It’s déjà vu all over again! Here are some of the best movies, television series, and individual TV episodes to feature a time loop story, in which characters repeat the same day over and over again until they find a way to break the cycle. From Groundhog Day to Russian Doll, these are the best.
We’ve all had déjà vu. You feel like you’ve been somewhere before, experienced something already, or met someone, perhaps in a past life. That feeling of a living loop has become common fodder for movies and TV series over the years, often depicting a character repeating the same day, or general time period, over and over. The theme can be ominous, centered around a terrible situation or a bit more humorous, like a reporter reliving the same small-town weather report.
Either way, it’s become a go-to concept, often used in creative ways over the years. As such, we’ve rounded up some of the best movies and TV moments that focus on the phenomenon. Sure, the theme sounds like it would be snore-worthy over time, but the results are often thoroughly — and repeatedly — entertaining.
In this classic example from the late Harold Ramis that helped spawn the phenomenon, TV weatherman Phil Connors (Bill Murray) keeps reliving the same mundane day, February 2, when he’s tasked with repeatedly reporting on the annual Groundhog Day event in the small town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. He spirals, believing that since the day will start again anyway, he might as well binge-drink, live dangerously, and have a series of one-night stands. He knows he’ll get a do-over anyway, right? He eventually resorts to desperate measures to end the curse, until finally realizing how to take his repetitious lemons and make lemonade.
Being stuck in a time loop is terrifying, but being stuck on your birthday sounds like reason to celebrate, right? That is, unless you come to the realization that it’s also the day you’re brutally murdered over and over again. Each morning, college student Theresa (Jessica Rothe) wakes up trying to escape death and figure out who keeps trying to kill her. Given the film’s success — it earned $125 million worldwide on a paltry $4.8 million budget — it was no surprise to see a sequel to this black comedy/slasher film, which has been described as Groundhog Day meets Scream.
