckinsale , Christopher Walken , David Hasselhoff

Votes: 354,338 | Gross: $137.36M

84. Clockstoppers (2002)

PG | 94 min | Action, Adventure, Comedy

A teenager accidentally activates a machine that enables him to speed up his body so that other people seem to be standing still.

Director: Jonathan Frakes | Stars: Jesse Bradford , French Stewart , Paula Garcés , Michael Biehn

Votes: 15,070 | Gross: $36.99M

85. Deja Vu (2006)

PG-13 | 126 min | Action, Crime, Sci-Fi

After a ferry is bombed in New Orleans, an A.T.F. agent joins a unique investigation using experimental surveillance technology to find the bomber, but soon finds himself becoming obsessed with one of the victims.

Director: Tony Scott | Stars: Denzel Washington , Paula Patton , Jim Caviezel , Val Kilmer

Votes: 326,202 | Gross: $64.04M

86. Freejack (1992)

R | 110 min | Action, Crime, Sci-Fi

Bounty hunters from the future transport a doomed race car driver to New York City in 2009, where his mind will be replaced with that of a dead billionaire.

Director: Geoff Murphy | Stars: Emilio Estevez , Mick Jagger , Rene Russo , Anthony Hopkins

Votes: 17,358 | Gross: $17.13M

87. Grand Tour: Disaster in Time (1991)

88. idiocracy (2006).

R | 84 min | Adventure, Comedy, Sci-Fi

Corporal Joe Bauers, a decisively average American, is selected as a guinea pig for a top-secret hibernation program. He is forgotten and left to awaken to a future so incredibly moronic that he's easily the most intelligent person alive.

Director: Mike Judge | Stars: Luke Wilson , Maya Rudolph , Dax Shepard , Terry Crews

Votes: 180,207 | Gross: $0.44M

89. I'll Follow You Down (2013)

After the disappearance of a young scientist on a business trip, his son and wife struggle to cope, only to make a bizarre discovery years later - one that may bring him home.

Director: Richie Mehta | Stars: John Paul Ruttan , Rufus Sewell , Gillian Anderson , Kiara Glasco

Votes: 7,990

90. Journey to the Center of Time (1967)

Not Rated | 82 min | Sci-Fi

Hard-nosed new boss Stanton takes over a scientific research company upon the death of his benevolent father.

Director: David L. Hewitt | Stars: Scott Brady , Anthony Eisley , Gigi Perreau , Abraham Sofaer

91. Men in Black 3 (2012)

PG-13 | 106 min | Action, Adventure, Comedy

Agent J travels in time to M.I.B.'s early days in 1969 to stop an alien from assassinating his friend Agent K and changing history.

Director: Barry Sonnenfeld | Stars: Will Smith , Tommy Lee Jones , Josh Brolin , Jemaine Clement

Votes: 384,842 | Gross: $179.02M

92. My Future Boyfriend (2011 TV Movie)

73 min | Comedy, Fantasy, Romance

An archaeologist from 1000 years in the future uncovers a romance novel written in our time. Curious, he journeys back to find out about this thing called "love" from the novel's author.

Director: Michael Lange | Stars: Sara Rue , Barry Watson , Fred Willard , Enisha Brewster

Votes: 2,414

93. Lost in Space (1998)

PG-13 | 130 min | Action, Adventure, Family

The Robinson family was going into space to fight for a chance for humanity. Now they are fighting to live long enough to find a way home.

Director: Stephen Hopkins | Stars: Gary Oldman , William Hurt , Matt LeBlanc , Mimi Rogers

Votes: 74,673 | Gross: $69.12M

94. The Spirit of '76 (1990)

PG-13 | 82 min | Comedy, Sci-Fi

In 2176, a magnetic storm erases all recorded history, including the U.S. Constitution, so, three time travelers are sent back to July 4, 1776, to retrieve the heritage, but end up in 1976's Bicentennial, while being perceived as aliens.

Director: Lucas Reiner | Stars: Mark Mothersbaugh , Gerald Casale , Carl Reiner , Nancye Ferguson

95. Time Changer (2002)

PG | 95 min | Drama, Fantasy, Sci-Fi

A Bible professor from 1890 comes forward in time to the present via a time machine and cannot believe the things that he sees!

Director: Rich Christiano | Stars: D. David Morin , Gavin MacLeod , Hal Linden , Jennifer O'Neill

Votes: 2,884 | Gross: $1.28M

96. Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann (1982)

PG | 94 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

A maverick motorbike racer wanders into a top-secret time-travel research test site which unintentionally teleports him to the mid-1800s and ends up having to fight violent outlaws for his survival.

Director: William Dear | Stars: Fred Ward , Belinda Bauer , Peter Coyote , Richard Masur

Votes: 2,475

97. Timequest (2000)

R | 92 min | Sci-Fi

A story about a man who travels back in time to Fort Worth, Texas on November 22, 1963 and prevents the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Director: Robert Dyke | Stars: Victor Slezak , Caprice Benedetti , Vince Grant , Bruce Campbell

98. The Yesterday Machine (1965)

Not Rated | 85 min | Sci-Fi

A Nazi scientist invents a time machine enabling him to go back to alter the events of WWII.

Director: Russ Marker | Stars: Tim Holt , James Britton , Ann Pellegrino , Linda Jenkins

99. 13 Going on 30 (2004)

PG-13 | 98 min | Comedy, Fantasy, Romance

Unpopular schoolgirl Jenna Rink makes an unusual wish on her birthday. Miraculously, her wish comes true and the 13-year-old Jenna wakes up the next day as a 30-year-old woman.

Director: Gary Winick | Stars: Jennifer Garner , Mark Ruffalo , Judy Greer , Andy Serkis

Votes: 214,605 | Gross: $57.23M

100. 17 Again (2009)

PG-13 | 102 min | Comedy, Drama, Fantasy

Mike O'Donnell is ungrateful for how his life turned out. He gets a chance to rewrite his life when he tried to save a janitor near a bridge and jumped after him into a time vortex.

Director: Burr Steers | Stars: Zac Efron , Matthew Perry , Leslie Mann , Thomas Lennon

Votes: 215,180 | Gross: $64.17M

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COMMENTS

  1. Top 100 Time Travel Movies

    1. Back to the Future (1985) PG | 116 min | Adventure, Comedy, Sci-Fi. 8.5. Rate. 87 Metascore. Marty McFly, a 17-year-old high school student, is accidentally sent 30 years into the past in a time-traveling DeLorean invented by his close friend, the maverick scientist Doc Brown.

  2. The 50 All-Time Best Time-Travel Films

    A man's vision for a utopian society is disillusioned when travelling forward into time reveals a dark and dangerous society. Director: George Pal | Stars: Rod Taylor, Alan Young, Yvette Mimieux, Sebastian Cabot. Votes: 44,511. 2. Back to the Future (1985) PG | 116 min | Adventure, Comedy, Sci-Fi.

  3. 25 Time Travel Movies to Watch in 2022

    The Time Traveler's Wife (2009) Based on Audrey Niffenegger's 2003 novel of the same name, The Time Traveler's Wife tells the story of Henry (Eric Bana), a librarian who is able to randomly travel ...

  4. The 25 Best Time Travel Movies of All Time, Ranked

    Time travel movies have been done to death, and many time travel movies suck because they rehash the same old predictable tropes and cliches. But there's still a lot of potential left to be mined in the genre! ... Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi (1h 46m) 6.3 on IMDb — 38% on RT. Watch Now.

  5. 22 Best Time Travel Movies of All Time

    4. Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) Also considered to be an action classic (featured in our Best Action Movies of All Time ), 'Terminator 2' not only provides engaging action sequences, but a surplus plot which involves labyrinthine uses of time-travel. T:2 continues the storyline of 'Terminator' and tells us about John Connor, who ...

  6. The 25 Greatest Time-Travel Movies Ever Made

    24. Happy Death Day (2017) Pick away at the surface of a time-loop movie and you find a horror movie. Most of the entries on this list are covered in enough feel-good spin to land as comedies, but ...

  7. The 15 Best Time Travel Movies of All...Time

    4. Primer (2004) Shoestring budget indie film, Primer, which acts as a no-frills psychological thought experiment about the accidental discovery of time travel, is one of the most cerebral takes ...

  8. Best time travel movies

    A good time travel movie doesn't need to try too hard to take the subject seriously, as the core concept itself and the mechanics surrounding it remain a mystery and purely hypothetical.

  9. The 15 Best Time Travel Movies, Ranked

    5. Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. 1989's Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure combined the sci-fi genre with the teen comedy to result in a wonderfully inventive—and hilarious—adventure ...

  10. 55 Best Time Travel Movies Of All Time Ranked

    2. Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Tri-Star Pictures. "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" holds a number of high-octane superlatives: it's one of the best time travel films of all time, one of the best sci ...

  11. 12 Most Complex Time Travel Movies Executed Well

    12 Monkeys. 12 Monkeys is too close to the COVID-19 virus epidemic for comfort. This time travel movie sees a dystopian future trying to identify the original strain of a virus that took out most of the living beings on the planet. The scientists of the future rely on time travel to identify the source of the infection.

  12. Top 300+ Time travel movies

    Votes: 489,108. 3. The Girl from Tomorrow (1992 TV Movie) 104 min | Sci-Fi. 8.4. Rate. A teenager from the year 3000 takes part in a time-travel experiment, but due to a malfunction finds herself sent back to the year 1990, along with a criminal from the year 2500.

  13. The Most Underrated Time Travel Movies You Need To Watch

    So it should come as no surprise that time travel movies have long been a favorite of the sci-fi genre. ... the intriguing mystery at the heart of the film is more similar to 2002's "Minority ...

  14. The 15 Best Time Travel Movies of All...Time

    Time After Time's bonkers hook -- that being Malcolm McDowell's H.G. Wells using his time machine to track a fleeing Jack the Ripper (the late David Warner) to 1979 San Fransisco -- actually makes for an entertaining, oft emotional film. This playfulness with both sci-fi and real history forms a fun, irresistible yarn that has to be seen to be ...

  15. 9 Time-Travel Movies to Stream in Your Past, Present and Future

    As with most time travel movies, her changes to the timeline complicate the future. ... a 2018 Spanish mystery. It all starts when they move into a new apartment and find a film that was recorded on VHS during an electrical storm in 1989, when a young boy was tragically killed. When they decide to watch it, a similar electrical storm hits. Vera ...

  16. 17 Underrated Sci-Fi Movies About Time Travel

    Men in Black 3. Photo: Sony Pictures Releasing. Men in Black will forever remain a '90s classic and, well, the less said about Men in Black II, the better, but Men in Black 3 has quickly become an underrated movie - even though it grossed a monstrous $624 million at the worldwide box office. The sci-fi threequel follows Will Smith's Agent J as ...

  17. Time Travel Movies You Should Watch Again

    This is a beautiful time travel movie with the two leads turning in great performances that capture the mystery at the heart of this film. These are the funniest movies of all time . Buy now

  18. 10 Best Time Travel Movies on Netflix

    As the best time travel movie Netflix has to offer, Mirage is a compelling mystery thriller from Spain. As more circumstances of the boy's death emerge, greater narrative threads are pulled into ...

  19. The 20 best time-travel movies

    14. The Time Travelers (1964) A 1964 movie made on the cheap with genuinely terrible effects, The Time Travelers is about a group of scientists who travel to the future, fight some mutants and ...

  20. Time Travel Movies

    87 Metascore. Marty McFly, a 17-year-old high school student, is accidentally sent 30 years into the past in a time-traveling DeLorean invented by his close friend, the maverick scientist Doc Brown. Director: Robert Zemeckis | Stars: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover.

  21. Rob Hart's 'The Paradox Hotel' is a trippy time travel murder mystery

    In Rob Hart's "The Paradox Hotel," an old-fashioned murder mystery stirs up trouble in a luxury lodging for time travelers. (Image credit: Ballantine Books) Ever since H.G. Wells' sci-fi novella ...

  22. The Heartfelt Aubrey Plaza Time Travel Movie You Should Stream

    He puts her through her paces to decide if Aubrey Plaza is a worthy time-travel cohort. This is the real story of Safety Not Guaranteed, these two lonely people forming a real, honest connection.

  23. ‎Mystery Burrito: Does Time Travel Exist? on Apple Podcasts

    ‎Show Mystery Burrito, Ep Does Time Travel Exist? - Jan 24, 2024

  24. All "Time Travel" Movies

    A malfunctioning time machine at a ski resort takes a man back to 1986 with his two friends and nephew, where they must relive a fateful night and not change anything to make sure the nephew is born. Director: Steve Pink | Stars: John Cusack, Rob Corddry, Craig Robinson, Clark Duke. Votes: 185,409 | Gross: $50.29M.

  25. Movies Featuring Time Loops & Time Travel

    In a future world devastated by disease, a convict is sent back in time to gather information about the man-made virus that wiped out most of the human population on the planet. Director: Terry Gilliam | Stars: Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, Brad Pitt, Joseph Melito. Votes: 643,577 | Gross: $57.14M.