Top 10 Time Travel Movies According to Lifehacker Readers

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Films in which time machines, mysterious caves, cryocapsules, and even a mailbox become the cause of the chronological shift.

In the comments to our previous collection, readers offered several of their own options, which we could not pass by.

1. Obsessed with time

• USA, 2018.
• Science fiction, comedy, melodrama.
• Duration: 104 minutes.
• IMDb: 5, 7.

A light youth comedy starring Asa Butterfield and Sophie Turner. Time Obsessed is a remake of a short film that was nominated for an Oscar in 2012. Unfortunately, a full-length film does not fit for such a nomination, but it will do to brighten up the evening.

Stillman, despite his youth, is very knowledgeable in physics. Therefore, when the beauty Debbie dumps him, he does not think of anything better than creating a time machine and going back in time to correct his mistakes and keep the romance. He takes with him his best friend Evan - a classic goof and gouge who constantly does something wrong. Naturally, for such a couple, manipulations with time will certainly not go according to plan.

2. Time machine

• USA, 2002.
• Science fiction, action, adventure.
• Duration: 96 minutes.
• IMDb: 5, 9.

The film begins in 1895. Young explorer Alexander Hartdegen, played by Guy Pearce, is studying physics at Columbia University. He meets a sweet girl Emma, but their date ends tragically - they are attacked by a robber and accidentally killed the heroine.

Broken with grief, Alexander spends four years in his laboratory building a time machine. He wants to save Emma by all means by moving into the past. And when the time traveler becomes convinced of the futility of his attempts, he decides to go to the future to see what fate awaits humanity.

This picture is a fairly free adaptation of the novel by H. G. Wells. Yes, there are eloi and morlocks here, but they do not look like their book prototypes. Anyway, only the main ideas were borrowed from the novel. Nevertheless, the film is worth watching.

3. Time trap

• USA, 2017.
• Science fiction, action, adventure.
• Duration: 87 minutes.
• IMDb: 6, 6.

A group of five students is moving out in search of their favorite teacher of archeology, who a couple of days ago went to some cave to look for the source of eternal life. Sounds like a typical third-rate adventure movie set-up? Don't be fooled, despite the small budget, the Time Trap is far from easy.

In the cave, the youngsters are faced with a space-time anomaly - time here goes dozens of times slower than on the surface. And the deeper the students go, the stranger things happen to them.

4. Lake House

• USA, 2006.
• Fantasy, drama.
• Duration: 99 minutes.
• IMDb: 6, 8.

This film is a remake of the South Korean film House by the Sea. The main roles were played by Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. Kate Forster, a lonely female doctor, leaves her rented house on the lake, deciding to move to Chicago, closer to her new job. She leaves a letter in the mailbox for the next tenant, apologizing for the mess.

A man named Alex Wyler who has moved into the house discovers that the circumstances mentioned by Kate do not coincide with reality. He enters into correspondence with a stranger, and gradually sympathy grows between them. But apparently they were not destined to meet in person: as it turns out, they are separated by two years of time. Alex is in the past, Kate is in the future. And the only way to communicate with each other is in the mailbox next to the lake house.

5. Jacket

• Germany, USA, 2004.
• Detective, thriller, fantasy, drama.
• Duration: 102 minutes.
• IMDb: 7, 1.

Former military man Jack Starks, who returned to his native Vermont after the Iraq war, suffers from blackouts due to a head wound. When he comes to his senses after another attack, he finds himself in the dock, accused of murdering a policeman. Since Jack does not remember anything, the court finds him insane and sends him to a mental hospital.

Dr. Becker, Jack's physician, uses extremely brutal methods. He puts a straitjacket on the patient (which the clinic staff calls a "jacket"), pumps him with horse doses of experimental drugs and locks him in a morgue cell.

While in the box, Jack suddenly moves in time - to his future. He learns that he must die in four days. And now he has to figure out how to avoid such a fate.

The filmmakers were inspired by Jack London's novel The Straightjacket, and the film stars Adrian Brody and Keira Knightley for good reason to watch.

6. Deja vu

• USA, UK, 2006.
• Science fiction, thriller, detective.
• Duration: 126 minutes.
• IMDb: 7, 1.

According to statistics, 97% of people have experienced the feeling of déjà vu at least once. You find yourself in a place you've never been, or you see a person you have never met. But at the same time it seems that new places and people are already familiar to you. In this film, the effect of déjà vu is explained by memories, not from the past, but from the future.

Special Agent Doug Karlin, played by the charismatic Denzel Washington, is investigating the circumstances of the attack. A monstrous explosion on a ferry in New Orleans killed 500 passengers.

From the very beginning, this case seems extremely strange: a call from an unknown woman who is soon found dead, a mysterious message at the scene of a crime … And when Doug is involved in a government experiment related to the manipulation of time, events take a completely unexpected turn.

7. Time loop

• Spain, 2007.
• Horror, fantasy, thriller, detective.
• Duration: 92 minutes.
• IMDb: 7, 2.

The main character of the film, named Hector, lives with his wife the most ordinary life in a country house. Once, returning from the store, the head of the family decides to relax on his own lawn. Examining the surroundings with binoculars, the man notices a half-naked girl in the forest and decides to help her.

It does not end well: Hector is attacked by a psychopath armed with scissors with a face wrapped in bloody bandages. Escaping from the maniac, the hero discovers a laboratory with a time machine hidden in a silo tower on a hill. The stranger scientist promises to hide him, and as a result, Hector is transported a day in the past and meets an early copy of himself there.

8. The butterfly effect

• USA, Canada, 2003.
• Science fiction, thriller.
• Duration: 113 minutes.
• IMDb: 7, 7.

The main character of the film, a boy named Evan Treborn, suffers from an unusual mental illness - he does not remember some events in his life at all. Moreover, memory lapses occur at the strangest and most frightening moments.

On the advice of his doctor, Evan begins to keep a diary, documenting everything that happens to him. With age, the hero gets rid of his illness. But one day he begins to re-read the notes and suddenly finds out that he can, having opened the diary, move into the past and change it, creating an alternative reality with one thoughtless act.

The butterfly effect is a term coined by mathematician and meteorologist Edward Lorenz. According to chaos theory, even the smallest actions can have unpredictable consequences. And this very idea is at the heart of the film.

9. Sex mission

• Poland, 1983.
• Science fiction, comedy, adventure.
• Duration: 121 minutes.
• IMDb: 7, 8.

A funny Polish film in which two men are frozen in cryocapsules - all for the sake of science. True, during the experiment, something does not go according to plan, and instead of the prescribed three years, the unlucky test subjects spend as much as half a century in their sleep.

And when the heroes come to their senses, they discover that in the future men have become extinct as a species and the planet is inhabited only by representatives of the beautiful half of humanity.

To be surrounded by only women sounds like a dream for any man. Nevertheless, in reality, the prospects for the heroes are not at all rosy. They will either have to spend their entire lives under observation, like an outlandish animal, or undergo the "naturalization" procedure - in other words, sex change.

10. Guest from the future

• USSR, 1984.
• Science fiction, adventure.
• Duration: 317 minutes.
• IMDb: 8, 3.

A good old Soviet adventure film based on the fantastic story "A Hundred Years Ahead" by Kir Bulychev. And although it is for children, it is also worth seeing for adults who have not seen it.

A simple Soviet pioneer Kolya Gerasimov accidentally finds a time machine in an abandoned house and moves into the future - in 2084. There he meets the famous Alisa Selezneva and helps her save the myelophon from the space pirates, a mind reading device. And then together they return to 1984 - and now Alice will have to settle in an unfamiliar time for her.