Happy Death Day took a fun Groundhog Day style approach to the slasher, with a star-making performance by Jessica Rothe as Tree Gelbman, the mean college coed turned final girl after being murdered repeatedly by a masked killer. Writer/Director Christopher Landon expanded Tree’s world and the temporal paradox concept in the sequel, shifting away from the slasher elements to bring something completely different while setting up potential for a bonkers sequel. With Happy Death Day 2U recently released on Blu-ray, it seems like a perfect time to celebrate by revisiting other horror movies that have explored the twisty, mind-bending nature of time travel. Whether it be loops, or simply moving backwards and forwards through time in dizzying fashion, these 10 horror movies will have you doing the time warp again.
Insidious: Chapter 2
Insidious may have introduced us to the haunting purgatory known as The Further via astral projection, but leave it to screenwriter Leigh Whannell and director James Wan to up the ante in a big way by introducing a time loop for the sequel. Picking up after the events of the first film, which ended with strong astral projector John Lambert (Patrick Wilson) trapped in the Further while his body is possessed by the Bride in Black, the sequel becomes a complex web of time travel with adult Josh and young Josh overlapping in time to assist each other and their loved ones in the fight to restore present day Josh to his own body.
Haunter
From director Vincenzo Natali (Cube, Splice), Haunter brings a refreshing twist to a haunted house thriller by way of time loop. Abigail Breslin stars as Lisa, a teen who slowly comes to realize that she’s a ghost stuck reliving the day she was murdered in 1985 along with her family, on perpetual loop. Lisa also discovers that she can bend time to communicate with people in other timelines, eventually working with a teen currently living in her home to prevent the same killer from murdering again. And hopefully breaking the cycle. Look for the always magnetic Stephen McHattie as Pale Man, a mysterious ghost that tries to warn Lisa away from tampering with time too much.
The House at the End of Time
Dulce is happily married and the mother of two sons; a perfect life interrupted by spooky paranormal occurrences in their home. One night her family is attacked by an unseen foe inside the home, leaving her husband dead and her son Leopoldo missing. Dulce is arrested and convicted once her fingerprints are discovered on the murder weapon. Cut to 30 years later, she’s released from prison under the requirement that the rest of her sentence be carried out via house arrest- the same home where tragedy occurred. The paranormal activity begins anew, only this time the older Dulce learns it’s not ghosts, but time travel that’s behind it all. The House at the End of Time takes the familiar trappings of a haunted house tale and injects a heartbreaking story of familial love and tragedy by way of time travel.
Coherence
A dinner party goes awry when a comet passes overhead, causing strange occurrences and anomalies. Or rather, the dinner party guests find themselves stuck in a sort of temporal nightmare. The guests discover parallel realities overlapping with their own, causing an unsettling mix of quantum physics and interpersonal dynamics. Coherence is a creepy Twilight Zone-style tale of doppelgangers via claustrophobic paranoia on a micro-budget.
Timecrimes
Writer/director Nacho Vigalondo’s first feature film is a twisty sci-fi horror time travel story that sees its lead, Hector, stuck in a time loop following an attack by man covered in bloodied bandages. Those that are a stickler for time travel logic and characters whose decisions compound their own misfortune might be frustrated, but Timecrimes is a creative, fun face-paced romp in suspense. The more Hector continues his time loop, the deadlier things get. What starts as a slasher evolves into something completely different.
The Butterfly Effect
Evan Treborn discovers that when he reads his journals from adolescence, he can travel back in time to redo pieces of his life. But as the film’s title suggests, Evan learns that making small changes in the past can lead to catastrophic consequences in the present. The more Evan tries to undo mistakes or fix tragic moments from his friends’ pasts, the worse things tend to get. A great example of the horrors that await in wielding the ability to alter time, this thriller explores the brutal side of Chaos Theory.
Waxwork II: Lost in Time
Proving not all time travel horror movies have to be cerebral and dark, this fun sequel bypasses the demise of the Waxwork museum in the first film by introducing time travel. In this outing, plucky heroes Mark and Sarah travel through various horror-filled dimensions with a compass that allows them to navigate through time and space. Literally. But it comes with a bit of a learning curve. There’s Alien homages, nods to The Haunting (in comical black and white, with a Bruce Campbell appearance to boot), Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Frankenstein, and so many more.
The Endless
The latest by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead sees them star as a pair of brothers returning to the cult they fled from years ago when an old videotape resurfaces. It may have been a decade since they left, but they discover the cult members haven’t aged a single day. The cult, Camp Arcadia, resides on a strange plot of land filled with various time loop pockets, presenting a very unique, meditative story of cosmic horror and coming to terms with the past. For these brothers, Camp Arcadia presents a mind-bending space that allows them to confront both their bizarre upbringing and their current place in the world, in all its existential intricacies.
Pandorum
In this sci-fi horror movie, a ship of 60,000 people embarks on a 123-year trip to colonize an Earth-like planet; the passengers remain in hypersleep while the crew rotates out of hypersleep every two years to maintain the ship. But when two crew members, Corporal Bower and Lieutenant Payton, awaken improperly from hypersleep, they discover that they might be suffering from a space psychosis, and weird cannibalistic humanoids have overrun the ship. With a 123-year trip into deep space, a lot can go wrong, and the passage of time factors into Pandorum in a major way in this fun creature feature.
Triangle
Director Christopher Smith (Black Death, Severance) delivered one of the most mind-bending horror films in Triangle. Melissa George stars as Jess, a woman desperate for a break from her autistic son so she agrees to join a friend for a day on a yacht. A storm leaves them stranded until an ocean liner comes along, only it’s deserted. As the group finds themselves hunted by a masked killer on board, a serious case of Déjà vu sets in for Jess, and no one can effectively predict the turns the story takes from there. There are seriously twisted time loops involved in this one.