10 Time Travel Movies To See Before You Die

2. Timecrimes

Timecrimes (Spanish: Los Cronocrímenes) is a low-budget time loop flick with a small cast of characters, but large questions of agency and causality, all wound up in a masterful, suspense-driven tale of metaphysical déjà vu.

It follows Héctor, the ordinary man of ordinary men, as he is wound tightly into an increasingly nightmarish plot of cyclical time travel and a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts that suggests morality might be obsolete in the face of predetermination.

This quick and disorienting picture grabs you from the get-go and doesn't stop squeezing until the credits roll. While Hector's actions are increasingly frustrating (especially once he has encountered the time machine), his seemingly inevitable - and thus tragic - plight within the space of a couple of hours nonetheless come with a certain grim satisfaction as you watch it all come together.

From both a technical and artistic standpoint, the film is superb, with creative camerawork and sound design, a strong score, and all of the carefully studied nuances and cinematic sensibilities one would expect to find in many of the continental indie sleeper hits of the last few decades.