List of films featuring time loops
This list of films featuring time loops where characters experience the same period of time which is repeatedly resetting: when a certain condition is met, such as a death of a character or a clock reaches a certain time, the loop starts again, with one or more characters retaining the memories from the previous loop. The list provides the names and brief synopses of films in which time loops are a prominent plot device.
Film | Year | Description |
12 Dates of Christmas | 2011 | Kate finds herself reliving Christmas Eve over and over again. She must discover how to break the cycle – should she attempt to win back her ex-boyfriend Jack, should she pursue Miles, or something else? |
12 Days of Christmas Eve | 2004 | Calvin is an executive and as Christmas nears he becomes so preoccupied in clinching a deal that he fails to notice the preparations being made for the holidays by his girlfriend and son. On Christmas Eve itself Calvin is hurt in an accident and it takes nurse Angie to make him realize how he can make up for lost time. |
' | 1993 | Office worker Barry Thomas is forced to relive the worst day of his life. |
' | 1990 | This is the first film adaptation of the short story "" by Richard A. Lupoff, which was published in 1973 in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. It originally aired on cable television as part of the Showtime 30-Minute Movie anthology series. It was nominated for an Academy Award. |
About Time | 2013 | A 21-year-old man is given his family secret, the ability to travel back in time. His first goal is to find a girlfriend, and subsequent trials and errors lead him to appreciate ordinary happiness in life. |
ARQ | 2016 | An engineer, whose invention causes time to loop during a home invasion, attempts to save his former lover, while learning who has targeted him and why. |
Before I Fall | 2017 | A popular high school senior finds herself reliving the same day over and over. |
Blood Punch | 2013 | A trio visits a remote cabin for a one-time criminal endeavor and finds each member independently reliving the same day. |
Camp Slaughter | 2005 | A group of present-day teenagers are sent back to 1981, and discover a summer camp which is stuck reliving the day a demented killer went on a rampage. |
Christmas Every Day | 1996 | An American television movie based on William Dean Howells' 1892 short story "Christmas Every Day". A selfish teenager is forced to relive the same Christmas every day. |
A Day | 2017 | A father attempts to save his daughter whilst stuck in an endless time loop. |
Doctor Strange | 2016 | Stephen Strange traps himself and Dormmamu in a time loop in order to stop him from consuming the Earth. |
Edge of Tomorrow | 2014 | Maj. William "Bill" Cage and Special Forces soldier Rita Vrataski team up to fight a hostile alien race known as Mimics, with Cage continually returning to a repeating battle through a time loop. |
The Endless | 2017 | Two brothers return to a cult that is stuck in a time loop. |
Game Over | 2019 | The Tamil film stars Taapsee Pannu as Swapna, a wheelchair-bound woman who is defending her home from a mysterious intruder. Every time she is killed by the intruder, she awakens to the start of the day. However, the concept is more on the lines of how a video game works. |
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time | 1983 | Based on Yasutaka Tsutsui's 1965 novel of the same name. The story is about a Japanese school girl who accidentally gains the ability to time travel, which she experiments with and attempts to alter past events, leading her on a journey through multiple time loops. |
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time | 2006 | Based on Yasutaka Tsutsui's 1965 novel of the same name. The story is about a Japanese school girl who accidentally gains the ability to time travel, which she experiments with and attempts to alter past events, leading her on a journey through multiple time loops. |
' | 2010 | Based on Yasutaka Tsutsui's 1965 novel of the same name. The story is about a Japanese school girl who accidentally gains the ability to time travel, which she experiments with and attempts to alter past events, leading her on a journey through multiple time loops. |
Groundhog Day | 1993 | Self-centered television weatherman Phil Connors is forced to relive the same day over and over again. |
Happy Death Day | 2017 | A snobby young woman is murdered on her birthday, Monday the 18th. She wakes up the morning of the 18th, alive, facing the same day over and over again, while also getting weaker. |
Happy Death Day 2U | 2019 | Immediately after the events of the first film, Tree Gelbman unexpectedly re-enters the time loop and becomes determined to escape it after finding out her friends are now involved. |
Haunter | 2013 | The ghost of a teenager, Lisa Johnson who, along with her family, keeps reliving the same day tries to protect a young girl, Olivia and her family from a dead serial killer, the Pale Man who can possess the living. |
Horse Girl | 2020 | Sarah is a shy and awkward woman slowly losing touch with reality as she begins to believe that she is a clone of her grandmother. She loses time, sleepwalks, and has disturbing dreams, which she believes is a product of an alien abduction. The movie ends with Sarah reliving the same week from a different perspective. |
Hurok | 2016 | A young drug dealer betrays his boss guy and later abandons his girlfriend, but finds himself caught up in a time loop. |
The Incident | 2014 | Two stories of groups trapped in infinite time and space loops. One, and endless staircase, another and endless road, both looping back on themselves. While time resets in their surroundings each day, the trapped characters continue to age within the loops. |
The Infinite Man | 2014 | After a romantic weekend break with his girlfriend goes awry, a scientist invents time travel in order to create for her the perfect getaway, but inadvertently traps her in a recurring temporal loop. |
The Last Day of Summer | 2007 | 11-year-old Luke gets his wish that every day could be the last day of summer. |
Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas | 1999 | Huey, Dewey, and Louie must repeat Christmas Day until they come to learn the true meaning of Christmas. |
Mine Games | 2012 | A group of friends vacationing in the woods discover their own corpses and realize they are trapped in a time loop which they attempt to break. |
Mirror for a Hero | 1987 | Zerkalo dlya geroya a Soviet Union film by Vladimir Khotinenko. Two heroes circle multiple times in 1949, adapting to the harsh post-war life, meeting the parents of one of them, finally returning to the present time, having reassessed their attitude towards elders. |
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children | 2016 | Teenager Jake visits the ruins of an orphanage that was destroyed by a bombing raid during World War II and discovers that the original inhabitants are still alive inside a time loop set to repeat the day of September 3, 1943. |
Naked | 2017 | Rob is caught in a time loop as he keeps waking up naked in a hotel elevator on the day of his wedding. This is a remake of the 2000 Swedish film, Naken. |
Naken | 2000 | On the day of his wedding, Anders wakes up naked in an elevator. As he attempts to piece together the reason for his predicament, the day repeats itself, and he becomes stuck in a time loop. |
The Fare | 2018 | A taxi driver and his passenger find themselves locked in an endless time loop trap as they have to repeat their journey over and over again. |
The Obituary of Tunde Johnson | 2019 | A gay African-American teenager repeatedly relives the day of his fatal shooting in an unprovoked police brutality incident. |
Palm Springs | 2020 | When carefree Nyles and reluctant maid of honor Sarah have a chance encounter at a Palm Springs wedding, things get complicated the next morning when they find themselves unable to escape the venue, themselves, or each other. |
Predestination | 2014 | An agent for the Temporal Agency is sent back in time to prevent unwanted events in the past so their consequences cannot occur in the present, all while chasing an unidentifiable terrorist. |
Premature | 2014 | Rob, a high school senior, has to re-live losing his virginity over and over again until he gets it right, with the right girl. |
Primer | 2004 | Two scientists discover and use a method allowing them to travel backwards in time to exist alongside their "original" selves for a period of time, leading to stress on their relationship and serious ethical issues. |
' | 2010 | Set in the mystical lands of Persia, a rogue prince and a mysterious princess race against dark forces to safeguard an ancient dagger capable of releasing the Sands of Time — a gift from the gods that can reverse time and allow its possessor to rule the world. |
' | 2012 | Homura Akemi has the ability to travel 30 days back in time, and has done so countless times. Each month, Homura fails in her attempts to save Madoka Kaname from destruction, and is forced to relive the tragedy of losing Madoka. |
Repeaters | 2010 | A group of inmates at a rehabilitation facility are forced to repeat the same day over and over again. |
Reset | 2017 | A physicist uses an experimental wormhole machine to travel to parallel universes and back in time by an hour, trying to save her kidnapped son. |
Retroactive | 1997 | A psychiatrist makes multiple trips through time to save a woman who was murdered by her husband. |
The Road | 2011 | A group of teens finally work up the fortitude to explore a rural road, that has all the warning signs of being a bad idea. |
Run Lola Run | 1998 | A woman needs to obtain 100,000 Deutsche Mark in twenty minutes to save her boyfriend's life—and gets three tries to do so. Not featuring time loops in the strict sense the German action film illustrates the butterfly effect / chaos theory. |
Salvage | 2006 | Claire encounters horror and murder after finishing a day working at a convenience store, not once but many times. An official selection of the 2006 Sundance Festival. |
Source Code | 2011 | U.S. Army Aviation pilot Captain Colter Stevens repeatedly experiences the last eight minutes of another person's life to identify the bomber in a terrorist attack in order to prevent a second, nuclear attack on Chicago. |
Timecrimes | 2007 | Hector, a middle-aged man, is chased by an unidentified bandaged man. He meets a scientist with a time machine, and travels a short period back in time to briefly escape the unknown assailant. |
Triangle | 2009 | A group of friends go on boat trip and become stranded due to a storm. They discover a cruise ship which causes them to experience a series of repeating events. |
' | 1984 | The students of Tomobiki high school relive the day before the school festival over and over again. |