time travel love movie

10 Romantic Time Travel Movies to Binge Watch: I’ll Love You to the End of Time

These are some of the best time travel romance movies!

Time travel as a genre is always fascinating in any medium, whether a book, movie, TV show or comic. The possibility of meeting anyone in existence, going to places long forgotten, and uncovering secrets of well-loved icons of the past and maybe even the future gives a special allure to time travel romance movies.

The fantastical direction this genre takes adds elements of magic, naivete, and touches of illusion, appealing to older and younger viewers alike. Add into this the sprinkle of romance, and you have me hooked.

If I get the chance to watch Shakespeare wooing a girl from the 21st century using poems that have become cult classics, I’m grabbing the popcorn and switching my phone off.

RELATED: 80 OF THE BEST ENTERTAINING TIME TRAVEL TV SHOWS YOU NEED TO WATCH

Like most people, I grew up watching time travel movies. Consequently, they have become my favorites. For example, we can all appreciate Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure or watching Hermione travel back in time to see herself punch Draco in the face. (Not only a win for Harry Potter fans but for girls all around.)

Meanwhile, Doctor Who (2005) is my first exposure to real romance and time travel. With the Doctor’s companions all falling for him, he initially only falls for Rose (Nine and Ten).

RELATED: 7 FUN AND ROMANTIC TIME TRAVEL ASIAN DRAMAS

As a result, it had millions of us hoping he would appear in our living rooms, ready to take us on our own adventure. Since then, there was no going back. There are just so many romantic time travel movies calling out to be binged.

Here is a list of my personal favorite romantic time travel movies that have thus far survived the test of time. However, I will admit this list is not exhaustive (limiting the films to 10 was difficult).

10 ROMANTIC TIME TRAVEL MOVIES TO BINGE WATCH

(In No Particular Order)

#1: ABOUT TIME (2013)

Without a doubt, this is a humorous and engaging retelling of a classic boy trying to win over a girl story. Tim wishes to change his life and get a girlfriend. With this intention, enter Mary.

Tom falls for her and is relentless and tenacious in his pursuit, all thanks to a family secret. The men in his family can travel through time! What a secret to have, and at 21, your options are endless.

About Time beautifully captures the fun-loving side of romance. And, as viewers, we see the benefits of having such a gift and just how painful the gift can be.

For this reason, we see the love between a man and woman and the close relationship between Tim and his father, played by the talented Bill Nighy . Have tissues ready, as poignant scenes will get you teary-eyed.

Content Note: This film is rated 12A in the UK for mild profanity, nudity, violence, and moderate love scenes. For the same reason, About Time is a mild rated R in the United States.

#2: THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE (2009)

This falls quite high on my list of must-watch romance films in general as it has sweeping romance and not to mention swoon-worthy Eric Bana as the protagonist. The film beautifully interweaves through different phases of time, keeping the viewer enthralled.

It follows the life of Clare (Rachel McAdams) and how she meets Henry (Eric Bana), or rather how he encounters her. Clare and Henry ‘meet’ in a library. Soon, they both know what Henry is and what he can do, which is being involuntarily thrown through time, forwards or backward.

The movie’s most interesting aspect is that, despite Henry being the traveler, Clare knows more about him. She’s even aware of their relationship during their ‘first meeting’.

You can assume this is not their first meeting without giving too much away. The story follows them through their life together, how his continued absence becomes a toll on Clare, and over time, it delves into the life of living with a time traveler.

Could you live with someone who knows your future? They will know exactly where your life together could end up. Instead of going for the fated lovers’ angle, this looks at how fate may have brought them together, but should they have walked away?

Content Note: This film is rated 12A in the UK for mild sensuality, nudity, and profanity. In the US, the film is rated PG-13.

#3: SOMEWHERE IN TIME (1980)

If you prefer sweet innocent love stories with classic romance, Somewhere in Time will be perfect for you.

Set in 1972, Christopher Reeve stars as student Richard Collier who travels to Mackinac Island to stay at the Grand Hotel, where he sees a portrait of a woman who he becomes enamored with.

He finds out she was a famous stage actress who has passed away. In this obsession with the picture, he finds a way to go back in time to meet her.

Using methods of self-hypnosis, he is able to get back to 1900 and meet Elise McKenna, but what fate is in store for two people with such a big ‘time’ difference? Get ready to fall in love with the characters, cinematography, music, and love stories all over again.

Fun tidbit: Somewhere in Time was nominated for an Oscar for best costume design.

Content Note : This film is rated PG for mild profanity and sensuality.

#4: THE LAKE HOUSE (2006) AND IL MARE (2002)

The Lake House is a somber story, showing love with a facet of yearning, similar to Somewhere in Time . Both have protagonists who are trapped in different times.

Kate Forrester (Sandra Bullock) moves to a new house, leaving behind a letter for the next tenant. The person who reads the letter, Alex Wyler (Keanu Reeves), realizes some unusual things are happening.

Events mentioned in the letter have yet to occur. They come to the realization that they are exactly two years apart, writing from different times.

This charming movie weaves a beautiful story that will appeal to anyone in a long-distance relationship. You will be able to relate to the dates they attempt to go on and how they try and share experiences with each other.

It will make you appreciate that you are at least a phone call away. The ending of the movie will have you on the edge of your seats, and the revelations revealed will make you want to believe in fate and kismet take your pick.

Special mention to the original movie Il Mare (2002), a Korean production and equally a must-watch if you don’t mind subtitles.

Content Note: This film is rated PG with mild profanity, alcohol, and drugs.

#5: BACK TO THE FUTURE PART III (1990)

If you are not familiar with this series, what are you doing? Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) and the iconic DeLorean made a generation of kids dream about hoverboards and Nike trainers.

This is the third installment of the series, giving more focus to the ‘Doc’ Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd).

Set against the backdrop of the 1885 old west (and true to the name), we get standoffs, brawls, and romance. Meanwhile, Marty travels to 1885 and is stuck because his car breaks down.

Of course, he has a run-in with ‘Mad Dog’ Biff Tannen and his unruly gang. (Trying to send Marty back with their limited resources makes you appreciate a lot of amenities we take for granted.)

In this process, Emmett meets a school teacher, Clara Clayton (Mary Steenburgen), who is a science geek just like him, and soon a romance blossoms.

It is surreal and sweet to see Doc so enamored and unable to figure out how to act. Furthermore, the romance breathes new life into his character and shows an angle we never thought we needed.

In the climax of the movie, there is a race against time to get the DeLorean fixed and Marty back to the present day. Ultimately, even as a sequel, Back to the Future Part III is brilliant.

Content Note: This film is rated PG with moderate profanity, mild sensuality, nudity, and violence.

#6: MIDNIGHT IN PARIS (2011)

‘ You’re in love with a fantasy.’ ‘I’m in love with you.’

Woody Allen does it again, giving us a spellbinding movie with sophisticated and witty characters. He portrays Paris in a way that will make you want to go there and explore.

Winner of an Oscar, Midnight in Paris follows Gil (Owen Wilson) and Inez (Rachel McAdams) on vacation in Paris, where he wishes to move after they marry.

However, his wife-to-be doesn’t see the magic of the city, hoping to settle in America instead. In the meantime, Gil struggles to write his first novel and takes a strange late-night stroll through Paris, getting an invite to a party that includes guests such as Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Gertrude, and many others who frequented the famous salon of Stein.

It is up to the audience to decide if this is time travel or just the fantasy of a desperate writer who is in love with the golden era of the ’20s. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie because it gave a glimpse of how some of my favorite writers would interact.

This is what other genres cannot do, transport and introduce characters and figures who we would love to meet. This charming film will have you falling in love with the characters and the dialogue.

The superb acting by Wilson portrays an awe-struck, enthusiastic writer who meets his heroes. There is no real story to follow, but rather more events that unfold and how the characters react to them. But life is like this sometimes: we don’t know where things are going until later on.

Content Note: This film is rated 12A  in the UK and PG-13 in the U.S. for mild profanity, sensuality, and nudity.

#7: 13 GOING ON 30 (2004)

13 Going on 30 is a reverse-coming-of-age time travel romantic comedy. Jenna (Jennifer Garner) makes a wish on her thirteenth birthday, wanting to be older after going through an embarrassing ordeal.

Jenna wishes to make her older, and it is fulfilled magically. She wakes up the next day to find she is weeks from her thirtieth birthday, has a dream job as a magazine editor, a car, and a very attractive boyfriend.

Everything that anyone could want, but she is still not happy, which pushes the story toward what she truly desires.

This approach is always fun to watch, including hilarious scenes where the protagonist tries to understand the new circumstances and her new body. I admit it’s nothing new in terms of what we can expect, but Garner portrays the character’s innocence and naivete so well.

We see beautiful shots of New York City, which will make you want to book your flight and get over there. However, the surprise in this movie is Mark Ruffalo, who plays Matt, the high school best friend.

Seeing him in this role will be new and a fresh take for fans of the Marvel world. One of the best moments in the movie is the Michael Jackson ‘Thriller’ dance which will leave you astounded and get you on your feet.

Content Note: This film is rated 12A in the UK and PG-13 in the U.S. for mild profanity and suggestive content.

#8: WINTER’S TALE (2014)

Winter’s Tale is set in 1895 on the streets of New York and is based on the novel of the same name. Peter Lake (Colin Farrell) is a seasoned thief who enters the home of Beverly Penn (Jessica Brown Findlay). Beverly catches him in the act.

They both fall in love, and she tells Peter a story about how everyone is born with a miracle inside them. This is the theme for the whole movie so keep this in mind while watching.

The movie boasts a lot of big stars: Russell Crowe, Will Smith, and William Hurt, who all play fantastical characters brilliantly. The story jumps to modern times showing us Peter again. But he has amnesia, setting the story for the rest of the movie. The search for his memories and lost story.

Romance like this is always beautiful to watch, even though the audience and characters know it will not be the happy ending we all hope for.

Fans of Downton Abbey will recognize Findlay as Lady Sybil Crawley, carrying off the character of Beverly competently, with a timeless beauty that is only enhanced because we know the fate of the character.

Farrell is exquisite as always, playing his role as an Irish thief so convincingly. There are many twists and turns to keep you entertained during the second half, which is worth the effort.

Content Note: This film is rated 12A in the UK and PG-13 in the U.S. for violence and sensuality.

#9: IF ONLY (2004)

If Only uses the winning formula that led Groundhog Day (1993) to success, where the day is on repeat. We have Samantha (Jennifer Love Hewitt) and Ian (Paul Nichols), who are a typical couple, showing the relationship and fights.

Tragedy strikes when Samantha has a car accident leaving a heartbroken and grief-stricken Ian. But fate gives him another chance to back in time to try and change events. He lives the same day again and, like any sensible hero, tries to alter the events leading up to her accident.

It’s a sweet story showing the importance of cherishing the people close to you. The film further makes you wonder about how you would react in this situation. Would you be able to change anything?

The story moves at a good pace, keeping audiences on edge as to whether Ian will succeed. Very beautiful moments occur between the two as Ian knows what will come.

He tries his hardest to make everything perfect (and take notes, guys – ahem, ahem). Tissues may be needed; you have been warned.

Content Note: This film is rated PG-13 for some sensual material.

#10: KATE & LEOPOLD (2001)

‘I’m not very good with men.’ ‘ Perhaps you haven’t found the right one.’

This time travel romance movie captures everyone’s heart because Leopold (Hugh Jackman) comes from 1876 and has a romantic, classic approach to love.

He has purity dripping from every glance and every word he speaks. It would make any girl fall head over heels for the chivalrous Leopold.

So, what chance does Kate (Meg Ryan) have? Leopold needs to marry someone for wealth, with a dwindling purse and big dreams to pursue. He enters a portal transporting him to modern times. This blows him away to see the sights and progress.

He meets Kate, a market researcher who is cynical but ambitious. They get close but inevitable differences arise, and he returns back to his time.

Kate & Leopold also provides well-written comedic scenes with Kate’s brother, an actor assuming Leopold is deep in character. For fans of epic romantic movies from the ’90s, this 2001 film is equally awesome. Plus, any fan of Jackman will enjoy seeing him in this swoony role.

Content Note: Rated PG-13 for brief strong language.

Did you find one of your favorite movies about time travel and love? If you had the chance to have one of these romances, which one would it be?

Top Photo Credit: Somewhere in Time (Universal Pictures)

PIN THIS ARTICLE! AND MAKE SURE TO FOLLOW US ON  PINTEREST .

MORE PERIOD DRAMAS:

PERIOD DRAMA REVIEWS: A COLLECTION SORTED BY TIME PERIOD

Book lover – reader and writer. Being a bookworm from an early age introduced me to all wonderful worlds, travelling from Narnia to Hogwarts. This became my hobby and passion leading me to pursue avenues where I can write not just for my enjoyment but also to progress my career. Some of my current obsessions include K-dramas, all things period - any BBC original adaptation. I am currently reading Dan Brown's new novel as well as "All men are Mortal" and re-reading "North and South" because you can never read enough about Mr.Thornton and Margaret!

More posts by this author.

12 thoughts on “10 Romantic Time Travel Movies to Binge Watch: I’ll Love You to the End of Time”

Found some new ones for my list, so thanks! I love Hugh Jackson in Kate and Leopold – he plays it so straight it makes the whole thing so much funnier.

Though I haven’t seen it in a while now, I remember that I liked “Lake House,” and I just started to watch “About Time” last night. It’s nothing like I expected, but so far I quite like it! 🙂

Man, Rachel McAdams is all about that time travel life!

Oh, I hoped I’d find a new romantic time travel movie to add to my watched list, but I’m afraid I’ve already seen them all. Lovely curated list, tho!

A long time ago there lived a scientist who would hardly ever venture outside. His life was a lonely one, with long days of research and experiments. It was his ambition to create a potion to see into the future. He had over years collected hundreds of herbs and combined them in various ways until eventually, he was on the brink of a breakthrough…

Where am I able to find the remainder of this story? One mustn’t dangle a carrot expecting no one to bite! Rachel

All these are lovely —- another good one is “1994 Timecop” with Jean-Claude Van Damme and Mia Sara — thriller & romance

I can’t seem to find the movie which was based on a short story “ Christopher Frame “ a photo restorer who time travels ,.falls in love and stays there , tried to lookup but there is no information about it ,I can’t remember the name of the movie or episode either for the love of God ,If anyone knows about it please let me know ,thanks

Another outstanding time travel movie is the 1998 Hallmark Hall of Fame production “The Love Letter”, starring Campbell Scott and Jennifer Jason Leigh. Aired in the late 90s, it’s about an engaged civil war buff who finds hidden letters in an old desk which were written by an unmarried woman in 1863. He is compelled to respond to her and even though he lives in the late 20th century she receives his letters and they begin a correspondence through time. This obviously causes a big problem for his life with his fiance. It’s an excellent movie based on a short story by Jack Finney. Finney is the author of two great time travel novels, Time And Again and From Time to Time.

Hi Everybody, I read through the candidates for best time travel romance, all of which I have seen. I agree with your choices, but not exactly in that order. Although they were all great movies, it is “Somewhere in Time” that takes the number one spot. I was happy to see that at least you gave them the 3rd spot, but, in reality, it was the one movie that expressed so beautifully the concept that love transcends time and in the end, true love brings them together as they slip off into eternity.

There is one more movie to which I would give honorable mention. That is the 1979 movie “Time After Time” where the prolific writer HG Wells pursues Jack the Ripper into the future where Hubert (Malcolm Mcdowell) meets Mary Steenburgen and falls in love. This is another great movie. Thanks, DAD

Hi Dad! I agree with you that Somewhere in Time is the best time-travel romance movie. 🙂 Such a beautiful film!

Comments are closed.

17 Best Romance Movies That Incorporate Time Travel, Ranked

Your changes have been saved

Email is sent

Email has already been sent

Please verify your email address.

You’ve reached your account maximum for followed topics.

Who would've thought that manipulating time would forge some of the great love stories? Whether it's found within the chivalry of the gentlemanly past or the future of civilization, cinema has shown that love has no bounds – even if it means traveling through time to get it. Where it may be a common trope for the sci-fi genre, romance flicks have also surprisingly used it to their advantage.

From classic rom-coms like 13 Going on 30 and The Lake House , to more hidden gems like If Only – these movies use the phenomenon of time travel to intertwine greater levels of fantasy and magic . Not only does this increase the overall cinematic experience, but these time travel romance movies also make the love stories incredibly epic.

17 '13 Going on 30' (2004)

Directed by gary winick.

After being humiliated on her 13th birthday, Jenna Rink ( Christa B. Allen ) wishes to escape her life of pre-teen unpopularity and become a well-adjusted grownup in this time travel rom-com. She's shocked when she wakes up to find her wish has come true; somehow Jenna ( Jennifer Garner ) is now 30 and living in 2004. Soon she realizes how adulthood has its own set of struggles – one particularly being her love life.

As an iconic 2000s rom-com , 13 Going on 30 has warmed fans' hearts for decades. Largely driven by Garner's bubbly innocence, Jenna's connection with Matt (Mark Ruffalo) is undeniably pure and one of the great depictions of friends-to-lovers . This movie also uses time travel to put forth the message of how time is precious; by choosing to only look towards the future, one would never absorb the milestones of the present.

13 Going on 30

Not available

16 'When We First Met' (2018)

Directed by ari sandel.

Having been friend-zoned by the girl of his dreams after meeting her at a Halloween party, Noah ( Adam DeVine ) remains close to Avery ( Alexandra Daddario ). Three years later, she's now engaged to someone else. Suddenly, Noah stumbles on the opportunity to travel back in time to the moment they met, giving him the chance to alter his life, and get the girl.

In an almost Groundhog Day scenario (and it's worth noting that film is a benchmark for romantic time-travel movie), When We First Met is a humorous film that's filled with charm and charisma thanks to the talents of the cast , especially in the case of DeVine. Where the romantic connection is present between characters, it isn't with whom you'd naturally expect as this is a classic tale that teaches audiences that everything happens for a reason.

When We First Met

15 'kate & leopold' (2001), directed by james mangold.

Kate ( Meg Ryan ) is a 21st-century woman who's determined to focus on her career. She thinks she doesn't need romance in her life at all, that is until she meets Leopold ( Hugh Jackman ), an English Duke from the 19th century who's accidentally brought to the future via a portal made by her ex-boyfriend, Stuart ( Liev Schreiber ).

Where Kate & Leopold may be cheesy at times with the classic fish-out-of-water tropes, this movie is an underrated feel-good romance that will easily keep one warm and cozy. Don't expect it to be anything groundbreaking, but it's perfect for a chill night that needs a film that's mildly entertaining. With the script's quick wit and fun character dynamics, this twisted modern-day fairytale shows how love doesn't always come to us in the most expected ways.

Kate & Leopold

14 'the fountain' (2006), directed by darren aronofsky.

A moody think-piece that sees director Darren Aronofsky at his intense stylistic best, The Fountain is as awe-inspiring as it is mind-boggling as a dramatic and tragic love story told across time. It primarily follows Dr. Tommy Creo ( Hugh Jackman ), a scientist who discovers a tree with life-sustaining qualities and tries to use it to combat his wife’s brain cancer. Jackman also appears as a 16th-century Spanish conquistador on a mission to find the Fountain of Youth and as a futuristic space traveler nurturing the tree of life until arriving at the heart of a dying star.

While polarizing on account of its demanding and convoluted narrative, The Fountain is a brilliant, sprawling tale of heartbreak and longing across time. Technically, it doesn’t feature time travel as it is usually depicted on screen, but its three interwoven stories do lean heavily on each other to present a love story that transpires across centuries . – Ryan Heffernan

The Fountain

13 'the lake house' (2006), directed by alejandro agresti.

As lonely doctor, Kate Forster ( Sandra Bullock ), moves out of her beloved lake house, she begins to exchange letters with its newest resident, a frustrated architect named Alex Wyler ( Keanu Reeves ). The two instantly spark a connection and form a budding romance. The only problem – she's living in the year 2006, whereas he's in 2004.

An epic love story where two are separated by time, this romantic flick is special in the way that it portrays the simplicities of intimacy. With only the written word to connect, Kate and Alex's closeness is unlike any other in The Lake House . It's also refreshing to see Keanu Reeves in a non-action role , which he pulls off with ease. The two main characters need not rely on physical attraction or physical needs, they're brought together by a deeper connection – one built on stories, soul, and emotions.

The Lake House

12 'if only' (2004), directed by gil junger.

Struck with grief after the sudden loss of his girlfriend Samantha ( Jennifer Love Hewitt ), Ian ( Paul Nicholls ) is given the opportunity to relive the day she died and rewrite his wrongdoings. The repetition of time allows him to become a better partner and fix things before the impending tragedy, but it also brings some unexpected pain as he relives the best and worst moments of his relationship.

Despite being an emotional and bittersweet tale, If Only is filled with hope and true love . It sends a message to viewers about how important it is to treasure every moment, every milestone, and to treat every day as if it were your last. It's not an innovative concept by any stretch, but with the palpable chemistry between Hewitt and Nicholls, fans will be moved by their devotion towards each other, even until the film's final bittersweet twist .

Watch on Peacock

11 'Peggy Sue Got Married' (1986)

Directed by francis ford coppola.

A bold genre departure from Francis Ford Coppola , Peggy Sue Got Married is an inventive movie that combines comedy, romance, and fantasy together with aplomb. It focuses on Peggy Sue ( Kathleen Turner ) who, when attending her 25th high school reunion, grows bitterly regretful of her life to the point that she passes out at the event. When she wakes up as a teenager back in 1960, she decides to embrace life with a renewed sense of fervor and not make the same mistakes twice.

Rich with nostalgia and the profound desire to turn back time and live life differently, Peggy Sue Got Married delicately plays with universal themes of regret and the way love between two people changes over time. The focal relationship between Peggy and her high school beau and eventual husband, Charlie ( Nic Cage ), is beautifully realized, making for one of the best time travel romance films ever made . – Ryan Heffernan

Peggy Sue Got Married

10 'the time traveler's wife' (2009), directed by robert schwentke.

Henry Detamble ( Eric Bana ) is a librarian from Chicago who struggles with his rare genetic disorder that causes him to randomly travel through time, uncontrollably. His life becomes more complex when he meets and marries the love of his life, Claire ( Rachel McAdams ), as she must now learn to cope with her husband's condition.

An interesting spin on star-crossed lovers, The Time Traveler's Wife captures the struggles of fated love . Where Henry and Claire's story is romantic and tender, it's also incredibly bittersweet. With Henry's condition, fans (as well as Claire) are never sure of when he'll disappear. So when he does on occasions like their wedding, the heartbreak and tension are palpable. Their love story may be unconventional, but there's beauty to it.

The Time Traveler's Wife

9 'somewhere in time' (1980), directed by jeannot szwarc.

Enamored and infatuated by a vintage portrait that hangs in a grand hotel, playwright Richard Collier ( Christopher Reeve ) finds a way to travel through time to 1912 to meet Elise McKenna ( Jane Seymour ), a stage actor. Where the two seem destined to be together, conflicts arise when Elise's obsessive manager, William ( Christopher Plummer ), tries to stop them.

A great movie that's severely slept on, Somewhere in Time tells the story of an unworldly and impossible love . With a brilliant concept and beautiful chemistry between Reeves and Seymour , this movie is one for the romantics and dreamers. It shows the sheer lengths someone is willing to go to find their soulmate – even if it means going through time itself.

Watch on Tubi

8 'Time After Time' (1979)

Directed by nicholas meyer.

A joyous fantasy romp realized with so much charm and light-hearted fun that viewers can’t help but be absorbed by it, Time After Time presents a wacky, time-jumping adventure of prominent historical figures. Having invented a time machine, author H. G. Wells ( Malcolm McDowell ) plans to leave 1890s London and explore the distant future. However, when Jack the Ripper ( David Warner ) uses the contraption to escape the police, Wells must follow the notorious killer to 1979 San Francisco to apprehend him. On his journey, he befriends and falls for a bank employee, Amy Robbins ( Mary Steenburgen ).

While it contains a little violence, the film excels with its childlike sense of adventure and its wonderfully pure romantic beats. Bolstered by the fact that each of the three main actors look to be having the time of their lives, Time After Time is an infectiously fun time-traveling romance that also serves as a wonderful sci-fi adventure that is as inventive as it is delightful. – Ryan Heffernan

Rent on Apple TV

7 'Palm Springs' (2020)

Directed by max barbakow.

A critically acclaimed cult hit of modern comedy, Palm Springs breathes new life into a time loop formula with its unique rom-com premise and its all-conquering sense of charm. It follows Nyles ( Andy Samberg ) and Sarah ( Cristin Milioti ), two wedding guests who find themselves living the same day over and over. While the two are drawn to each other, rising problems and a series of revelations threaten to ruin their budding romance.

Samberg and Milioti are both phenomenal in their roles, balancing irreverent comedy with an underlying heart that has an uncanny knack for taking viewers by surprise. While there may be some discrepancy between time loop and time travel, Palm Springs deserves all the praise it gets for avoiding formulaic clichés with confidence and wit. It stands as one of the best romantic movies of the decade so far. – Ryan Heffernan

Palm Springs

6 'back to the future part iii' (1990), directed by robert zemeckis.

As the third and final chapter to their adventures, Marty McFly ( Michael J. Fox ) must travel back in time to 1885 to the Old West to save his friend, Doctor Emmett Brown ( Christopher Lloyd ), from his impending murder. Matters become more complicated when Marty realizes that Doc has fallen deeply in love with local school teacher, Clara Clayton ( Mary Steenburgen ).

Though not a typical romance movie, Back to the Future Part III , is a film spearheaded by the themes of love . Where there are romantic storylines in the previous installments, Doc and Clara's is a breath of fresh air – mostly because Doc is a character that's so determined to avoid the supposed banalities of love. And yet, here he is, willing to be stuck in a foreign time period for the sake of love, happiness, and true companionship.

Back to the Future Part III

5 'the girl who leapt through time' (2006), directed by mamoru hosoda.

A popular anime movie for beginners , The Girl Who Leapt Through Time tells the story of Makoto Konno (voiced by Riisa Naka ), who learns that she has the ability to time travel. She soon uses her newfound power to fix the small things in her daily life, from schoolwork to friendships. When she meets another person who can time travel, the two develop an unconventional bond.

Chiaki Mamiya (voiced by Takuya Ishida ) helps the protagonist realize and fix the consequences of messing with time, but soon reveals something heartbreaking to her. Their romance is complicated by the fact that Chiaki isn't from Makoto's present day, and eventually has to leave. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time will have fans rooting for the time-traveling duo's success until the tear-jerking end .

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006)

4 'midnight in paris' (2011), directed by woody allen.

Whilst on a holiday in Paris with his fiancé and her family, Gil Pender ( Owen Wilson ) – a screenwriter and aspiring author – develops a habit of touring the city alone. One night he finds himself swept back in time to the 1920s where he meets his favorite cultural and artistic icons. By experiencing life in the past, he is forced to confront his dissatisfactions with the present.

As a romance movie, Midnight in Paris offers multiple romantic interests, each with its own qualities and individual purposes. From Inez's (McAdams) 21st-century realism, to Adriana's ( Marion Cotillard ) 1920s romanticized attitude to life, Gil is forced to reflect on what kind of love will give him true happiness. He'll even come to terms with the dangers of escapism. It's a severely underrated Owen Wilson movie , with the actor's performance being a delicate and moving one that anchors the entire story .

Midnight in Paris

3 'groundhog day' (1993), directed by harold ramis.

The original time loop movie, one that has become an enduring American classic, Groundhog Day features Bill Murray in a career-best performance while meshing comedy, romance, and character drama together with astute deftness. Phil Connors (Murray) is a self-centered weatherman who is sent to Punxsutawney to cover the annual Groundhog Day celebration. When he becomes stuck in a time loop, however, he is forced to confront himself while falling in love with his new producer, Rita Hanson ( Andie MacDowell ).

An inventive spin on rom-com cinema that remains one of the most sincere and intelligent stories that the genre has ever seen, Groundhog Day thrives with its manipulation of time and the way its central love story is incorporated into that . With its innate ability to make audiences smile while feeling a range of emotions, it continues to be revered as a hopeful story of love and inner growth over 30 years since its original release. – Ryan Heffernan

Groundhog Day

2 'about time' (2013), directed by richard curtis.

Life changed forever when Tim Lake ( Domhnall Gleeson ) turned 21 as his father revealed an odd hereditary trait; all the men in their family have the ability to time travel. Though initially shocked, Tim decides to use his skill to alter his past to improve his future. His main goal – bolster his love life and win the heart of Mary (Rachel McAdams). He soon realizes that his power can have serious consequences if used incorrectly.

With a clever concept, a beautiful script, and a great cast, this poignant movie is one that masterfully tackles the topics of love, redemption, and loss. Where Gleeson and McAdams' chemistry is incredibly sweet, About Time is a movie about more than a simple romantic story . It uses time to talk about the importance of living in the moment and the consequences of one's choices. Viewers can expect its small-scale intimate story to move most to tears.

1 'Your Name' (2016)

Directed by makoto shinkai.

Your Name is a massively popular and beloved anime film that blends fantasy, romance, and sci-fi together. It tells the story of two high school students – Taki Tachibana (voiced by Ryunosuke Kamiki ) and Mitsuha Miyamizu ( Mone Kamishiraishi ) – who inexplicably begin to swap bodies. The two characters have never met, but begin to improve each other's lives. Before they know it, they slowly fall in love in the process of learning about each other's realities.

It's impossible to talk about the time travel aspect of Your Name without completely spoiling the plot , but audiences who enjoy emotional animated films should consider this essential viewing for its notoriously tear-jerking twist. The gorgeous visuals and heartbreakingly romantic story easily make it the best film to show the potential of combining love and time travel in film.

Your Name (2016)

NEXT: The Best Romantic Movies of All Time, Ranked

Screen Rant

8 best time travel romantic movies.

Your changes have been saved

Email is sent

Email has already been sent

Please verify your email address.

You’ve reached your account maximum for followed topics.

Your Name Ending Explained (In Detail)

10 best mcu quotes from its stars that weren't in the movies or shows, 3 actors that would be better than timothee chalamet in the bob dylan biopic.

• Time-travel romance movies have been a popular genre in cinema for decades, with many films exploring the concept of love and destiny through the lens of time travel.
• These movies often feature unique storylines and themes, making them stand out from other romantic films.
• Here are some of the best time-travel romance movies that you can watch.

The merging of romance and time travel has led to some truly spectacular movies that highlight eternal themes of absence, destiny, and humanity's desire to go back and change the past. From hilarious rom-coms that played into the humorous consequences of those trying to mess with time to deeply nuanced portrayals of the hardship of unwanted distance, the time travel romance subgenre was one rife with thematic and emotional resonance. While these movies may be fantastical in concept, the ideas they laid bare captured something universal about the challenges of love and romance.

The best time-travel romance movies all address the consequences of trying to mess with the past and the unintentional problems those who failed to accept destiny were confronted with. These films included some of the best rom-coms of the early 2000s and even enduring classics from beloved franchises of the past. With incredible concepts, unique storytelling devices, and, in some cases, awe-inspiring animation, the best time-travel romance movies all had something special to offer .

8 When We First Met (2018)

Directed by ari sandel, when we first met.

Noah meets Avery at a Halloween party and falls in love but gets friend-zoned. 3 years later, she's engaged to someone else. Noah returns in a time machine to fix things.

The time-travel rom-com When We First Met starred Adam DeVine as Noah Ashby, a man who never got over being friend-zoned by the love of his life three years before. However, when Noah stumbled across a way to travel back in time, he decided to redo the past and finally get things right with Avery Martin (Alexandra Daddario.) With a heartwarming story about staying true to oneself, When We First Met overcame its genre cliches and tropes through an excellent performance from DeVine .

Directed by Ari Sandel, When We First Met took its Groundhog Day -esque concept and ran with it to deliver a movie packed with charm and charisma. Perhaps the greatest asset of When We First Met was how it subverted the predictability of its concept with twists and turns that viewers won’t see coming. The story was great, the acting was superb, and the script was funny, which, when all taken together, made When We First Met among the best Netflix rom-coms .

7 13 Going On 30 (2004)

Directed by gary winick, 13 going on 30.

Not available

13 Going on 30 is 2004 fantasy romantic comedy about a 13-year-old girl named Jenna Rink, who, in 1987, dreams of being popular and wishes she were "thirty and flirty and thriving." She later wakes up in 2004 at the age of 30. Jennifer Garner stars as 30-year-old Jenna, while Christa B. Allen plays the role of young Jenna. Mark Ruffalo, Judy Greer, Jim Gaffigan, and Andy Serkis also star. 

The Jennifer Garner-led rom-com 13 Going on 30 was a fascinating time-travel story that transported its protagonist from 1987 to 2004. Garner played the grown-up Jenna Rink, a nerdy 13-year-old girl who longed to be popular and secretly loved Matty Flamhaff (Mark Ruffalo), who found herself suddenly 17 years older and living in New York as a successful fashion editor. As a laugh-out-loud story of childhood innocence meeting the incredible potential of adulthood, 13 Going on 30 was as heartfelt as it was humorous.

13 Going on 30 was truly one of the best rom-coms of the 2000s as Garner played a teenager stuck in an adult body to perfection and captured all the awkwardness, anxiety, and earnest innocence of adolescence. Although 13 Going on 30 was filled with plenty of over-the-top fun, it also delivered a powerful message of self-empowerment and the trapping of adult societal expectations. While 13 Going on 30 borrowed a lot from Big , the Tom Hanks movie with a similar premise, its feminist spin added a new dimension to the story and made for a compelling time-travel rom-com.

6 Back To The Future Part III (1990)

Directed by robert zemeckis, back to the future part iii.

The final entry in Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale's timeless trilogy, Back to the Future Part III wraps up Marty McFly and Doc Brown's adventures through time when Marty travels to 1885's Wild West to save his mentor, meeting Biff Tannen's ancestor "Mad Dog" and almost changing the course of history once again along the way.

While the first Back to the Future movie included the franchise’s most notorious romantic subplot when Marty McFly’s mother found herself unknowingly infatuated with her own son, it was the third entry that could genuinely be described as a time-travel romance movie. This was because Doc Brown finally found love with Clara Clayton in Back to the Future Part III . This came after Doc found himself trapped back in 1885 and altered the original timeline when he saved the schoolteacher Clara from certain death.

Back to the Future Part III was an incredibly romantic movie that featured some of the greatest Doc Brown quotes as he told Marty his “ future hasn’t been written yet ” and that it can be “ whatever you make it .” Throughout the franchise, Doc was seen as a man of science who never allowed his life to be complicated by the stresses of love, only for him to encounter the girl of his dreams in the final installment. While the first two Back to the Future movies told Marty’s story, the final entry focused on Doc’s time-travel love story .

5 The Time Traveler’s Wife (2009)

Directed by robert schwentke, the time traveler's wife.

In the 1970s, Henry DeTamble discovers he's a time traveler after a tragic accident. His life intersects with Clare Abshire's repeatedly, as she's known him since childhood. Despite marrying, their relationship is challenged by Henry's uncontrollable jumps through time, leaving Clare to wait for his return. As they navigate the complexities of love and loss, they confront the limitations of Henry's condition and the impact it has on their family.

The Time Traveler’s Wife was based on Audrey Niffenegger's novel and powerfully addressed themes of love and absence. With Rachel McAdams as Clare Abshire, the wife of the time traveler Henry DeTamble (Eric Bana), The Time Traveler’s Wife was a heartfelt exploration of building romance in the most trying of circumstances as Clare’s husband continually involuntarily vanished and reappeared throughout her life. With emotional depth and poignant nuance, this story will surely tug at the hearts of all those willing to forgive its logical fallacies.

From the complex challenges of raising a child together to the couple’s mismatched experiences of their timelines, The Time Traveler’s Wife raised interesting questions regarding a non-chronological love affair. For all its faults, The Time Traveler’s Wife succeeded due to the committed performances of McAdams and Bana, who imbued this fantastical romance with depth and realism. The Time Traveler’s Wife was a worthy adaptation of Niffenegger's novel that’s sure to please lovers of the book.

4 The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006)

Directed by mamoru hosoda, the girl who leapt through time (2006).

A high-school girl named Makoto acquires the power to travel back in time, and decides to use it for her own personal benefits. Little does she know that she is affecting the lives of others just as much as she is her own.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time was a loose anime sequel to the 1967 novel by Yasutaka Tsutsui, which told the story of a teenage girl who gained the power of time travel. As 17-year-old Makoto Konno started to use her powers frivolously to solve her problems, she started to unknowingly impact the lives of those around her. As a sci-fi story packed with plenty of romance, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time was a highly imaginative coming-of-age tale that used its unique concept to address themes of personal responsibility.

Makoto's use of time travel to solve even the most minute of problems, from school tests to awkward conversations, was a humorous depiction of time travel romance that was soon confronted with the stark reality of the consequences of her actions. With impressive visuals and just the right amount of realism, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time was a highly engrossing story of time travel and romance . As the perfect mix of somber and lighthearted humor, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time was an excellent film and a great entry point for those unfamiliar with anime.

3 Midnight in Paris (2011)

Directed by woody allen, midnight in paris.

Written and directed by Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris stars Owen Wilson as Gil Pender, a struggling writer who, on a trip to Paris with his fiance, begins traveling back in time to the 1920s every night at midnight, leading him to meet and mingle with some of the city's biggest names of the time. Besides Wilson, the cast includes Rachel McAdams, Tom Hiddleston, Kathy Bates, Marion Cotillard, Corey Stoll, and Adrien Brody. 

The romance of Midnight in Paris was primarily related to the love that people can conjure for a place and the alluring appeal of the past. This Woody Allen-directed time travel story involved the screenwriter Gil Pender (Owen Wilson) confronting his issues with his fiance (Rachel McAdams) as he’s transported back to 1920s Paris. From here, Gil encountered prominent historical artists and writers such as Ernest Hemingway , Salvador Dalí, as well as F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, in a powerful homage to the City of Love: Paris, France.

Midnight in Paris was arguably Allen’s greatest work in the 21st century, which perfectly highlighted his ability to blend everyday relationship anxieties with fantastical stories that paid tribute to the enduring legacy of art and literature. Wilson gave an exceptional performance that mimicked the anxious mannerisms and stuttering awkwardness of Annie Hall’s Alvy Singer. Through the use of magical realism, Midnight in Paris captured the charm of Parisian culture and the infectious romance of the city’s rich artistic history.

2 Your Name (2016)

Directed by makoto shinkai, your name (2016).

Two teenagers share a profound, magical connection upon discovering they are swapping bodies. Things manage to become even more complicated when the boy and girl decide to meet in person.

Your Name was a complex and emotional anime film by director Makoto Shinkai that may not be immediately recognizable as a time-travel romance. This concept of Your Name involved two Japanese high school students, Taki Tachibana and Mitsuha Miyamizu, who suddenly started to switch bodies despite having never met before. As the story progressed, a deeply nuanced tale of time travel set against the backdrop of an impending natural disaster revealed itself with thrilling effect, highlighting the complex intersection between love and destiny.

With beautiful animation, a thrilling script, and emotionally satisfying characters, Your Name received universal acclaim and stood as one of the most beloved non-Studio Ghibli anime movies ever released. While the ending of Your Name may have been somewhat confusing, this was part of its power, and its two timelines made the conclusion all the more effective. With a unique storytelling style, Your Name managed to add something entirely new to the well-worn time-travel romance genre .

Your Name, a 2016 animated film, combines an emotional love story with a sci-fi time travel element in a plot that can be hard to follow.

1 About Time (2013)

Directed by richard curtis.

When Tim Lake learns that he, like all the men in his family, has the ability to travel back in time, he decides to use this ability to help him find love and improve his and his loved ones' lives.

On his 21st birthday, Tim Lake’s (Domhnall Gleeson) life was changed forever when he learned he was part of a family whose men could travel back in time to change the past and improve their future. As a beautiful pontification on destiny, love, and the need to accept life’s pain and grievances, About Time was a powerful romance from director Richard Curtis that told a complex and unabashedly sentimental story. With his romance with Mary (Rachel McAdams) at the center of its story, About Time was a beautiful depiction of an ordinary man’s extraordinary life .

While many comparisons could be made to The Time Traveler’s Wife , which also co-starred McAdams, About Time captured the poignancy and fragility of tampering with romance in a way that felt far warmer and was delivered with more humor. Although plotholes appear if viewers think too hard about the logic behind time travel in About Time , the movie proceeds with such vibrancy that it is easy to forgive these faults. With plenty of twists and turns, About Time delivered everything a viewer could want from a time-travel romance movie.

The 25 Best Time Travel Movies to Whisk You Away from Reality

Who wouldn't love a time machine right about now?

Every product on this page was chosen by a Harper's BAZAAR editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy.

Once reserved for the science fiction genre, time travel movies have since taken on a life of their own. Whether you're a fan of unique romantic comedies utilizing time machines, or classic '80s flicks transporting us to alternate decades, time travel films are the perfect escape for anyone needing a little time out from current events. From classic "time loop" jaunts such as Groundhog Day to unforgettable indie films like Donnie Darko , we've rounded up 25 of the best time travel movies you can stream right now.

Meet Cute (2022)

Kaley Cuoco and Pete Davidson co-star in Peacock's Meet Cute , a delightful and often dark rom-com based around time travel. Feeling suicidal, Sheila (Cuoco) finds a time machine in a nail salon and decides to go back in time 24 hours. While re-living her first date with Gary (Davidson) again and again, Sheila loses touch with reality and might have destroyed any chance she had with him.

A Wrinkle in Time (2018)

High schooler Meg Murry travels through time and space in search of her missing astrophysicist father (Chris Pine). On her journey, Meg meets Mrs. Which (Oprah Winfrey), Mrs. Whatsit (Reese Witherspoon), and Mrs. Who (Mindy Kaling), as well as a whole host of dangerous beings.

The Time Traveler's Wife (2009)

Based on Audrey Niffenegger's 2003 novel of the same name, The Time Traveler's Wife tells the story of Henry (Eric Bana), a librarian who is able to randomly travel through time. After meeting Clare (Rachel McAdams) as a child, Henry later develops a romantic relationship with her. HBO's recent adaptation starring Theo James and Rose Leslie has reignited the debate regarding whether or not the story promotes grooming , or if it's a timeless romance.

Back to the Future (1985)

'80s classic Back to the Future has stood the test of time, and spawned two equally entertaining sequels. In the first film, Marty McFly is sent to the 1950s in his friend Doc Brown's time machine, a super cool DeLorean. Marty meets his parents as teenagers, and his presence risks changing history forever.

See You Yesterday (2019)

Netflix's See You Yesterday follows science prodigy C.J. (Eden Duncan-Smith), who invents time traveling backpacks. Along with her best friend Sebastian, C.J. uses her invention to go back in time to stop her brother from being murdered by a racist police officer. However, she's also forced to face up to the limitations and consequences of time travel.

About Time (2013)

Tim (Domhnall Gleeson) inherits the ability to time travel from his father, and decides to use the gift to find love. After a failed attempt at romance, Tim meets Mary (Rachel McAdams), but due to several time travel-related mishaps, romance isn't instantaneous for the pair. Written and directed by rom-com aficionado Richard Curtis.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

James Cameron's follow-up to 1984's The Terminator was a smash-hit that cemented the franchise's popularity. In the sequel, a killer T-1000 Terminator is sent back in time by Skynet to kill the future leader of the resistance, the son of Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), John (Edward Furlong). At the same time, the resistance sends a reprogrammed T-800 Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) back to protect Connor.

Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)

Four miserable friends reunite after one of them nearly dies. To cheer themselves up, they decide to spend some time together at a ski resort. Unfortunately, the resort's hot tub isn't what it seems, and they accidentally end up traveling back to 1986. The four friends scramble to find a way back to present day. Starring John Cusack and Craig Robinson.

12 Monkeys (1995)

After a deadly virus destroys humanity in 1996, survivors are forced underground. Decades later, prisoner James (Bruce Willis) agrees to go back in time to find the original virus, so that scientists can work on a cure. However, he arrives too early in 1990, and is promptly institutionalized, where he meets Jeffrey (Brad Pitt), an anti-corporate environmentalist. From there, the mystery only gets more intriguing.

Looper (2012)

In the future, time travel is used by the mob to assassinate people, who are sent back in time and killed by assassins known as "loopers." Joe's (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) older self (Bruce Willis) is sent back to be eliminated, but manages to escape before he is killed. Thus begins a twisty time travel epic, that also stars Emily Blunt.

Tenet (2020)

The Protagonist ( John David Washington ), a former CIA agent, is tasked with stopping World War III. Learning to bend time, he attempts to prevent the destruction of the world. Robert Pattinson and Elizabeth Debicki co-star.

Last Night in Soho (2021)

Aspiring fashion designer Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie) manages to travel back to the 1960s, where she meets singer "Sandie" ( Anya Taylor-Joy ). What starts as a glamorous encounter with the past soon becomings a horrifying nightmare. Co-starring Matt Smith.

Déjà Vu (2006)

A top secret organization has developed the ability to see four days into the past, in order to catch criminals. While hunting a terrorist, ATF agent Doug (Denzel Washington) realizes that this new technology might allow him to stop crimes from happening altogether.

Source Code (2011)

An unusual riff on the time travel movie, Source Code stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Army Captain Colter, who is trying to identify the person responsible for bombing a commuter train. Re-living an eight minute re-creation of the moments leading up to the explosion, Colter is stuck in a terrifying loop, until he can solve the mystery.

Mirai (2018)

A young boy called Kun runs away from home, as he feels neglected by his family after the arrival of his little sister, Mirai. Kun accidentally discovers a time travel portal in a magic garden, and is transported into the past, where he meets his mother as a child. Later, he travels to the future, where he finds his sister as an adult, and completely changes his outlook in the process.

Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)

Aubrey Plaza stars as an aspiring journalist whose latest assignment involves a mysterious classified ad about time travel. "You'll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. I have only done this once before. SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED," the ad reads. Mark Duplass co-stars.

Groundhog Day (1993)

Although Groundhog Day is technically a "time loop" movie, it wouldn't feel right to leave it off the list. Phil (Bill Murray) is a disgruntled weatherman sent to cover the annual Groundhog Day event in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. When he wakes up the next day, he realizes that he's re-living February 2, which happens again and again, until he figures out how to stop it.

Needle in a Timestack (2021)

The wonderful Cynthia Erivo stars alongside Orlando Bloom, Leslie Odom Jr., and Freida Pinto in this romantic sci-fi flick. In the future, the wealthy are able to partake in "time jaunting," but the ripples from these changes often cause timelines to warp and change. Needle in a Timestack focuses on a happily married couple whose relationship is jeopardized by an ex intent on changing history.

The Lake House (2006)

Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves star in this completely cheesy but endlessly loveable rom-com that defies time. Architect Alex (Reeves) and doctor Kate (Bullock) write letters to one another via a mailbox at a lake house where they both live at separate times. Despite the time difference, they're able to communicate with one another and forge a relationship via this magical postal system that transcends time.

Predestination (2015)

Ethan Hawke stars as an agent tasked with stopping a deadly attack before it happens, via time travel. Traveling back to 1975, he attempts to find and stop a bomber in New York, but his mission is far from simple. When he returns to the future, his life only gets more complicated.

Amy Mackelden is a freelance writer, editor, and disability activist. Her bylines include Harper's BAZAAR, Nicki Swift, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, ELLE, The Independent, Bustle, Healthline, and HelloGiggles. She co-edited The Emma Press Anthology of Illness , and previously spent all of her money on Kylie Cosmetics.

Film, TV & Theatre

“The Perfect Couple” and the Limits of Fan Casting

Gwyneth Paltrow Will Return to Acting for A24 Film

FKA Twigs Always Knew She Was Meant to Act

“Blink Twice”’s Costumes Are Emotionally Charged

Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu on Becoming Sylvie

All About Michaela Coel's Next TV Show

Jodie Foster & Issa López on Collaboration

Outfits in Emily in Paris , Ranked

All About “Emily in Paris” Season 4, Part 2

The “Gossip Girl” Easter Egg in “It Ends With Us”

Why TV Can’t Stop Crushing on the Hot Billionaire

The Umbrella Academy’s Finale Is a Wild Ride

Top 10 Best Time-Travel Romance Movies

True love knows no bounds. Welcome to MsMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the Top 10 Time-Travel Romance Movies. For this list, we’ll be including films that involve time loops. However, both the time travel and the romance have to make up a significant portion of the plot/story. That means films like “The Terminator,” which features a romantic subplot but is first and foremost an action flick, will not be included.

#10: “Kate & Leopold” (2001)

Director James Mangold rarely dips his toes in the romantic comedy genre, but when he does he’s known for delivering endlessly entertaining high-concept flicks. “Kate & Leopold” is no exception, asking audiences to suspend their disbelief for just over two hours in order to appreciate the humor and love shared between the two titular characters. The film is about a 19th century duke who finds himself transported to modern day New York City. There he meets Kate, a market researcher, and the two quickly fall in love. The film doesn’t overplay the time travel aspect of the story, instead choosing to focus on the relationship between the two leads. Hugh Jackman earned a Golden Globe nomination for his performance and it’s easy to see why.

#9: “Back to the Future Part III” (1990)

Known more for its depiction of time travel than for its romantic subplots, few could deny that the “Back to the Future” film series has featured a number of iconic romances. In fact, the original film was almost exclusively about Marty trying to make his parents fall in love. In “Back to the Future Part III,” it was Dr. Emmett Brown who found himself pierced by cupid’s arrow, falling for fellow science-lover Clara Clayton after saving her from an untimely demise. While the film is far from a rom-com, the scenes featuring Doc and Clara are undeniably sweet and their relationship brings closure to a part of Doc’s arc we never thought we needed to see.

#8: “Peggy Sue Got Married” (1986)

While dated in some areas, “Peggy Sue Got Married” is nonetheless a thoroughly enjoyable film, with big names both on-screen and off. Helmed by legendary director Francis Ford Coppola and starring Kathleen Turner and Nicolas Cage, the film tells the story of a jaded divorcee trying to get over her ex-husband’s infidelities, who is suddenly transported back in time to her senior year of high school. While in the past, she gleans information about her future that she’d previously overlooked and, in the process, manages to forgive her husband’s mistakes. The film is worth revisiting for Turner’s performance alone, which earned her an Oscar nomination.

#7: “Somewhere in Time” (1980)

While time travel romance flicks often lean towards the comedic, there are others that throw themselves wholeheartedly into the melancholic nature of finding the love of your life in the past. One such film is “Somewhere in Time,” starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. Reeve plays Richard Collier, a playwright living in 1980 who is bewitched by the portrait of a woman from 1912. Through the power of hypnosis, he travels back in time to be with her, and the two quickly fall in love. The chemistry between Reeve and Seymour is palpable, making the film’s ending all the more emotional.

#6: “The Lake House” (2006)

While critics were quick to judge “The Lake House’s” for its convoluted premise and narrative inconsistencies, others, such as Roger Ebert, were quick to point out that “A time travel story works on emotional, not temporal, logic.” When viewed from that perspective, “The Lake House” is not only one of the best romantic films of the 2000s, but one of the most imaginative time travel flicks as well. Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock deliver passionate performances as two lovers living in different times, who manage to communicate through their lake house mailbox. Rooting for two characters to get together despite their difficult circumstances has never been so easy.

#5: “Midnight in Paris” (2011)

“Midnight in Paris” might just be Woody Allen’s most complete film. It’s certainly one of his best written, winning the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. The film centers on screenwriter Gil Pender, who is obsessed with the literary world of the 1920s. During a visit to Paris, he is magically transported to his dream era, where he meets everyone from Ernest Hemingway to Pablo Picasso. He also meets and falls in love with a beautiful muse named Adriana. However, despite the vigor he once felt, he soon discovers that his ideal time period may eventually sour on him. So, will he continue to escape to the 1920s or learn to function in his own time?

#4: “13 Going on 30” (2004)

Be careful what you wish for! “13 Going on 30” is about Jenna Rink, a girl who wants nothing more than to be one of the popular girls. However, when the popular girls pull a mean prank at her 13th birthday party, she cries and wishes that she could be a 30-year-old woman. The next morning, she is both shocked and elated to wake up in her 30-year-old body. Unfortunately for Jenna, it appears she turned into a bit of a jerk during those missing 17 years and is now estranged from both her parents and her former best friend, Matty. Featuring heartfelt and hilarious performances from Jennifer Garner and Mark Ruffalo, “13 Going on 30” is a coming-of-age story that definitely sticks the landing.

#3: “Groundhog Day” (1993)

The time travel genre is as much about second chances as it is about imaginative plot devices. From “If Only” to “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past,” time travel is often used as a way to show wayward men the error of their ways. Few films did it with as much heart and humor as “Groundhog Day.” Known for Bill Murray’s curmudgeonly performance and popularizing the time loop trope, the film touches upon everything that makes cinematic time travel great. From getting to punch the annoying guy in the face to finally winning over the woman you love, the film is pure escapism. However, at its core, it’s about love and the things we’re willing to do for it… such as spending 10,000 years in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.

#2: “The Time Traveler's Wife” (2009)

Starring Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams as the titular time traveler and his wife, this film weaves a complicated narrative, one that involves one of cinematic history’s most impossible romances. Bana plays Henry DeTamble, a man who sporadically travels through time with no control over when he will disappear or where he will end up. Keeping him grounded is his wife Clare, who knows more about him than he does about himself - thanks to his constant unplanned temporal travels. Through their love for one another, they manage to endure the trials and tribulations of Henry’s condition… for a time. All we’ll say is that you’d be wise to have a box of tissue ready at the end of this one… Before we unveil our top pick, here are some honorable mentions: “When We First Met” (2018) “Happy Accidents” (2000) “Safety Not Guaranteed” (2012) “Time After Time” (1979) “Les Visiteurs” (1993)

#1: “About Time” (2013)

Featuring a who’s who of lovable actors, from Domhnall Gleeson and Rachel McAdams to Bill Nighy and a young Margot Robbie, the film is about a young man who upon turning 21 discovers that the men in his family can travel to different points in their own lives. Armed with this newfound knowledge, Gleeson’s character embarks on a quest to win over the love of his life. Along the way, he discovers what it means to live each day as if it were the last and to cherish the time he has with his friends and family. Featuring great writing and a fantastic soundtrack, “About Time” is the perfect date night flick. Exactly how many time travelers can McAdams date, though?

Den of Geek

Time Travel and Romantic Comedies: A Perfect Love Match?

Christopher Reeve, Back To The Future, About Time, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time: join us as we examine time travel in romcoms...

• Share on Facebook (opens in a new tab)
• Share on Twitter (opens in a new tab)
• Share on Linkedin (opens in a new tab)
• Share on email (opens in a new tab)

Love is complicated enough without time travel. When time becomes a factor in a relationship, that relationship may be in trouble. In science fiction especially, time travel is a wrinkle that both brings lovers together and keeps them separate in some temporally devastating way.

Marty McFly almost breaks up his parents before they even get together. Kyle Reese falls in love with Sarah Connor when tasked with saving her life. Captain America misses out on a dance with Peggy Carter by getting frozen for 70 years (still technically time travel, if a bit low-tech). And, on TV, River Song and the Doctor experience their marriage in almost opposite directions.

read more: 22 Best Romantic Movies on Netflix

But, just as romance factors into timey-wimey movies like Back To The Future , The Terminator , and Groundhog Day , so does time travel cross over into primarily romantic movies. These aren’t sci-fi staples, but films with a degree of magical realism, where the emphasis is on the love story rather than on the disruption to the space-time continuum. They’re about romance, heartbreak and, usually, an extremely dubious mode of transport.

Ad – content continues below

So, without a DeLorean in sight, here are some of the ways that movie characters travel backwards or forwards in time for love.

Persuading yourself back in time…

The field of hypnotism is a tricky one, but in a number of movies, it’s the way to will yourself back in time. The crossover between time travel and romance in popular fiction can be traced at least as far back as Henry James’ unfinished novel The Sense Of The Past . This was adapted into a play called Berkeley Square , about a young man called Peter Standish who reads his American ancestor’s diary and becomes convinced that he will go back in time, so he does.

The play was adapted into two films, 1933’s Berkeley Square , which bagged its star Leslie Howard an Oscar nod for Best Actor, and 1951’s The House In The Square , directed by Roy Ward Baker and starring Tyrone Power. The 1970 Barbra Streisand musical On A Clear Day You Can See Forever has a woman undergoing hypnotherapy for her smoking addiction regressed back into the time of her ancestor, a nobleman’s wife in the English Regency era.

But the biggy here is 1980’s Somewhere In Time , in which Christopher Reeve plays Richard Collier, a playwright who falls in love with a dead stage actress after seeing her portrait at the hotel where he is staying. With the help of his philosophy professor and some pretty compelling evidence that he once stayed at the hotel in the year 1912, Richard hypnotises himself back in time, shedding all tokens and reminders of his past life in order to remain in the past.

It’s this mode of travel that allows him to meet Elise McKenna (Jane Seymour), but also gives the film its tragic, tear-jerking twist at the end. To get geeky about it, their romance is a bootstrap paradox of mindboggling proportions. The elderly Elise initially inspires young Richard’s obsession by handing him a watch, which he then takes back with him and leaves with her. But it’s the perfect example of a time travel film that packs an emotional wallop without stressing the science.

Passing out at a high school reunion…

As timing goes, it’s probably not ideal to release a movie about going back in time to high school just one year after Back To The Future was an enormous hit. Perhaps that’s why Francis Ford Coppola’s Peggy Sue Got Married is the less celebrated of the two films, but as romantic as Back To The Future gets by the time Marvin Berry and the Starlighters play Earth Angel , the latter film focuses more on the emotional and nostalgic side of things than the time-travelling adventure.

At the start of the film, Peggy Sue Bodell (Kathleen Turner) has separated from her husband and high school sweetheart “Crazy” Charlie (Nicolas Cage), and memories come flooding back at their 25-year reunion, which Charlie promises not to attend then eventually shows up anyway. On stage, as the reunion committee’s homecoming queen, Peggy Sue passes out under the spotlight and wakes up at a school blood drive in 1960.

Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox!

read more: 20 Best Romantic Movies on Hulu Right Now

After ruling out the possibility that she has died or gone insane, she realises that she may have a chance to live her life differently. Sure, Charlie seems sweeter than the one she’s come to know, but couldn’t she hook up with tough, thoughtful outsider Michael Fitzsimmons (the lesser seen heartthrob role for Kevin J. O’Connor) instead? Well, maybe, but over the course of the film, she comes to remember exactly why she fell in love with her husband in the first place.

The film holds up as a romantic comedy, and has almost become a nostalgic time capsule in itself, for its early roles for the likes of Jim Carrey, Helen Hunt and Joan Allen. And in the center of it, Crazy Charlie isn’t just an early sighting of Crazy Cage. Any given clip of his high-pitched performance might seem as eccentric as some of his later work, but taken altogether, he gives one of the very best turns of his career, making both his future wife and the audience fall for him again. Over time, the film itself has literally become about remembering why Nicolas Cage is so great.

Fighting for the right to nostalgia…

Probably the least well known film on this list, Happy Accidents was a Sundance favorite starring Marisa Tomei and Vincent D’Onofrio in the year 2000. It’s a lo-fi comedy drama with all the hallmarks of a festival film, but it’s endlessly, breathlessly imaginative with it.

Tomei plays Ruby, a woman with a literal shoebox full of mad exes, who meets and falls for Sam Deed (D’Onofrio, playing it like a kind of proto-Mark Ruffalo.), She really thinks he might be the one, despite him telling her early on that he is a “back-traveler” from the year 2470. Framed by conversations with her therapist and friends, Ruby variously enjoys the fantasy that she thinks Sam is spinning, and feels frustrated at the ambiguity of his origins.

According to Sam, he comes from a family of “anachronists”, who fight for civil rights and nostalgia in a society that no longer enjoys sex outside of pro-creation and has otherwise broken with the ways of the past. His story is that he travelled back in time on the run from the future cops, but because the movie takes place from Ruby’s point of view, his reluctance to tell the whole story, especially after elements of The Terminator muddle things, gives off the appearance of a cheating partner. He’s come back bearing spoilers, which affects the closeness of their relationship.

Written and directed by Brad Anderson, it’s a film that wraps a compelling time travel story, with more than a few references to Doctor Who ‘s Blinovitch Limitation Effect, into a Sundance-friendly romantic comedy that plays both sexy and geeky by turns. The chemistry between Tomei and D’Onofrio is really something else, and the film constantly plays its central mystery to entertaining effect.

Jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge through a crack in the fabric of time…

In Kate & Leopold , Hugh Jackman plays Leopold Alexis Elijah Walker Gareth Thomas Mountbatten, 3rd Duke of Albany and inventor of the elevator. If that fictionalised character gives you pause, you’re going to have trouble with the way in which he gets from 1876 to the 21st century. Anyone would be upset to see Liev Schreiber in their home taking pictures with a digital camera, but you’d be especially cross if you lived in the 19th century.

Schreiber plays Stuart, an amateur physicist who has created a formula to forecast cracks in the space-time continuum as you might forecast the weather, and has jumped through one of them to track his great-great-grandfather, Leopold. Unfortunately, Leopold climbs up the Brooklyn Bridge (then still in construction) in pursuit of Stuart and winds up following him back to the future.

read more: Ranking the Romances of the MCU

There, he falls for Stuart’s ex and downstairs neighbour, a cynical research executive called Kate (Meg Ryan), and generally gets much too comfortable in 21st century New York. In addition to the film’s dubious use of time travel, the effect of Leopold’s jaunt to the future when he should be inventing the elevator leads to an accident early on, where Stuart falls down an elevator shaft, apparently as a consequence of history being changed. It does beg the question of why the shaft would still be there, if we’re to understand that the lift might cease to exist, but this is definitely more about the romance between the title characters than the science behind it.

Ultimately, the film’s happy ending winds up glossing over Stuart getting all sorts of things wrong, not least in having at some point slept with his own great-great-grandmother before he set them up, but then these are the sorts of slip-ups you make when you literally jump off a bridge as an experiment. As always, Jackman is loads of fun as a man out of time, and this film marks his first collaboration with writer-director James Mangold, with whom he most recently made Logan. An Oscar-worthy screenplay this is not, but nevertheless, it’s the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Finding a penpal from two years ago…

Dating apps usually have a distance setting, so you can find someone who’s close by, but the snail mail equivalent in The Lake House has two people in the exact same location, separated by two years. Based on the South Korean film Il Mare , the film is about a long-distance correspondence between doctor Kate Forrester ( Sandra Bullock ) and architect Alex Wyler ( Keanu Reeves ), who live in the same house in the years 2006 and 2004, respectively.

Whether you’ve seen the film or not, it’s tough to keep the timey-wimey contortions of this one straight in your head. Kate and Alex’s continuing correspondence goes on in relative time, exactly two years apart from one another. So, at one point, Alex meets Kate at a party and interacts with her without introducing himself as someone she’ll write to in the future, which can happen because she vaguely remembers it in 2006 and so he doesn’t change time.

read more: 15 Best Romantic Movies on Amazon Prime Right Now

But the film hinges on a man who dies in a traffic accident, after Kate fails to save him, and when the film becomes about saving him, even though she remembers that she didn’t – oh dear, I’ve gone cross-eyed. Even more than Kate & Leopold , the time travel mechanics of this one are secondary to the romance, with Speed co-stars Reeves and Bullock making a likeable couple separated by the weirdness of their postal arrangements. They save more on stamps than most would writing to each other over a long distance, and they leave the arguments about causality to the geekier couples who go to see the movie.

Borrowing a time-travel device off a tourist from the future…

Yasutaka Tsutsui’s 1967 novel The Girl Who Leapt Through Time has been adapted many times in Japan, on TV and in movies. The most striking of these is the 2006 anime film, in which the novel’s original protagonist features as the aunt of schoolgirl Makoto Konno, who discovers the ability to leap through time after a near-death experience.

Latest Movie reviews

Beetlejuice beetlejuice review: michael keaton is still a man possessed, alien: romulus review – brings the whole franchise together with love and acid, deadpool & wolverine review: maximum effort, medium results.

This coming-of-age story sees Makoto use her ability frivolously in order to ace tests and impress her peers, but quickly gets more complicated once her two best friends Chaiaki and Kousuke become entangled in her shenanigans. Having believed that she came upon this ability naturally, it’s eventually revealed that she came into contact with a time travel device that was misplaced by a tourist from the future, and has inadvertently stolen their leaps.

Makoto takes a run-up before each leap and lands hard almost every time she travels back, but the bigger impact usually comes when she affects her own recent history in unexpected ways. It hits all of the usual notes that these films do in terms of characters growing up, but not necessarily in the right order, and one gorgeous sequence involving multiple leaps to avoid an awkward conversation with an admirer is just one of the delights in this gorgeously animated teen movie.

read more: 10 Underrated Time Travel Movies

How do you time travel? You just time travel…

All of this faffing aside, some time travelers have it and some time travelers don’t. Audrey Niffenegger’s novel The Time Traveler’s Wife was a book club favorite throughout the 2000s, and was noted as an influence on Steven Moffat’s creation of River Song in Doctor Who . It follows the very un-chronological romance between Claire Abshire, the title character, and Henry DeTamble, who has a genetic disorder which causes him to involuntarily time travel at random.

The 2009 film version, directed by Robert Schwentke and starring Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams, makes relatively short work of a complex novel, but stays true to that central conceit of a relationship played out in the wrong order, from Henry meeting his wife as a child to their struggles to have children. As in the novel, the film makes an involving and emotional study of the downsides to a superpower that many would probably choose for themselves, albeit not in the conditions that Henry and Claire have to endure.

The wish fulfilment angle on the same ability comes in Richard Curtis’ About Time , in which Tim (Domhnall Gleeson) wins the genetic lottery by not only having Bill Nighy as a dad, but also inheriting the male line of his family’s unique ability to move backwards in time within their own memory. Tim’s first thought is that this ought to be a great help in finding himself a girlfriend.

Early on, the film is about him learning that you truly only get one chance to make a first impression, by accidentally erasing his first meeting with the love of his life Mary (Rachel McAdams, again) and then scrambling to reinstate their relationship. As the film develops, it becomes a study of a time-traveler growing up, with various rules and wrinkles preventing the kind of carefree meddling that Tim enjoyed in his younger years. It’s ultimately more a film about familial love, but it’s still bursting with romance.

read more: Time Traveler’s Wife TV Series in Development at HBO

…but not if you’re Rachel McAdams

To date, there are precisely four films in which Rachel McAdams is the love interest of a man who gets to faff around with time, and she hasn’t got to time travel herself in any of them.

In addition to The Time Traveler’s Wife and About Time , there’s Midnight In Paris , where she plays Inez, the spoiled, cheating wife of Woody Allen’s author insert Gil (Owen Wilson) who doesn’t understand her husband’s nocturnal jaunts to the 1920s, and Marvel’s Doctor Strange, in which she’s squandered as Christine Palmer, Strange’s ex and tether to normality.

In About Time , it’s Tim’s sister Kit Kat who’s hard done by the weirdly specific rule that only male relatives can time travel, but Mary remains oblivious to it altogether. It seems the only sure way to travel back in time in a time travel romance is to not be Rachel McAdams. It’s a whole lot of bollocks that McAdams isn’t at least an A-list star by this stage in her career, but ‘the time traveler’s significant other’ is a fascinating niche in which she’s found herself.

read more: The Best Female Time Travelers in TV History

Being passengers…

But in the majority of the films we’ve covered, the lovers aren’t the Doc Brown type. They’re more Marty – passengers of time travel, usually not fully in control of their respective modes of transport. Time is a force beyond their control, which love must withstand in order to get us to a happy ending.

Whether they’ve swiped right on an old photograph or happened to meet the love of their lives outside of their own timezone, the how is never so important as the why. Like Basil Exposition tells us Austin (and us) in the second Austin Powers movie, the more romantic movies suggest that we don’t worry about those things, and try to enjoy ourselves.

Mark Harrison | @MHarrison90

Mark is a writer from Middlesbrough, who once drunkenly tried (and failed) to pitch a film about his hometown to a director from Pixar. Fortunately, he…

The 15 Most Creative, Mind-Bending Time Travel Movies Ever Made

With Safety Not Guaranteed and About Time , these are the best movies about time travel you haven't seen yet.

We've been independently researching and testing products for over 120 years. If you buy through our links, we may earn a commission. Learn more about our review process.

Ever wish you could go back in time and handle a situation differently — or live through a historic event before your time? You're not the only one. Time travel has captured the imagination of countless creatives over the years, giving us some fascinating, morally challenging and even hilarious movies. We may not be able to talk a walk into the past — but as some of these films prove, that may be a good thing.

Whether you're in the mood for an adorable romantic comedy, a nail-biting action movie , or a haunting sci-fi movie , these time-traveling movies cross every genre. So once you exhaust everything on your Netflix list, these are the best time travel movies to watch. Don't forget the popcorn (ahem, we recommend these popcorn makers ).

About Time (2013)

Instead of altering history and life as we know it, the protagonist in this charming British film uses his time-traveling abilities for something a little more relatable: finding love. The result is a surprisingly sweet and criminally underrated romantic comedy.

RELATED: The 60 Best Romantic Comedies of All Time to Stream Right Now

Predestination (2015)

Based on Robert Heinlein’s short story All You Zombies , this Ethan Hawke movie will leave you guessing (and second-guessing) the whole time. Without spoiling the ending, it's definitely worth watching again.

The Time Traveler's Wife (2009)

Of the three movies where Rachel McAdams dates a time traveling man (girlfriend's got a type), the drama is definitely the most serious. Based on Audrey Niffenegger's 2003 novel of the same name, Clare tries to build a life with the man she loves — while dealing with the fact he has no control over where and when he will travel through time.

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989)

Excellent! You're going to want to revisit this goofy, fun time travel flick before Keanu Reeves returns for the upcoming sequel.

Groundhog Day (1993)

Does living the same day over-and-over again count as time travel? This Bill Murray film about a weather man trapped in the worst day of his life is a classic, so we're going to count it.

Doctor Strange (2016)

Marvel fans are probably already familiar with Benedict Cumberbatch's role as a neurosurgeon with the powers to access alternate dimensions, but even if you're not familiar with the Marvel Universe, you can still enjoy this superhero romp.

RELATED: How to Watch All 24 Marvel Movies in the Correct Order

Back to the Future (1985)

If you're looking for some good, old-fashioned nostalgia, this 80s classic holds up! Michael J. Fox stars as Marty McFly, a teen who accidentally who accidentally gets stuck in the 1950s thanks to his mad scientist friend — and must make sure his parents fall in love with each other so he can still exist!

Interstellar (2014)

Trippy, mind-bending, and everything you want out of a time-travel movie, Christopher Nolan's time-traveling space epic will stay with you long after you finish watching,

Donnie Darko (2001)

Though it initially flopped at the box office, this film gathered a cult-following when it was released on DVD, thanks to Jake Gyllenhaal's intense performance and the surrealist images and themes just waiting to be dissected and discussed. See if you can untangle this famously dense plot for yourself.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)

One of the best Harry Potter films happens to also be a time-traveling tale. Hermione uses a "Time Turner" to take more classes at Hogwarts, but that's not all Harry and his friends use the device for.

Time Bandits (1981)

Terry Gilliam's endlessly imaginative film follows an 11-year-old boy who teams up with 6 dwarves for an adventure through time.

Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)

A classified ad from a mysterious man looking for a time-traveling companion intrigues three cynical Seattle journalists. An unexpected connection forms between the would-be scientist and one of the reporters in this low-key indie.

Primer (2004)

Two engineers create an invention that can alter time — and butt heads over how to handle the magnitude of their creation.

Time After Time (1971)

H.G. Wells pursues Jack the Ripper in 1970's San Fransisco — as outlandish as the premise is, it's a fascinating movie once you get on board with it.

The Terminator (1984)

Two time travelers from the future, an evil cyborg and a resistance fighter, fight over the life of modern woman Sarah Connor, after it's revealed her fate can save humanity.

As an Editorial Fellow for Good Housekeeping, Katie covers health, beauty, home, and pop culture. Outside of the office, you can find her killing it on the karaoke machine or listening to true crime podcasts.

Entertainment

Where Was 'Gilmore Girls' Filmed?

Tyler Perry Fans Are in Awe of His Big Movie News

Freddie Highmore Just Revealed His Next TV Project

Chip and Joanna Gaines' No Social Media Policy

Only Real 'GG' Fans Will Know These Quotes

Is 'Brilliant Minds' Based on a True Story?

Drew Barrymore Reveals Exciting Talk Show News

How Long Has Al Roker Been on the 'Today' Show?

Ralph Macchio Teases 'Cobra Kai' Season 6 Part 2

JoAnna Garcia Swisher on Her Friendship With Reba

Wait, Is 'Yellowstone' Coming Back for Season 6?

Season 6 of “Unsellable Houses” is Here

12 Best Time Travel Movies on Netflix (August 2024)

Whether altering the past, glimpsing the future, or visiting alternate realities, time travel concepts brim with potential. They seem to add intriguing twists to every genre of film they are utilized in. Such works often greet us with refreshing settings and unique dynamics, putting their characters through imaginative scenarios. From heart-pounding thrillers to heartwarming romances, these are the absolute of best time-traveling movies offered on Netflix.

12. See You Yesterday (2019)

Directed by Stefon Bristol, ‘ See You Yesterday ’ is a Netflix teen-adventure film that blends racial themes with a time travel plot. When a police officer senselessly shoots African American teen C.J. Walker’s caring brother, she and fellow prodigy Sebastian Thomas complete their time-traveling device to save him. However, they find that changing the past turns out to be incredibly difficult.

With their device’s charges running low, the two become desperate to prevent the shooting and try to alter the sequence of events at various points. The poignant and impactful tale addresses themes of racial injustice, grief, and sacrifice. It conveys a sense of helplessness felt by the protagonist, which is symbolic of her community’s emotional state, making great progress but falling victim to old prejudices. You can see the movie here .

11. Captain Nova (2021)

In the directorial hands of Maurice Trouwborst, ‘ Captain Nova ’ is a Dutch sci-fi film that follows Nova, a fighter pilot from a dystopian future where the Earth is on the brink of environmental collapse. She is sent on a mission from 2050 to 2025 to alter key events and save the future. However, she unexpectedly becomes a young teen girl as a side effect and struggles to be taken seriously. Nas, an outcast teen, assists her on the mission as the Secret Service tries to capture her. With striking visual effects and creative future technology, the film adds a touch of humor for a refreshing sci-fi experience aimed at audiences of all ages. You can see the movie here .

10. In the Shadow of the Moon (2019)

With Jim Mickle at the helm, ‘ In the Shadow of the Moon ’ combines a noir-style serial killer mystery with time travel in a high-concept thriller filled with twists and turns. The story centers on Philadelphia police officer Thomas Lockhart, who becomes obsessed with a series of inexplicable murders committed by a woman appearing every nine years despite having died in front of him. As Lockhart delves deeper into the investigation, he uncovers a chilling connection that challenges his understanding of reality and time itself. The Netflix sci-fi film features a thought-provoking, imaginative plot that explores themes of fate, justice, and the burdens of the past. You can stream the movie here .

9. The Flash (2023)

While not a conventional time-traveling film, ‘ The Flash ’ sees the titular superhero blaze through his fair share of timelines. Directed by Andy Muschiett, the film follows Barry Allen as he taps into the speed force to save his mother, inadvertently altering the timeline to a catastrophic degree. He teams up with his past self and must gather an unfamiliar and scattered Justice League to defend against General Zod’s invasion of Earth. The film explores the potential divergence of the timeline far beyond the Butterfly Effect, with a single seemingly mundane event of time manipulation changing both past and future dramatically. Featuring an array of cameos and plenty of fan service, the film maintains a decent pace with explosive action sequences. You can see the movie here .

8. Long Story Short (2021)

Loosely based on the Indian film ‘Baar Baar Dekho,’ ‘Long Story Short’ follows Teddy, a man who wakes up the day after his wedding to discover that his life is fast-forwarding, with each day skipping ahead a year. As Teddy struggles to understand this strange phenomenon, he begins to miss the most important moments of his life. The Josh Lawson directorial combines humor with a poignant message about love, regret, and the fleeting nature of time. The impactful film creates an increasingly charming and thought-provoking narrative with the use of fantastical time travel. You can stream the movie here .

7. The Door Into Summer (2021)

Also known as ‘Natsu e no Tobira: Kimi no Iru Mirai e,’ ‘The Door Into Summer’ narrates a tale of mystery, betrayal, and advanced technology interwoven with the delicate threads of time travel. Directed by Takahiro Miki and based on Robert A. Heinlein’s eponymous novel, the film follows Soichiro Takakura, an ingenious inventor who finds himself betrayed by his girlfriend and business associates who take over his life’s work. Hoping to live in a brighter future, he enters cold sleep and wakes up thirty years later in 2025. Finding his wealth completely dissolved and his company closed down, he traces down figures from the past in search of answers. The Japanese-language film essays as a thoughtful time travel story, offering a combination of romance and sci-fi with moving performances from the lead cast. You can see the movie here .

6. Still Time (2022)

Directed by Alessandro Aronadio, ‘Still Time’ is a poignant Italian comedy-drama about a workaholic man who finds his life skipping a year ahead every day. The film is based on Josh Lawson’s ‘Long Story Short.’ Dante barely makes time to spend with his friends and family, being late to his own fortieth birthday. Blowing out the candles, he makes a wish that causes him to begin leaping in time. From missing the birth of his baby to witnessing his relationships withering owing to overwork, each day makes him grieve the life slipping through his fingers.

‘Still Time’ stands out as a touching and thought-provoking time travel movie that encourages us to cherish each moment before it’s too late. The narrative depicts how everyday choices and habits can paint the picture of one’s life in the long term, offering a glimpse into the future without even requiring time travel. You can stream the movie here .

5. When We First Met (2018)

‘When We First Met’ narrates the story of a man going back in time to win the affection of the woman he loves in a delightful romantic comedy directed by Ari Sandel. Noah meets Avery, the girl of his dreams, but waits too long to make a move and is friend-zoned. After she marries someone else, he wishes for another chance and inadvertently travels back in time through a photo booth. Jumping with joy, Noah tries to woo Avery in a series of hilarious and ill-fated attempts, traveling back to the night they met repeatedly. With its humor, heart, and refreshing twists, ‘When We First Met’ offers a relatable and gratifying take on a time-tested formula. You can see the movie here .

4. Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)

Helmed by Steve Pink, ‘Hot Tub Time Machine’ transports a group of washed-out friends to the 1980s, when they are tempted to change their lives and the timeline. Four friends suffering through various shades of disaster in their lives are sent to the past via a malfunctioning hot tub. At a bustling ski resort, they seek to relive their youth by immersing themselves in ‘80s culture while attempting to make better choices for the future.

The irreverent comedy doesn’t take itself or the concepts of time travel too seriously; instead, it uses its premise to go all out with silly references and hilarious sequences. Despite the zany humor, the characters gain unexpected depth and charm, making ‘Hot Tub Time Machine’ an easily recommendable lighthearted and raunchy adventure into the ‘80s. You can stream the movie here .

3. The Adam Project (2022)

Helmed by Shawn Levy, ‘ The Adam Project ’ narrates a humorous and action-packed time travel tale of a pilot from the future teaming up with his past self to save the world. Adam is a young boy grappling with the recent loss of his father while facing bullying at school. One day, he finds an injured pilot hiding in his shed, who is revealed to be his future self. On a secret mission, the older Adam (Ryan Reynolds) is being pursued by a powerful organization and seeks to save the future from it.

The interactions between the Adams are both heartwarming and hilarious, with the two bonding over their woes and sharing comparable mannerisms. Their futuristic pursuers attack with gunships, pulse weaponry, and “not lightsabers,” making for stylish chase and fight scenes. ‘The Adam Project’ is a solid sci-fi romp which accomplishes its goal of thorough entertainment with Ryan Reynolds delivering his signature charm. You can see the movie here .

2. Mirage (2018)

Originally titled ‘Durante la tormenta,’ ‘ Mirage ’ revolves around Vera Roy, a mother who finds that she is able to influence past events through her television set. With the old device and a peculiar thunderstorm overhead, she communicates with a boy living 25 years in the past and saves his life before he meets with a tragic accident. The intervention unknowingly alters the course of her own life, and she wakes up in a reality where her daughter never existed.

Vera must restore her timeline within 72 hours or be stuck in her new reality. Helmed by Oriol Paulo, the gripping Spanish thriller blends complex time travel with suspense and mystery, its post-Cold War setting creating a foreboding atmosphere. The well-written film manages to keep us in the dark with its twists and is further enhanced by stellar performances from the cast. You can stream the movie here .

1. Back to the Future (1985)

Directed by Robert Zemeckis, ‘ Back to the Future ’ is a timeless classic when it comes to time travel films, transporting us to the ‘80s and ‘50s. The film follows the journey of Marty McFly, a teenager who accidentally travels back to 1955 in a DeLorean-turned-time machine invented by the eccentric Dr. Emmett Brown. There, he must ensure that his parents meet and fall in love to prevent his existence from being erased.

The lighthearted yet sophisticated comedy captures the imagination with clever writing and great special effects that hold up in the modern context as well. The film isn’t afraid to have fun through its time-traveling concepts, with Marty going through a number of awkward and comical scenarios during his iconic adventure. You can see the movie here .

Read More: Best Sci-Fi Movies on Netflix

SPONSORED LINKS

• Movie Explainers
• TV Explainers

25 of the Best Time Travel Movies Ever Made

These films will have you flying through the years, decades and dimensions—and ready to do it over and over again.

Every item on this page was chosen by a Town & Country editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy.

From star-crossed lovers to harrowing action sequences, the plots to these films didn't stay in one dimension.

Whether you love to indulge in the unbelievable or lose yourself in a sci-fi drama, we've rounded up the best time travel movies that cinema has to offer. (If you're looking for time travel books, right this way .) So reach for some popcorn, prepare to get your mind blown, and take a trip through time with us. Below, 25 of our favorite time travel films:

Back to the Future

What is a list of time travel classics a without a nod to Marty McFly and his friend Doc Brown from the 1980's classic, Back to the Future ? Although the second and third movie are equally as entertaining– it's hard to beat the original.

Somewhere in Time

Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour play the ultimate time-crossed lovers in this romantic drama that will have you rooting for time to be by their side.

The Lake House

Settle in for a mystifying romance and watch the relationship between the characters of Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves unfold — all while they are communicating with each other separated by two years of time.

The Time Traveler's Wife

Every marriage requires work, but when your husband has a condition that causes him to involuntarily time travel– your issues are outside the normal scope of relationship stressors. The romantic drama starring Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana follows a newlywed couple through the trials and tribulations of their unusual relationship.

Palm Springs

When carefree Nyles (Andy Samberg) and reluctant maid of honor Sarah (Cristin Milioti) have a chance encounter at a Palm Springs wedding, the two get stuck in a time loop that they can't escape.

Kate & Leopold

A 19th-century bachelor (Hugh Jackman) falls through time and meets a 21st-century woman (Meg Ryan). What more could you want in a time travel movie, honestly?!

Time After Time

No, not the Cyndi Lauper song: this is a time travel movie where H.G. Wells (Malcom McDowell) chases Jack the Ripper (David Warner) through time, and they end up in... 1979 San Francisco! When there, Wells falls for a bank clerk named Amy (Mary Steenburgen). There's a bit of everything: Romance, action, adventure, and obviously, time travel.

Source Code

When Jake Gyllenhaal finds himself inside the body of a man he doesn't know, he quickly figures out there's an important reason for why he's been sent back in time. The film's plot twists as well as the climax of his pressure-filled mission makes for incredible action and drama.

Donnie Darko

A cult classic ever since it's release in 2001, Donnie Darko takes a dark twist on teenage time travel.

Interstellar

Interstellar left audiences perplexed, bewildered, and all around baffled as it's characters journey through a wormhole in space.

Groundhog Day

Ever used the term groundhog day to describe a never-ending day? Well you can thank the 1993 film for that! Comedian Bill Murray stars as a weatherman who finds himself trapped reliving the same day over and over again.

In Loop , actors Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, and Emily Blunt star in the marvelous film that combines the the best traits of a mob drama with the intrigue of the space-time continuum.

13 Going on 30

As a thirteen-year old in the 1980's, all Jenna Rink wants is to skip over her teenage years and live as a sophisticated and self-assured 30 year old (who didn't want that?). But when she gets exactly what she's dreamed of, she realizes it's not everything she though it'd be. In a film which imbues the message "enjoy the journey not the destination" cliche, Jennifer Garner does an amazing job of keeping the role refreshing and sweet.

Predestination

The intertemporal plots of the film Predestination along with actor Ethan Hawke's marvelous performance will leave you wanting to view it over and over again.

The Family Man

Although the film Family Man is more about an alternate universe than actual time travel, watching Nicolas Cage portray an investment banking bachelor who gets thrust into the life of a suburban dad to teach him what really matters in life is just too good not to recommend it.

Doctor Strange

Marvel dips its toe into the world of time travel with the release of Doctor Strange, the story of a neurosurgeon who introduces the audiences to an entire world of alternate dimensions.

Edge of Tomorrow

Edge of Tomorrow takes the winning concept behind Groundhog Day and combines it with an action-fueled adventure starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt.

The film was met with mixed reviews from critics, however the plot's time travel complexities are extremely well done and will satisfy any sci-fi lover.

What would you do if you could go back in time and re-do any moment? We're sure you'd change a few corny pick-up lines, awkward conversations, and coulda-woulda-shoulda moments and that's exactly what you'll find in this romantic comedy meets fantasy drama.

The Adjustment Bureau

Matt Damon and Emily Blunt will captivate you as they protect their love from a mysterious group that is aiming to tear them apart.

Best Movies

These Netflix Tearjerkers Will Make You Cry

Everything We Know About the 'Peaky Blinders' Film

Angelina Jolie to Star as Maria Callas

Who Will Be the Next James Bond?

When Is 'Horizon: An American Saga' Streaming?

How to Stream 'The Fall Guy'

When Is 'Blink Twice' Streaming?

Knives Out 3 Details

The Best Psychological Thrillers To Stream Now

Why We’re Still So Obsessed With the Tudors

'The Thursday Murder Club' Movie News

50 Classic Autumn Films

You need to watch the most charming time-travel movie on Netflix ASAP

This 2019 movie combines tropes of A.I. movies with romcom humor for a cute but still thrilling adventure.

The sci-fi rom-com is a genre balancing act. Lean too heavily on romance, and the worldbuilding feels fake. Lean too heavily on science fiction, and the romance can feel like an afterthought. It’s a wide spectrum, but movies like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind to Earth Girls Are Easy all find the right balance.

And how do you strike a perfect balance? This 2019 film may just be a masterclass in walking the tightrope between the two genres. Here’s why you should watch this movie on Netflix immediately.

Eggnoid: Love and Time Portal is a 2019 Indonesian film directed by Naya Adindita. A movie adaptation of a popular webtoon, Eggnoid makes no fuss about its premise. Ran is a young girl mourning the loss of her parents. She’s at her most lonely. Because of this, she gets an Eggnoid assigned to her: an alien humanoid creature who exists purely to keep a human company.

Eggnoid plays off classic romance tropes.

The film starts with the first anniversary of Eggy’s introduction to Ran’s life, and they’re nothing more than best friends and roommates. Eggy has a job at a frozen yogurt shop, and Ran’s in school studying game design. It’s the perfect setup, but Eggy is falling helplessly for his assigned human.

The rest of the movie plays on tropes of forbidden love: Eggy’s handlers warn him they can erase his memories if his attachment to Ran is too great. They give him an ultimatum: He must avoid committing the seven deadly sins. If he commits three sins, he’ll be reassigned.

But Eggy isn’t about to let that get in the way of him and Ran. Through some alien technology, he does the most romantic thing there is in sci-fi — he sacrifices one of his sins to travel in time with Ran so she can properly say goodbye to her parents.

A perfect love story with a time travel twist.

Eggnoid: Love and Time Portal follows many familiar beats, but the way the film approaches them is completely brand new. Part of that can be chalked up to differences in culture — the way Eastern cultures approach romance varies from the typical Hollywood love story. But another part of it is the big swings this film takes by trying something new.

Because it’s based on a webtoon, there’s heart and humor in every second. We see it when Eggy’s coworker stoically stacks paper cups on her head while cracking pearls of wisdom about love, and when a small kid points at Eggy’s glowing alien tattoo and remarks, “Hey, it’s Iron Man!”

In an era of the “gritty” sci-fi movie, this lighthearted time travel movie is the perfect antidote.

Eggnoid: Love and Time Portal is now streaming on Netflix .

• Science Fiction

Browse interesting keywords

More to explore, movie charts.

• Most Popular Movies
• Top 250 Movies
• Top Rated Indian Movies

Advanced search

Recently viewed.

Things you buy through our links may earn  Vox Media  a commission.

The 25 Greatest Time-Travel Movies Ever Made

It must say something, surely, about humans, how often time-travel movies are about returning to the past rather than jumping to the future. As Mark Duplass’s forlorn character says in Safety Not Guaranteed , “The mission has to do with regret.” With all the potential to explore the unknown world of the future, so often when our minds conspire to bend the rules of time it’s instead to rehash the old. It’s compelling to watch a character in a movie do what we cannot — right past wrongs or uncover the reason for or meaning behind the events in their lives, whether they be emotionally catastrophic or merely geopolitically motivated.

So absent is the future from the canon, in fact, that when it is involved, typically future dwellers are leaving their own time to come back to the present. Back to the Future Part II aside, it seems as if there’s something about going forward in time that just doesn’t track for humans. (Of course, you could argue that this is because the present-day concept of bidirectional time travel would infinitely multiply or change beyond recognition any future that may occur, but that’s a knot for another article.)

In any case, the time-travel stories deemed worthy of Hollywood budgets aren’t always straightforward in their mechanics. Some films on this list barely qualify as time-travel movies at all; others could hardly qualify as anything else. There are movies about trips through time but also ones about the bending and fracturing and muddying thereof; then there are those about, as Andy Samberg aptly puts it in Palm Springs , “one of those infinite time-loop situations you might have heard about.” There’s even a movie in which we get only 13 seconds’ worth of time travel, when it functions more like a joke whose punch line hits at the film’s climax.

What these films all do have in common is a fascination with changing the way time works. That being said, the list leaves out movies in larger, more extended franchises in which time meddling is a one-off dalliance thrown into a sequel with little by way of foreshadowing: think Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban , Avengers: Endgame , and Men in Black III . (It also leaves off perhaps the Ur-time-travel movie, Primer , and the quite good Midnight in Paris because their directors don’t deserve the column inches.) We’re looking at self-contained stories using time mechanics from the start, with preference given to those that involve themselves more intently with the ins and outs of time travel; that ask questions about time, aging, memory and so forth; and that try to succeed at it in new and interesting ways. So let’s get to it.

25. Galaxy Quest (1999)

Does Galaxy Quest really count as a time-travel movie? Some compelling reasons argue that it doesn’t: Time travel isn’t a major factor in the plot, and the time traveling that does occur is, yes, only a 13-second jump. But its use of time travel is meaningful insofar as the movie itself is a loving spoof of Star Trek , which makes use of time travel in three films ( one of which made this list ), not to mention dozens of episodes across its various TV iterations. Tacking on time travel as a deus ex machina for the actors in a Star Trek– like show pressed into service as an actual space crew by an endangered alien race is the exact right amount of ribbing in a movie that’s as on point as it is hilarious.

Galaxy Quest is available to rent on Amazon .

24. Happy Death Day (2017)

Pick away at the surface of a time-loop movie and you find a horror movie. Most of the entries on this list are covered in enough feel-good spin to land as comedies, but Happy Death Day stares the horror of the time-loop phenomenon right in the face. (It’s also quite funny.) Reliving the same day over and over is an unimaginably potent form of psychological torture, and adding murder to the equation does little to dull that edge. The film follows a college-age protagonist struggling to escape from a masked slasher hell-bent on killing her again and again while she tries to solve the mystery of how she got stuck in a time loop.

Happy Death Day is available to rent on Amazon .

23. Back to the Future Part II (1989)

Seriously, this may be the only good movie in which the film’s whole focus is using a time machine to travel into the future. The fact that it’s a sequel is telling — the characters already traveled into the past in the first movie , and the filmmakers decided to save “traveling even further into the past“ for the third film in the trilogy. Still, Back to the Future Part II is a fun time that makes great use of sight gags and references, recasting scenes from the first film in the distant future year of 2015 with all its hoverboards and self-lacing Nikes.

Back to the Future Part II is available to rent on Amazon .

22. See You Yesterday (2019)

It’s a dirty little secret of time-travel movies that they tend to be, well, pretty white. Tenet ’s Protagonist aside, if Hollywood’s sending someone through time, they’re almost certainly not a Black person, and for obvious reasons: Most of post-contact North American history is deeply unfriendly to people of color, and the problems a person running around out of time and place is going to encounter are deeply compounded if they’ll likely be the target of racist abuse or violence — which makes See You Yesterday all the more compelling. Produced by Spike Lee and featuring one of filmdom’s most famous time travelers in a cameo role, it follows a Black teenage science prodigy who uses a time machine to try to save her brother from being killed by a police officer.

See You Yesterday is streaming on Netflix .

21. Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)

No offense to the Back to the Future franchise, but time travel never looks more fun on film than it does in the first Bill & Ted movie. It’s a concept that feels distinctly of a different era, so pure is its zaniness, that it’s hard to imagine anyone concocting it today. The titular duo, Californian high-school students in the ’80s, travel through the past looking for historical figures in order to ace a history project, then bring them all back to the present. High jinks ensue! We get Genghis Khan in a sporting-goods store and Mozart on an electric keyboard. What more could you want?

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure is streaming on HBO Max .

20. Source Code (2011)

Time-travel-film aficionados know this won’t be Jake Gyllenhaal’s only stop on this list, but no matter. Source Code finds him repeating the same eight minutes over and over as he struggles to find the culprit in a train bombing — with each replay ending in his own death by explosion. For some reason, a romantic subplot is shoehorned into this, along with a bunch of frankly unnecessary technical mumbo-jumbo, but the core idea is a compelling mix of the time-loop movie and the train whodunit that Gyllenhaal is a perfect fit for.

Source Code is available to rent on Amazon .

19. 12 Monkeys (1995)

Some sort of law of nature dictates that every genuinely good idea and/or piece of true art has to at some point be turned into a Hollywood movie. Thank God La Jetée was adapted into something that can stand on its own feet artistically. 12 Monkeys may not retain its source material’s black-and-white look or stripped-down, static-image presentation, but it is a rollicking good time nonetheless. That’s in no small part due to director Terry Gilliam getting the best out of Bruce Willis and a young Brad Pitt, and recasting World War III as a planet-decimating virus. Which, like at least one other movie on this list , “speaks to the present moment,” or whatever.

12 Monkeys is available to rent on Amazon .

18. Run Lola Run (1998)

Unlike almost all of the other films on this list, the terms time travel and time machine don’t show up anywhere in Run Lola Run . Rather, it’s a sort of de facto time-loop scenario in which the protagonist tries repeatedly to pay a ransom to save her boyfriend’s life. In fact, if not for a few key details, it could easily be characterized (and often has been) as an alternate-endings movie rather than a time-travel film. But the fact that Lola seems to be learning from her past attempts with each successive one suggests that she is, indeed, using knowledge gained from previous loops to bring a satisfactory end to this situation.

Run Lola Run is available to rent on Amazon .

17. Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

One of the most striking things about Groundhog Day is the mutability and replicability of its core conceit. Perhaps the best case in point is Edge of Tomorrow , sometimes known as Live. Die. Repeat. after its original tagline. It’s the kind of physically grueling movie only an actor as genuinely unhinged as Tom Cruise could pull off. A noncombatant thrust into a war against invading aliens, Cruise’s character finds himself reliving day one of combat over and over, slowly but surely refining his techniques in order to survive the extraterrestrial onslaught. Like the central twosome in the much less violent Palm Springs , he winds up with a partner in (war) crime, teaming up with the similarly time-trapped Emily Blunt, and the explanation for the replay glitch here is actually pretty satisfying.

Edge of Tomorrow is streaming on Fubo TV .

16. Star Trek (2009)

If you could create some sort of an advanced stat to measure controversy generated per unit of interesting filmmaking decisions, J.J. Abrams would have to be near the top in terms of his ability to rig up movie drama from almost nothing. This is a guy whose filmography is like Godzilla rip-off, Spielberg homage, safe reboot of cherished IP, repeat. Star Trek may be his best film, though, a sure-footed reinvention of a dorky sci-fi franchise that made it, well, cool. Somehow, the beauty of Spock and Kirk’s bromance being woven through chance encounters with future selves kind of … works?

Star Trek is available to rent on Amazon .

15. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006)

There’s a relative dearth of time travel in animated film, which perhaps is a function simply of the fact that it’s less impressive to stage in a world that’s already unreal. If you can Looney Tunes your way through physics, what’s so special about grabbing the flow of time and tying it into a bow? Still, the original Girl Who Leapt Through Time deserves mention here. It’s a beautiful story that interlaces the complexity of time leaping with the intensity of teenage emotion and the thorny process of growing up where the opportunity to redo things leads, over time, to growth — a less shitty Groundhog Day , in a way.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is available to rent on Amazon .

14. Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)

She may not be the most famous, decorated, or emulated actress of her generation, but Aubrey Plaza is someone whose personality spoke to the irony-soaked 2010s in a way that simply could not be denied. Her character on Parks and Recreation , April Ludgate, was, by all accounts, created specifically to channel Plaza’s real-life personality to the screen, and she plays essentially the same character in Safety Not Guaranteed . Here, she’s a sarcastic intern at a magazine working on a story about a would-be time traveler and using her feminine wiles to slowly gain his trust. The chemistry between Plaza and Mark Duplass is probably the film’s high point; the subplot about the FBI feels like it was clipped out of a bad X-Files episode.

Safety Not Guaranteed is streaming on Tubi .

13. La Jetée (1962)

At only a 28-minute run time, La Jetée is arguably too short to merit inclusion on this list. However, what it lacks in content (and in, well, moving images; it’s almost exclusively a collection of static black-and-white shots set to voice-over), it more than makes up for in inventiveness and influence, and it would be a travesty to leave it out in favor of more recent by-the-book fare. Tracing the tale of a man held prisoner in post-WWIII Paris being used in time-travel experiments as his captors seek to remedy the postapocalyptic state of the world, he’s sent into both the future and the past and ends up unraveling a lifelong personal mystery while he’s at it.

La Jetée is streaming on the Criterion Channel .

12. Planet of the Apes (1968)

Unlike the worse but more straightforwardly time-traveling Tim Burton remake, the relationship between the original Planet of the Apes and time travel is inexact — technically, the astronaut crew that lands on the titular planet does travel forward 2,000 years, but it’s not done via a time machine. The travel isn’t instantaneous: It literally does take them 2,000 years to get there; they’re just unconscious and on life support. Still, the way the film’s ending handles the iconic reveal is exactly in line with the best of the time-travel canon, the telescoping, mise en abyme feeling of the world shifting in front of your very eyes without your moving an inch.

Planet of the Apes is available to rent on Amazon .

11. Groundhog Day (1993)

The famous Bill Murray vehicle essentially invented the infinite-time-loop genre (and it’s hardly a movie that succeeds on the strength of its concept alone), but the idea at its core is so steeped in the casual misogyny of late-’80s and early-’90s cinema that it’s hard to watch today without cringing. Murray’s character employing what amounts to PUA-style techniques over and over and over in a desperate bid to fuck his hapless co-worker just doesn’t hit the way it did back then. If the story arc didn’t present a guy detoxifying himself of the worst aspects of masculinity in order to be worthy of a woman’s love as the primary way for a 20th-century white man to achieve full personhood, this would be much higher on the list.

Groundhog Day is streaming on Starz .

10. Predestination (2014)

This is probably the most complicated film on the list. Following a “temporal agent” (played by Ethan Hawke) who’s trying to prevent a bombing in 1970s New York, it’s based on a Robert A. Heinlein short story and features Shiv Roy herself, Sarah Snook, in a star-making turn as someone with a complicated backstory and a secret. Like the best sci-fi, the film’s premise raises all kinds of fascinating questions about the titular concept and throws in some interesting musings on sex, gender, and the self in the process.

Predestination is streaming on Tubi .

9. Looper (2012)

Wes Anderson gets a lot of flak for his overwrought twee visuals, but Rian Johnson has a knack for making movies that feel and function like dioramas even if they don’t look it. Narratively speaking, everything here is constructed just so — and there’s a certain beauty in that — but who ever had a profound experience of art by looking at a diorama? Looper was probably Johnson’s least precious pre– Star Wars film, which is nice because the temptation to drastically overmaneuver the mechanics of a time-travel story can lead to disaster. The tech used to Bruce Willis–ify Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s face is distracting, and the third act’s retreat from the postapocalyptic city of the future to the postapocalyptic corn farm of the future is a brave choice that the film struggles to land. Still, Johnson’s vision of a future in which organized crime runs time travel is compelling and well worth a watch.

Looper is streaming on Netflix .

8. Donnie Darko (2001)

Donnie Darko is a bit of a genre mash-up. Part high-school movie, part sci-fi flick, part bleak meditation on the soullessness of late-’80s America, it’s nevertheless a weirdly successful piece of filmmaking that makes fantastic use of a young Jake Gyllenhaal, a great supporting cast (Maggie Gyllenhaal, Drew Barrymore, Jena Malone, and Patrick Swayze among others), and an absolutely iconic haunting cover of Tears for Fears’ “Mad World.” Watching high schoolers navigate parallel universes, wormholes, and time travel is a dicey proposition, but director Richard Kelly makes it work, somehow.

Donnie Darko is streaming on HBO Max .

7. Back to the Future (1984)

While it’s clearly superior to the sequel (and leagues ahead of the final film in the trilogy), the original Back to the Future is a bit of a mess (John Mulaney was right , to be honest). Its racial and gender politics are cringey, and the incest subplot is weird (“It’s your cousin Marvin. Marvin Pornhub . You know that new plot element you’ve been looking for?”), but there’s a clear interest in time travel beyond its shimmering surface: the very real addressing of the “grandfather problem” in time travel via the slow disappearance of Marty from his family photo, the accidental invention of rock music, and a genuine curiosity about the nuts-and-bolts mechanics of time machines. Ahh, what the hell. It’s a romp.

Back to the Future is available to rent on Amazon .

6. Palm Springs (2020)

No offense to Gen-Xers and boomers, but the best time-loop movie of all time is Palm Springs . The film isn’t without its missteps, but it’s much more curious about life than Groundhog Day was through the eyes of Murray’s misanthrope. Cristin Milioti and Andy Samberg‘s characters, stuck in the loop together, are a perfect comedic match, and their shared humanity makes for a beautiful arc. The film raises questions about what’s worth doing in life when nothing lasts and how to stay sane when every day is the same. Of course, as a sort of polar opposite of Tenet , it benefited from coming out during the pandemic by speaking, as it does, to the experience of lockdown.

Palm Springs is streaming on Hulu .

5. Tenet (2020)

Interstellar wasn’t enough for Chris Nolan, apparently. Tenet ’s legacy may end up being little more than that of the COVID action movie no one saw — a bloated thriller that Nolan fought to get into theaters and bar from home viewing reportedly to swell the size of his own pockets. It really did suffer from bad timing, though, because this is genuinely a quintessential big-screen popcorn movie whose absurdity is all the more palatable when it’s given the audiovisual bombast it deserves. Ambitious in scope as it traces a war on the past by the future (yes, you read that right), Tenet is as enamored of action tropes as it is in bucking them, and its investment in rendering visible the brain-bendingly knotty mechanics of moving through time is laudable, even when the movie itself remains opaque — as impenetrable as the future, as hazy as the past.

Tenet is streaming on HBO Max .

4. The Terminator (1984)

A partner to Blade Runner in the mid-’80s invention of sci-fi noir, The Terminator is a stunning film in many ways, despite the third act’s now-iffy visual effects. While it’s not James Cameron’s debut, and it would go on to be bested by its sequel , it functions as an incredible showcase for an emerging young director who would exclusively make big stories for the rest of his career. Arnold Schwarzenegger is perfectly cast as the relentless, unemotional killer cyborg sent back from the future to terminate the mother of the eventual resistance leader, and the film’s romantic subplot has just the perfect amount of time-travel-induced cheesiness for it to work.

The Terminator is streaming on Amazon Prime Video .

3. Interstellar (2014)

It’s not inaccurate to say Christopher Nolan is a director who’s more interested in scale and scope than in expressing the minutiae of the human experience in its purest form. But in Interstellar, a Nolan movie in its titular ambitions, there’s a core element of time travel wrought not as sci-fi fireworks but as a paean to the sheer force and will of the power of love. It both does and doesn’t work, depending on your capacity for cheese in space, but even besides that, Nolan’s use of time as story arc — the way Miller’s planet functions, in particular — is conceptually masterful in the best kind of time-travel-movie way.

Interstellar is streaming on Paramount+ .

2. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Whereas the franchise’s first movie spends more time on the question of time travel, in the second it takes a bit of a back seat to the action itself. It’s hard to fault director James Cameron for this decision; T2 remains one of the best action movies of the ’90s and — along with Jurassic Park and The Matrix — one of the decade’s best when for special effects. The groundbreaking T-1000 would honestly be enough to get this movie on the list; a tween John Connor grappling with questions of predestination and the fact that he is vicariously responsible for his own conception feel almost like icing on the time-travel cake. Much as in 12 Monkeys , time travel here is mistaken for delusion, as valiant Sarah Connor, in a Cassandra-esque nightmare, has to battle against the future only she knows is coming. Of course, Cassandra never had access to any firepower stored in underground desert arsenals.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day is streaming on Netflix .

1. Arrival (2016)

It’s fair to wonder whether Arrival really is, in fact, a time-travel movie. The Ted Chiang short story it’s based on isn’t about time travel per se; rather, it’s an exploration of alternate forms of temporal understanding. The linguist protagonist, played by Amy Adams, doesn’t travel through time so much as come to experience it differently. Still, the plot ends up hinging on foreknowledge that she is granted not via visions but by actually experiencing her future simultaneously with her present and past. For our purposes, though, that’s time fuckery enough to merit inclusion, and boy howdy does the film deliver in overall quality. Partly, that’s simply a question of the source material. Chiang is arguably the most talented (and possibly the most decorated) American sci-fi writer of his generation. But the source story is not especially Hollywood friendly, and director Denis Villeneuve has adopted it lovingly, borrowing a plot device from another of Chiang’s stories, the more straightforwardly time-travel-based “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,” in order to add some third-act blockbuster flavor. The result is a beautiful meditation on love, choice, and courage that packs art-film ethos into a genuine sci-fi blockbuster.

Arrival is streaming on Hulu and Paramount+ .

• vulture homepage lede
• timey-wimey
• vulture lists
• time travel
• vulture picks

Most Viewed Stories

• Cinematrix No. 164: September 6, 2024
• Can Ben Affleck Handle Another Jennifer in His Life?
• The Perfect Couple Series-Premiere Recap: Welcome to Summerland
• The Bachelorette Season-Finale Recap: It Wasn’t Supposed to Be This Way
• Coach Taylor Swift Lands at Travis Kelce’s Chiefs Opening Game
• The Real Housewives of Orange County Recap: Videos Killed the Reality Star
• Every Ben Stiller Movie Performance, Ranked

Editor’s Picks

Most Popular

What is your email.

This email will be used to sign into all New York sites. By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy and to receive email correspondence from us.

Sign In To Continue Reading

Create your free account.

Password must be at least 8 characters and contain:

• Lower case letters (a-z)
• Upper case letters (A-Z)
• Numbers (0-9)
• Special Characters (!@#$%^&*)

As part of your account, you’ll receive occasional updates and offers from New York , which you can opt out of anytime.

The 32 greatest time travel movies

You don't need a DeLorean to revisit these time travel gems

If you had the means to travel in time, where would you go? The past, or the future? For so long, filmmakers have wondered this same question, with more time travel movies than you can count. At least some of them happen to be - ahem, timeless classics.

While time travel has existed in the human imagination for centuries, with examples found in Hindu and Islamic mythologies, our modern understanding of time travel begins with early science fiction tales. Stories like The Year 2440 by French author Louis-Sébastien Mercier, Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy, and The Time Machine by H.G. Wells are some of the earliest and most popular uses of time travel in sci-fi. 

It should be no surprise that as soon as humans invented moving pictures, time travel became a recurring genre. (This is not to be confused with time loop movies, in which stories involve a set and finite time frame that "loop" back and start all over again.) Whether it's to prevent catastrophes or just fall in love, filmmakers have obsessed over time travel as a story device to explore what it really means to be human. With so many time travel movies to choose from, here are 32 of the greatest time travel movies ever made.

32. The Time Machine (1960)

It should be no surprise that the first feature film adaptation of H.G. Wells' seminal science fiction novella The Time Machine also qualifies as one of the best time travel movies ever made. Rod Taylor stars as a scientist inventor, also named "H. George Wells," whose invention of a time machine flings him to Earth's distant future where he sees mankind split between peaceful, gentle Eloi and the predatory Morlocks who feed on them. Though its primitive effects may be hard on modern eyes, George Pal's movie splits the difference between pulp slop and old-school magnificence.

31. Timecop (1994)

It's not saying much that Timecop, an adaptation of comic strips published by Dark Horse, is one of the best movies starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. But JCVD is in top form in Peter Hyams' corny '90s gem. Van Damme stars as a police officer in the Time Enforcement Commission who must stop a corrupt politician (played by Ron Silver) from influencing the past for personal gain. Although Timecop's comic book-y premise and wham-bam filmmaking renders it indistinguishable from other Van Damme flicks, it also happens to feature one of Van Damme's finest performances. 

30. The Time Traveler's Wife (2009)

Based on Audrey Niffenegger's hit debut novel, The Time Traveler's Wife stars Rachel McAdams as the wife of a Chicago librarian (Eric Bana) who suffers from a genetic disorder that causes him to spontaneously travel through time, making a stable life in the present difficult to maintain. Written by Niffenegger as an elaborate metaphor on her failed relationships, the sentimental and sappy movie version - from director Robert Schwentke - efficiently captures that painful desire to stay still in a life that pulls us apart. 

29. Déjà Vu (2006)

In their third collaboration together, actor Denzel Washington and director Tony Scott teamed up for the time travel thriller Déjà Vu. Washington plays a special agent who goes back in time to prevent a terrorist attack in New Orleans. While doing so, he falls in love with a beautiful victim (Paula Patton) and becomes determined to save her. While Déjà Vu isn't the best movie by Scott nor even the best from Scott and Washington's creative tag-teaming, it's still a gritty action thriller with a novel science fiction bent.

Sign up to the GamesRadar+ Newsletter

Weekly digests, tales from the communities you love, and more

28. Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)

While it may feel too "Tumblr twee" for some, Colin Trevorrow's Safety Not Guaranteed is an emotional comedy-drama about having trust in the impossible. A group of magazine journalists (played by Aubrey Plaza, Jake Johnston, and Karan Soni) investigate a curious classified ad that promises a time travel adventure; Mark Duplass plays the socially awkward grocery clerk who placed the ad, claiming to have a time machine. Safety Not Guaranteed notably launched Trevorrow into the realm of big budget blockbusters, with the director landing the gig of helming Jurassic World shortly after and, for a time, attached to the coveted ninth Star Wars movie. Safety Not Guaranteed is small fries in comparison, but the movie's flightful sensibilities showed what Trevorrow was capable of. 

27. Donnie Darko (2001)

It's a bit of a spoiler to detail exactly how time travel factors into Richard Kelly's morbid teen drama Donnie Darko. But in its tale about a troubled suburban teenager (Jake Gyllenhaal) who receives cryptic psychic messages from an ominous figure in a scary bunny costume, Donnie Darko explores adolescence as a vehicle to meditate on the nature of reality. Years later, Donnie Darko remains a cult classic, not only for its dark and cerebral tone and surprisingly star-studded cast, but for its enthralling portrait of teenage angst and depression through the lens of science fiction and comic book tropes.

26. Star Trek (2009)

In this modern reboot of the classic 1960s sci-fi television saga, the past and present collide in unexpected ways when villainous Romulans (led by Eric Bana) are flung to Starfleet past, changing the course of Star Trek history forever. As the starting point for what has been called the "Kelvin Timeline" - an alternate timeline diverting from original Star Trek canon - J.J. Abrams ' Star Trek satisfies fans both new and old with a zippy, crowd-pleasing blockbuster that is secretly about the burdens of history and legacy and the virtues of pursuing one's own path.

25. Midnight in Paris (2011)

Leave it to Woody Allen to create a time travel movie that isn't about aliens or A.I., but hanging out with famous literary icons. Owen Wilson stars as a dissatisfied screenwriter who, while on a trip to Paris with his fiance (Rachel McAdams), finds himself able to travel to 1920s Paris, meeting the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald and befriending Ernest Hemingway. After a long period of movies that failed to live up to his established reputation, Allen enjoyed a brief career resurgence with his critically acclaimed Midnight in Paris, a jovial gem (with an excellent Corey Stoll as Hemingway) that romanticizes Paris regardless of whatever era you're seeing it. 

24. X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

While parsing out the X-Men movie timeline can induce psychic shock, the 2014 tentpole X-Men: Days of Future Past is still one of the franchise's all-time strongest entries. Loosely adapting Chris Claremont's iconic comic book storyline, Bryan Singer's film version swaps Kitty Pryde for fan-favorite Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) who is psychically sent back in time to the 1970s to prevent Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage) from creating his menacing Sentinels that will doom mankind and mutantkind alike. With memorable set-pieces and a locked-in Jackman anchoring alongside Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy, the past and present collide like never before in this exquisite sci-fi superhero spectacle.

23. When We First Met (2018)

After falling in love at a Halloween party in 2014, lovestruck Noah (Adam Devine) uses a magical photo booth to relive the night he met the gorgeous and funny Avery (Alexandra Daddario), who only sees Noah as a friend. While Noah tries to relive and redo that night all over again, he quickly finds out that love is sometimes set in stone. Though Ari Sandel's sugary rom-com for Netflix may leave some audiences in the friend zone, for anyone familiar with the pangs of unrequited feelings, When We First Met is a breeze of a movie that can help us figure out why things happen for a reason - or for no reason at all. 

22. Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)

Raunchiness meets bitterness in the R-rated time travel comedy Hot Tub Time Machine. John Cusack, Rob Corddry, and Craig Robinson (plus Clark Duke, as Cusack's nephew) play unsatisfied adult men who - after a freak accident involving a hot tub and an energy drink spillage - find a way to time travel back to one fateful night in 1986. Determined to change their mediocre lives for the better, the men embark on reliving the greatest night of their young lives. With surprising depths of darkness, wistful nostalgia, and an underlying message to never take even one second for granted, Hot Tub Time Machine is more than its simplistic title leads on.

21. Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989)

If your life ethos is to "Be excellent to each other!" and "Party on, dudes!" then you have Bill and Ted to thank. In this cult classic from 1989, Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter co-star as dim-witted high school students and aspiring rock stars who are desperate to pass their history class and avoid being enrolled in military school. With the help of an enigmatic figure - played by the legendary George Carlin - Bill S. Preston Esq. and Ted "Theodore" Logan travel in time to collect the world's greatest figures in history to help them pass. While Bill and Ted inadvertently threaten to change history, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure is, indeed, an excellent movie about the virtues of friendship and being true to oneself. 

20. Synchronic (2020)

In this time travel horror movie, two New Orleans paramedics - hard-drinking playboy and terminally ill Steve (Anthony Mackie) and family man Dennis (Jamie Dornan) - find a series of bizarre deaths linked to a designer drug called Synchronic, which induces abilities to travel in time. Dennis grows alarmed when his daughter goes missing at a party where Synchronic was rampant. With its explorations of loss and friendship, Synchronic is unlike many other time travel movies with a distinctly dark and grim atmosphere. It's complimented by the skillful filmmaking of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, who have helmed films like Spring (2014), The Endless (2017), Something in the Dirt (2022), and the Marvel shows Moon Knight and Loki.

19. Click (2006)

Ever wondered what the "Beyond" was in Bed, Bath, and & Beyond? Adam Sandler found out in the 2006 comedy Click, where Sandler plays a workaholic family man who finds a universal remote that lets him travel in time. Though Sandler has fun "fast-forwarding" mundane moments, he soon finds out how critically important it is to relish every single minute you get in life. While Click initially polarized audiences and critics, it has slowly accrued goodwill, with some observers calling it one of Sandler's best and most mature movies behind Uncut Gems. 

18. Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002)

Oh, behave! In the third installment of the Austin Powers series, the out-of-time special agent Austin Powers (Mike Meyers, reprising one of his most iconic characters) is flung from 2002 back to 1975, teaming up with feisty FBI agent Foxxy Cleopatra (Beyoncé) and his own distant father, Nigel Powers (Michael Caine) to stop the mastermind known as "Goldmember." After spoofing spy-fi media of the 1960s, Jay Roach's Goldmember roasts the grittier, funkier era of '70s James Bond and Blaxploitation classics like Foxy Brown. 

17. Kate & Leopold (2001)

Can love transcend time? That's the idea behind Kate & Leopold, a most enchanting romantic comedy from James Mangold and starring Meg Ryan opposite Hugh Jackman. Jackman plays Leopold, the handsome Duke of Albany from the 19th century who falls through a time portal and ends up in 2001 Manhattan. While adjusting to the 21st century, he begins wooing a successful but lonely ad executive (Ryan). Kate & Leopold is good old fashioned Hollywood magic at its best, being a mismatched couples comedy that champions how love can triumph over all - even time itself.

16. About Time (2013)

Several years after The Time Traveler's Wife, Rachel McAdams again fell in love with a time traveler in Richard Curtis' sappy but sweet romantic dramedy About Time. Domnhall Gleeson plays an ordinary man who inherits a remarkable family power: the power to travel in time. (The only catch: They can only travel in their lived timeline, and never forwards.) Determined to use his power to find love, he becomes smitten with beautiful Mary (McAdams), though using time travel to maintain a perfect life involves a lot more risk than it seems. About Time plays fast and loose with its time travel rules, but the movie's irresistible premise and picturesque romance is enough to thaw even the most cynical of hearts.

15. Peggy Sue Got Married (1986)

After revolutionizing Hollywood filmmaking with his acclaimed gangster epics The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, Francis Ford Coppola lightened up with his lively comedy about middle-age regret and baby boomer nostalgia. In Peggy Sue Got Married, dissatisfied Peggy Sue (Kathleen Turner) is on the brink of divorcing her unfaithful husband Charlie (Nicolas Cage) when she faints at her 25th high school reunion. When she wakes up, she's back in her senior year of high school, learning she's been given a second chance at changing her life for the better.

14. Looper (2012)

Brick star Joseph Gordon-Levitt and director Rian Johnson reunite for one of the best time travel thrillers of the 2010s. Looper, released in 2012, takes place in a near future reality where time travel is possible but illegal; "loopers" are hired assassins who are sent back in time to kill specific targets. Things get complicated for a looper named Joe (Gordon-Levitt) who must "close the loop" when his older self (Bruce Willis) is sent back for him to kill. A trippy action-thriller that was critically acclaimed for its ingenious depiction of time travel, the buzzy success of Looper undoubtedly put Johnson on the map to later helm Star Wars: The Last Jedi in 2017.

13. See You Yesterday (2019)

Time travel whimsy meets timely social commentary in See You Yesterday from director Stefon Bristol and producer Spike Lee. Teenage science prodigies and best friends C.J. (Eden Duncan-Smith) and Sebastian (Danté Crichlow) invent backpacks that enable time travel; they use their inventions to save C.J.'s brother, who was killed by a racist police officer. But in trying to save her family, C.J. finds unforeseen problems in trying to alter the past. A beautiful mix of Amblin-esque adventure and the full weight of systemic racism, See You Yesterday - a sweeping picture about love and the ethics of genius - elevates the time travel genre into something more. 

12. Avengers: Endgame (2019)

To mark the end of Marvel's acclaimed Infinity Saga, directors Joe and Anthony Russo and writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely invited Marvel fans to take another lap around the Marvel Cinematic Universe with the time travel-oriented finale Avengers: Endgame. Following up on the events of Avengers: Infinity War, Endgame sees the Avengers reunite and hatch a scheme to reobtain the powerful Infinity Stones - all scattered throughout the MCU's vast canon - and restore a vanished populace, not to mention stop Thanos for good. Avengers: Endgame needs no introduction; it was and still is one of the biggest movies of all time.

11. Time Bandits (1981)

Terry Gilliam brings his strange sensibilities to a more mainstream family audience with his 1981 classic time Bandits. Craig Warnock stars as Kevin, a young boy with a fascination for history who is visited by time-traveling dwarves who plunder treasures from different historical periods. As Kevin joins the dwarves, they escape capture by Evil (David Warner), a malevolent entity who wants to steal the dwarves' map that lets them travel through portals. Time Bandits stands the test of, ahem, time, to look and feel like a riveting children's storybook come to life. 

10. Primer (2004)

In Shane Carruth's debut feature film, two engineers (played by Carruth and David Sullivan) accidentally discover the means of time travel. While experimenting with their discovery, they find out that time travel is a lot more complex than they thought it would be. Still an underground indie favorite to this day, Primer is remembered for its experimental plot structure that mixes philosophical theory with hard mathematics. Primer was concocted by Carruth, who actually majored in mathematics in college and previously worked as an engineer prior to becoming a filmmaker. Primer was a huge hit at the Sundance Film Festival and is still beloved for its cerebral exploration of the ethics of scientific discovery.

9. Time After Time (1979)

Nicholas Meyer pays tribute to the granddaddy of time travel storytelling, H.G. Wells, with his delectable time travel fantasy Time After Time. Malcolm McDowell plays H.G. Wells, who uses his time machine to finally apprehend Jack the Ripper (David Warner) after the famed serial killer escapes to modern-day San Francisco. While Time After Time tries to be a dark thriller, it can't help but have fun with H.G. Wells and Jack the Ripper exploring a most alien environment loaded with fast food chains and disco nightclubs. 

8. Somewhere in Time (1980)

Have you ever been in love so bad you were willing to get lost in time? Shortly after Christopher Reeve took off with Superman: The Movie, the actor strove to play against typecasting with Somewhere in Time. Directed by Jeannot Szwarc, Reeve stars as a playwright who becomes smitten by a beautiful stage actress (Jane Seymour) seen in a portrait dated 1912. Under hypnosis, Reeve's character ends up in 1912 and tries to find and woo the woman. He succeeds, but we won't spoil the devastating ending. While the movie endured bad reviews during its original release, it has since become a beloved romantic classic. The Grand Hotel in Michigan, where the majority of principal photography, hosts annual anniversary screenings of the picture every October.

7. 12 Monkeys (1995)

Terry Gilliam is no stranger to science fiction and time travel stories. One of his most successful Hollywood films to date is still the 1995 classic 12 Monkeys. Bruce Willis plays a convict from 2035 who is sent back in time to 1996 (though he ends up in 1990) to gather information about the terrorist plot that led to a virus wiping out most of humanity. Arriving at the right time to observe the paralyzing inundation of information at the end of the 20th century, 12 Monkeys mesmerized critics and audiences to become the number one movie for two weeks in January 1995. While not strictly a remake of the French New Wave sci-fi La Jetée by Chris Marker - Gilliam even claimed he hadn't even seen it before production - Universal Studios obtained the remake rights to Marker's film after producer Robert Kosberg successfully pitched the studio 12 Monkeys as a movie heavily inspired by it. In 2015, a hit TV series remake premiered on Syfy.

6. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)

Time travel isn't exclusive to science fiction. In the 2004 sequel to the hit fantasy film saga, Mexican auteur Alfonso Cuarón adapts the book of the same name which sees the increasingly aging Hogwarts trio - Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Hermoine (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint) - meet the wizard criminal Sirius Black (Gary Oldman) who has connections to Harry's family. A key part of Prisoner of Azkaban's story involves a magical device that lets the characters travel in time; some of the film's most memorable and deliciously staged set pieces center around ingenious depictions of time travel.

5. Source Code (2011)

In the aftermath of major events like 9/11, some Hollywood filmmakers dared to ask if time travel could stop acts of terrorism. Enter: Source Code, from director Duncan Jones. Jake Gyllenhaal stars as a U.S. soldier tasked with using a cutting-edge government program called "Source Code" to relive the final minutes of a commuter train prior to its bombing and identify the terrorist behind it. The catch is that Gyllenhaal's character enters the program inhabiting the body of another unknown man, which creates problems for both himself and the unknown man's beautiful companion (Michelle Monaghan). Jones' movie is a muscular action-thriller that successfully combines time travel with time loop stories, perfectly balancing the two to become something totally unique. 

4. Tenet (2020)

Christopher Nolan is a filmmaker obsessed with time as a thematic motif. But in 2020, Nolan was in top form with his summer sci-fi Tenet. John David Washington stars as the nameless agent, going only by "The Protagonist" who must navigate the twilight world of international espionage to stop the powerful arms dealer Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh) and prevent World War III. To accomplish this, he teams up with another enigmatic agent (Robert Pattinson) and the beautiful wife of Sator, Kat (Elizabeth Debicki), all while using the newest tool in his arsenal: inverted entropy, basically the reverse physics of an object in time. Confused yet? A lot of people were. But that hasn't stopped Tenet from amassing a dedicated fanbase who insist that Tenet isn't a movie you think about, but rather feel.

3. Your Name (2016)

In this sweeping animated romantic fantasy by acclaimed director Makoto Shinkai, two teenagers (voiced by Ryunosuke Kamiki and Mone Kamishiraishi in the original Japanese language, and Michael Sinterniklaas and Stephanie Sheh in the English dub) mysteriously find themselves swapping bodies. In their efforts to better understand what is going on, they find a deeper connection linked to a tragic natural disaster. A time travel movie unlike so many others, Your Name was celebrated upon release for its gorgeous visuals and equally breathtaking story about fate, love, and intertwined destinies that transcend time itself.

2. The Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Arguably the definitive time travel action blockbusters, James Cameron 's Terminator movies are simply unstoppable. Arnold Scwharzenegger is in top form as the T-800, who is initially dispatched to kill the mother of mankind's hero John Connor, a woman named Sarah (Linda Hamilton). In the bigger, somehow better sequel Terminator 2, Schwarzenegger returns as a repurposed T-800 to save both Sarah and her 12-year-old son John Connor (Edward Furlong). Despite numerous sequels, nothing can top the tech-noir transcendence of the first two Terminator entries.

1. The Back to the Future Trilogy (1984-1989)

Robert Zemeckis' '80s classic trilogy is, without question, one of the greatest time travel adventures ever told, an untouchable sci-fi trilogy if there ever was one. In the first movie, teenager Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) accidentally travels to 1955 and must figure out a way to get his own parents to fall in love again after his presence disrupts the whole town. In the sequels, Marty travels to the "future" year of 2015, and then the distant past of the Old West, all with the help of Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) and a ridiculously tricked-out DeLorean. The Back to the Future trilogy is foundational for an entire generation, and it's not hard to see why. The movies are fast, fun, and unforgettable, a movie that doesn't need roads to take us away.

Eric Francisco is a freelance entertainment journalist and graduate of Rutgers University. If a movie or TV show has superheroes, spaceships, kung fu, or John Cena, he's your guy to make sense of it. A former senior writer at Inverse, his byline has also appeared at Vulture, The Daily Beast, Observer, and The Mary Sue. You can find him screaming at Devils hockey games or dodging enemy fire in Call of Duty: Warzone.

One of the most underrated sci-fi thrillers with a great Rotten Tomatoes score is available to watch for free right now

This behind the scenes video of the final creature in Alien: Romulus will haunt you forever

Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake may have "never happened" without its gorgeous pixel art, and after playing for 30 minutes I can see why

Most Popular

• 2 Concord review: "Plenty of characters and little personality"
• 3 Visions of Mana review: "A beautifully sculpted 3D world that disappoints in a thousand small ways"
• 4 Star Wars Outlaws review: "An exceedingly fun Star Wars game that's hindered by poor stealth systems"
• 5 Madden 25 review: "A good game, but not a great one"
• 2 Starve Acre review: "Morfydd Clark and Matt Smith headline a chilling and unnerving horror movie"
• 3 Sing Sing review: "Colman Domingo’s soulful performance keeps this prison story gripping and gritty"
• 4 Beetlejuice Beetlejuice review: "Inventive fun but Tim Burton's belated sequel won't live too long in the memory"
• 5 The Crow review: "Hard to imagine this forgettable take will enjoy the same legacy as its 1994 predecessor"
• 2 The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 2 review: "A bleak, oppressive ode to Middle-earth anchored by one of the year's best performances"
• 3 Slow Horses season 4 review: "Apple TV's masterful spy drama remains one of the best shows on right now"
• 4 The Umbrella Academy season 4 review: "Like any good family reunion, most frustrations can be waved away, at least in the moment"
• 5 House of the Dragon season 2 episode 8 review: "Excellent sequences can’t save a finale that’s all set-up and no conclusion"

15 Best Time Travel Movies & Shows to Stream Now

May 6, 2022

Time travel, much like magic wands or fairy godmothers, seems like something out of stories and not real life. While that may ( or may not ) be true, that doesn’t make it any less fascinating. 

Even though the events in time travel movies and shows are improbable (though not proven to be entirely impossible ), getting the chance to go back and fix wrong decisions or save someone important is something we all have fantasized about. 

Whether you’re into infinite time loops or races to prevent apocalyptic events, Hulu is the place to find some of the best time travel movies and shows.

Time Travel Movies on Hulu

In 2074, the mob has gotten… creative in how they handle hits. When they’re ready to “get rid of” someone, they simply send them to the past where specialized assassins, called “Loopers,” are waiting in the middle of the desert to finish the job. Eventually, every looper has to “close the loop” or, in other words, murder their future self to protect the secrets of their trade—but what happens when a looper’s future self outsmarts them?

Watch: Looper

Fast forward 45 years into the future. The earth has been destroyed by climate change, forcing humanity to live on artificial oxygen that is causing an incurable illness in humans. The only hope for the future of humankind comes in the form of one message: “Send Ethan Whyte.” In this pulse-pounding sci-fi thriller , Ethan Whyte (Kodi Smit-McPhee), an underground tunnel worker, is called to the future to finish the job his scientist father started.   

Watch: 2067

Demolition Man

In 1996, Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes), one of the world’s most prolific criminals and his arresting officer, John Spartan (Sylvester Stalone), aka “The Demolition Man,” were sentenced to life in a cryogenic prison meant to reprogram their violent nature. Decades later, in a utopian, post-apocalyptic society, Phoenix is unfrozen for a parole hearing and escapes. With a police force that has forsaken violence in any form, no one is able to catch him—no one except The Demolition Man.

Watch: Demolition Man

Peggy Sue Got Married

Back in high school, Peggy Sue (Kathleen Turner) was completely infatuated with her boyfriend (now husband), Charlie (Nicholas Cage). However, just before their high school reunion, Charlie runs off with another woman, sparking a divorce and forcing Peggy Sue to rethink her entire life. When Peggy Sue passes out at the reunion, she wakes up in her high school gymnasium—as a senior in high school. With the chance to live her life over again, will Peggy Sue make the same choices, romantic and otherwise?   

Watch: Peggy Sue Got Married

Time Loop Movies

Groundhog day.

We can’t talk about time loops without mentioning the most iconic time loop movie ever— Groundhog Day . 

Disgruntled weatherman Phil Conners (Bill Murray) is sent to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania to cover Groundhog Day and report on whether or not the groundhog sees his shadow. Upset by the assignment, Phil is glad when the day is over. But, when he wakes up in the morning and it’s Groundhog Day…again, Phil decides to use it to his advantage—until he realizes he could be stuck in this time loop forever.

Watch: Groundhog Day *

*Groundhog Day requires STARZ® on Hulu add-on subscription.

Palm Springs

When Nyles (Andy Samberg) and Sarah (Cristin Milioti) have an interrupted encounter while at a wedding in Palm Springs, they find themselves waking up to the same day over and over again. When faced with this situation, there’s only one thing to do—whatever you want. 

In this outlandish and hilarious romantic comedy , Nyles and Sarah have free reign over the wedding day—and they make the most of it. However, eventually even a rule-free life has to come to an end. The only problem is that no one knows how to end it.

Watch: Palm Springs

In one of the best movies on Hulu , former special forces agent, Roy Pulver (Frank Grillo) gets trapped in a time loop that forces him to relive his assassination day over and over again. As he fights through each somewhat new day, Roy discovers a secret government project that may explain his repeated death. The more times he dies, the closer he gets to discovering the truth, saving his ex-wife and son, and staying alive.

Watch: Boss Level

Time Travel TV Shows

While you may not be able to watch time travel favorite, Manifest on Hulu anymore, that doesn’t mean all time travel shows are in the past. From Hulu Original Future Man , to Rick and Morty , check out our favorite time travel shows streaming now on Hulu.

From Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg comes the Hulu Original Series , Future Man , which follows Josh Futturman, aka “Future Man” (see what we did there?), in his attempt to save the human race. 

Josh (Josh Hutcherson), a janitor in a medical research facility, is an avid gamer—but when he beats “Bionic Wars,” he learns his favorite futuristic video game isn’t just futuristic, it is the future. When tasked with saving the world before it’s wiped out, Josh must use his gaming skills to defeat his former boss and protect humankind from a terrible fate.

Watch: Future Man

Cole (Aaron Stanford), a time traveler from a post-apocalyptic future, has traveled back in time in hopes of preventing a deadly plague that wiped out 7 billion people. The virus was released by an elusive organization called the “Army of the 12 Monkeys,” whose leader, “The Witness,” is a mystery and the key to saving humanity. Cole, with the help of renowned virologist Cassie Railly (Amanda Schull), must find The Witness and prevent him from unleashing the virus before it’s too late.  

Watch: 12 Monkeys

On November 22, 1963, the world was rocked by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Based on the novel by Stephen King, 11.22.63 follows Jake Epping (James Franco) as he’s asked to do the impossible—travel back in time to solve the mystery of JFK’s death and perhaps, even prevent it from happening. However, changing the course of history can have devastating effects on the present. Can Jake solve the mystery without disrupting the future? 

Watch: 11.22.63

Time travel is real. The past can be altered. The future is in danger. 

When scientist Lucy Preston (Abigail Spencer) discovers that time travel is real and, at the same time, that a man has stolen a time machine and is going back in time to change history, her world is turned upside down overnight. Alongside a soldier and a history professor, Lucy travels to the past in order to apprehend the man and save the future from a catastrophe before everything is erased.

Watch: Timeless

Rick & Morty

Rick, a scientific genius and alcoholic, and Morty, Rick’s average teenage grandson, embark on dangerous and mind-bending adventures into alien worlds , alternate dimensions, and infinite universes. The adult animated show follows the pair as they cause mayhem and get into trouble across the multiverse and at home. 

Watch: Rick and Morty

Time Travel Anime

Japanese anime , InuYasha , follows Kagome Higurashi, a 15-year-old girl living at a historic Japanese shrine, who just so happens to be the reincarnation of ancient priestess Kikyo, guardian of the Shikon no Tama, or Jewel of Four Souls. When Kagome accidentally falls into a well, she’s thrust back to feudal Japan in order to help young half-demon InuYasha find the scattered shards of the Shikon Jewel and protect it from the demons who seek it.   

Watch: InuYasha

Steins;Gate

Okabe Rintarou, or self-proclaimed Crazy Mad Scientist Hououin Kyouma, and his team of university science students are working on a device to send messages to the past. Much to their surprise, it works! Once the device is operational, Okabe and his team must stop an evil organization from carrying out their diabolical plans.

Watch: Steins;Gate

29-year-old Satoru Fujinuma is a struggling manga artist with a secret and strange ability—he can travel back in time to the moment before something life-threatening happens and is forced to continue doing so until the event is prevented. 

In this limited series , Satoru and his mother are in a deadly accident. In hopes of saving his mother, Satoru travels back in time, but finds himself traveling all the way back to his childhood, where he uncovers a series of events that led to his mother’s death.

Watch: Erased

Feel like traveling back in time yourself? We’ve got you covered—check out the nostalgic blasts from the past in our watchlists featuring shows from the 80s , 90s , 2000s , and old-school MTV.

Latest Guides explore all

September 5, 2024

Watch ABC News Live Streaming and Programming on Hulu

How to Stream ‘The Bachelorette’ Season 21 with Jenn Tran Live and On-Demand

How to Watch NFL Games Without Cable 2024: Streaming & More

MLB Live Stream: How to Watch Major League Baseball Games on Hulu

September 4, 2024

Bachelor Nation News: Get the Latest Gossip, Streaming Info, & Much More

No results were found.