Groundhog Day and 11 More Great Time Loop Movies

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

The same holiday is celebrated in the USA on February 2. A great excuse to watch movies with looping action.

The time loop is an artistic device in literature and cinema, when the authors make the heroes constantly experience the same period of time. To break the action, the character usually needs to fix something, or at least just survive.

1. Groundhog Day

• USA, 1993.
• Comedy, melodrama.
• Duration: 101 minutes.
• IMDb: 8, 0.

Television commentator Phil Connors travels to Punxsutawney to celebrate Groundhog Day. On February 2, he shoots a report, spends the day on a daily basis, and goes to bed. And in the morning he discovers that February 2 is again on the calendar. This day will repeat over and over again until Phil finds a way to get out of the time loop.

Perhaps this is the most famous film on this topic. And this despite the fact that it has nothing to do with fantasy or time travel. Groundhog Day is a melodramatic comedy about trying to get out of your everyday life and look at the world wider. No wonder its name has become a phraseological unit, meaning the endless repetition of the same events.

And those who know the original by heart can watch the 2004 Italian-Spanish remake of Already Yesterday. The plot is almost the same, but the atmosphere is somewhat different.

2. Edge of the future

• USA, 2014.
• Science fiction, thriller.
• Duration: 113 minutes.
• IMDb: 7, 9.

In the not too distant future, humanity has to fight an aggressive race of aliens. People are defeated, but Major William Cage gets the blood of one of the aliens. From that moment on, he constantly returns to the day he died in battle. As a result, he, with the support of an experienced soldier Rita Vrataska, needs to somehow survive this battle. At the same time, William can use his new knowledge to help humanity defeat enemies.

Structurally, this film is also similar to Groundhog Day, only in the form of a fantastic action movie: the hero needs to build a perfect plan to break out of an endless loop.

3. Run Lola Run

• Germany, 1998.
• Drama, thriller.
• Duration: 81 minutes.
• IMDb: 7, 7.

Manny made a big smuggling deal, and all he had to do was hand over the money to his boss. But he forgets his bag on the subway, and now his girlfriend Lola needs to get 100,000 marks in 20 minutes. She robs a bank, but it all ends tragically. Then Lola returns to the very beginning of the story.

This film does not directly talk about the time loop, just at the moment of the denouement, the action again returns to the beginning and the heroine makes other decisions. Interestingly, all events take place in real time.

The same theme was later tried to be played in the American romantic film "And Lola Came" in 2009. But it didn’t come out very well.

4. Mirror for the hero

• USSR, 1988.
• Drama, fantasy.
• Duration: 139 minutes.
• IMDb: 7, 6.

Sergey Pshenichny and Andrey Nemchinov meet by chance at a concert. In an incomprehensible way, they move from the eighties to 40 years ago, where friends are forced to live the same day. The heroes understand that they need to somehow fix the past in order to open the loop. Sergei meets his parents and tries to understand them, and Andrei wants to save the workers of the coal mine.

Five years before Groundhog Day, the USSR had already released its own film on a similar topic, only much more serious. Here the rules look a little different. For example, the next morning the heroes do not move to their starting point, but remain in their place. But otherwise the idea is the same: a repetition of some events and attempts to fix the past.

5. Source code

• USA, Canada, 2011.
• Science fiction, thriller.
• Duration: 93 minutes.
• IMDb: 7, 5.

Military Coulter Stevens finds himself in the body of a stranger on a train. Before he can understand anything, an explosion occurs. It is revealed that Coulter is in a simulation that allows him to survive the last 8 minutes of a person. During this time, the hero must figure out the terrorist who planted the bomb.

The main difference between this film is that the action takes place in a simulation, which partly explains the possibility of repeating some events. Although the ending of the picture still allows you to look differently at what is considered reality.

6. Triangle

• UK, Australia, 2009.
• Mysticism, thriller.
• Duration: 99 minutes.
• IMDb: 6, 9.

Single mother Jess goes sailing with friends on a yacht. They are caught in a storm, and everyone has to escape by getting on a strange empty liner. But then it turns out that there is someone else on board and he is hunting guests. And the clock on the ship stopped not by accident.

In "Triangle" a slightly different view of the time loop is presented: here the repetition of events does not cancel what happened before, but as it were superimposed on all the previous ones, making each circle more and more creepy.

7. Twelve zero one in the morning

• USA, 1993.
• Science fiction, comedy.
• Duration: 92 minutes.
• IMDb: 6, 8.

It all starts with the fact that the main character Barry dies a colleague and his old love. He decides to drown his grief with alcohol and gets drunk at the bar. Returning home, Barry clings to the lamp cord, shocks him. And now he is going through the same day trying to save his beloved.

The film is based on the "12:01 PM" short story by Richard Luopoff, written back in the seventies. A few years before the release of the picture, a short film adaptation of the same name had already appeared, and it was even nominated for an Oscar. The full-length version deviated greatly from the original, more comedy was added to the plot, and the hero began to experience not one hour of his life, but a day.

Interestingly, the picture "Twelve Zero One in the Middle of the Night" was released almost simultaneously with "Groundhog Day", which gave rise to various rumors about the theft of ideas.

8. Loop

• Hungary, 2016.
• Science fiction, thriller, crime.
• Duration: 95 minutes.
• IMDb: 6, 6.

Adam is a drug dealer, and one day, after a broken deal, the hunt begins for him. As a result of the tragic events, Adam's girl dies. He himself soon discovers that events are repeated and he has a chance to save his beloved. But his every act in the past invariably affects the development of history. He collides with himself and tries to somehow prevent the tragedy.

Hungarian film looks very cheap, there is no need to wait for beautiful filming or special effects. But the story itself is shown in an interesting way, with each repetition the characters “multiply”, and Adam has to take into account his behavior in previous versions of events in order to fix everything.

9. Happy death day

• USA, 2017.
• Horror, comedy.
• Duration: 96 minutes.
• IMDb: 6, 5.

The arrogant beauty Trish wakes up on her birthday in the room of an unfamiliar guy. Soon Trish is killed by a masked maniac, after which she wakes up again in the same room of an unfamiliar guy. The girl tries to escape the villain, but each time she dies, returning to the beginning. The only way to get out of the time loop is to find the killer.

The filmmakers approached the genre in a non-standard way. At first, the action seems to resemble a thriller, but then for a while everything is replaced by a real comedy. Therefore, there was no particular depth in the plot, this is an exclusively entertaining movie.

10. Matrix of time

• USA, 2017.
• Drama, detective.
• Duration: 98 minutes.
• IMDb: 6, 4.

High school student Samantha was almost always lucky. But on February 12, she went with her friends to a party, and on the way back she had an accident. Now she will have to go through the last day of her life and think about what needs to be changed in order to escape from the endless circle of events.

This film was released in the same year as the picture "Happy Day of Death", but here the plot is more inclined towards romance and simple life truths. Perhaps it was because of the simplicity of the movie that they did not really notice.

11. Arch

• USA, Canada, 2016.
• Science fiction, thriller.
• Duration: 88 minutes.
• IMDb: 6, 4.

In the post-apocalyptic future, the hero Renton invented the perpetual motion machine ARQ. But the device caused a closure of time, and now, when Renton dies, he returns to the past to relive the last 3 hours again. Each time he is attacked by unknown persons in masks and he dies. Gradually Renton realizes that the matter is in the confrontation between the corporation, which has taken over almost the entire world, and the rebels.

The time loop theme is very well mixed here with the post-apocalyptic idea. It's not just the hero's salvation that is at stake, but perhaps the survival of the entire world.

12. Time lapse

• USA, 1997.
• Action, thriller, fantasy.
• Duration: 91 minutes.
• IMDb: 6, 3.

Karen had an accident and had to hitch a ride to get to town. But at the nearest gas station, the driver who picked it up started a firefight. Escaping from the criminal, Karen finds herself in the laboratory, where a mysterious apparatus sends her exactly at the time of the beginning of events. The girl tries to fix the situation, but things only get worse.

Probably the simplest time loop story. Here one can only observe how with each attempt to open it, the scale of the tragedy increases. But by the middle of the plot, a very unusual move appears: other characters are sent to the past, and the main character does not remember this.