Time travel movies: 21 essential films

Weekly collection in the app for the week of July 3, 2026.

Time travel is the genre where cinema invents its own physics: paradoxes, butterfly effects, second chances. It fits every budget, with Zemeckis's DeLorean and Nolan's wormholes at one end and Shane Carruth's garage experiment, famously made for around seven thousand dollars, at the other.

This collection of 21 films ran as the weekly theme in the I Like Movies Discover tab for the week of July 3, 2026, featuring Back to the Future. Anime carries two of the best entries (Your Name, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time), and Hi, Mom, a Chinese box-office phenomenon, is the deep cut most Western viewers miss.

The collection

1. Back to the Future (1985) Zemeckis Featured A teenager accidentally drives a plutonium-powered DeLorean back to 1955, derails his parents' first meeting, and must make his mother fall for his father instead of him; the perfect script. Cast: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Crispin Glover
2. The Terminator (1984) Cameron An unstoppable cyborg is sent back from a machine-ruled future to kill the woman whose unborn son will lead the human resistance; lean, relentless, and still scary. Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Biehn, Linda Hamilton
3. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) Cameron The killer machine from the first film returns reprogrammed as a boy's protector, hunted by a shape-shifting upgrade; the rare sequel that outgrew its original. Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong
4. 12 Monkeys (1995) Gilliam A convict from a plague-ruined future is sent back to trace the outbreak, but keeps landing in the wrong year and doubting his own mind; built around one childhood memory at an airport. Cast: Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, Brad Pitt
5. Primer (2004) Carruth Two engineers discover time travel inside a garage startup and immediately begin using it against each other; famously made for around seven thousand dollars, and famously demanding a second viewing. Cast: Shane Carruth, David Sullivan, Casey Gooden
6. Donnie Darko (2001) Kelly A sleepwalking suburban teenager survives a freak accident and starts receiving instructions from a man in a rabbit suit counting down to the end of the world; a cult object of endless interpretation. Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, James Duval
7. Looper (2012) Johnson In a future where the mob disposes of bodies by sending them thirty years back to contracted killers, one looper fails to kill his own older self; a tight thriller that plays fair with its rules. Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt
8. Edge of Tomorrow (2014) Liman A PR officer with no combat training dies on an alien-war beach and wakes up the previous morning, again and again, leveling up each loop; the video-game structure done right. Cast: Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Brendan Gleeson
9. Groundhog Day (1993) Ramis A contemptuous weatherman gets stuck living the same small-town February 2nd forever, cycling through despair, hedonism and, eventually, decency; the loop film every other one cites. Cast: Bill Murray, Andie MacDowell, Chris Elliott
10. Interstellar (2014) Nolan As blight strangles Earth, a pilot leaves his daughter behind to search for a new home through a wormhole, where hours cost decades; Nolan's biggest swing at heart and physics at once. Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Michael Caine
11. Source Code (2011) Jones A soldier wakes in another man's body aboard a commuter train that explodes in eight minutes, and is sent back into those eight minutes until he finds the bomber. Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga
12. About Time (2013) Curtis The men in one family can revisit their own past; the hero uses it first to find love, then learns what the gift is actually for; a romcom that turns into a father-son tearjerker. Cast: Domhnall Gleeson, Rachel McAdams, Bill Nighy
13. Midnight in Paris (2011) Allen A nostalgic screenwriter on holiday finds that at midnight a vintage car carries him to the Paris of Hemingway and Fitzgerald; a charming argument about golden-age thinking. Cast: Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Kathy Bates
14. Time Bandits (1981) Gilliam A boy joins six dwarves who have stolen a map of time's holes, looting their way past Napoleon, Agamemnon and Evil itself; Gilliam's anarchic children's film that adults keep. Cast: Craig Warnock, David Rappaport, Kenny Baker
15. Your Name (2016) Shinkai A Tokyo boy and a small-town girl wake up in each other's bodies, build a life across the swaps, then discover the distance between them is stranger than geography; a phenomenon in Japan. Cast: Ryunosuke Kamiki, Mone Kamishiraishi, Ryo Narita
16. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006) Hosoda A schoolgirl gains the power to leap back through her day and spends it dodging embarrassments, until the counter on her arm runs low; small stakes, real feeling. Cast: Riisa Naka, Takuya Ishida, Mitsutaka Itakura
17. Timecrimes (2007) Vigalondo A man watching a woman through binoculars stumbles into a machine that sends him one hour back, and must manage three overlapping versions of himself; a Spanish loop wound watch-tight. Cast: Karra Elejalde, Candela Fernández, Bárbara Goenaga
18. Hi, Mom (2021) Jia Ling Grieving her mother's sudden death, a woman falls back to 1981 and befriends her as a young co-worker, scheming to give her a better life; a Chinese box-office phenomenon that earns its tears. Cast: Jia Ling, Zhang Xiaofei, Shen Teng
19. Predestination (2014) Spierig A temporal agent's last assignment, told through a stranger's life story in a bar, folds in on itself until every role is accounted for; the tightest paradox plot ever filmed. Cast: Ethan Hawke, Sarah Snook, Noah Taylor
20. Time After Time (1979) Meyer H.G. Wells builds a working time machine, Jack the Ripper steals it, and Wells chases him into 1979 San Francisco, where a bank clerk mistakes the Victorian for a charming eccentric. Cast: Malcolm McDowell, David Warner, Mary Steenburgen
21. Tenet (2020) Nolan A CIA operative learns some objects and people move backwards through time and follows them into a cold-war plot around inverted entropy; Nolan at maximum, best not decoded on first watch. Cast: John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki

Keep your place

Watchlist the ones you have missed in I Like Movies and mark the rewatches; the app keeps the collection sorted by what is left. A new themed collection lands in the Discover tab every Friday.

Questions people ask

What is the most scientifically rigorous time travel film?

Primer (2004) is the fan consensus: engineers stumble into time travel and the film refuses to simplify the consequences. People still draw diagrams of its timeline. Predestination is the tightest paradox plot.

Which time travel movie should I start with?

Back to the Future remains the perfect machine: clear rules, real stakes, and a script with no wasted scene. Groundhog Day if you prefer the loop to the machine.

The week before: Directors filming their own lives: 21 autobiographical films. The week after: French New Wave and beyond: 21 films from sixties France. See every weekly theme, or browse every guide, watch order and comparison.