The 12 Best Time Loop Movies Of All Time, Ranked

Not long into “Palm Springs,” trying to explain the strange situation they find themselves in, Nyles (Andy Samberg) tells Sarah (Cristin Milioti), “This is today. Today is yesterday, and tomorrow is also today. It’s one of those infinite time loop situations you might’ve heard about.” Incredulous, she repeats, “That I might’ve heard about?”

Everyone’s heard about infinite time loop situations, at least in the world of cinema. They’ve been around a while, but ever since 1993’s “Groundhog Day,” the idea of being stuck in the same day, repeating everything day in and day out, has stuck in the popular consciousness. Several movies have tried to recapture the novelty of “Groundhog Day,” using the time loop conceit to examine everything from romantic relationships to social justice issues like police brutality. It’s a compelling format, after all; it allows you to examine a life in minute detail, getting deep into a character’s psyche as they take stock of who they want to be in a world gone mad. It’s also the perfect opportunity for comedy, a genre that thrives on repetition.

In other words, many time loop movies take many different approaches, to many different results. Here are 12 of the best to ever do it.

The sex comedy is a time-honored tradition in cinema, so it was perhaps only a matter of time before someone mashed up an “American Pie”-style “high school guy trying to lose his virginity” film with a time loop conceit. Dan Beers’ 2014 film “Premature” is the result, and it’s pretty solid! The film follows a teen named Rob (John Karna) on a particularly monumental day. He has a sex dream, gets bullied, bombs a Georgetown interview by making the interviewer (Alan Tudyk) cry, and finds himself in a position to lose his virginity to a hot girl named Angela (Carlson Young). He gets too excited, though — you can work it out yourselves from the film’s title — and the next thing he knows, Rob wakes up again and starts the day all over.

As you might expect, this isn’t a particularly highbrow film. It’s full of crude sex jokes, contains lots of orgasm-related slapstick, and is packed full of stuff we can safely call “problematic.” Still, there’s a weirdly-sweet heart here. Throughout most of his time loops, Rob ignores his best friend Gabrielle (Katie Findlay), with whom he was supposed to watch the National Spelling Bee that night. As Rob realizes he needs to do his day right in order to escape, their friendship takes center stage, and it’s oddly heartwarming for a movie like this.

In “Before I Fall,” Zoey Deutch plays Samantha Kingston. Just like in “Premature,” this time loop is generated because this is the day that Samantha plans to lose her virginity. Unfortunately, things at her high school party go horribly wrong, and her night ends not in sex, but in a horrific car crash that leads her to wake up and do it all over again.

Deutch is a likable actor, so at first, we’re on her side as she tries to figure out what’s going on. However, as the film unfurls, Samantha starts to realize that maybe she’s not a good person. After all, she and her friends ruthlessly bully a girl named Juliet (Elena Kampouris), and if Samantha manages to survive a loop, the night ends in Juliet’s death instead.

“Before I Fall” includes a regrettable voice-over that over-explains what’s going on. It’s confusingly phrased, occasionally directed to an ambiguous “you” and occasionally just narrating the events on-screen. It’s unfortunate, because otherwise, Deutch is doing impressively subtle work; it would’ve been better if we were able to discover her motivation on our own, rather than having it spoon-fed. Still, this is a thoughtful little take on the time loop subgenre, well worth a watch.

The ultra-weird film “Koko-di Koko-da” is a Swedish and Danish co-production, and it’s a super-strange, super-Scandinavian descent into madness. It’s about a couple named Tobias (Leif Edlund) and Elin (Ylva Gallon), parents who have recently lost their child to an allergic reaction. They head out into the woods to camp, hoping to reconnect with one another. Unfortunately, thanks to a traveling troupe of weirdos who emerge from the forest, Tobias and Elin find themselves trapped in a time loop instead.

The troupe is led by Mog (Peter Belli), a small man dressed in white. Alongside his two assistants, Mog finds numerous ways to torment and torture the bereaved couple, graphically and gruesomely punishing them over and over again. The film is full of strange symbolism, like a dead white dog that keeps turning up, and there’s even a cat that appears to be observing the proceedings. It plays with Scandinavian folklore and myth, includes several shadow plays, and even features a magical music box that may be responsible for everything that’s happening. There are many time loop movies, but there are very few that use the conceit to such a bewildering, off-kilter effect, making “Koko-di Koko-da” a standout in the genre.

When we first meet Lisa (Abigail Breslin), she’s already gone through her time loop several times. She’s now a bored, disaffected teenager simply going through the motions — laundry, playing with her little brother, practicing clarinet — secure in the notion that her day’s just going to repeat itself again tomorrow. Also, her house is surrounded by impenetrable fog, and any time she tries to leave, she winds up right back where she started. Lisa, naturally, has concluded that she’s dead. Soon, however, things in the loop begin to change. There are noises at night that Lisa’s never heard before, and then a pale man (Stephen McHattie) shows up at the house to threaten her. “If you or anyone else try to contact the living … you and your families will suffer in ways you can’t even imagine,” he says.

“Haunter” is directed by Vincenzo Natali, the man behind deliciously-twisted films like “Cube” and “Splice.” Like those movies, this one feels slippery, constantly shifting as it goes along, always a new surprise around the corner. “Haunter” isn’t just a time loop film; it’s about how trauma can fester in a location, can turn a house rotten from the inside out. Lisa isn’t the only one going through a loop; there have been loops here for a long time, it seems, and if she can figure out how to break through, she might be able to disrupt things. “History doesn’t repeat itself,” the pale man warns. “It rhymes.” 

“Happy Death Day 2U” is the only time loop sequel on this list, perhaps because it’s one of the only time loop movie sequels that exists. After you’ve done the same thing repeatedly, who wants to do it all over again? How do you make it different?

In this case, director Christopher Landon found a new angle on his material by switching genres. Whereas the original “Happy Death Day” was a horror-comedy, the sequel is more of a sci-fi-comedy. Picking up immediately after the end of the first film, Tree Gelbman (Jessica Rothe) realizes that she’s not the only one who’s been looping. In order to save her friends from being killed by multiverse variants of the killer who was after her in the first movie, she must understand the mysterious technological mechanism through which she’s been repeating the same day.

This sequel is weirder than the original — a compliment — and it’s more straightforwardly funny. Unfortunately, “Happy Death Day 2U” loses something by essentially re-staging the first movie’s looped day with new twists. Instead, if Tree had been put into a totally new looping situation, it might’ve set the sequel apart more. Here’s hoping the post-apocalyptic “Happy Death Day” threequel happens someday.

Ali LeRoi’s film “The Obituary of Tunde Johnson” is an ingenious use of the time loop conceit. The movie is about a teenager named Tunde (Steven Silver), a closeted kid from a Nigerian family who’s desperate to live his life more authentically. He’s been seeing a boy at school named Soren (Spencer Neville), and as Tunde’s day goes on, he works to get his life in order so that he and Soren can both come out. However, at night, headed to Soren’s birthday party, Tunde is pulled over by the police. The situation escalates until suddenly the cop pulls out his gun and shoots … and Tunde wakes back up and starts again.

No matter what Tunde does, no matter what changes he makes, and no matter where he goes for safety, this day will always end with a deadly police encounter. It’s a clear metaphor for our national condition, for the way it feels to read the news and to see, over and over again, that another young Black man has been killed by the cops. It’s occasionally a painful film to watch, but it helpfully doesn’t linger on Tunde’s deaths. Instead, Silver’s empathetic performance results in a nuanced, complex character we become desperate to see win. If only more time loop movies were this thoughtful about the psychological effects of seeing the same violence, day in and day out.

“Happy Death Day 2U” is plenty of fun, but the original film is better. The incredibly named Tree Gelbman (Jessica Rothe) awakens on her birthday, goes through a frustrating day at college, and is murdered at night by a knife-wielding killer in a baby face mask. She wakes up violently … on her birthday, during which she’ll go through a frustrating day at college and get murdered once again at night. At which point she’ll … at this point in this list, fittingly, we’ve done this a few times. You get the idea.

A large part of what makes “Happy Death Day” so fun and memorable is Rothe’s committed performance. She’s dialed in to the film’s comedic tone perfectly, finding laughs in every exasperated facial expression and pithy kiss-off. As she storms around the film, she’s a whirlwind of self-possessed anger, just so totally over it about the fact that she has to go through this again. There’s a real heart beating here, too, though; especially in the way she portrays Tree’s growing affection for Carter (Israel Broussard), the strange boy in her room each morning, Rothe rounds Tree out as a real person and not your average slasher movie victim. 

At its core, German thriller “Run Lola Run” is a pretty simple film, as time loops go. The loop only occurs three times, for one, and Lola’s actions manage to change her reality each time. Still, it’s one of the most explosively cinematic time loop movies on this list. All else aside, the 1998 film is all about forward momentum. It’s about movement, about motion, about the way Lola looks as she dashes around Berlin. It’s one of the best running movies ever.

Lola (Franka Potente) is a woman dating a criminal. Her boyfriend Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu) manages to lose the 100,000 marks he’s smuggling across the city. He’s supposed to deliver them to his boss in 20 minutes, and if he doesn’t, he’ll be killed. That means each time she’s killed and reawakens, Lola has only 20 minutes to find 100,000 marks for her boyfriend.

This was one of the first films to really incorporate a “dying and trying again” storytelling mechanism, lifted from the then-still-emerging art form of video games. It also doesn’t bother to explain what’s going on, instead trusting that the audience will learn how to watch the movie as it unfolds. It helps that Lola is hands-down the coolest-looking film character of the ’90s … at least until she was upstaged the following year by the gang from “The Matrix.” Lola’s flaming red hair, grey tank top, and mint-green pants are unforgettable, making her an instantly-iconic standout in the subgenre.

Most time loop movies are, in some way, sci-fi movies. They’re about the laws of space and time bending in ways we don’t understand, fracturing our understanding of time itself. For the most part, though, most time loop movies don’t foreground that genre. “Edge of Tomorrow,” on the other hand, is hard sci-fi: aliens, spaceships, weapons, and military battles.

Tom Cruise plays Major William Cage, a public relations guy who finds himself conscripted to fight on the front lines of a war against an invading alien army called the Mimics. Cruise, who usually goes for a hyper-macho, hyper-competent character, is playing against type here; Cage is, for all intents and purposes, a total coward. Luckily, he has Sergeant Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt) on his side. Rita is an action heroine for the ages, and she’s everything he’s not: a brave badass who runs toward danger, not away from it. Cage’s first time on the front lines goes horribly awry, and next thing he knows, he’s repeating the same day over and over, desperate to find a way to win the war before he’s killed yet again.

Leaving aside what a pleasure it is to watch Cruise die repeatedly, “Edge of Tomorrow” is just a great time at the movies. This film is such a time loop landmark that its tagline “Live. Die. Repeat.” inspired the title of (lackluster) timeloop wedding romcom “Love Wedding Repeat.” 

In Duncan Jones’ brilliantly twisty action film “Source Code,” Jake Gyllenhaal plays a man named Colter Stevens. He’s a soldier, and he’s taking part in an experimental military program that puts him in the body of a civilian on a train. In eight minutes — every eight minutes — a bomber destroys the train. By going back and doing it all over again, Colter has been tasked with figuring out which of his fellow passengers is the bomber. Ideally, he won’t just notify the military of the bomber’s identity. Depending on how this technology works, he’ll be able to change the past and prevent mass death.

Gyllenhaal is reliably great, but the film really chugs along thanks to the supporting ensemble. Michelle Monaghan plays Christina, a woman on the train who seems to know Colter in ways he initially doesn’t understand. Vera Farmiga is Colleen, a military operative who appears to the out-of-loop Colter on a television monitor, guiding him through each jump; she’s backed up by Jeffrey Wright as Dr. Rutledge, an imposing figure who operates the “Source Code” that lets Colter re-enter the train scenario. Each actor pulls their weight, their enigmatic performances deepening the film’s mystery.

Aside from its novel construction, “Source Code” is most memorable for its twist ending. We won’t give it away here, but it’s one of the only time loop films that really reckons with the ethical ramifications of the subgenre. You’ll never see the Bean in Chicago the same way again.

There is before “Groundhog Day” and there is after “Groundhog Day.” (Well, there’s also during “Groundhog Day,” and during “Groundhog Day,” and during “Groundhog Day,” etc., but you get the idea.) The landmark 1993 film was a turning point for time loops on film, executing the concept so well that it took off as a cinematic subgenre in its own right. In other words, there were time loop movies before this one, but this is the ur-text, the one that every other time loop movie is looking to as its main inspiration. It makes sense; the movie’s great!

You probably know the story. Bill Murray stars as Phil, a Pittsburgh weatherman who heads out to Punxsutawney to cover their annual Groundhog Day ceremony. Unfortunately for Phil, he manages to get stuck reliving the same day, over and over. Every morning, he wakes up to the same song on the radio. He steps in the same puddle, covers the same event, and meets Rita (Andie MacDowell), the same woman. No matter what he does — no matter how his night ends — Phil wakes right back up in that same hotel bed each morning.

Many time loop movies dip in and out of a loop, getting a character stuck and then getting them out. Phil, though, isn’t so lucky. There’s a montage in “Groundhog Day” that suggests Phil was there for a very, very long time … long enough to drive a guy mad. It’s delightful, then, that the film has so much heart.

Like a man stuck in a time loop, iterating on the same day over and over again, it took Hollywood several decades after the release of “Groundhog Day” to truly perfect the time loop movie. That film is “Palm Springs,” a Hulu Original released in the summer of 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Audiences understandably related to the idea of going through the same thing over and over, existing in a kind of suspended animation where nothing truly matters because nothing is getting better.

“Palm Springs” takes place at a destination wedding in the titular California town. Andy Samberg plays Nyles, a man who’s been stuck in a time loop for a very, very long time. Thanks to a mysterious cave out in the desert, he manages to “wake up” other people, including the murderously vengeful Roy (J.K. Simmons) and an unsuspecting wedding guest named Sarah (Cristin Milioti). At first, she’s furious that he’s done this to her, but as they loop together, over and over, they form an uneasy kinship.

By adding another person into the time-looping mix, “Palm Springs” smooths out the creepiness of the love story in “Groundhog Day.” It’s also a perfect mix of genres, blending the time loop comedy, the time loop romance, and the time loop slasher movie into one. Many time loop movies are issue movies, which is fine, and a lot of them are quite sad, which is fine, but above all else, “Palm Springs” just wants to be fun. Finally.