Time travel movies are always interesting, but the truly best time loop movies add an extra special aspect to the genre — and do it with style. Time loop movies are defined as when a character, for one reason or another, relives a day or experience over and over again and must figure out what they need to do to escape it. Hollywood has used this concept numerous times for different genres with varying success. So many notable movies have employed a time loop premise, and its influence in sci-fi movies shows no signs of fading away anytime soon.

There are many examples of time travel on the big screen, but cool time loop movies come with their own spin. Time loop plots have been shown to work in just about anything from family comedies to experimental science-fiction, so there's no shortage of great time loop films to recommend to fans of any genre. The best time loop movies show just how versatile the idea is, featuring a lot of action and horror as well as theoretical science and metaphorical drama. The best movies featuring the time loop idea are beloved classics and cult hits worldwide.

25 Until Dawn (2025)

Teens Get Stuck In A Cabin With New Murderous Threats Emerging Each Night

Until Dawn is not only a time loop movie but also the latest video game adaptation to hit the big screens. Based on the popular game developed by Supermassive Games, Until Dawn follows Clover, a young woman searching for her sister who went missing over a year ago. ed by her friends, Clover ventures to a cabin where her sister was last heard from in search of clues. However, the group is quickly and brutally murdered, only to wake up still in the cabin and realize they are in a terrifying time loop.

While Until Dawn deviates from the game in some big ways that might annoy die-hard fans, it is also a terrifically entertaining horror movie. With each night the heroes face, introducing them to a new kind of danger, the film is able to play like a love letter to the horror genre. It also features some clever writing that prevents the time loop aspect from becoming too repetitive and tiresome.

24 Mondays: See You 'This' Week! (2022)

Office Workers Are Caught In An Endless Time Loop

The Japanese time loop movie Mondays: See You 'This' Week! takes two fun genres and blends them together. Similar to how Shaun of the Dead equates how the daily work grind creates a lifeless existence similar to a zombie apocalypse, Mondays presents the idea that office workers' daily and weekly lives are often similar to time loop horrors. In a commentary on the never-ending cycle of work in an office setting, the workers in this movie realize they are literally in a time loop.

Seen as Office Space meets Groundhog Day, when two employees realize they might be living the same weeks over and over again, they start to convince others to break the chain. There is even a funny moment where they have to explain it to their boss with a PowerPoint presentation since he only understands things in business . The movie heads in an interesting direction involving Japanese mangas, and the ending is a creative solution not before seen in the genre.

23 Meet Cute (2022)

A Woman Uses A Time Loop To Fix A Bad Date

Meet Cute is a romantic comedy spin on the time loop movies, with Kaley Cuoco and Pete Davidson in the lead roles. In the film, Sheila meets a man named Gary, who seems perfect for her as he would rather watch movies than sports, and they share other similar likes with a lot in common. However, the date ends up awkward when Sheila tells Gary she has a time machine she found at a nail salon that she uses to relive this same night repeatedly for seven nights in a row.

The movie does take a dark turn when she its she started using the time machine on a day she was planning to die by suicide because it helped her relive a day when she was happy for the first time in a long time. The story has Gary realize what is happening and he tries to intervene, with possible tragic results. Meet Cute is more of a rom-com than an actual sci-fi movie, and it received lukewarm reviews but has its charms.

22 11.22.63 (2016)

Based On Stephen King's Time Travel Novel

While not technically a movie, 11.22.62 is a Hulu miniseries that can be viewed as one long film. It follows Jake, a recently divorced English teacher from Maine who learns about a time machine in a local diner.

The diner owner, Al Templeton, explains that he has been using the time machine for years to attempt to stop Lee Harvey Oswald from assassinating John F. Kennedy. There is one problem. The time machine drops a person off at a precise date and time - September 9, 1958. This means he had five years to set up the plan to stop it but the problem is that the person ages in real time.

When they return to the present, they have aged and then when they go back, they hit 1958 again and have to start over. Al has gotten too old and is dying, and Jake agrees to take his place to put the plans in motion. After a few failed attempts, he finally sets out to achieve their plan with unexpected results.

The miniseries won the Saturn Award for Best Television Presentation and it sits at 83% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.

21 When We First Met (2018)

A Young Man Tries To Force Love Through A Time Loop

When We First Met was a tough topic from the start, as it has a protagonist in Noah Ashby who wants to use time travel to make a woman fall for him rather than the person she actually fell in love with. Adam DeVine stars as Noah, a guy who learns that he can cause a time loop using a photo booth at a party, and he figures he can manipulate things so that the woman he loves, Avery (Alexandra Daddario), falls in love with him rather than her fiance, Ethan (Robbie Amell). The entire plan is toxic.

However, what makes the movie work is DeVine's charming personality and the fact that, as he keeps fighting to force his idea of happiness on the world, he realizes that he is not the center of the universe. He needs to let people — including himself — find their own happiness. It is when he realizes this that he sees love has been in front of him the entire time. The film received lower critical reviews, but it remains a lighthearted romantic time loop comedy with fun performances and a big heart.

20 12:01PM (1990)

A Short Film Of A Man Stuck In A Time Loop On His Lunch Break

A unique addition to the long list of time loop movies that exist, 12:01 PM doesn’t take place over the course of a day or a week. Instead, this short film takes place over the course of a single lunch hour, or more accurately, over 59 minutes. Starring That 70s Show’s Kurtwood Smith as Myron Castleman, the movie sees his character start his time loop by standing in the middle of the road when he’s started his lunch break from work.

Myron, fortunately, spends one of the hours of his time loop seeing a news broadcast that details a report of “time bounces,” which is exactly what he finds happening to him, as he’s bounced back to the start of the 59 minutes as soon as it ends. He spends his next time loop chapter trying to find the scientist who predicted the time bounce. It’s an incredibly unique take on a time loop movie that manages not to get too repetitive despite the shorter time frame.

19 The Map Of Tiny Perfect Things (2021)

Teens Who Like Living In A Time Loop

The Map Of Tiny Perfect Things turns the idea of the time loop on its head because it begs the question: why would you want to escape a time loop where you know how everything plays out? That’s the question for Mark (Kyle Allen), a teenager who uses the time loop to slightly change his decisions every day and make himself into a seemingly effortlessly cool individual.

When he meets Margaret (Kathryn Newton), however, his perspective on the time loop changes just a little bit. Instead of making herself cooler to other people, Margaret likes to create “tiny perfect things” within the time loop, moments of everyday beauty that can be missed when people are too busy moving on to the next thing. She finds them or creates them and returns to them again and again. It’s a great and unusual take on a time loop movie.

18 The Incredible Shrinking Wknd (2019)

Each Time Loop Gets Shorter In Time

The Incredible Shrinking Wknd is not the typical time-loop movie. Instead of repeating the same set time over and over, this time loop lessens by an hour every time it repeats. That puts a ticking clock on this time loop, creating tension that makes the audience and the main character wonder just what will happen when the time loop finally ends. When there is no time left, will they blink out of existence, or will something even worse happen?

That main character is Alba (Iria del Rio), who is someone quite literally stuck in a rut in her life when the time loop occurs. She finds herself unsure of where she wants her life to take her as she’s unemployed, living with her father, and heads out with friends to celebrate her 30th birthday. Alba has to find an opportunity to grow even as her chances seem to get shorter and shorter.

17 The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006)

An Anime About A Young Woman Who Creates Her Own Time Loop

This beloved anime isn’t strictly a time loop movie, but it does have a major time loop element in it. The movie is more about time travel as a whole when the main character Makoto Konno (voiced by Riisa Naka) discovers she has the ability to time travel. She uses that ability without thinking about the consequences until she settles on her school days.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time sees the main character relive her school days over and over again, trying to fix her past mistakes. She chooses to loop time and go back and change things instead of necessarily getting stuck in a loop as most other fictional characters do. The narrative here, however, explores the unintended consequences of her changes. The movie highlights how small decisions can have a big impact.

16 Two Distant Strangers (2020)

A Time Loop Short Movie About Police Brutality

Two Distant Strangers is an unusual addition to the time loop selection because it is not a feature-length movie but a short film directed by Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe. The duo teamed up to provide a half-hour movie depicting police brutality and the Black American community.

Joey Bada$$ stars as Carter, a man who has a one-night stand and just wants to get home to his dog the next day. He has an encounter with a police officer that becomes the focal point of a time loop. The thought-provoking short film earned a 2021 Academy Award for Best Live-Action Short Film and is a great way to use the time loop trope in a modern context. It opens up conversations about racism, abuse of power, and police brutality, all with a very small window of time to tell a story.