The Top 10 Best Time Loop Movies

5. Run Lola Run

The next entry on this list of time loop movies actually shows what happens when you make the best of a bad situation thanks to a temporal anomaly. Lola (Franka Potente) has to help her boyfriend come up with 100,000 Deutschmarks (it’s a German flick) to give to his crime lord boss in 20 minutes or he’ll be killed. The film follows her on three different attempts to come up with the money, all of which come with plenty of pros and cons. When it comes to time loop movies, Run Lola Run is perhaps the most respected of them all. It’s the film that many cinephiles point to as the best use of the plot device, and I’ll probably have my cinema snob card revoked for not putting it at the top of this list. Still, Run Lola Run offers an interesting analysis of free will and the role of fate in our lives. It doesn’t try to offer any answers, only food for thought and a philosophical rabbit hole.

4. Happy Death Day/ 2U

Happy Death Day and Happy Death Day 2U are some of my favorite horror-comedies of all time. They also feature one of my favorite final girls as well, Tree Gelbman (Jessica Rother). Tree doesn’t just find herself trapped in a time loop once with a masked killer hunting her, but twice. Luckily, every time Tree takes a dirt nap she wakes up fresh as a daisy ready to start the day all over again. Then again, maybe that isn’t such a “lucky” thing, because she’s forced into trying to survive the day all over again. After getting killed more times than she can count, Tree finally has enough of living life on repeat and seizes control by solving and stopping her own murder before it happens. Happy Death Day 2U continues Tree’s misadventures through time by throwing her into an alternate reality, doomed to repeat a new day over again. It’s kind of a cheat, but I couldn’t choose between these hip and hilarious time loop movies.     

3. Edge of Tomorrow

Grab your mech suit and get ready to take on an alien invasion, because Edge of Tomorrow throws Major William Cage (Tom Cruise) into the most exciting time loop on this list. At the beginning of the film, Cage is a powder puff excuse for a Chairborne Ranger who barely lasts 5 minutes in combat. Just before he dies, he unlocks the unlimited-lives-cheat-code and respawns at the start of his day. If he plans on getting through the day alive, he needs to upgrade his skills at killing extraterrestrials. So, he turns to one of the greatest alien killers of all time: The Angel of Verdun, the Full Metal Bitch herself, Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt). Rita knows a little something about reliving the same day until it’s done right. So, she teaches Cage the ropes when it comes to being a badass and sends him off to save the world. Edge of Tomorrow is a fun action/adventure blockbuster, making it a unique, but perfect addition to this list of time loop movies.    

2. Palm Springs 

It can get lonely living in a time loop, which is why it’s always good to bring a friend. At least in theory. Nyles (Andy Samberg) discovers a temporal anomaly in a cave out in the desert that traps him on the day of his friend’s wedding day in Palm Springs. A wrench is thrown into his endless cycle is disrupted when Sarah (Cristin Milioti) accidentally gets sucked into the same temporal anomaly he’s trapped in. The two make the best of things and set out to discover everything the day has to offer. While Nyles is fine putting tomorrow off forever, Sarah begins longing for tomorrow and launches a search to find a way out of November 9th. Samberg and Milioti have remarkable chemistry together in the film and manage to find the perfect blend of funny and heartfelt as their characters reevaluate their perspectives on life. 

1. Groundhog Day

Even the other time loop movies on this list know that Groundhog Day is the big kahuna. Hell, half of them even have their characters make outright references to the Bill Murray classic. Of course, I’m not going to hand Groundhog Day the top spot just because other entries like talking about it. No, it’s coming in at number one, because it’s a classic movie that proved just how much was possible with time loops. It follows a curmudgeon weatherman who is forced to cover the titular holiday and report on Punxsutawney Phil’s findings. Somehow he finds himself trapped in the day, restarting it any time he falls asleep or dies. It seems like a nightmare for the cynical meteorologist, but he soon discovers that if you stop and pay attention, there’s a lot going on around you. Ferris Bueller said it best, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it,” and once Murray’s character learns that lesson, he finds a new lease on life.      

Honorable Mention: Primer 

Primer proves you don’t need a big budget to make good time loop movies. This micro-budget movie’s version of time travel is a bit more grounded in theoretical science than a lot of Hollywood blockbusters, which means it’s not exactly “awe-inspiring”. In fact, I might go so far as to say that Primer only qualifies for a spot on this list of time loop movies on a technicality. However, when it comes to science, technicalities are a big deal. The film follows two engineers who accidentally discover a way to transport an object through time while working on a device for their side hustle. Basically, you start the device on and in the future you can travel back to the point when it was first turned on. That gives you a few hours to see what’s going to happen next, then you enter the machine and do something about it. There’s some overlap between your past and present, but Primer is careful of paradoxes. It’s one of the must-watch movies on this list.  

Shout-Out: Tenet

The science behind Christopher Nolan’s Tenet film is a bit on the precarious side, but it plays with some fascinating ideas. Technically, Tenet isn’t about time travel, but reversing the entropy of an object within time and space. Basically, it’s about applying the “rewind” effect to certain objects (or individuals) so that it seems like they’re moving against the flow of time. I want to give it a shout-out, because it features the “Protagonist” (John David Washington) “reliving” certain key moments, only from a reversed perspective. In that regard, it is kind of a time loop movie because the character moves in a circle through parts of time in order to complete his mission. That entropy aspect might prevent it from truly earning a spot with the time loop movies above, but I still want to give Tenet a shout-out.

Animated Shout-Out: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

While I usually stick to live-action movies on these lists, I had to give a shout-out to the delightful anime film, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. Director Mamoru Hosoda, has been responsible for some of my favorite anime films and ranks up there with the likes of Hayao Miyazaki. His take on a Japanese high school girl who relives the same day repeatedly is heartwarming and features absolutely gorgeous animation. Most importantly, it takes a detailed look at cause-and-effect, forcing the character to slow down and consider her actions. In that regard, a perfect alternative title would have been “The Girl Who Should Have Looked Before She Leapt Through Time.”    

Time travel is one of the oldest plot devices in Hollywood, and it’s been used in a lot of great films over the years. However, if you really want to take things to the next level, time loop movies are where it’s at…

I’m just kidding.

Those are the best time loop movies I’ve seen over the years. If there’s one that I missed or you think I should check out, please leave me a comment below. I’d always love to hear what you think of the films that earned spots on the list. As always, I’ll continue updating as new time loop movies are released. So, be sure to check back in the future to see how the rankings might change.