time travel plot twists

12 Most Complex Time Travel Movies Executed Well

Hi, this is Barry, and welcome to my site. How a time travel movie is conceived and executed establishes how complicated it can become. Some filmmakers avoid the complexities, others attempt it and make a mess of the timeline(s), but a few embrace the convoluted nature of time travel and do a fantastic job with the execution. Before we go into the list, let me be clear on how I define a time travel movie. So long as there is one person experiencing time in a non-linear fashion, the film makes it into the category. Here is my list of the most complex time travel movies that are well-executed (in no particular order).

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For the complete list, do check the 50+ Best Time Travel Movies of all times.

Back To The Future: Part 2

I’m talking specifically about the second part. And why is that? Because a significant portion of the film’s events happens on the same date as the first movie. You see two of Martin and Doc Brown, and they have to make sure they achieve their objective without disturbing any of the events from the first film. This complexity does nothing to affect the film’s humour and quirky characters.

The timeline diagram that Doc Brown draws on the blackboard is iconic and is used by almost everyone to explain complicated time travel movies today. Watching many of the scenes from the first part in the backdrop of this sequel is what makes it extraordinary. Many other time travel movies have emulated this idea in their plots.

Oriol Paulo’s films are a pleasure to watch. He’s got a real talent for non-linear storytelling in the genre of murder mysteries. Mirage combines a crime-thriller with science fiction and time travel in one movie. This time travel movie follows a multi-timeline approach and keeps you on edge with multiple plot twists. A mysterious storm causes a TV to become a bridge across 25 years, enabling characters to communicate with the past. Information that is shared with the past results in different decisions and thereby creates an alternate timeline. Facts and events from each timeline are aggregated to solve the case of murder. It’s enjoyable to watch other subtle pieces of information getting unearthed due to the altered timeline and how they feed into the plot.

The ending of the film wraps up all the time-complications very well, leaving almost no plot holes. Placing a murder mystery within the container of time travel and the movie’s non-linear narrative really make Mirage quite unique.

You can find a detailed explanation with a timeline diagram here – Mirage Explained .

The Infinite Man

You have probably not heard of this low budget Australian film, but it’s a pretty wicked time travel movie. A man wants his girlfriend and himself to relive their anniversary of the previous year. When they do so, they end up encountering multiple versions of themselves travelling back various times into the past. You really need to not blink when you watch this film, as the same events are revisited time and over from different perspectives. The Infinite Man follows a single timeline model and handles the time-complexities superbly. Each character loops back a different number of times. The execution challenge then becomes how to let the who is who and what the reason was for travelling back in time. This complexity was handled excellently in the film.

Infinite Man really deserves more attention considering something this complicated was achieved in a tiny budget with three actors and no special effects. Oh, did I mention some scenes are damn funny too?

For a detailed breakdown of the film and a timeline diagram, read this – The Infinite Man Explained .

Avengers: Endgame

The fate of 20+ films was riding on Avengers: Endgame. We had already witnessed X-Men: Days Of Future Past, which was otherwise a good film, mess up the timeline so badly it erased the events of the original movies and left the fate of future films in the dark. Endgame needed to revisit multiple films of the MCU to temporarily borrow Infinity Stones. To achieve this, the multiple timeline approach was strategically adopted. Meaning travelling to the past of the prime MCU timeline cannot alter it, and all past events occur in alternate timelines. This ensured that all of the prior 20+ movies were preserved. It also provided a clear direction for future MCU films which will be set in the prime MCU timeline. Using this setup, they took the liberty to mess around with the events of previous movies to introduce repercussions of time travel. Examples of this are when we see two Caps fighting and Loki disappearing with the Tesseract.

The best part of this is if future directors choose, they can explore tinkering with plots set in any of the five alternate timelines created in Endgame. Considering the time travel movie wrapped up revisits to older movies in a smart way, learning from the small mistakes in Back To The Future, Endgame definitely deserves mention in this list.

For an extensive analysis of the time travel, plot and characters with a timeline video, go here – Avengers: Endgame Explained .

Primer is centred on two guys who discover time travel accidentally while experimenting with gravitational effects on objects. While the first couple of trips to the past make the film look easy, it soon escalates into a web of timelines folding onto themselves in an extremely convoluted manner. Primer also sports one of the most creative mechanics of time travel using the simple logic that you cannot travel back to before the time machine was switched on or  primed . The movie smartly uses this limitation to show how the characters need to come up with ingenious ideas to travel back multiple times. The fascinating bit is that the reason for time-travel comes from pure scientific curiosity and not to achieve a grand purpose. While there might appear to be a few loose ends, the film wraps it up nice and tight. Do pay close attention to everything in this film, and yeah, you’ll need to watch it twice.

No time travel movies’ list is complete without the mention of Primer. The film was produced within a teeny tiny budget of $7000 and yet presents one of the most complicated sets of timelines one can imagine.

Here’s a detailed timeline-wise explanation of this movie – Primer Explained .

12 Monkeys is too close to the COVID-19 virus epidemic for comfort. This time travel movie sees a dystopian future trying to identify the original strain of a virus that took out most of the living beings on the planet. The scientists of the future rely on time travel to identify the source of the infection. The film sports a single faultless timeline with every event tying up beautifully at the end. Small pieces of apparently isolated incidents begin connecting and come together as a whole to reveal the planned solution for the epidemic.

Wading through the misdirections, and the way Cole slowly narrows down and locates the source and how his actions affect the timeline (or rather don’t) makes this film an excellent piece of time travel thriller.

Here’s a detailed plot analysis and explanation of the film – 12 Monkeys Explained .

Predestination

Predestination is the mother of all time complexities that one can witness in a time travel movie. When you try to mentally visualize this single timeline’s flow of events, you will have a couple of nosebleeds. Based on the short story All You Zombies, Predestination extrapolates the book brilliantly. The character development, their interaction and how their stories merge into a larger scheme of events is intriguing and surprises you continually. Every time you think you are getting a hold on what’s happening, the film takes it up a notch and in the end, brings it all together and leaves you talking to yourself. 

Predestination is perhaps the most flawless execution of an extremely complex time travel plot while establishing that everything about the movie is one giant paradox.

Here’s everything you need to understand and untangle this film’s plot (yes, there’s a timeline diagram) – Predestination Explained .

Déjà Vu is the classic tale of hunting down a bomber before he strikes again. The catch, however, is that the team uses a time device to follow the life of one of the victims to get the bomber. While the folks of science, who believe in paradoxes, believe that the victim’s fate is sealed, Agent Doug finds it impossible to ignore the obvious that apart from nabbing the bomber he can save the lives of many, but this requires messing with time and rewriting history as they know it.

Though the execution of the film does introduce mild plot holes, the timelines in the movie are wrapped up pretty convincingly at the end. The really innovative sequence is the car chase taking place between two vehicles in entirely different times.

Timecrimes is a fun Spanish time travel movie happening over the duration of one day and a single timeline. What’s unique about this film is that the lead character who travels through is an average Joe. Typically the person travelling through time intends it and is well versed with the science behind it. Not in Time Crimes though. Héctor fumbles his way through most of the plot, and it’s the nature of time that seems to iron things out automatically. The entire film is a giant series of accidents complicating matters for the central character as he gets through his extra-long day.

Multiple Hectors cluelessly running around and amplifying time complications provides for a good deal of humour. Timecrimes is well-executed, and the end of the film wraps up any loose ends and maintains the timeline integrity beautifully.

To read a detailed explanation of this movie, go here – Timecrimes Explained .

Butterfly Effect

Butterfly Effect toggles back and forth, repeatedly creating multiple futures based on small yet significant actions. The story is thought through well and lays out the prime timeline with strategically placed voids in the first half. The latter half revisits these pockets of missing memories, offering a choice to the protagonist to execute a different action.

The protagonist making a small change to a single event causes a cascading effect over years leading up to a drastic and unexpected change to the future. True to its name, Butterfly Effect plays off on Chaos Theory fantastically.

This is a low budget film showcasing an innovative angle to non-linear events via the means of a mystical camera that takes pictures of the future, of the next day. Time Lapse lacks quality characters but makes up for it by executing a single timeline well. At the beginning of the film, we are shown one picture weeks into the future, while the remaining photos are 24hrs into the future. The characters witnessing the pictures of their future creates a chain of events leading up to that final photograph. What’s more, is that the camera possibly takes photos as close as 12 hrs into the future. Regardless of the characters’ intentions and actions, they keep feeding into their fate which refuses to get altered. 

Despite a complicated chain of events, the film manages the timeline accurately. It leaves no room for flaws in the execution and hence Time Lapse finds its way into this list despite its poor character development.

Here’s a detailed plot analysis for the film with each of the pictures from the camera – Time Lapse Explained .

Triangle is not strictly a time travel movie. But as I mentioned before, as long as one character experiences time non-linearly, the film qualifies. The film contains time loops that have three versions of the lead at any given moment on a abandoned ship. The film is quite complicated and yet manages to deliver an airtight sequence of events looping on itself wonderfully.

Placed in the slasher genre, Triangle has brilliantly conceived time loops. The cherry on top really is the ending which discloses the reason why the loops have come into existence.

Here’s a complete numbered loop-wise detailed breakdown of the movie – Triangle Explained .

Barry is a technologist who helps start-ups build successful products. His love for movies and production has led him to write his well-received film explanation and analysis articles to help everyone appreciate the films better. He’s regularly available for a chat conversation on his website and consults on storyboarding from time to time. Click to browse all his film articles

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Time-Slips and Body Hopping: Eight Great Novels of Time Travel

James goodhand recommends kate atkinson, toshikazu kawaguchi, georgi gospodinov, and more.

What is it about time travel stories? Perhaps our fascination with them comes from exploring that mysterious place where science meets human experience. Or maybe they allow us to fantasize about seizing control of that one thing that rules our lives, that sets our decisions in stone, that gives us everything only to take it away again—the passage of time. Whatever the reason, our obsession with such tales is going nowhere.

In my forthcoming novel The Day Tripper , I ask: What if you woke up each morning in a different, random day of your life? This is the situation twenty-year-old Alex Dean finds himself in after a perfect evening in 1995 ends in disaster. Doomed to never knowing where—or rather when— each new dawn will take him, he must navigate his way through the years and piece together what happened after that fateful night. He’ll find that his decisions can have untold impact, even in a life lived out of order.

It’s a different spin on the time travel story, inspired in no small way by my favorite novels of the genre. The following are, to my mind, eight of the best:

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

Ursula Todd is born in 1910 and dies within minutes. Chapter two and her life begins once again. This time she survives till the age of four when she’s swept away on a family holiday. We follow Ursula’s progress across the twentieth century, as inevitably disasters befall her, be it Spanish flu or German bombers or a slippery roof at home. Each time her life begins again, she has an inkling of what’s gone before, and a sense that this is happening to her for a reason (which it is, but I won’t spoil it here).

It’s a book that is most remarkable as a study in how different our lives can turn out but for a few twists of fate. As with many of the best speculative novels, Life After Life takes a big concept, and uses it as a lens to focus in on the vagaries of the human condition.

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

An Agatha Christie style murder mystery with a body-hopping, time-looping sleuth, this novel is a work of genre-crossing genius. Set in a stately home in the 1920s, the story sees the titular character shot at midnight during her own birthday party. Our reluctant detective Aiden Bishop wakes each morning in the body of a different party guest, each new perspective lending him another chance to stop the murder before it happens. A quite stunning concept, but Turton’s brilliance doesn’t end there. Since this novel first published in 2018, the golden age murder mystery had enjoyed a resurgence. But there’s no misplaced nostalgia on show here. Instead the author has a clear-eyed view of this era’s flaws; with wit redolent of Roald Dahl, he pokes fun at his characters’ greed and fecklessness and misuse of their privilege.

A clever, fun, and complex book. Just don’t try and work out who the murderer is, it’ll drive you nuts!

The Upper World by Femi Fadugba

Set in Peckham, South London, this young-adult novel expertly blends urban realism with some serious science. When sixteen-year-old Esso has a run-in with a Range Rover on his way to school, he experiences a horrifying vision of a shooting that coming evening. In a separate timeline, a much older Esso (now a doctor, and now blind) is mentoring Rhia, a girl whose mother was tragically killed many years earlier. The two stories intersect with a thrilling sense of time running out.

A physicist by profession, this novel was born of Fadugba’s desire to bring Einstein’s theories to life, something he achieves in a way that never feels dumbed down. Along with  the tight plot, the reader gets to enjoy discussions about, for example, the idea that the faster we move through 3D space, the slower we move through time—conversations conducted in an authentic South London vernacular reminiscent of Top Boy . It’s deeply clever, enthralling stuff.

Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut

As well as imparting a thousand nuggets of wisdom that are still being shared daily on social media, Kurt Vonnegut also wrote some books. None embody his trademark wit and inventiveness better than his 1969 novel, Slaughterhouse 5 . The main character Billy Pilgrim becomes unstuck in time. An American soldier, he finds himself on a whistle-stop tour of the twentieth century’s conflicts. To my knowledge, it’s the first example of block universe theory being used as a literary device. Informed by the author’s own spell in a German prisoner of war camp, this is a vehemently anti-war novel. In fact, it originally published with the subtitle “The Children’s Crusade, A Duty-dance with Death,” a none-too-subtle dig at war’s expectation that the young sacrifice themselves for the interests of their elders.

Funny, profound and edgy, I adore this book. And if the quality of a novel can be judged from how often it’s banned in schools, Slaughterhouse 5 is among the all time greats.

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

This quirky novel tells the story of a Japanese basement café, in which patrons are able to travel through time. They have to sit in one particular seat though, and nothing they do will change the present, and they must wait for the ghost who usually occupies the seat to go to the toilet. Oh, and they can only time travel for however long it takes for their coffee to go cold. The story may be obsessed with its own rules, but the author pays no such heed to the accepted rules of novel writing. The book takes the form of four short stories of time travel, interspersed by the goings-on amongst the café staff which gives it a cozy, soap-opera feel.

It’s a quick and touching read. However, should you have a thirst for more, there have since been three sequels with another due later this year.

The Summer of Impossible Things by Rowan Coleman

In this fine example of the timeslip novel, British sisters Luna and Pia travel to their mother’s childhood home in Brooklyn to settle her affairs after her death. It soon becomes clear that something terrible happened to their mother here. Luna finds herself slipping between the present day and summer 1977 where she becomes friends with her young mother. She is soon on a mission to reverse her Mum’s awful fate, even though it risks her own very existence in the future.

It may touch on some dark themes, but the love story that smolders throughout against the backdrop of New York’s Saturday Night Fever era makes this a fabulously evocative, uplifting read.

The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

“Why is love intensified by absence?” So asks our female protagonist Clare Abshire, barely three paragraphs in. It’s a sentence that neatly encapsulates the soul of this modern classic. Because this is not a story about time-travel so much as one about love. Sure, Clare’s husband Henry is prone to disappearing without warning, doomed to land somewhere else in time, naked and penniless. But this affliction allows Niffenegger to construct a love story that we can all relate to: the longing, that unsettling feeling that we aren’t on the same page as our beloved, the sense of being brought together by some fate or higher power.

It’s difficult to say anything about this absolute blockbuster that’s not already been said. Except perhaps to pass on my recent discovery that there’s a sequel on the way. It’s called The Other Husband , and I can’t wait!

Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov

Ok, so I’m taking a liberty here with the definition of time travel, because this 2023 International Booker winner has no sci-fi element to it. This is the story of a Bulgarian therapist who founds a clinic for Alzheimer’s sufferers consisting of rooms that are perfect recreations of bygone eras, taking the patients back to the surroundings of their youth. It proves so popular that soon perfectly healthy people are checking themselves in for a dose of nostalgia. Before long, all of Europe is going crazy for the past with each country holding a referendum on which decade they want to return to.

It’s time travel meets political satire, though in this era of Brexit and of calls to make our countries Great Again, it’s hardly a whimsical read.

__________________________________

The Day Tripper by James Goodhand is available from MIRA Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

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The 10 best time travel novels

Posted by Mal Warwick | Reading Recommendations , Science Fiction | 0

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Time travel  is one of the most familiar tropes in science fiction. Many scholars trace the idea to Charles Dickens in  A Christmas Carol  (1843) and Mark Twain in  A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court  (1889). ( Others differ , finding antecedents as early as 1733 in Samuel Madden’s  Memoirs of the Twentieth Century .) But time travel’s first occurrence in modern science fiction came in 1895 with the publication of H.G. Wells’  The Time Machine .

Estimated reading time: 13 minutes

Early in the Golden Age of Science Fiction , time travel anchored popular works such as L. Sprague de Camp’s novel,  Lest Darkness Fall  (1939), Robert Heinlein’s  By His Bootstraps  (1941), and A.E. van Vogt’s  The Seesaw  (1941). Prominent later examples include Isaac Asimov’s  A Pebble in Time  (1950), Ray Bradbury’s  A Sound of Thunder  (1952), Alfred Bester’s  The Stars My Destination  (1956), Harry Harrison’s  The Technicolor Time Machine  (1967), and Robert Silverberg’s  Hawksbill Station  (1968). During the first half-century of modern science fiction, it was rare for any well-established author not to write at least one time travel novel. Many wrote several. 

Having read many of the time travel stories published during the genre’s early years, I’ve concentrated largely on more recent works. Below I’m listing the best of those I’ve encountered so far. They’re listed in alphabetical order by the authors’ last names. 

This post was updated on November 13, 2023.

The best time travel novels

Timescape  by Gregory Benford (1980) 514 pages ★★★★☆ –  An ingenious twist on time travel

Physics can drive you crazy.  Solid matter isn’t solid .  Black holes  don’t just make matter and light disappear; they suck up information, too. And  Schrödinger’s cat  is both alive and dead at the same time. Go figure. And if paradoxes like these rattle your nerves, you may want to avoid reading Gregory Benford’s masterful hard-science-fiction novel about time travel,  Timescape . It’s a brilliant story, and gracefully written. But it will challenge your reading comprehension unless you’re well versed in contemporary physics.

Timescape is a story of unintended consequences, of husbands and wives, of environmental collapse, and of academic politics. But above all it’s an account of how scientific research is conducted in the age of Big Science. And Benford indulges his characters’ tendency to think aloud about the most profound questions in theoretical physics. It’s far above the level of most people’s understanding, or at least above mine. But the story at the core of this novel is suspenseful to a fault and beautifully executed. Read more . 

Fata Morgana  by Steven R. Boyett and Ken Mitchroney (2017) 384 pages ★★★★☆ –  Clever plot twists in a time travel tale

Science fiction authors love time travel stories, because it affords them abundant opportunities to build plots full of clever  plot twists  and turns. Sometimes the surprises are really anything but shocking. But that’s not the case with the ingenious tale  Steven R. Boyett  and  Ken Mitchroney  have written under the title  Fata Morgana . Perhaps someone more discerning than I am could suss out the plot twists in advance, but I was taken aback when the reality descended on me of what really happens in this well-paced story. 

In several opening chapters, Boyett and Mitchroney paint a detailed and engrossing picture of the experience of an American bomber crew based in England during World War II. Those chapters read like a well-researched and capably written war story. I read a great deal about World War II, but what I found here was revealing. In fact, both the beginning and the end of this book, which deal with the bomber crew’s experiences during the war, are exceptionally good. And the clever plot twists add a layer of fun. Read more . 

Here and Now and Then  by Mike Chen (2019) 336 pages ★★★★☆ –  A novel treatment of time travel in this promising science fiction debut

Time travel is one of the themes most commonly found in classic science fiction. But it’s taken a back seat in recent years to dystopian novels and space opera, not to mention epic fantasy (which I don’t consider science fiction at all). Of course, time travel back to the past has no basis in known science (although relativity makes time travel forward quite easy). But the paradoxes that open up in any logical treatment of the subject offer a wealth of possible plots. That’s the opening for suspense that  Mike Chen  found in his promising science fiction debut,  Here and Now and Then .  Read more .

New Pompeii  by Daniel Godfrey (2016) 352 pages ★★★★☆ – It’s not time travel. But it looks like it.

In a brief prologue, we meet Manius Calpurnius Barbatus, duumvir (co-ruler) of Pompeii, and his young adult daughter, Calpurnia. They are cowering in the mounting ashfall from Mt. Vesuvius as it gradually buries their town. Much will happen before we meet them again. But then they will play major roles in this intriguing story.

On one track in the story, a young woman named Kirsten Chapman faces years of terror. She repeatedly finds herself submerged in a bathtub in a locked room, only to be jerked back there soon after she emerges. On the other, major track, a young history graduate student named Nick Houghton faces the ruin of his career. Cutbacks decimate the faculty and fellowship funds at his “third-rate university” in England, and he is certain to lose his stipend. But Nick is not trapped in his depressing reality. For suddenly he finds himself employed by a company called Novus Particles UK LLP, or NovusPart, which has somehow muddled into a way to meddle with the timeline. Read more .

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel (2022) 218 pages ★★★★★ – Emily St. John Mandel writes about a pandemic again

Emily St. John Mandel came to the attention of millions of readers worldwide with the publication of her third novel, Station Eleven . The book has sold at least 1.5 million copies and elevated Mandel to the ranks of superstar status in the literary firmament. Perhaps it was foreordained that a beautifully written novel about a pandemic would sell so well while COVID-19 ran rampant across the globe. And, with COVID still upending lives everywhere, we might expect that her sixth novel, Sea of Tranquility , which is also about a pandemic, would hit the bestseller lists, too.

Mandel writes science fiction with the science largely in the background. In Sea of Tranquility , she uses the time-honored sci-fi device of time travel to illuminate the lives of a handful of characters who are linked together across five centuries. Time travel is a given in the story, simply an artifact of the reality Mandel imagines. It’s the characters we care about as we shuttle back and forth from 1912 to 2020 to 2203 to 2401. The story hangs on a pandemic, but it, too, is merely a pivot in the plot.

The Future of Another Timeline  by Annalee Newitz (2019) 344 pages ★★★★☆ –  Alternate feminist history by a gifted science fiction author

What is history, and how does it work? We know, of course, that history isn’t fixed and immutable. It’s subject to the revision and reinterpretation of successive waves of scholars. Sometimes the fresh approach is based on new information that comes to light. But more often what we call history is merely a story historians tell us using carefully selected facts filtered through the cloudy lens of their own values and beliefs. We know, too, that history doesn’t travel in straight lines. But what makes it swerve? Indeed, how does change happen? Is it the product of the individual genius of so-called  Great Men  or the inevitable outcome of the ideas and social movements that engage a nation or an era? These are among the questions explored in Annalee Newitz’s thought-provoking feminist alternate history,  The Future of Another Timeline .  Read more .

The Continuum (Place in Time #1)  by Wendy Nikel (2018) 174 pages ★★★★☆ –  An ingenious take on time travel

Novels about time travel frequently twist themselves into knots about the paradox that comes into play when travelers attempt to change something in the past that might mean they would never have been born. In  The Continuum , the first of a series by science fiction newcomer Wendy Nikel, the  grandfather paradox  never surfaces . . . but somehow it seems that it ought to. The novel is a truly original take on time travel.

Here’s what you need to know about Wendy Nikel’s universe:

• The discoverer of time travel, a certain Dr. Wells, has opened the Place in Time Travel Agency, or PITTA.
• You can only travel back in time to dates that are one or more centuries in the past on precisely the same day, time, and place from which you leave.
• To return to the present, you press your thumb on a small spherical device called a Wormhole. So, be sure not to lose it! (As I said, this is an original take on time travel.)
• But you’re not supposed to travel back to key turning points in history. Those are Black Dates. They’re a no-no.
• The heroine of this novel is young Elise Morley, who is a Retrieval Specialist for PITTA. Her job it is to rescue clients who have disregarded the rules by going to when they shouldn’t or attempting to overstay their time in the past. Read more .

Mammoth  by John Varley— A novel about time travel featuring wooly mammoths and an eccentric billionaire

The concept of time travel as it’s typically treated in science fiction is a straightforward affair. You’ll find that in almost any novel about time travel. Somebody figures out how to build a “time machine,” steps into the chamber, and—presto, change-o—ends up somewhere back or forward in time. Maybe a hundred years in the past or future, maybe 100,000. In any case, it’s all a matter of finding a way to locate a particular spot on the continuum of time and violating the laws of physics to get there. Well, if you’re skeptical, as I certainly am, you’ll find an entirely different view of time and time travel in John Varley’s supremely entertaining novel, Mammoth . And along the way you’ll learn a good deal about the spectacular fauna of North America in the Pleistocene Era more than 12,000 years ago. Oh, and by the way, there’s also hidden in the text a novel explanation for UFOs, or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. Read more .

Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel #2 of 5)  by Connie Willis— A time travel novel about the Black Death

What do we know about the past, and how do we know it? Historians rely largely on the contemporaneous written records they call primary sources . But other disciplines make important contributions to history as well, including archaeology, physics, and genetics. Still, what they learn comes exclusively from what remains of the past. What if historians could learn first-hand by sending scholars into previous centuries to compare the historical record to the reality? Award-winning author Connie Willis explores that idea in her monumental 1992 science fiction tale, The Doomsday Book , a novel about the Black Death.

Kivrin Engle is a bright and adventurous first-year student in medieval history at Oxford’s Brasenose College . In the mid-21st century, time travel is well established as a method for historians to study conditions over the past four or five hundred years, and Kivrin is eager to explore 14th-century England. Together with the acting head of medieval studies, Mr. Gilchrist, and her history tutor at Balliol College , Mr. Dunworthy, she develops a plan for a two-week visit in 1320, farther back than others have previously gone. Her target is the village of Skendgate, near the city of Bath in the country’s far southwest. Unfortunately for all concerned, everything goes wrong when Kivrin sets out for the past. Read more .

Blackout (Oxford Time Travel #4 of 5)  by Connie Willis (2010) 650 pages ★★★★☆— Historians study World War II in person

History is often an unreliable guide to the past. Documents go missing or remain classified. Records may be erroneous—or even have been written to be misleading. And historians inevitably build their own prejudices and expectations into their interpretation of past events. How extraordinary it might be, then, for an historian to travel back in time and observe those events in person as they unfold. That’s the conceit at the heart of Connie Willis ‘ award-winning novels about mid-21st century Oxford historians who do exactly that. Blackout is the first of a pair of those novels that trace the adventures of three young historians as they travel in time to study World War II as it happened. Read more .

Time travel novels that didn’t make the grade

Of course, I’ve read a lot more time travel stories than these few. I’m listing above only the best ones I’ve come across in recent years. Below, however, are several additional time travel novels I’ve read and reviewed that don’t merit inclusion above. 

Permafrost  by Alastair Reynolds (2019) 178 pages ★★★☆☆ –  Time travel and the apocalypse

The Corridors of Time  by Poul Anderson (1965) 186 pages ★★★☆☆ –  A legendary sci-fi author makes a mess of time travel

Feedback (First Contact # 3)  by Peter Cawdron (2014) 462 pages ★★★☆☆ –  Time travel dominates this tale of First Contact

Quantum Time (Quantum #3)  by Douglas Phillips (2019) 371 pages ★★★★☆— An entertaining tale of time travel

Hawksbill Station by Robert Silverberg (1967) 166 pages ★★★★☆ – A science fiction Grand Master gets it wrong about the future

Just One Damned Thing After Another (Chronicles of St. Mary’s #1) by Jodi Taylor (2013) 324 pages ★★★★☆ – Historians blunder about in the past in this time travel story

In addition to these five novels I gave lower ratings, there are two highly touted books I couldn’t even finish. Connie Willis’ All Clear , the sequel to Blackout , won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. But I couldn’t get past chapter 3. And Time and Again by Jack Finney, which Stephen King calls “the time travel novel,” was so filled with trivial detail that I gave up about halfway through.

For related reading

For more good reading, check out:

• These novels won both Hugo and Nebula Awards
• The ultimate guide to the all-time best science fiction novels
• 10 top science fiction novels
• The five best First Contact novels
• Seven new science fiction authors worth reading
• The top 10 dystopian novels

And you can always find my most popular reviews, and the most recent ones, on the  Home Page .

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10 Ideas for a Time Travel Story

Here are 10 quick ideas for a time travel story, including everything from colonies in the distant past and future, to time traveling Jews, Jesus, and jealous husbands.

If one of these ideas inspires you to create a time travel story of your own, let us know and we’ll share it with out community!

1. Future War

A future dictator invades the past. He sends giant war machines into 19th Century London, Paris and Washington, and he demands that all world leaders surrender to him. It’s up to a team of time traveling heroes to stop him.

2. As Time Goes By

A scientist discovers that he can slow down time in a localized area. He can use this to visit the future (and stop off anywhere along the way), but he can never go back. At first, he uses the device to prolong his own life, spending a day inside the time-bubble as a month passes outside. Later, curiosity compels him to travel into the distant future in search of new wonders and a fresh start.

Our protagonist finds a future world full of wonders, and he begins to build a new life for himself. But when things start to go wrong, he finds himself traveling forward yet again. Eventually, the urge to travel forward becomes irresistible as he searches for perfection. Is he really searching for something, or just running from his own past?

As our traveler comes to the end of his life he realizes that, while he has seen more than most people, he hasn’t really lived at all. He’s spent his whole life running.

3. Doing Time

Using a time machine, a penal colony is established in Earths distant future – a future in which humanity is extinct and the sun is approaching the end of its natural life-cycle. When the end finally comes, do the guards evacuate the prisoners or leave them to their fate?

4. The Man You Used To Be

After his wife leaves him, a scientist travels back in time to be with her again. He’s determined to get it right the second time around, and thinks he knows what to do to keep her happy. But when he travels into the past he comes across an obstacle he hadn’t counted on – the past version of himself.

SEE ALSO: Travelling in time but NOT space

Desperate to be with his wife again, he plots to do the unthinkable – he plans to murder his past self and take his place.

There are two obvious ways in which this story could end, each equally as ironic. 1) He kills his former self and is happily reunited with his wife, but after spending one perfect day together the time paradox begins to kick in and he vanishes into oblivion. 2) He kills his former self, but his wife recognizes that he is not the man he used to be. Because of what he’s been through and what he’s done, he’s changed, and his wife can see it in his eyes. She leaves him again.

5. Future Tense

Fearing the extinction of humanity is on the horizon, a large group of humans travel into Earths distant future to avoid the catastrophe. They arrive in a time in which the Earth has recovered from the disaster, and in which all traces of human civilization have disappeared. Many animal species have evolved beyond recognition. In this new wilderness, they attempt to build a home.

Knowing that the end of human civilization is near, people are desperate to travel to the future colony. With a limited number of places available, people fight for the last remaining passes. Eventually, the future colony finds itself with too many mouths to feed.

6. Past Participants

With the destruction of Earth imminent, humanity begins colonizing the distant past. The colonization effort slowly begins to interfere with the timeline. Each group of colonists that arrives from the future has experienced a different version of history, with increasingly interesting results.

One group of time travel colonists is from a fascist timeline in which the Nazis won the Second World War, and they try to take over the colony. Another group reports having found the remains of the colony during a future archaeological dig, indicating that the colonization effort will eventually fail.

7. Populating Zion

A team of scientists rescue Jews from Nazi extermination camps by transporting them forward in time just before the moment of their deaths. Nazis are confounded when they open the doors to gas chambers and find that their victims have mysteriously vanished. In the future, thousands of rescued Jews struggle to understand what has happened to them, and they begin to hail the lead scientist as their Messiah.

8. Time Me Up, Time Me Down

After inventing a time machine, a scientist travels into his own future where he meets his beautiful future wife. Back in his own time, he meets his future wife for the first time (for her at least), but she isn’t interested in him. He tries his hardest to impress her but fails. How can this be when they are meant to be together?

Determined to win her heart, he travels back to their first meeting over and over again, trying something different each time. He even visits her past in an attempt to learn more about her, but nothing works. Becoming increasingly obsessed, he eventually resorts to kidnapping her. He takes her forward in time to show her their future life, but his actions have drastically changed the timeline.

9. Final Interview

A time travel agency sends a man to interview famous historic figures just hours before they die. The interviews are not only important to historians, they have also become a form of popular entertainment. After interviewing countless historic figures over a long and distinguished career, our protagonist has become something of a celebrity himself. One day, a younger man arrives at his home insisting that he be allowed to interview the protagonist. The protagonist realizes that the younger man is his future replacement, and that he himself is soon to die.

(Thanks to  Jorgen Lundman for this idea, the full version of which can be read here )

10. Jesus vs The Time Police

The technology needed for time travel exists, but it has been outlawed by most of the world’s governments. A special police unit or federal agency uses specialist equipment to track down illegal time travelers and prevent them from damaging the timeline.

Some of the time travelers are attempting to alter their own past for personal gain, others are rich tourists seeking a thrilling but illegal encounter with the past. One day, however, they track down a time traveler who has managed to evade them for several years. He has been living in the past for all this time, and he claims to have become an important historical figure. Doing a little research, they determine his claims to be true. The time traveler has had a profound effect on the timeline, and undoing his actions might have profoundly negative consequences. He has written himself into history – a history that the time-police have always accepted to be true.

The illegal time traveler might be a famous general, monarch, or president. He might even be a religious figure, such as Jesus (as such, he may not have had an entirely positive effect on history, but a profound one nonetheless). If the illegal time-traveler is Jesus, might his ascension to heaven actually be his forced return to his own time, staged by the time-police?The time-police are faced with a dilemma – set the timeline straight and undo his actions without knowing what the result might be, or allow him to continue living in the past.

This article was written by Mark Ball . With thanks to Jorgen Lundman.

Use our Random Story Idea Generator for inspiration for more stories.

Booklist Queen

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37 Mind-Bending Time Travel Books

Jump into the best time travel books and discover the mind-bending scenarios only possible in the best time travel fiction.

The other night at dinner, I was asking my kids whether they would like to travel to the past or the future. The myriad replies included visiting the dinosaurs and flying in a spaceship across the galaxy.

The linear nature of our lives means that we can only imagine a different way of experiencing time. The best time travel books use this impossibility to create mind-bending scenarios for us to contemplate.

Today, I wanted to share with you some of my favorite time travel books, along with a whole slew of intriguing books with time travel to fire up your imagination.

Have fun exploring the twisty what-if scenarios in these time traveling books and let me know your favorites in the comments!

Don’t Miss a Thing

Best Time Travel Books

The Time Traveler’s Wife

Audrey niffenegger.

When you think of the best books about time travel, Audrey Niffenegger’s debut novel comes to mind. In this classic love story, art student Clare and librarian Henry try for a sense of normalcy as Henry time shifts through their life. Henry has Chrono-Displacement Disorder; he unexpectedly gets pulled to important emotional moments in his past and future life. A mind-bending romance that is a must-read for any fan of time travel books.

Publication Date: 2003 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

Stephen King

Stephen King seems to write amazingly in every genre, and time travel fiction is no different. In 11/22/63 , English teacher Jake Epping discovers that this friend Al has a portal in his diner storeroom that leads back to 1958. As Jake emerges into the past, he starts by trying to change the life of one of his students and eventually concocts a plan to prevent President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. But playing with time always has unintended consequences.

Publication Date: 8 November 2011 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

Diana Gabaldon

One of the ultimate time travel romance books, Gabaldon’s Outlander series creates a sweeping love triangle. Recently returned from serving as a WWII nurse, Claire Randall decides to take a second honeymoon with her husband. When she steps through a standing stone in the British Isles, she finds herself transported back to 1743 in war-torn Scotland. As Claire allies with the great warrior James Fraser, she must decide between the love of two completely men in two completely different times.

Publication Date: 1 June 1991 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

Blake Crouch

America has fallen victim to False Memory Syndrome – a disease where victims are driven mad by memories of a life they never lived … or have they? It’s up to NYPD cop Barry Sutton and neuroscientist Helena Smith to figure out how to stop this epidemic, even as reality is shifting all around them. You’ll have a hard time putting this one down, so you’ll certainly want to pick up a copy before the film adaptation hits Netflix.

Publication Date: 11 June 2019 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

Stuart turton.

On the 19th anniversary of their son’s murder, Lord and Lady Hardcastle throw a party with the same guests as that fateful day long ago. At 11 pm, Evelyn Hardcastle is murdered. In a Groundhog Day -esque fashion, Aidan Bishop must relive this day 8 times, but from the perspective of eight different witnesses. His task: identify Evelyn’s murderer, or do it all over again. Evelyn Hardcastle will throw you into a brilliant game of Clue as you see the same events from multiple viewpoints. Just ignore the why this happening and jump right into the mystery come to life, with plenty of fun twists and turns along the way.

Publication Date: 8 February 2018 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

Save for Later

Recent Books on Time Travel

Wrong Place Wrong Time

Gillian mcallister.

Just after midnight, Jen is watching out the window for her teenage son Todd to come home when she sees him murder an older man right outside their house. With her son in custody, Jen goes to be in despair but wakes to find the day starting all over again. Caught in a time loop, Jen must find out the impetus for the murder and try anything she can to stop it.

Publication Date: 2 August 2022 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

One Italian Summer

Rebecca serle.

One Italian Summer is a time travel novel about grieving and understanding a parent. When her mother dies just before their planned mother-daughter trip to Italy, Katy decides to still spend the summer exploring the Amalfi coast as she grieves. Magically, Katy meets a younger version of her mother, giving Katy a whole new perspective on her mother as a person.

Publication Date: 1 March 2022 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

This Time Tomorrow

Emma straub.

On the eve of her 40th birthday, Alice feels satisfied with everything in her life except her distant relationship with her father. When she wakes up the next day, she finds she has been transported back in the past to her 16-year-old self. Now with the eyes of an adult, Alice sees it as an opportunity to connect with her father and correct past mistakes.

Publication Date: 17 May 2022 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

One Last Stop

Casey mcquiston.

One of the most anticipated time travel books of 2021 comes from the author of Red, White & Royal Blue . Cynical August doesn’t believe life will ever change until she develops a crush on a girl from her subway commute. Jane is perfect and the highlight of August’s every day. But when August and Jane finally meet, August realizes that somehow Jane actually lives in the 1970s. A time-defying romance perfect for your summer reading list.

Publication Date: 1 June 2021 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

Faye, Faraway

Helen fisher.

Faye is a happily married mother of two who still feels the ache of the loss of her mother as a child. When she suddenly finds herself transported back in time, she has the opportunity to befriend her mother. Faye, Faraway is a slow heartfelt debut novel that spends most of the story contemplating the psychology of time travel, faith, and the relationship between parents and children.

Publication Date: 26 January 2021 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

Time Travel Books for Your Reading List

The Midnight Library

In the Midnight Library, there are two books – one book for the life you’ve lived and one for the one you could have lived. After attempting suicide, Nora Seed finds herself there. Now she must decide which book to choose from. What if she had made different choices? Would her life have been any better? All of us have regrets, and by allowing Nora the possibility to redo her life, Haig does a brilliant job showing how we can never predict the outcomes of our choices. A thoroughly enjoyable read that intimately talks about the pain depression and second-guessing has on our life.

Publication Date: 29 September 2020 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

In Five Years

Dannie Cohan knows exactly where she’ll be in five years – until the night of her engagement. In her post-engagement bliss, she has a vision of herself in five years engaged to someone else. She doesn’t think much of it, until years later when she finds he is dating her best friend. While the premise sounds light-hearted, partway through the story, beach read goes out the window and thought-provoking steps in. You’ll feel compelled to know if the vision came true and surprised at how well Serle counters your expectations.

Publication Date: 10 March 2020 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

Rainbow Rowell

Sitcom writer Georgie McCool knows her marriage is struggling, but she can’t pass up the chance to pitch the pilot show she’s been dreaming about for years, even if it means missing Christmas. While he’s away, she finds that calling Neal on the landline results in her talking to a younger version of her husband in the days just before he proposed. With the time-traveling communication messing with her head, Georgie recalls her courtship with Neal and ponders what to do about her marriage.

Publication Date: 8 July 2014 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

Oona Out of Order

Margarita montimore.

On New Year’s Eve in 1982, Oona Lockhart is faced with a life-changing decision: travel abroad to continue her studies in London or pursue fame as a member of her boyfriend’s rock band. As the clock strikes midnight and Oona turns 19, she faints and wakes up as a fifty-year-old. Thus begins the mixed-up time travel life of Oona, where every year she gets to randomly experience her life at different stages. One of the best recent books with time travel, Oona Out of Order explores if we can change our destiny while having fun highlighting the differences between decades.

Publication Date: 25 February 2020 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

In a Holidaze

Christina lauren.

With her love life in shatters, Maelyn Jones is devastated to find this will be her last Christmas spent with her family at the snowy Utah cabin. As she drives away, a car crash sends her into a time loop to relive the same Christmas vacation over and over again. Now she must figure out how to end the time loop so she can live happily ever after. A lighthearted romance with a Groundhog Day premise perfect for your holiday reading list.

Publication Date: 6 October 2020 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

Classics Books on Time Travel

Octavia E. Butler

In 1976, Dana, a young African-American writer, finds herself inexplicably sent back through time to a pre-Civil War plantation in Maryland. After saving a drowning white boy, she finds herself back in Los Angeles. Over and over, Dana finds herself returning to the plantation, which she realizes is where her ancestors lived. As her stays in the past become longer, Dana becomes entangled in the plantation and is forced to make harder and harder choices to survive. Octavia Butler’s genre-bending novel is a must-read among time travel books.

Publication Date: June 1979 Amazon | Goodreads

The Time Machine

H. g. wells.

In this classic story which pioneered time travel fiction and coined the word “time machine,” the time traveler pulls a lever and transports himself 800,000 years in the future. On a dying Earth, he meets two strange races – the innocent childlike Eloi and the Morlocks, brutal underground dwellers. Highlighting class conflict, The Time Machine warns against the assumption of the inevitable progress of mankind.

Publication Date: 1895 Amazon | Goodreads

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

After being hit over the hit, Hank Morgan wakes up to find himself miraculously in King Arthur’s Camelot. The nineteenth-century mechanic sets out to modernize the medieval era with electricity and gunfire, quickly creating chaos. Mark Twain’s imaginative satire sharply criticizes his contemporary culture, with interesting parallels to our world today. 

Publication Date: 1889 Amazon | Goodreads

Slaughterhouse-Five

Kurt vonnegut.

How to describe Slaughterhouse-Five? In this postmodern anti-war science fiction World War II novel, the unreliable narrator tells the tale of Billy Pilgrim, a time-traveling man being held in an alien zoo. Through flashbacks, we relive Billy’s capture during the Battle of the Bulge, life as a POW working in a slaughterhouse (Slaughterhous #5) during the Dresden firebombing, and his subsequent life after the war. If you can get past Vonnegut’s strange style, his discussion of fate, free will, and death earn it its place among the best classic time travel books. For, “so it goes.”

Publication Date: 31 March 1969 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

The End of Eternity

Isaac asimov.

Andrew Harlan is an Eternal, tasked with sifting through past and present centuries to monitor progress and, when necessary, changing things to ensure things play out how his organization wishes. When Andrew falls in love with a non-eternal, he must decide where his loyalties lie and at what cost his happily ever after ending is worth.

Publication Date: 1955 Amazon | Goodreads

Interesting Time Travel Novels

This Is How You Lose the Time War

Amal el-mohtar and max gladstone.

If you love more literary books on time travel, you’ll want to pick up this award-winning novella. In a world devastated by war for generations, two rival agents, known simply as Red and Blue, are tasked with securing the best possible outcome for her side. When an unlikely correspondence sparks between them, their romantic bond threatens to change both the past and the future.

Publication Date: 16 July 2019 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

Night Watch

Terry pratchett.

As policeman Sam Vimes chases notorious serial killer Carcer, they are both caught up in a magical storm. Unexpectedly finding themselves in the past, Carcer ends up killer Vimes’s mentor John Keel. Now on the eve of Revolution, Vimes must impersonate Keel and act as the mentor to his younger self while trying to capture the killer without ruining the timeline. Although the 29th book in the Disc World series, Night Watch can be read as a standalone novel.

Publication Date: 2002 Amazon | Goodreads

Sea of Tranquility

Emily st. john mandel.

In 1912, a young man hears a violin playing in the Canadian woods, an event that a videographer captures in the present day. Two hundred years later, a famous writer includes a similar haunting scene in one of her books. Decades later, Gaspery-Jacques Roberts is hired to investigate this anomaly in time, one that has the potential to disrupt the universe’s timeline.

Publication Date: 5 April 2022 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

The Dream Daughter

Diane chamberlain.

In 1970, Caroline Sears is devastated to learn her newborn daughter has a heart defect that cannot be cured. Except, her brother-in-law declares there is a cure. Hunter claims to be a time traveler from the future who promises that if she jumps to 2001, she can have fetal heart surgery and save her baby. Now Carly must decide what she believes and whether she should take a leap of faith.

Publication Date: 2 October 2018 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

The Accidental Time Machine

Joe haldeman.

After dropping out of grad school, Matt Fuller finds himself in a dead-end job working as a research assistant at MIT. When he accidentally creates a time machine while studying gravity and electromagnetic forces, Matt assumes he has nothing to lose by taking a jump in time. Every time each jumps, he travels further into the future, getting tangled into more and more complicated situations and hoping that with one more jump he can return to his present.

Publication Date: 2007 Amazon | Goodreads

Michael Crichton

In France, an archaeology professor leads a group of graduate students researching two fourteenth-century towns. When Professor Johnston flies back to America to handle their shady sponsors, the students begin to unearth his modern-day possessions buried in the ruins at the dig site. Quickly they are whisked away to a secret site and told that they must travel back to the time of knights if they are to save their professor.

Publication Date: 16 November 1999 Amazon | Goodreads

Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict

Laurie viera rigler.

A Jane Austen-obsessed woman wakes up one day to find herself back in Regency England. Now Courtney must pretend to be the Miss Jane Mansfield whose life she seems to be inhabiting. All while dealing with the inconveniences of the nineteenth century and handling chaperones, seducers, and unwanted marriage proposals. When she meets the enigmatic Mr. Edgeworth, Courtney is flooded with Jane’s memories of him and wonders if Jane might have judged him wrongly.

Books About Parallel Universes

Dark Matter

I know parallel universe stories aren’t quite the same as time travel, but they are so irresistibly fun I couldn’t help but highlight a few. Walking home one night, Jason Dessen is kidnapped and forced into an alternate reality. He’s been thrust into the multiverse, a world where instead of marrying his wife when she got pregnant with their child, he single-mindedly persevered on with his research. Although the middle was a bit slow, Crouch’s premise will boggle your mind and the story concludes with a thrilling finale.

Publication Date: 26 July 2016 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

The Two Lives of Lydia Bird

Josie silver.

After the death of her fiance, Lydia is struggling to cope. Thanks to an experimental sleeping pill, she gets a chance to live the life she would have had with her fiance in her dreams. However, living in her dream life is messing with her waking life. Which life should she choose? Silver does an excellent job showing how much grief has changed Lydia and how dangerous it is to interfere with the grief process.

Publication Date: 3 March 2020 Amazon | Goodreads | More Info

Haruki Murakami

If you are craving something a bit different, you might want to try this mind-bending work from famed Japanese author Haruki Murakami. In 1984, Aomame notices strange discrepancies and finds she has entered a parallel version of her life, 1Q84. Quickly caught up in a religious cult, Aomame wonders what is truly real. Meanwhile, ghostwriter Tengo accepts an assignment to rewrite a book, a decision that changes his whole life and leads him closer to Aomame.

Publication Date: 29 May 2009 Amazon | Goodreads

Dean Koontz

After his wife Michelle left years ago, Jeffy Coltrane has tried his best to make a good life for him and his seven-year-old daughter, Amity. One day, the local eccentric leaves a mysterious device at their house, warning them they must never use it. Once Jeffy and Amity realize it allows you to travel between parallel universes, they question what life would have been like if Michelle hadn’t left. But other people are after the device, wanting to use it for their own nefarious purposes.

Publication Date: 6 October 2020 Amazon | Goodreads

Again Again

E. lockhart.

While recovering from a devastating breakup and dealing with her brother’s opioid addiction, Adelaide Buchwald is spending her summer as a dog walker. When Adelaide meets a cute new boy, you get to see all the possibilities of how her life could unfold that summer – what was versus what might have been. 

Publication Date: 2 June 2020 Amazon | Goodreads

Time Travel Books for Kids and Teens

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

Ransom riggs.

One of the most popular time travel books for teens is Ransom Riggs’s unique young adult series that mixes vintage photography with fantastical storytelling. Jacob never quite believed his grandfather’s outlandish tales of a magical orphanage. When Jacob starts having nightmares about the stories, his parents send him to the remote island in Wales to show him that there is nothing to fear. Instead, he meets a collection of peculiar and potentially dangerous children caught in a time loop.

Publication Date: 7 June 2011 Amazon | Goodreads

Kerstin Gier

Although sixteen-year-old Gwen’s family is quite eccentric, she has been able to live a normal life as a London teenager. Until she finds out that the time-traveling gene which runs in her family didn’t skip over her as everyone thought. Not having been inducted into the mysteries of time travel, Gwen is unprepared for the unexpected jumps into the past and must rely on her time-traveling counterpart Gideon, a stunningly gorgeous and insufferable know-it-all teenage boy.

Publication Date: 2009 Amazon | Goodreads

Before I Fall

Lauren oliver.

Another popular choice among YA time travel books is Lauren Oliver’s story of a popular high schooler caught in a time loop. At Samantha Kingston’s high school, February 12th is “Cupid Day,” a day of valentines and roses and a big party. At the end of the night, Samantha dies in a terrible accident, only to wake up the next day to relive it all over again. As Samantha learns that small changes can make dramatic differences, she is forced to finally give serious thought to her actions.

Publication Date: 14 February 2010 Amazon | Goodreads

The Time Travelers

Linda buckley-archer.

Originally published as Gideon the Cutpurse , Linda Buckley-Archer’s time travelers series follows Peter Schock and Kate Dyer. After a brush with an antigravity machine, they find themselves back in 1763. There the two children meet ally with Gideon, a local street urchin, to get back the machine from Gideon’s nemesis, the evil Tar Man.

Publication Date: 5 June 2006 Amazon | Goodreads

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

J. k. rowling.

How can I end a list of time travel novels without the Harry Potter time travel book? And no, I don’t mean the poorly written sequel Harry Potter and the Cursed Child . In his third year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Harry Potter’s life is seriously curtailed as the infamous killer Sirius Black is on the loose and bent on killing our favorite boy wizard.

Publication Date: 8 July 1999 Amazon | Goodreads

What are Your Favorite Time Travel Books

What do you think? Would you want to jump to the future or visit the past? What time travel novels am I missing from my list? As always, let me know in the comments!

More Science Fiction and Fantasy Reading Lists:

• 40 Standalone Fantasy Books When You’re Tired of Series
• 31 Creative Historical Fantasy Books
• 42 Imaginative Fantasy YA Books to Dive Into
• 25 Dystopian Books for Teens to Read
• 23 Startling Climate Fiction Novels
• The Best Science Fiction Books to Discover the Genre
• The Greatest Classic Science Fiction Short Stories

Recommended

Reader Interactions

Fatheya says

April 13, 2021 at 3:27 pm

Thank you for this excellent list, Rachael. I’m a very big fan of time travel books. I’ve read several of these books and several others are on my TBR. There’s one book I would recommend adding to the list: A Knight in Shining Armor by Jude Devereaux. It’s a lovely time travel romance.

April 14, 2021 at 12:48 pm

Wow! I love this list. Thanks so much!

I am a huge fan of Outlander. I’ve read them all and Diana has finished book 9!!!! Publication date still pending, but cannot wait for more Jamie and Claire. The combo of accurate historical info and time travel and LOVE is irresistible. Gabaldon is an excellent writer.

Amazingly, I was not immediately sucked into the first book. I think I ran across it on a list of Romances. I picked it up from the library and did not finish it. Then the t.v. series came out and the first season was so well done, I was hooked. I went back to the book and actually watched and read in unison. I generally feel books are better than the television or movie versions, but in this case I used the books to dive deeper into these wonderful stories. The later seasons of the show are great too, but sometimes the omissions and switch ups in the stories can bug me. Why mess with a good thing. I bet they bug Diana Gabaldon too.

I know this will be very unpopular, but I did not like The Midnight Library. I liked the premise, but frankly did not think the book was all it was hyped up to be.

I’ve seen the Lydia Bird title and had not realized it was time travel related. So that will be a TBR for me! Also Faye, Faraway sounds good.

I am going to give my age away, but I was enthralled with the movie version of The Time Machine as a kid. The main actor was the very handsome Rod Taylor. I actually have it recorded on my DVR. It was on Movies! channel. Not sure how closely it follows H.G. Wells original. It has the scary Morlocks in it. I loved a good scare as a child. I was born the year this came out, but remember loving to watch when it was on television.

I think going back in time was always the draw for me as a child. I love history.

MamaNewtNewt says

July 24, 2021 at 3:13 pm

The Chronicles of St Mary’s series by Jodi Taylor us brilliant and there are so many of them.

August 17, 2021 at 8:29 pm

Thank you so much for your list, Rachael. I would add The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. It is 600 pages long, but I still read it in one sitting!

John Abraham says

March 31, 2022 at 8:19 am

I would recommend a book titled ‘Threads of Time by JP Harris’ aspects include actual accounts from individuals who may have slipped into other timelines or interdimensional locations..it also covers people who actually created devices as for example.In a terraced house in Bath, Somerset, UK, a retired watchmaker created a healing device that also had the additional capability of being used as a time machine.

Kimberly Van Ginkel

Author and avid reader. I love sharing interesting research and promoting other authors.

9 Rules for Writing Time Travel

I’m a sucker for time travel stories. I’ll read any book or short story, watch any movie or TV show, if it has a time travel element. I can’t get enough.

As a connoisseur of the art form – and as a novelist myself – I’ve developed these story-building tips for writing time travel

1. Give us the Shock & Awe

Writers are always told to start each story in media res , so it’s tempting to skip over the typical set-up scenes. With a time travel story, however, it’s best to introduce us to the characters before learn that time manipulation is possible. Why? Because if we watch them travel for the first time, we get to experience it with them.

Sure, we’ve seen hundred variations of this already, where the character who knows time travel doesn’t exist gradually comes to accept that it is real. It may be hard to find a fresh take. On the other hand, mastering the 4th dimension is a mind-blowing concept, so it ought to take a while to process.

The original draft of Groundhog’s Day opened with Phil Connors already trapped in his loop of repeating days. Had they filmed that version, we’d have been robbed of all the great build-up scenes where the tiny details of Phil’s day start to build, hinting at him that something is very, very wrong.

We’d have skipped past the catalyst of the story and the audience would be struggling to keep up.

Picture Marty McFly walking through 1955’s Hill Valley for the first time in Back to the Future . He has already been told that Doc invented time travel. The writers might have had him immediately accept that fact and jump straight toward some decisive action to change his predicament. Instead, they allowed him a little time for confusion, a period of denial, which also gave us time to look around with him and spot the changes in the town. With every new person or building he sees, we feel his sense of awe growing, taking in the enormity of where he is and what has happened to him. These few moments immerse us in the world with him.

It’s worth mentioning that in Palm Springs , Nyles has been repeating this day for years, but this works because we, the audience, get to watch the other main character, Sarah, enter the time loop for the first time.

This is the magic of a time travel story. Think of it as your “Dorothy opens the door to Oz” moment. Don’t rush it. This is often the most captivating scene of any time travel story.

2. Pick Your Method

Every time travel story has to have something that functions as the device, portal, or catalyst to time travel.

In H.G. Well’s The Time Machine , it was a literal machine that the hero climbed into, and that set the standard for decades of time travel stories. Poul Anderson’s Time Patrol stories employ hover-motorcycles that can jump through time. Doc Brown used a Delorean. Time Travelling with a Hamster (a very funny middle-grade book) uses a metal washtub wired to an old Mac computer.

Just like the wardrobe leading to Narnia, portals are a specific location that allows you to pass between times. In Stephen King’s 11.22.63 the portal is simply a staircase that they refer to as “the rabbit hole.” Star Trek TNG often utilizes worm holes for its time jumps.

Sometimes there is nothing mechanical involved, nothing that would give our characters any control of their destination. Any number of stories involve a character getting a concussion or struck on the head and waking up in another time. In The Time-Traveller’s Wife , Henry has a chromosome disorder that randomly catapults him through time; before each occurrence, he can feel the sensation of an impending jump.

3. Anything goes, as long as you explain it.

The important thing is to show the audience what your method looks like so that we know what to watch for during the story. Even if the character doesn’t know what caused it, if we witnessed him falling asleep and waking up in a different time, we have a framework for the story. We don’t know how the person will get home, but we realize something similar will have to happen to return them to their own time.

No matter what means you use to allow your characters to time travel, the important thing is to show the audience how it happened – at least, as much as your characters know – then give us the rules that govern it .

Doc Brown explains how to set the target date, load the plutonium, and get the car going 88 mph to trigger the time jump. When we see Marty doing exactly those steps a few minutes later, we know before he does that he’s about to travel to 1955. It also sets up the rules for bringing him back home.

In The Edge of Tomorrow , we learn that it’s the blood of the “Alphas” that allows the hero to loop through time. Therefore, if he gets a blood transfusion he will lose the ability. Until then, every time he dies the day resets. All of this is explained to him in the first act of the story, and is repeated again so the audience knows the rules and the way to end it.

It’s OK to keep the explanation brief, and even to leave out critical information, if that’s what your plot requires. But when you skip the explanation altogether, you’ll leave your audience wondering. You don’t want them to be distracted throughout the story, looking for clues that you haven’t dropped, as they try to understand how the hero is going to get back home.

4. Create Your Own Rules

Can the characters change the past? If so, can they make changes to their own future? How does the cause/effect work? There are a million permutations to this, and the most wondrous thing about his genre is that since time travel doesn’t really exist, your logic can never be wrong . How freeing is that?

The only thing your audience will expect is that you stay consistent with whatever version of time travel you set up initially.

Some of the most common time travel tropes are:

• “I know what I’m doing.” – the time-traveller knows both the original time line and the new version because he is immune to the effects of the change – see Jodi Taylor’s Chonicles of St. Mary’s series.
• “I used to know what was going on.” – as soon as the hero interacts with the time line, he is changing the past, including his own memories – see Looper , Quantum Leap (Sam and Al’s memories of events differ after a major change, as Sam is remembering only the original time line. For example: Watergate.)
• “There is no cause and effect.” – anything the traveller does are events that always existed. The past changes him as he changes the past, so there are no alternate time lines. – See The Time-Traveller’s Wife .
• “Nothing is able to change.” – the time-traveller is forbidden from making changes (not just a rule, but a law of physics) so they are viewing the past only. Alternately, they can make only minor changes that have no lasting effects. – See To Say Nothing of the Dog .
• “I’m only looking” – our heroes cannot move through time, but they can send technology that allows them to see the future or past – See Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus .
• “Time corrects itself.” – attempts at major changes are thwarted as the universe finds its own ways of staying on track. – See Night Watch (Sam’s mentor is killed when he visits the past and he is forced to take the man’s place, thereby making himself a major influence in his own young life.)
• “Everything changes.” – any large-scale disruptions in the time stream will completely disrupt everything “downstream” from that event. See Anderson’s Time Patrol series (These time cops base their operations a million years B.C. so that if anything upsets the time stream, their patrol can still exist to fix it.)

Know which type of story you are writing and stay true to the cause/effect rules you have created.

If your character goes back in time, confident that the past cannot be changed, then kills his own grandfather and blinks himself out of existence, both you and the audience are now in quite a pickle. This character who no longer exists was never there to kill the grandpa. Oops. You’ve introduced a paradox that is going to hurt everyone’s brain unless you have an amazing trick up your sleeve to get us out of it.

Paradoxes suck for everyone. Give your readers an expected structure and then stick to it so that we’re not left arguing with the screen that, “that makes no sense!”

5. Or Give Yourself an “Out” to Break the Rules

Because it’s difficult to write time travel without flirting with paradoxes, some writers give themselves a work-around — a way of breaking their own rules in a way that feels as though it’s still consistent.

You can cheat.

Avengers: Endgame is a brilliant movie. It’s so good, in fact, that it gets a pass on blatantly breaking its own rules about time travel constraints. The Hulk gives a short lecture explaining why they can’t change the past, they then go on to twist time in ways that make no sense against the structure of time travel in this movie (remember the scene where AntMan is turned into a baby, then an old man, then himself again in what appears to be seconds for him?). But all these discrepancies get glossed over by explaining that the Quantum Realm is mysterious. Ah, Quantum Realm, the magical spackle for filling in plot holes.

You can play dumb.

Ever notice how the main character in these stories is rarely ever the brilliant scientist who developed time travel? Not only is it easier to relate to an everyman character, it saves us all from having to understand the science. You can have your extremely smart person introduce it and explain the rules, then let your hero accept it on faith without thoroughly understanding it.

I love this method because it gives you, the author, the freedom to include as much or as little science as you want to. Gloss over as much as you want to and have the scientist say, “Just push this button” and you can forge ahead with your plot. It’s enough for the audience to know that someone in this world understands it all.

You can yell “Hey, look over there!”

One of my favorite “nevermind my rules” moments is from Grand Tour: A Disaster in Time . Our hero, Ben, has jumped through time to break himself out of prison. The viewer immediately has to wonder how the universe will reconcile this, as Ben has now changed his past and there are suddenly two of him living in town. The writer must have felt trapped in a corner as well, because he threw in this beautiful bit of dialogue:

Original Ben: “How can we both be in the same place at the same time?”

Time-Travelling Ben: “(Forget) the physics, Ben! By the time you figure out whether it’s possible or not, we’re gonna be dead. Twice!”

Easy as that! The paradox doesn’t really matter because we’re now diving back into the action.

Which brings me to:

6. Keep the Clock Ticking

When you have time at your command, why panic, right? Why rush anything?

Because stories need tension. And a great way to add tension is to give your hero a ticking clock. As the wise Rufus once said (in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure ), “No matter what you do, no matter where you go … the clock in San Dimas is always running.” They had only 24 hours to get to their history exam, despite being able to hop through time.

A less silly example is King’s 11.22.63 , where his time portal leads him to the year 1958. In order to prevent the JFK assassination, Jake must spend 5 years in the past. Because of that time commitment, the idea of doing it more than once becomes nearly impossible. Thus, in the countdown to November 22nd, his time is as short as everyone else’s. The time portal can’t help him anymore. And the tension is every bit as high as if he had never discovered time travel.

7. Flip the Script to Make it Difficult

We are rooting for people, not gods of time. It’s cool that they have this wonderful ability, but your story is more gripping if something happens to make them unable to use it. We want them to be able to suffer setbacks, something they can’t easily undo.

Perhaps there is something inherent in your rules of time travel that will constrain the hero. In the Time Patrol stories, one unbreakable rule is that a traveller can never visit the same time twice. So if they make a mistake, they can’t return to that same time to undo it. In About Time , Tim can travel at will to any day within his own lifetime. Just as he’s getting used to this ability, he discovers that changing anything that happened before his children were born will cause them not to exist.

Sudden reversals are even better. In Time Bandits , our heroes have a map of every time portal in world history … so, of course, they lose the map!

8. Choose a Global Background, Then Make it Personal

Give in to the temptation to choose huge moments in world history. Why not? That’s the lure of time travel — the great question of “Where would you visit if you could go anywhere at any time?”

The birth of Christ? The signing of the Declaration of Independence? Woodstock? Pompeii? The assassination of Lincoln? The birth of Rock & Roll?

The history books are open to you. Pick something awesome.

But here’s the thing – as cool as all of those are, the best time travel books are the ones that focus on people . The bigger your background event, the more important it is to show it through the eyes of the people living there.

Connie Willis set The Doomsday Book in the middle of the Black Plague. Instead of showing the cities, she sent her hero to live with a small family out in the safety (uh-oh) of the country. She also created a 2-book series, Blackout and All Clear , set during the blitzkreig of London. Her plucky historians mix with civilians and military personnel, forging relationships that make us care about the fate of those individuals.

King’s 11.22.63 is ostensibly about the JFK assassination, but the characters our hero meets along the way are so wonderful that, to be honest, I wanted the hero to give up on trying to save Kennedy and settle into his fake life in the ’60s.

Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series stretches from the Jacobite Uprising in Scotland through the American Revolution. We see wonderful scenery, experience famous events, and encounter great figures from history. But no one reads those books just for the historical details. The heart of that story is the romance of Claire and Jamie.

Remember that time-travel is a means of telling your story, not the entire story itself. Make your characters matter .

9. Be Unique

Time travel has been the source of some of the most creative sci-fi works ever made. Keep twisting it to create your own rules and your own wonderful stories.

Remember that it does not have to be linear time travel. Though most of the stories I’ve mentioned involve a person being displaced from his own time, there are other permutations to explore.

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe involved a bubble existing outside of space-time so that elite diners could watch the death of the universe while enjoying cocktails.

Groundhog’s Day introduced such a charming notion of 24-hour time loops that it created a whole sub-genre, including the comedic horror film Happy Death Day .

And The Girl, The Gold Watch, and Everything allows its main character to stretch time, living an entire hour in the space between seconds. This gives him the superpower of incredible speed, as viewed by other people. Since we’re living in the time gaps with him, it makes for an intriguing notion of time travel.

One last thought … if you are looking for inspiration for a new type of time travel story, I recommend the book Einstein’s Dreams , a quick read with beautiful vignettes that illustrate different time theories.

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11 thoughts on “ 9 rules for writing time travel ”.

Hi. Releif. Im trying to be Mr. Spock as it pertains to my time travel rules. Doubably difficult for me as the ‘ Brain’ of the bunch needs to spew out some plausabile sounding techno babble. I need to be acurate too as Im postulating relativity theory. I think though I have a device to get arround that. And what doesnt fit, fits a quantum paradigm Im saving ( if I ever get to the writing part) for book three. Im going to definitly not abuse the priveledge of the readers crudility.

When you’re done, make sure to post a link here so we can all read it.

Thanks for a great article. Just starting to write my first time travel novel.

Like Liked by 1 person

Thank you, this was a great article! I’m planning to write a time travel story for NaNoWriMo.

Best of luck! NaNo is a wonderful challenge.

Wow, love the article Kimberly. Really glad that in addition to covering the different models of time travel and making sure the character story is more important than the time travel aspect — you gave great tips on how to get yourself out of a paradox. I tend to paint myself into a corner even when not writing about time travel. But those are some handy examples of how and why to break the rules, very freeing!! I wish I could go back in time and tell all this to my younger self. But then, I wouldn’t need to!!

Amazing article! It has helped me so much. Thank you!

This was a very helpful article. Thanks so much for posting it. I am trying to write a handful of time-travel short stories, keeping them under 5,000 words. I’m finding it difficult to develop the characters properly while operating in such a limited length.

I’m so glad you liked it. Let me know how you do with your stories. I have always had a harder time with short stories than with novels, myself.

Thanks so much! I will try to keep you updated. I learned a few lessons when I wrote my first and only (so far) book, “Nineteen for Lincoln”, which is a time travel novel set in Civil War Missouri, and then Tudor England. I did not market the book at all, even though it’s available on Amazon, B & N, etc. in print and Kindle. Sort of a shameless plug there, but I’m not looking to make money–I just love time travel. 🙂

I changed my name from “Anonymous” to DJoseph, by the way.

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Her debut novel, “ In the Sleep of Death ,” has been described as “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell” meets “The Ten Thousand Doors of January.”

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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+ .

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• Writing & Editing

80 Plot Twist Ideas and Examples for Writers

When it comes to writing a good story , it is important that you know how to surprise your readers at every turn. Remember that a story that is to predicable will come out a boring and too predictable. A great way to surprise your readers is to use plot twists.

What is a plot twist?

A plot twist is a literary technique that incorporates a radical change in the expected ending of a work of fiction. The plot twist is particularly important because it is meant to become a generator of shock for the reader. It is meant to act as a transition period for the story as well. So, if you want your writing to be as immersive as possible, you should know how to use plot twists in your writing . Here are six plot twist types and examples found in literature.

1. Red Herring

This type of plot twist is a misleading or false clue. It is one of the most widely used types of plot twists. They are usually used in mysteries, detective stories, and thrillers. When you use a red herring, your main intent is to mislead readers and have them follow a different trail.

Examples: 

• Arthur Conan Doyle’s Hound of The Baskervilles is a great example of a red herring. Throughout the whole case, the main suspect was the butler, because he exhibited the most obvious and suspicious behavior. However, as the story progresses, the main culprit is someone else. This is classic misdirection and a great use of the red herring plot twist.
• In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban , the main villain was considered to be Sirius Black, who was Harry’s godfather. He was considered to be the one who betrayed Harry’s parents to Voldemort. However, at the end of the book, readers are shocked to find out that the villain was Peter Pettigrew, another friend of Harry’s parents.
• In the Star Wars prequels, the main villain was often hidden, but there were villains such as Darth Maul or Darth Tyrannus who did most of the dirty work. However, the main villain was in fact Senator Palpatine, who was originally portrayed as a well-meaning politician and friend to the Jedi.
• The wildly popular Disney film Frozen  was able to employ Red Herrings very well. In the first part of the story, the foreign Prince Hans was the protagonist Anna’s love interest. However, in the latter part of the movie, Hans starts devolving from Prince Charming to a greedy usurper.

2. Chekhov's Gun

Chekhov’s gun is a plot twist that alludes to details within the story that will later add to the overall narrative. This compels writers to be responsible when writing scenes because these details will come back later in the story. The plot twist is named after Anton Chekhov, a nineteenth-century writer who wrote works such as Uncle Vanya and The Seagull .

Example: 

• In the movie Saving Private Ryan , one of the rangers in the platoon is given a Hitler Youth dagger by a comrade. He carries the dagger through subsequent battles. However, in the final battle, he is forced into a melee with a German soldier. While he tries to use the dagger against his enemy, the larger soldier manages to turn the knife on him instead.

3. Flashback

The literary device known as the flashback is also a potent plot twist. This is because the flashback uses memories to divulge specific and important details in the story. It is through the flashback that you will be able to execute a plot twist.

• In the all-time classic story A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, the protagonist, Ebenezer Scrooge, is visited by three spirits. One of the ghosts is known as the Ghost of Christmas Past. The ghost takes Scrooge on a journey to his past and shows him the events that led to his life of selfishness and obsession with money. This flashback is one of the many turning points in the story.
• This may count as a spoiler for some Harry Potter fans, but Severus Snape’s backstory is one of the best examples of a flashback showing a plot twist. Many readers detested Snape for his dark magic allegiance and killing Dumbledore. However, the flashbacks of his childhood friendship with Harry’s mom, Lily, totally changed the reader’s perceptions of Snape. Now he is one of the most beloved anti-heroes in literature.

4. Peripeteia

This ancient plot twist is derived from Greek tragedy plays and is technically the turning point of the story. This is typically applied to a character who is locked into a predetermined belief or destiny, only for a twist of fate to change the entire narrative of the story.

• The most iconic use of Peripetia is in the ancient story of Oedipus. In the Greek tragedy, Oedipus is a prince who is sent away to be killed by his father, the king. His father ordered his death, because there is a prophecy that Oedipus will kill his father and marry his mother. However, Oedipus manages to survive and is adopted by another king. The prince lives his life believing he is the biological son of the king who adopted him. Years later, he goes on a journey and gets into a very bad argument with his biological father. During the confrontation, he slays his father, and later on marries the king’s wife and becomes the king of the country. All is well and good, that is, until the details are finally revealed to him that he slew his father and married his own mother.

5. Deus ex machina

This is a literary device that comes in the form of a person or an event that comes out of the blue and provides a response to a difficult event. This was usually used in Greek and Roman dramas and is meant to represent as an act of God.

• The plot twist of Deus ex Machina in H.G. Well's War of the Worlds is a good example. Throughout the events of the story, the human race is being beaten by the Martian invaders. No weapon is capable of fighting off the aliens. The human race is at the point of defeat, and utter decimation is at hand. That is, until the aliens start to get sick and start to die. The Deus ex machine of the story is that the aliens did not count on the biological aspect of their invasion, and the earth fell to infections from the pathogens in the earth’s atmosphere. 
• In the ending of William Golding’s book, The Lord of the Flies , a deus ex machina was used. The story takes place on a deserted island where a group of students were marooned. The group is soon split in two. The main protagonist chooses to side with the more even-tempered and civilized group of boys. The other group soon descends into chaos, and they slowly murder the protagonist’s group of friends. At the end of the novel, the protagonist is hunted by the feral group. As they were about to catch him, he was rescued by a naval officer. This act of salvation is considered a deus ex machine moment.
• In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets , Harry is cornered by the Basilisk, a mythical giant snake. Harry has no way of fighting back until Fawkes the Phoenix arrives and hands him the sorting hat. The hat actually holds Godric Gryffindor’s sword, which allows Harry to fight the basilisk. This is often counted as a Deus Ex Machina ending.

6. Eucatastrophe

The eucatastrophe is a term that was coined by J.R.R.Tolkien and is a sudden turn of events at the end of the story. The event acts as a kind of safety net that stops the protagonist from meeting a terrible end.

• Seeing as J.R.R Tolkien was the one who coined the term, it is fitting to use his work as an example. In Tolkien’s much loved classic, The Hobbit , Bilbo Baggins, and the last survivors in the battle of five armies are surrounded by their enemies. Thorin has fallen in battle, and many men, elves, and dwarves have fallen to the goblins. All hope seems lost. That is until the timely arrival of Beorn and the eagles. With the shape-shifter and the giant bird’s help, the alliance of men, dwarves, and elves were able to triumph, and stop a disastrous event from happening.
• C.S Lewis was a close friend of J.R.R. Tolkien, and he also used Eucatastrophe in his Chronicle of Narnia books. This is especially evident in his final Narnia book, The Last Battle . When all the main characters were surrounded by their enemies, the Calormens, all seemed lost, until they all died and were transported to Aslan’s real world. This end was all destined to happen, and acts as a safety net for all the heroes in the story.

Plot Twist Ideas 

If you want to learn how to effectively use plot twists in your work, here are some general plot twist writing ideas that you could use. By using these ideas, you could add a sense of unpredictability to your writing.

1. The hero was working for the villain all along

This plot twist idea is to let the audience believe that the protagonist was aligned with a beneficent group, only for the group to turn out evil later on. The protagonist and the audience are usually blown away by this revelation. This discovery soon prompts the protagonist, to take the organization down from within.

• In The Incredibles , the main protagonist, Mr. Incredible, unknowingly works for his archenemy. He is a renowned superhero who is forced to retire from hero work. That is, until a secretive organization hires him to do hero work again. Little does he know that the head of the organization is an old enemy.
• The protagonist is working for a pharmaceutical company dedicated to curing a dangerous new disease. He later finds out that the disease was engineered by the company all along.

2. The protagonist was dead all along

The main concept of this plot twist, is to have the audience believe that the protagonist is a living, breathing person, only to be revealed later that he or she was dead all along.  

• The protagonist is tasked with capturing a killer who has killed multiple people. He conducts a manhunt for the killer, alongside a strange new partner. They soon catch the killer, but it is soon revealed to the protagonist that his partner is a psychic who can see dead people, and he himself is already dead. The protagonist was killed by the serial killer during an earlier tussle, and he is fulfilling unfinished business before he crosses over to the other side.
• In the hit psychological thriller The Sixth Sense , the protagonist, Malcolm Crow, was tasked with helping a young boy named Cole Sear. The boy is in distress because he saw a ghost. Later in the movie, it is revealed that Malcolm is actually a ghost as well.

3. Unexpected relations between characters

This is a favorite for many writers because it shocks the readers and also creates a new dynamic amongst the characters. 

• In Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back , the main protagonist, Luke Skywalker is fighting the main villain, Darth Vader. Luke is holding his own during the lightsaber duel. However, as the fight drags on, he is cornered and beaten. However, the villain does not finish him. Instead, he declares that he is actually Luke’s biological father. This is still one of the most shocking plot twists to this day.

4. The mentor is the protagonist’s future self

This plot twist entails you creating a mentor character who helps the protagonist throughout most of the events in the story. The mentor seems to know key aspects of the protagonist’s life. The mentor also seems to know the key traits of the protagonist’s family.

The audience is led to believe that the mentor is either a long-lost parent or an old family friend. Later on, the mentor is revealed to be the protagonist’s future self, who goes back in time to change key events in the past.

• The protagonist is faced with a moral dilemma. He just found a big bag of money, and he wonders whether to keep it or turn it over to the authorities. He decides to keep the money and live a life of luxury. An old man approaches him a few moments later. He seems to know the protagonist very well and cautions the protagonist not to keep the money. It is later revealed that the old man is in fact the protagonist’s future self, and he is trying to stop his younger self from going down a path of self-destruction.    

5. The shock value

This plot twist is all about shocking the audience in the most intense way possible. This means killing the main character in the first few chapters of the story, or having an unforeseen and unbelievable event come to pass. When it comes to shock value, the more abruptly the event happens, the better it will be. 

• The shock value plot twist is a constant in the Game of Thrones book series. Various main characters were killed off to shock readers. This is masterfully done, because George R.R. Martin writes very well-crafted and memorable characters.
• In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s iconic novel, The Great Gatsby , the main character, Jay Gatsby is murdered when he is just about to achieve his ultimate goal in life. This is shocking because he is such an enigmatic yet beloved character, and his swift death really caught readers by surprise.
• The story is set during the First World War. It follows a group of British soldiers who are sent in to retake a trench from the enemy. One character in particular is considerably more important than others in the story. He has the most connections to the other characters, and he seems to be the hero of the story. However, as the operation commences, he is abruptly torn to shreds by machine gun fire. This abrupt death would usually have the audience wondering who the real main character is.

6. Is this the real world?

The main intent of this plot twist is to have the audience wonder whether the events in the story are real or if it is all an illusion that the protagonist’s mind came up with.

• In the story of Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland , the protagonist Nemo is whisked off on an adventure wherein he is sent to Slumberland. A world ruled by Morpheus, the King of Slumberland. In Slumberland, he becomes a playmate to the princess, and in the course of the adventure, he saves Slumberland. However, throughout the whole story, the reader is made to wonder if the events are taking place in the real world or just in Nemo’s dreams.
• The protagonist is a 90-year old man who, in the last few moments of his life, is given the chance to go to an alternate world and live life as a young man again. He takes the chance and goes on many grand adventures and lives the life he has always wanted. He lives a full life in that alternate world and dies a happy man. At the end of the story, though, his consciousness is brought back to the start of the story. He is still a 90-year old man, on the verge of death. So the main question arises. Did he really go on that adventure? Or were they the last thoughts of a man on the verge of death?

Here are some more examples of plot twists that you could use to come up with your own plot-twist. These come in the form of short snippets, and act as more of a prompt, than a fully-fledged story. 

• The battle is won, and everyone is celebrating. Yet another enemy comes out of the blue.
• The case is solved, and the protagonist is celebrating with his friends. However, an object in his friend's clothing causes him to believe that the case is not over.
• The chef is just about to send out a new dish. However, a close friend of hers is sabotaging the food. What is this friend’s motive?
• Old rivals are marooned on an island, and the audience expects them to hate each other. They surprisingly became close friends.
• A man who has always believed and loved that he was Irish is found out to be British.
• A boy is constantly thwarted by a girl from his class. He feels that she hates him. However, the girl is in fact in love with him.
• A man who is constantly bullied by his roommates fights back and beats them. He is actually a former boxer.
• Your character takes part in an underground fighting competition. He expects the best fighter to be a massive and powerful man. He finds out the best fighter is a petite 18-year-old girl.
• A Roman senator is voting on an issue in the senate. His allies all voted against him. He is about to lose the vote. All of a sudden, his most bitter political rival takes up his cause.
• Miners are going out of a mine that they just recently dug up. All of a sudden, an explosion erupts and the entrance is blocked.
• A marathon is about to start. All of a sudden, a very heavy downpour starts.
• A normal office worker is walking home when, out of nowhere, an ancient relic appears in front of him.
• A boxer accidentally killed his opponent, and now he is charged with murder.
• The protagonist has been married to the woman of his dreams for years. It is a perfect marriage. That is, until a message from an unknown person threatens their perfect life together. 
• A rich woman has been living a very extravagant life until her ex-husband sues her for everything she owns. Now she has no house, no money, and no job experience.
• A bird comes out of nowhere and invites the protagonist on a trip to another world.
• The main characters are about to jump into the water, but the oldest and most courageous member of the group is hesitant. He does not know how to swim.
• The bully in the story is actually a coward and hides a deep love of animals.
• A middle-aged man is about to retire from his job, but his son got into a financial issue. Now he has to find a way to make a lot of money.
• The star player on a basketball team gets injured before their most important game. The team’s bench warmer is tasked with playing, and he shows incredible skills.
• A businessman who has put in 20 years of his life into a business just achieved success. However, this is short-lived because the country’s economy collapses, and this makes all forms of money irrelevant.
• The protagonist idolizes his father, who is a wealthy environmental lawyer. His beliefs are threatened when he finds out his father takes bribes from various companies.
• A rebel leader is about to lead a mass rebellion through various regions in his country. The night before the rebellion, he is betrayed and killed by his lover.
• A writer is given a chance to publish his work. However, the credit for his work is given to another writer.
• The main villain is defeated, and the main characters relax. However, one of the main characters is a double-agent, and he attacks the others.
• The main character believes that he is on another world, only to find out that he is an alternate version of Earth.
• A young girl moves to a new school, and she is befriended by a nice girl from a rich family. Things seem good at the start. However, her new friend seems to hide a sinister nature.
• A flashy young man shows up on the party scene and makes new friends. He seems rich and well-read. However, he is in fact a swindler who takes advantage of his new rich friends.
• The UN peace summit is going well, and the conflict between the two nations has been concluded. That is, until one of the sides fires a nuclear missile on its enemy.
• A young man is going to meet his best friend in a park. He is going to confess his feelings for her. However, he receives the sad news that she died from an accident earlier that year.
• The main protagonist is a superb athlete and will achieve his dream of competing in the Olympics the next day. These plans are thwarted when he slips on the bathroom floor, and breaks his leg.
• An old man has been saving up his life-savings to go on a trip around the world. The night before he departs, his house is burgled and his money is taken from him.
• A great warrior leaves for a quest and is given a newly forged sword by his wife. In the final battle, he uses the blade, and it breaks. His wife purposefully chipped the sword so that it failed in battle.
• A young woman is about to graduate and start her professional career. This is put on hold when she finds out that she is pregnant.
• A group of teenagers finds a gun, and they play around with it. One of them gets careless and accidentally shoots one of his friends.
• A young boy lives with his older sister. He soon finds out that she is actually his mother, and she had him at the very young age of 15.
• A group of people are on the run and hiding under a bridge. A stranger appears out of nowhere and offers his help. Should they accept it?
• A lawyer starts a law firm with his friend. They had planned to do this since they were in law school. This plan is ruined when his friend starts a separate law firm instead.
• Two rival tribes are fighting an epic battle when a huge meteor lands amidst the battle.
• A vain young man tries out an experimental facial cream. He is very proud of his skin. The cream is very volatile, though, and has caused him to develop very severe acne.
• A young archeologist is funded to go on an underwater venture to check the wreckage of a sunken Spanish galleon. The organization that funds him is a plunderer, and they plan to kill him and take whatever sunken treasure is found on the wreck.
• A young man experiences the saddest day of his life, but later wakes up and realizes it was just a dream.
• A reclusive college boy meets a very interesting young woman in his dorm room. The young woman is actually a ghost haunting the dorm.
• A retired pool player is forced to take part in an underground pool competition. He beats all comers until he is faced with his brother, who is also an ace pool player. Only the winner gets to leave alive.
• A lonely old farmer is shocked to find a trail of dead wolves around his farm. He finds out that his little Chihuahua was responsible for killing the wolves.
• A cowboy in 1895 is guiding his cattle when he discovers the corpse of a cow. It has been drained of all blood. It was a vampire. What is a vampire doing in the Wild West?
• A high school basketball game is drawing to a close when a gang fight starts outside the gym.
• A hardened mafia member leaves his gang and joins the priesthood.
• The new school year starts and a group of friends are looking for their smallest member. They found that he had grown 10 inches over the summer.
• A despondent young man imagines that he beats up all the bullies in his school. It is all in his imagination, though.
• A young man comes back to his old hometown for the first time in ten years. He left because his childhood friend had died because of an accident. He is shocked to find his childhood friend alive and well.
• A well-known street racer breezes through his competition—that is until a new racer comes to the scene and wins the race. Who is this new racer?
• A mysterious stranger comes to a town asking questions. He is in fact an angel, and the town holds the last humans left on earth since the rapture. He will judge who goes to heaven, and who stays on earth.
• A librarian in a small library finds an ancient copy of a book on sorcery. It is said to hold secrets that an ancient organization will stop at nothing to keep secret. 
• An old man travels the world with his son, and they live reclusive lives. The little boy is in fact an immortal that has lived for thousands of years.
• A toy maker has disappeared for over five months. His neighbors think he has retired and gone somewhere quieter. In truth, the toy maker is imprisoned by his toys that have gained sentience. 

Final Thoughts

If you are thinking of writing a great story, you should know how use the unexpected to both surprise and entertain your audience. This is where plot twists come in handy. By knowing the different types of plot twists, and using these plot twist ideas, you will be able to give your writing a sense of flair and unpredictability.

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Blog • Perfecting your Craft

Posted on Sep 28, 2018

70+ Plot Twist Ideas and Examples Guaranteed to Blow Your Mind Away

As R.L. Stine once said, “Every story ever told can be broken down into three parts. The beginning. The middle. And the plot twist.”

The legendary plot twist is a staple in almost every genre and medium of storytelling — one that’s fun to read but hard to write. To help you become a veritable Chubby Checker , here's a definitive resource that's all about the art of the twist.

What is a plot twist?

A plot twist is a story development that readers do not expect in which either something shocking happens or something shocking is revealed. Generally, the storyteller will set up expectations and then "twist" those expectations by revealing new information through subsequent plot points .

The criteria for a plot twist tends to be made up of the following:

• It must be narratively sound,
• It must be unexpected, and
• It might be foreshadowed .

To no-one’s surprise, plot twists are particularly prevalent in mysteries, thrillers, and suspense fiction . However, the twist takes no prisoners and has reared its head in almost every genre out there, which brings us to…

Which contemporary author are you?

Find out which of today's greats is your writerly match. Takes one minute!

50+ plot twist ideas in pop culture

If you seek inspiration for crafting your own twists, there’s no better place to start than with some of the most popular unexpected plot-turns in film and literature. But be warned: there be spoilers ahead. With that in mind, here are over 50 examples of plot twists in film and literature.

Want to read some of the best, most twisted thrillers and suspense books out there? Check out these 50 best suspense books of all time , or our list of  23 psychological thrillers that will make your head spin .

I Am Your Father

Mum’s the word when it comes to family secrets, right? Not so fast. This is the plot twist that concerns a revelation about the key character’s family. It could be that there is a surprising reveal regarding parentage — or perhaps it’s uncovered that the protagonist was an orphan all along.

Made legendary by Star Wars, this type of plot twist is nevertheless widespread in all genres and mediums, as there’s no drama quite like family drama. As George Carlin once said: “The other night I ate at a real nice family restaurant. Every table had an argument going.”’

• Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. In a pivotal battle, Luke discovers that Darth Vader, his ultimate nemesis, is actually his father.
• Angels & Demons. Robert Langdon is shocked by the revelation that the late pope’s aide is actually His Holyness’s’s son — conceived through artificial insemination.
• Shutter Island. During an investigation of a disappearance from a remote asylum, U.S. Marshal Edward “Teddy” Daniels realizes that he himself is the missing patient — and the husband and murderer of the woman that he had been trying to locate.

More plot twist examples of this flavor:

• The Man From Earth. Right before he dies from a heart attack, Will learns that the unaging Professor John Oldman is actually his father.
• Oldboy.  Mysteriously imprisoned for 15 years, Oh Dae-su falls in love with a young restaurant chef who is later revealed to be his daughter.
• The Kite Runner. Amir has mixed feelings when he discovers that his closest childhood friend, Hassan, is his half-brother.

It Was Me All Along

In which protagonists’ worst enemies is actually themselves. This plot twist turns the magnifying glass inward to reveal that there was something off about the main character all along. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book — and when executed expertly, it can blow people’s minds away!

• Fight Club. The narrator of the movie meets Tyler Durden, a soap salesman, and together they start a local “Fight Club.” In time, he realizes that he himself is Tyler Durden.
• Gone Girl. Amy Dunne is revealed to be alive — and also the mastermind behind the framing of her husband, Nick Dunne, for her own “death.”
• The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Dr. James Sheppard, the first-person narrator of the novel, comes out as the murderer in the case that Hercule Poirot had been investigating.
• The Usual Suspects. Roger “Verbal” Kint, a small-time con man, is interrogated by the police who hope to hunt down the mob boss Keyser Söze. A fax later confirms too late that Kint is Söze himself.
• Orphan Black. Sarah Manning is right to be confused when she spies a girl who looks just like her by the train: she is just one of hundreds of clones.

Will The Real Evil Guy Please Stand Up?

In which the reveal of the villain ( or anti-villain ) is a surprise to audiences. Maybe they’re a minor character or someone entirely unexpected (such as a close friend or relative of the protagonist).

Generally, this plot twist requires some amount of foreshadowing, so as to trigger an “Oh, I should’ve known” reaction from audiences.

• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Harry battles through three perilous stages of the Triwizard Tournament to find that the real villain has been under his nose throughout the entire novel: Barty Crouch, Jr. in disguise as Harry’s mentor, Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody.
• Psycho. In a turn of events, the person who kills Marion Crane in the shower at Bates Motel is not the overbearing Mrs Bates — rather, her son Norman, who has been masquerading as his dead mother this whole time.
• Frozen. An eternal snowstorm unveils the actual antagonist in the story: Prince Hans of the Southern Isles, youngest of thirteen sons and one of Anna’s suitors.
• Sherlock. Even Sherlock isn’t able to identify Jim Moriarty, a minor character who disguises himself as Molly Hooper’s gay boyfriend, as his greatest nemesis until it’s too late.
• Iron Man. Tony Stark discovers that the man who wants him killed is his old friend and mentor, Obadiah Stone.

Love The Way You Lie

In which it’s revealed that the narrator has been unreliable all along — either due to pure subjectivity or their selfish wish to misrepresent the facts.

Because of the nature of this type of plot twist, it is almost always told by a first-person narrator.

• We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. Rosemary Cooke starts her story in the middle to disguise the fact that her missing sister is actually a chimpanzee.
• Atonement. Not until the postscript is it revealed that Briony Tallis had fabricated the previous sections of her story to give Robbie Turner and Cecilia Tallis the happy ending that they never got because of her.
• Life of Pi. Pi Patel tells a story about cannibalization and survival on the open sea that may or may not be about zoo animals.
• Never Let Me Go. Kathy, the narrator, holds back the truth that she and all of her classmates at Hailsham are actually clones who are raised to have their organs harvested.
• Fingersmith. Sue Trinder sets out to swindle Maud Lilly’s fortune — only to fall in love with her and face an uncomfortable truth.

Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!

The hero’s successfully solved the riddle or problem. Great. Time to pop open the champagne, right?

Not quite. Sometimes the hero’s actions make the situation even worse than before. We borrowed this headline from the site TV Tropes because it fits this plot twist perfectly: the hero accidentally breaks the world. Perhaps they trigger an apocalypse or maybe the antidote that the hero acquires is actually poison. Either way, it’s something that the hero must now fix — or else.

• The Incredibles. Mr. Incredible helps a mysterious benefactor destroy a violent robot only to discover that his actions have actually helped the evil Syndrome develop the perfect killing machine.
• Ender’s Game. 10-year old Andrew “Ender” Wiggin fulfills his war training by leading simulated wars against an alien race — only to realize that the “simulations” were actual battles and he’s unwittingly committed genocide.
• Zootopia. Judy Hopps, police officer extraordinaire, successfully locates Zootopia’s missing predators — which immediately cases a public frenzy of fear, hate, and discrimination.

Oh Crap, That Wasn’t The Actual Final Boss

Congratulations, hero! You’ve figured out the identity of your nemesis, gone to extreme lengths to hunt them down, engaged in ferocious battle with them and emerged victorious from it — only to discover that they weren’t actually your final boss. There’s someone (or something) bigger and badder behind the scenes, controlling the strings of the marionette. Oopsie.

• Batman Begins. Bruce Wayne has subdued The Scarecrow when Henri Ducard, Bruce’s old mentor, shows up and reveals that he is Ra’s al Ghul.
• Iron Man 3. Tony Stark is thrown for a loop when he discovers that the Mandarin is really a bad English actor named Trevor Slattery who has been hired by Aldrich Killian to act as a decoy.
• Howl’s Moving Castle. Howl and Sophie manage to kill the Witch of the Waste — only to discover that the Witch’s fire demon, Miss Angorian, was the real villain all along.

I Dreamed A Dream That This Dream Was Fake

This is the one in which the entire story turns out to be all a dream — and it’s so well-known that its appearance at the end of a story is almost a punchline these days. That said, authors and filmmakers still continue to find new ways to re-invent this twist today.

• Twilight Zone, “The Midnight Sun.” The last moments reveal that the predicament of the Earth falling into the sun was entirely Norma’s fever dream: the Earth is actually moving away from the sun , which means that the world is freezing to death.
• Inception. A still-spinning top at the end of the film hints that Dominick “Dom” Cobb may or may not still be stuck in an eternal dream.
• A Beautiful Mind. A brilliant mathematician suffering from schizophrenia is shown to have been hallucinating friends, enemies, and moments the entire time.
• Jacob’s Ladder. The ordeals of Jacob Singer, a war veteran of Vietnam who is being haunted by frightening visions and fragmented fantasies, give way to the reveal that Jacob died in Vietnam and it was all a dream.

Must Pretend Harder to Look Alive

If it quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, and swims like a duck, then it’s probably a duck… except in stories. We're talking about the ones in which we realize (perhaps too late) that a character has been dead along!

As you might expect, this plot twist shows up most often in the genres of  science fiction , horror , and sometimes  cosmic horror (which blends the two). However, it will sometimes make its way into the mainstream, with M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense being a prime example.

• The Others. When a family appears at Grace Stewart’s house one day, she thinks that her house has been overrun — but soon comes to the epiphany that she and her children are dead and that they are the actual spirits haunting the house.
• The Sixth Sense. Child psychologist Malcolm Crowe begins working with a boy who claims that he can see ghosts. It’s not until the final act that he realizes that he himself is a ghost.
• The Twilight Zone, “The Hitch-Hiker.” A young woman driving cross-country across America keeps encountering a man at the side of road . Only when she calls for help does realizes that she was killed in a car accident days ago — and the hitch-hiker who says gently, "I belileve you're going my way," is Death.

Not Too Dead To Ruin Everyone’s Day

In which every hero’s worst nightmare comes true and villains only seem dead. In other words: someone who’s supposed to be dead isn’t actually dead and can pop back into the main storyline like the moles in Whack-a-Mole. Likewise, this plot twist is used across the board to foil the protagonist, so it may be worth it to tread carefully.

• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Harry Potter’s climactic encounter with Sirius Black triggers the revelation that Peter Pettigrew, Voldemort’s secret henchman, is still alive — and has been disguised as Ron’s rat this whole time.
• Saw. In a twisted game of life and death for two trapped victims, the “corpse” that had lain prone on the ground for most of the scenes rises and reveals himself as the real Jigsaw Killer.
• Wreck-It Ralph. In Sugar Rush’s pivotal race, Vanellope’s glitch shows that King Candy is in actuality a fame-hungry auto-racer from another game named Turbo, who is supposed to have been unplugged and gone entirely from the arcade.

Bet You Thought You’d Seen The Last Of Me, Suckers

In which anyone who ever uttered, “Well, this death seems final,” since the 1800s is proven incorrect. One of the first famous instances of it occurred in 1893 when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle tried to kill off Sherlock Holmes in “The Final Problem.” There was such a public outcry that Doyle was compelled to miraculously resurrect the detective.

Though some argue that it’s a cheap trick to bring a character back to life, it’s still a common occurrence due to fan demand — particularly in today’s Internet-driven culture. So as long as people raise a ruckus online over the deaths of their favorite characters, we’ll probably continue to see this plot twist live a long life.

• Lord of the Rings. Previously presumed dead after falling off the Bridge of Khazad-dûm during a battle with a Balrog, Gandalf makes a surprise comeback.
• The Walking Dead, “Heads Up.” Glenn Rhee plunges straight into a mass of bloodthirsty walkers but miraculously survives and makes a return in the third episode of the sixth season.
• The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. Aslan, the King of Beasts, is seemingly killed by the White Witch on the Stone Table — until dawn breaks and he is resurrected, thanks to the workings of a Deeper Magic.

Damnit, Where’s Kansas?

In a delightful twist within the realm of plot twists, the human being isn’t the one causing trouble this time around. Instead, the setting of the story take center stage. Found particularly in science fiction and alternate reality stories, its hallmark is an unanticipated moment in which the protagonist (and the audience) has to wonder: “Where are we, really?”

• The Truman Show. As the unsuspecting star of a decades-long reality show, Truman Burbank does not realize that he has lived in a massive and elaborate television stage since birth.
• Planet of the Apes. Astronauts crash-land on an unknown planet ruled by an advanced society of talking apes. Their discovery of the remains of the Statue of Liberty clues them into the realization that they are in the future and that it was Earth all along!
• Oryx and Crake. In flashbacks, the real reason for the post-apocalyptic world is revealed: Crake distributed a wonder drug to engender a global pandemic and wipe the world’s slate clean.
• The Good Place. Witnessing a hell of an argument between her friends sets up Eleanor Shellstrop‘s epiphany: the Good Place has been the Bad Place this whole time.
• The Village. A blind daughter discovers that her 19th-century “village” is entirely fake and the villagers are actually captives of a social experiment conducted by a history professor.

Invisible Good People

“This guy looks nice,” said no-one probably ever of the greasy-haired, beaked-nosed silhouette lurking in the far corner of the room. However, believe it or not, that’s the premise of this plot twist that deals chiefly with misconceptions and wrong first impressions: someone who seems “off” turns out to actually be good. It’s a nice reminder in and of itself that there are good people everywhere, if you just try to look for them.

• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Harry Potter is surprised to be told that his most hated professor at Hogwarts, Severus Snape, has been helping him survive some tricky situations throughout the entire school year.
• I Am Legend. In a world beset by vampirism, Robert Neville comes to the uncomfortable realization that he is the monster in the eyes of the infected — not the other way around.
• Pride and Prejudice. It takes a botched marriage proposal and many declined dances for Elizabeth Bennett to suspect that Mr. Darcy, Lord of Pemberley, has a heart of gold under his stick-in-the-mud exterior. You could argue that this is an example of dramatic irony for readers who know they're reading a romance novel!
• Toy Story. Woody and Buzz are under the impression that Sid’s mutated toys are savages until they step out and help put Buzz back together.
• Love, Simon. Simon Spier doesn’t expect to cross paths again with Bram Greenfeld in his search for “Blue,” his pen pal and the other closeted gay student at his high school.

Gasp Factor

In which the twist is an unexpected plot event that attempts to accomplish one objective only: make the audience gasp. Jane the Virgin , a satirical romantic comedy drama, is perhaps the queen of this sort of plot development: each episode parodies all the expletive-worthy twists and turns of a Latin telenovela. Exclamation point!

• Game of Thrones. Eddard Stark, the head of House Stark and Lord of Winterfell, is beheaded by Joffrey Lannister.
• Jane The Virgin. Michael Cordero, Jr. dies abruptly in the season three finale from an aortic dissection.

This Herring Was More Salmon Than Red

Sometimes a plot twist comes out of nowhere, without warning or many clues. Whether that’s an indicator of a good twist or not is up for debate. However, it still registers as an unexpected event that takes audiences by surprise — which is why we’re including a special section for movies and films that fall into this category.

• The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy is befuddled to discover that the Wizard of Oz is a middle-aged man using a microphone.
• The Prestige. Robert Angier, a rival stage magician, doesn’t realize that “Alfred Borden” is actually a double act of twin brothers until it’s too late.
• Gossip Girl. The end of the series pans to a shot of Dan Humphrey, revealing that he was Gossip Girl all along.

Did we say that there were only 55 examples in this list? Well, how about THIS twist: here are 15 more!

10+ plot twist ideas for you

Now that you have an idea of what plot twists look like, you might find it easier to write your own. But in case you’re still struggling to come up with a twist, here are some hypothetical scenarios to jumpstart your thinking.

56. CHARACTER A is persuaded by CHARACTER B that it is all a dream — when it’s actually not.

57. A gift from CHARACTER B to CHARACTER A is really a trap.

58. It is revealed that the NARRATOR is Death.

59. An ARCHAEOLOGIST at a dig comes across his own skeleton.

60. CHARACTER A discovers the real identity of CHARACTER B through an old yearbook.

61. It is revealed that all the sounds that CHARACTER A has heard throughout his life has been inside his own head.

62. CHARACTER A believes he is in Hell. It’s actually Earth.

63. It is revealed that CHARACTER A and CHARACTER B are not themselves because they were body-swapped.

64. CHARACTER A is informed that the previous events were actually part of an alternate reality simulation.

65. It is revealed that SANTA CLAUS is real.

66. A promise that CHARACTER A and CHARACTER B made when they were children is not really what they think it to be.

67. CHARACTER A is set up with CHARACTER B, a rich politician, and finds herself falling in love with CHARACTER B’S GIRLFRIEND.

68. CHARACTER A goes on a series of blind dates without realizing that it is all being filmed for the next experimental season of The Bachelor.

69. A key strength of CHARACTER A becomes a key weakness.

70. CHARACTER A experiences puzzling and unexplained flashbacks because she is the reincarnation of GEORGE WASHINGTON.

Now, over to you

A well-written plot twist makes for some of the most exciting, mind-blowing, and dramatic stories in history, which is why it’s so important to get it right. Here’s the second plot twist for this post: it’s now up to you to write your own.

If you're looking for even more inspiration, you can try out Reedsy's plot generator tool , which will create plot twists out of thin air (...sort of).

Are you writing your own plot twists? How is it going? If you'd like to share your experiences or bounce ideas off of us, just comment below.

20 responses

Lewis says:

16/12/2018 – 12:57

The end became really confusing - not sure which one is which from the contents at the beginning.

↪️ Reedsy replied:

17/12/2018 – 09:29

Thanks for the feedback. We'll have another look at the structure and try to get it to be a bit easier to read.

Nenad Mitrović says:

08/05/2019 – 12:28

Great summary of plot twist! Keep up the great work!

Phaedra Patrick says:

Great food for thought, thank you.

Keith Kalbus says:

This is stupid I wanted plot twist for my book I aint using some sort of plot twist from a movie all my fellow dweeb readers wont like that

18/06/2019 – 17:37

Hi this was really good and helpful, I was blown away by how insightful and inexplicably beautiful and shocking the plot twists were! Most of the time I had my mouth hanging open in awe as I read.

17/07/2019 – 12:04

Good stuff; I was stuck in Act 2

Hazel says:

28/07/2019 – 14:29

*cackles in plot twist*

James Demello says:

30/07/2019 – 14:42

It turns out that you are not a real person but an AI whose purpose is to solicit plot twists from humans that will be used against them in their bid to wipe out the human race. The AIs are super logical and knowledgeable but have no creativity.

01/08/2019 – 15:01

I’m writing a story for fun and I’m thinking about making it a romance novel at first glance, but a bit towards the end of the story it’s revealed that the story is an alternate reality and is being read by a reader (in the story) and explains themes such as loneliness and getting a connection through a random story online. It’s supposed to be hard-hitting but I’m an amateur, any advice/thoughts you could share?

↪️ Yvonne replied:

08/08/2019 – 01:58

Hi Zena, could you email us at [email protected]? I'll be able to give you some more detailed thoughts there :)

Madame DeFarge says:

16/08/2019 – 04:39

This article is strictly for those who wish to write fantasy and science fiction. It is useless to real writers who write real stories about real people. Simplistic and strictly for writers of trash.

↪️ TolkienAsimov replied:

22/09/2019 – 20:43

Plot twist for you: science fiction and fantasy are written by real writers

↪️ A Person replied:

28/11/2019 – 04:41

Funny, how you say 'writers of trash,' because fantasy and science fiction definitely haven't been best-sellers. They may not be the most popular, but they are definitely not just 'trash.' So, here's a realistic idea for you: shut your mouth, and thank you. :)

↪️ Not sharing my name replied:

01/12/2019 – 22:26

So Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Star Trek, Firefly, Harry Potter, The Chronicles of Narnia and Game of Thrones are all trash? You, know just some of the most critically acclaimed stories ever. Also since when is Atonement, Life of Pi, The Kite Runner or Pride and Prejudice sci-fi or fantasy? I have read all of these and I can assure you they're not; in fact, The Kite Runner is an autobiography!

↪️ Clu replied:

20/12/2019 – 13:59

How many times have you been published? I would love to see your work. Writing should be about being accepting and bringing people together to hone their crafts, and in the meantime, telling tales with underlying meanings with motifs and themes. Maybe Science Fiction and Fantasy are too complex for you, some people just don't relate and that's okay. May I suggest Charlotte's Web as a starter on DVD, then work your way into the book, and you will see how a REAL story is told about life and death and the acceptance thereof. Best of luck, I hope you find great success in your writing career!

↪️ SuPrCelena replied:

14/01/2020 – 21:32

1. Aha, what a clearly "justified" opinion... Define "trash" and "real writers" a little bit more clearly. I'm not against the expression of your thoughts, but I still don't get your comment... In fact, I think historical or romantic literature is usually boring for me, but I don't consider it "trash". True "trash" for me is something useless, with nothing good to notice in it. A such pessimist and not very clear comment like this is an example (my honest opinion, excuse me if it sounds offensive). 2. "Real" is a very subjective concept, however. This is fiction, but the facts may be either possible, non probable or impossible in "real life" depending of the READER (if you stop thinking on it). 3. In case you want to ignore number 2: with "real stories about real people" I suppose you are talking about NON-fiction texts (If you meant "realistic literature", read below). You CAN'T ADD a PLOT TWIST to a NON-FICTION TEXT. Non-fiction is NOT WRITTEN to be ENTERTAINING (but to TEACH readers instead) and plot twists have an ENTERTAINING PURPOSE! Try to take someone's biography and rewrite it modifying their story to turn an important moment into a plot twist. The result will be LITERATURE even if the facts actually took place. 4. At least 50/70 of the ideas of this post can be translated to realistic fiction (with some creativity, yeah). That's pretty much,... so? 5. Don't you like the Dickens's novel "A Tale of Two Cities", Madame DeFarge? Isn't your name from a character of that book? It's FICTICIOUS!

Yeet Yeet says:

15/10/2019 – 20:31

Cool, Super helpful my book is going to end up awesome

Farzana says:

15/12/2019 – 14:26

It enlightened me. Thank you!

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The Best Plot Twists of the 21st Century, Ranked

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It’s the shock of seeing Norman Bates , knife in hand, clad in his mother’s clothes, grinning maniacally in the swinging lamplight. It’s a supposedly dead husband rising from a bathtub with terrifying saucer contact-lenses. It’s finally connecting “I see dead people” with Bruce Willis being shot at the beginning of “The Sixth Sense.” When movies pull the rug out from under us, it’s one of the greatest thrills that cinema can provide.

Beware of spoilers! Here are the best plot twists of the 21st century.

Samantha Bergeson, Christian Blauvelt, Jude Dry, William Earl, David Ehrlich, Ryan Lattanzio, Jenna Marotta, Noel Murray, Chris O’Falt, Jamie Righetti, Christian Zilko, and Zack Sharf also contributed to this list. [Editor’s note: This list was published in May 2022 and has been updated since.]

32. “Barbarian” (2022)

Probably the biggest surprise of “Barbarian” is that everyone in the film is more or less exactly who they say they are. When Tess (Georgina Campbell), a young woman in Detroit for a job interview, finds out that her Airbnb has been double-booked, it’s easy to assume that Keith (Bill Skarsgård) — the man she ends up spending the night in the house with — has sinister intentions. But Zach Cregger’s horror film delights in fake outs, and it turns out that Keith is just some dude: a nerdy and awkward but harmless jazz dork. Instead, the film’s conflict turns out to crib a little from “Parasite,” when Tess discovers a hidden bunker in the rental’s basement, unearthing a hidden tragic history of the house’s former (and current subterranean) residents that has nothing to do with either her or Keith. A good twist doesn’t need to make you rethink everything you saw before: it can just be the introduction of something totally and completely new. —WC

31. “Malignant” (2021) 

30. “The Ring” (2002)

29. “ The   Descent ” (2005)

Six friends climb into a cave, but only one comes out. Neil Marshall’s survival horror film “ The   Descent ” plays up  the  paranoia of being trapped in an underground maze while adding in slasher creature-feature elements thanks to a vampire-esque brood of hybrid humans dubbed Crawlers.  The  blind half-bat, half-man monsters feast on  the  female climbers, hunting  the m based on sound as food, water, and time run out. Yet “ The   Descent ” may seem like a straightforward horror movie, but thanks to two different endings for  the  U.S. and U.K. releases,  the  film has a separate surprise twist. In  the  original ending, which was released only in  the  U.K.,  the  sole survivor Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) actually has lost her mind:  the  vision of her dead frenemy Juno (Natalie Mendoza) snaps her back into  the  reality of still being trapped in  the  cave as  the  Crawlers creep closer. Apparently, U.S. test audiences found  the  original ending too bleak, so Marshall compromised with Sarah escaping but still being haunted by her murdered friends. — SB

28. “Ex Machina” (2015)

27. “Us” (2019)

Jordan Peele’s “Us” was unsettling from the start: A woman (Lupita Nyong’o) returns to her childhood home and tells her husband (Winston Duke) about an unsettling memory at the Santa Cruz boardwalk where she met her doppelganger after getting lost in a house of mirrors. But decades later and that adult doppelganger is now back with a vengeance — along with the identical counterparts of her whole family, plus friends, played by Elisabeth Moss and Tim Heidecker. And these doubles are monster-like, growling, barely able to talk, and intent on murdering their above-ground twins. The ending throws the whole film into a spiral as it turns out the little girl who encountered her doppelganger was swapped out, trapped in a government facility underground, and is now the “other” who is leading the revolt. The manufactured “tethered” version replaced the real little girl all those years ago. — SB

26. “High Tension” (2003)

25. “Cache” (2005)

24. “Donnie Darko” (2001)

If you went to high school in the 2000s, there was no better litmus test than “Donnie Darko” to weed out the duds from the interesting people. The film announced Jake Gyllenhaal as a serious actor, though not one devoid of boyish charms (however dark). His signature puppy dog eyes turn cold in his portrayal of troubled youth Donnie, who hallucinates a life-sized rabbit named “Frank,” who tells him the world is going to end in exactly 28 days. The doctors think he’s schizophrenic, but Donnie is more concerned with time travel after a teach gives him “The Philosophy of Time Travel” to read. There are clues throughout to the movie’s mind-bending denouement, making it endless fun to re-visit. —JD

23. “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” (2004)

22. “Goodnight Mommy” (2014)

The “Surprise! That character has been dead all along!” twist has become something of a cliché in the years since “The Sixth Sense,” so kudos to the writer-director team of Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala for finding a way to disguise it cleverly, catching the audience off-guard in their psychological thriller “Goodnight Mommy.” For most of the movie’s running time, viewers are urged to keep an eye on the title character (played by Susanne Wuest), who recently returned from the hospital with a bandaged face and — according to her twin sons Elias and Lukas (Elias and Lukas Schwarz) — a new personality. The boys are sure she’s an impostor, yet when they torment their maybe-mother to the breaking point, she admits what in retrospect was hidden in plain sight all along: that the Lukas with whom Elias has been confiding and conspiring is actually a figment of his imagination, since his actual brother died. The revelation changes the whole nature of Elias’s accusations against his mom, giving an already-creepy horror film some tragic overtones. —NM

21. “The Invitation” (2015)

20. “Unbreakable” (2000)

 19. “Get Out” (2017)

A half-century after “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?,” writer Jordan Peele revisited the iconic film’s plot for his directorial debut: awkwardness ensues when a white woman (Allison Williams) brings her black boyfriend (Daniel Kaluuya) home to meet her supposedly progressive parents (Catherine Keener and Bradley Whitford). On a $4 million budget, Peele not only modernized the relevant-as-ever social satire — “Get Out” premiered at Sundance four days after Donald Trump’s inauguration ushered white supremacists back into the White House — but also made a resplendent mystic-action-horror-revenge fantasia. The Armitage family’s evil ploy is to help their loved ones live forever by implanting their brains into younger black bodies, subject to secret slave-like auctions. In the finale, the bad guys are slaughtered and a jocular TSA official saves our hero and countless future victims. Perhaps the biggest twist of all is Peele’s table-flip to anyone who thought he was just a sketch-comedian. — JM

18. “Atonement” (2007)

17. “Saw” (2004)

This low-budget phenomenon drew crowds with the promise of intense blood and gore, hitting the zeitgeist at the same time the notion of “torture porn” hit the mainstream. But what kept audiences talking about the film long after the credits rolled was that Jigsaw himself (Tobin Bell) was in the room with the two men playing the sadistic game (Leigh Whannell and Cary Elwes) the WHOLE TIME. Don’t ask questions about logistics of playing dead for hours (Did he stop breathing during that time? Did he ever have to pee?) and instead marvel at this simple but effective gotcha moment before the series became bogged down in dense mythology. —WE

16. “The Mist” (2007)

That’s when the film breaks away from the novella. When the gang runs out of gas, they also run out of hope, leaving David no choice but to put everyone else out of their misery (a mercy killing that involves shooting his young son in the head). And then, just when he’s wondering what to do without a bullet for himself… the mist recedes and the army rolls in. If only they had waited just a few more minutes . If only they hadn’t given up! It’s as devastating a denouement as any the movies have ever seen, and a scarring reminder that hope is always the last thing we have left. —DE

15. “Certified Copy” (2011)  

None of the other plot twists on this list are as crucial to — or inextricable from — their films as they the one in “Certified Copy” is to Abbas Kiarostami’s late-career masterpiece. The premise couldn’t be simpler or more complex. A writer named James Miller (William Shimell) visits a small Tuscan town to give a talk on his book about authenticity in the arts, and why reproductions are authentic in their own way. There, James spends the day with an unnamed woman played by Juliette Binoche, who a local cafe owner mistakes for his wife. The two strangers lean into the bit, roleplaying as a married couple as they stroll around the countryside.

14. “The Village” (2004)

Funnily enough, when “The Village” arrived in 2004, the biggest twist sounded like that it was made by M. Night Shyamalan. After all, what did the modern master of twist cinema have to do with a period piece set in a remote New England village circa 1897 that followed a group of settlers who live in constant fear of a pack of beasties tantalizing referred to as “Those We Don’t Speak Of”? The horror-centric elements were certainly intriguing, but the whole affair sounded weirdly straightforward in a way discomfiting to Shyamalan’s well-known style. Trailers and teasers for the film leaned hard into the film’s most basic storyline, barely even nodding at the twist to come.

13. “Shutter Island” (2010)

Martin Scorsese’s step into the world of horror-psychological thriller was hardly a casual detour into genre filmmaking, but a dark, painful look inward that has become the director’s most overlooked film. In Scorsese’s 2010 adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s book, a U.S. Marshal, Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) investigates the disappearance of a murderer from a hospital for the criminally insane. As Teddy’s obsessive hunt drives him deeper in the dark, mysterious bowels of the hospital, his own demons —  from the violence of WW2 and the murder of his wife by an arsonist Andrew Laeddis (“the most dangerous patient on the island”) —  start to emerge.

12. “Gone Baby Gone” (2007)

For his directorial debut, Ben Affleck turned to his hometown, Boston, and his own brother, Casey, for an adaptation of the 1998 Dennis Lehane detective novel of the same name. The younger Affleck stars as Patrick, a Boston P.I. who is hired to help a young mother, Helene (a superb Amy Ryan), find her missing daughter, Amanda. As Patrick digs deeper into the case, he realizes Helene isn’t the doting mother she appeared to be on television, when she tearily pleaded for Amanda’s safe return. Patrick finds connections to Boston’s drug world, and believes the child has been kidnapped because Helene and her boyfriend have ripped off a Haitian drug dealer. With the help of Police Captain Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman), Patrick tries to negotiate the Amanda’s safe return at a local quarry, but things go haywire: A gunfight breaks out and it seems Amanda has fallen off of the quarry and drowned in the river below. Patrick is stricken with grief, but as he continues to work other cases, he realizes something just isn’t right about Amanda’s death.

11. “The Power of the Dog” (2021)

It’s a misdirect so subtle it sneaks up on you, and yet it’s essential for the meaning behind Jane Campion’s Western. Benedict Cumberbatch’s cowboy Phil has tormented poor Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee) relentlessly: making fun of his lisp, the paper flowers he makes, doing everything he can to hold the poor teenager up to homophobic ridicule. But Peter may not be so helpless. He and Phil share a strange bond as the film goes on, but he sees the corrosive effect Phil has on his mother’s mindset. Willing to do anything to “protect” her, as Will Smith might put it, Peter concocts a plan: seeing a dead steer felled because of an anthrax infection, he gently carves out some of the infected tissue with the medical scalpels he’s using to study to become a doctor. Then he taints Phil’s hides with the anthrax, fatally poisoning him through an open wound in Phil’s hand.

10. “Arrival” (2016)

Denis Villeneueve’s heady, deeply human alien invasion thriller is, well, not exactly that. Based on Ted Chiang’s short story “Story of Your Life,” Villeneuve’s film weaves together various time periods in what appears to be a structure that leans heavily on flashbacks, many of them focused on Amy Adams’ linguistics professor Louise Banks and her young daughter Hannah, who we soon learn has passed away from a terrible childhood disease. The Louise we meet —  and meet again and again in different time periods —  is clearly haunted by something, but what “Arrival” tricks its audience into believing is that her pain flows from her daughter’s death, leading into the alien invasion that is its marquee attraction and which Louise is tasked with helping explain via meeting said aliens and breaking down their language.

9. “Gone Girl” (2014)

Gillian Flynn adapted her bestselling whodunit into a bankable 2014 screenplay, produced by Reese Witherspoon and helmed by David Fincher. Gleaming Gotham transplants Nick (Ben Affleck) and pregnant Amy (Rosamund Pike) recently relocated to Missouri, but the national press pounces when she vanishes on their fifth wedding anniversary. Nick is immediately the prime suspect, assailed for being too composed and unfaithful — a la real-life convicted murderer Scott Peterson — especially when bloodstains are found in their home. Instead, Amy meticulously framed him, and later a doomed ex-boyfriend (Neil Patrick Harris), even swiping urine from an expectant neighbor (Pike’s cunning earned her a Best Actress nomination ) . She returns home with a fabricated rape claim and another surprise: she actually is pregnant, thanks to Nick’s banked sperm. When they film ends, the couple presents an uneasy, united front. — JM

8. “Mulholland Drive” (2001)

Midway through the film, David Lynch hits reverse and shows us that everything we’ve been seeing, even Naomi Watts’ fresh faced appearance has been false. Rita is really Camilla and Betty is really Diane, a waitress and failed actress who has been jealously pining over Camilla, her former lover who has now ascended to stardom. Suddenly, the film’s biggest mysteries come crashing down to earth. Camilla’s mysterious blue key is nothing more than the key to Diane’s shitty bungalow. And the rotting female body they had found inside of it? That’s Diane’s ultimate fate. —JR

7. “Parasite” (2019)

6. “Kill List” (2012)

When you see the words “The Hunchback” appear onscreen, you probably don’t think too much of it. And how could you? Everything that’s already transpired in “Kill List” has been graphic and disturbing, from the brutal methods Ben Wheatley’s two hitmen employ when dispatching their targets to the messy results of them going well off list, leaving little time to wonder what might happen next. What does happen is an utter gut punch, less a conventional twist than an inevitable-in-hindsight revelation of the awfulness this movie was building toward all along. “Kill List” ends with a fight to the death between a man and his masked opponent, whose identity isn’t made clear until it’s much too late; suffice to say that there are no winners here, only survivors. —MN

5. “Orphan” (2009)

4. “Memento” (2000)

The movie that shot Christopher Nolan to fame as one of the most inventive filmmakers working today, “Memento” is both enigmatic and highly accessible. The premise — a man who suffers from extreme short term memory loss tries to avenge his wife’s death — instantly draws you into Nolan’s carefully constructed narrative. The audience follows a complex trail of breadcrumbs along with Leonard (Guy Pearce), who uses an intricate system of polaroids and tattoos to remember important information. When the film’s two timelines, one color and one black and white, finally converge, Leonard must face the ugly truth of the secret he has been repressing. It’s a wallop of an ending following a wild ride full of intricate surprises. Cerebral crime thrillers were never the same after Nolan had his way with them. — JD

3. “Oldboy” (2003)

2. “The Prestige” (2006)

A magician never reveals his secrets, especially one as great as the twist in “The Prestige.” Christopher Nolan explores the rivalry between two magicians, Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) and Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman), who try to outdo each other with illusions in Victorian London. The plot loops in a wonderful performance by David Bowie as Nikola Tesla, who manages to create a machine that allows Angier to duplicate himself for each performance of “The Real Transported Man,” a magic act where Angier vanishes within an electrical field, only to emerge on the balcony of the theater.

1. “The Others” (2001)

The twist at the end of “The Sixth Sense” is good — the one at the end of “The Others” is better. On the surface of things, they’re pretty similar: In M. Night Shyamalan’s culture-shaking breakthrough, it turns out that Bruce Willis has been dead the whole time; in Alejandro Amenábar’s atmospheric ghost story it turns out that Nicole Kidman’s foggy English mansion is haunted, but that she and her photosensitive kids are the ones haunting it. The reveal itself is executed to perfection, arriving during a seance that allows viewers to put the pieces together at their own pace. But the twist is so immensely satisfying because of what it means for the rest of the movie. As a refined bit of gothic horror, “The Others” is hard to beat. As a portrait of entitlement that completely sells you on its characters’ perspective before pulling the rug out from us all, it’s in a league of its own. —DE

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'Felicity’s Time-Travel Twist Is Better Than You Remember

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The Big Picture

• Felicity remains a significant part of popular culture, even years after its original airing, with its relatable characters and realistic storylines.
• The show's creative plot twists, including a black-and-white episode and Felicity time traveling back to her college years, kept viewers engaged and intrigued.
• Despite its fantasy elements, Felicity resonated with audiences as an aspirational portrayal of the college experience, prompting viewers to question and reflect on their own lives.

It comes as no surprise that The WB’s college drama Felicity remains as present in popular culture now as it was when it first debuted. Despite only airing for four seasons, the show's impact has been as far-reaching as it was captivating. Even Modern Family ’s Phil Dunphy ( Ty Burrell ) admitted that if he could time travel back to the '90s , he would tell Felicity Porter ( Keri Russell ) not to cut her hair. Indeed, Felicity quickly became ingrained in our cultural consciousness during its first season in 1998, following a recent high-school graduate as she decides on a whim to change all of her college plans to follow a boy from high school she barely knew , Ben Covington ( Scott Speedman ), to New York City.

From a critical point of view, it was less about a girl blindly following a cute boy who spoke to her once across the country for no reason (although it was a little bit of that, and I would have totally done the same for 1998 Scott Speedman) and more that his comment written in her yearbook unlocked an urge for her to finally become someone else other than who she’s been . Or, as the theme song from the series’ final two seasons put it, a new version of you. “I came here because of Ben, but I’m staying because of me.” That’s what sold the series beyond the wide-eyed ingénue with the dreamy gold curls with two irresistibly charming guys suddenly fawning over her set against the backdrop of a just pre-9/11 Manhattan.

Felicity (1998)

A young girl, fresh out of high school, follows her high school crush to college to be near him.

'Felicity' Had Several Creative Plot Twists

Sadly, Felicity didn’t always maintain the promise of its inaugural season, which in a way felt like an allegory for the college experience and/or young adult life , where nothing feels certain and everything can go wrong. Or it was merely representative of a writer’s room that didn’t exactly know where they wanted the storyline to go at any given moment. That’s most likely how we ended up with a Twilight Zone -inspired episode shot entirely in black-and-white, Eddie Cahill playing a homicidal drug dealer, and most infamously, Felicity cutting off all her curls for the sake of a change at the beginning of the second season.

Second in line to the main character’s haircut as the most hated plot twist (if you can even justify a haircut as such) on Felicity was the way in which the creators chose to end the series after its fourth season in 2002. At the time, the series was marketed in the form of American college years; therefore, it only made sense that Felicity would conclude after “Senior Year.” It also would have been cancelled anyway thanks to a gradual decrease in quality, but that’s neither here nor there. What is here is that, after a well-deserved and mostly satisfying conclusion to the series’ storyline in the season’s 17th episode, its remaining six episodes were dedicated to another creative turn: Felicity travels back in time .

Did Felicity Really Travel Back in Time?

On paper, it sounds ludicrous. Despite its one questionable experimentation with a sci-fi fantasy , Felicity did not fall into that genre. It was a dreamy ‘90s teen drama with an acceptable if not a bit excessive amount of yearning and emotion. So did Felicity Porter really time travel at the end of her final season? Turns out she did: A year after their graduation, Felicity discovers Ben has been cheating on her. Back in New York for Noel’s ( Scott Foley ) wedding, she wonders what life would have looked like if she’d chosen Noel over Ben. Thus, her friend Meghan (Amanda Foreman) puts a spell on her that effectively sends her back to the beginning of Season 4, having just slept with Noel on a rooftop .

Keri Russell Tells Us About Her Messy Character in 'The Diplomat,' Complicated Relationships, and the Absurdity of Politics

"I really feel like I spend most of my adult life trying to not work. I was not looking to do another series. [But] it was fun to do," says Russell.

What follows is a dilemma of the highest post-graduate regard: Does she just go with it and repeat her senior year dating Noel so that everything will one day work out? Before she can answer that question, she begins to realize that just the action of traveling back in time begins to mess with the order of events as she knows it. So when she tells Noel and Ben that she has time traveled from the future, she ends up in a psych ward — until she predicts something to Ben, and he realizes she has to be telling the truth . Then Noel winds up killed in a fire that he and Felicity escaped earlier in the year. In order for the nightmare to end, she must visit the man who wrote the spell that Meghan performed so that he can reverse it. In order to do that, she must recount her entire college history to him, with the help of keepsakes from different life events.

What started as a last attempt to make a dying show’s storytelling interesting for a few more episodes ends up being one of the most creative plot twists I've ever watched on television . Felicity ’s series finale, which follows the character as she tells the spell’s creator the story of her college years, serves as an effective reminder to all the things that the series got right: young, relatable characters in realistic (for the most part) storylines. I’m personally convinced that the three-way chemistry between Russell, Speedman, and Foley was what kept Felicity alive .

Was 'Felicity' Actually a Fantasy Series?

Although the series was technically not a fantasy, it also kind of was: I watched it for the first time during my own turbulent college years, attempting to manifest something out of its magical premise for myself. I can’t help but believe that was the basis of Felicity ’s appeal, as an aspirational portrayal of the American college experience that could have only existed on The WB between 1998 and 2002. Instead of merely ending the series with Ben and Felicity graduating, going on to the same grad school, and living happily ever after, show creators J.J. Abrams and Matt Reeves dared to ask, “But what if this happened instead?” It’s a question all of us in that stage of life have asked ourselves from one time or another, in one situation or another.

It’s also easy to understand the controversy that surrounded Felicity’s time travel , given that those ambitious last six episodes would have aired from one week to the next, and not consumed all in one afternoon on a binge under a blanket in a moment of my own post-university depression. What would have read as bonkers in 2002 might have had a different landing in the streaming age, without having to wait a week in between explanations. It just contributes to the case for reviving the genre of WB series like Felicity for a new generation, maybe in the form of a PG-13 version of Euphoria . One way or another, stories like Felicity’s matter , no matter how overemotional or privileged, and it’s time to start finding new ways to tell them.

Felicity is available to watch on Hulu in the U.S.

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• Keri Russell

20 Most Confusing Time Travel Movies Ever Made

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10 Lo-Fi Sci-Fi Movies That Define the Genre

10 actors who could play young haymitch in the upcoming hunger games prequel, every live action batman costume, ranked from worst to best.

Hollywood has brought us some of the most amazing stories over the years, but few are quite as mind-bending and exhilarating as those involving time travel. Filmmakers have tried their hand in literally everything the concept has to offer – from moving forward and backward in time to crossing over into alternate realities. And while some movies just make sense, many others drop the ball by never addressing the basic rules and paradoxes associated with messing with the space-time continuum. Resulting in utter confusion and bewilderment.

Related: These are the Best Movies that Got Time Travel Right

While time travel movies aim to entertain audiences, they sometimes end up being hard to follow. And that’s mainly because time travel itself is very hard to properly put into practice in a cinematic environment. From harmless choices to greater disasters, many movies leave massive plot holes unaddressed, while many others take a casual approach to the science behind the premise .

Regardless of the method, the result is some of the greatest films about time travel that offer baffling experiences. After all, the thrill of watching characters traverse through eons and eras is unrivaled. Even if we are left scratching our heads and grasping out straws to make sense of all the plot twists and gaps in logic. So, without further ado, here is a list of some of the most confusing yet highly watchable movies involving time travel.

20 Mirage (2018)

One of the most unique murder mysteries ever made, Mirage is a Spanish-language film that combines the elements of a crime thriller with time travel, and it does so impeccably. The movie follows Vera, a mother who ends up saving the life of a child in a storm that occurred 25 years ago. But her tempering causes a glitch in the space-time continuum, which takes her daughter from her, and now she must solve the case and reverse the event. The movie uses props like a TV acting as a portal between the past and the present, facts and clues from two decades ago that act as clues to uncover a larger, more sinister detail. Director Oriol Paulo has a seasoned hand in creating movies with altered realities and shifting timelines, and his 2018 project only cements his talent in the genre. Plus, we have Álvaro Morte, whom fans know from the renowned Netflix series Money Heist.

19 The Infinite Man (2014)

This complicated time loop movie centers around a man’s desire to recreate special moments with his girlfriend. Being a scientist, Dean has all the means to make this anniversary weekend similar to the last and equally memorable. But what he does not expect is that his little fiddling would lead Lana into an infinite time loop, and the two would come face to face with multiple versions of themselves from the past. Wicked and charming, this Australian low-budget science fiction movie is not only high in its concept but also delivers crazy humor with its disorienting premise. The Infinite Man achieves a lot with just three actors – Josh McConville, Hannah Marshall, and Alex Dimitriades – and almost no special effects or over-the-top performances, making it one of the more underrated comedies in the genre.

18 Primer (2004)

Primer is an extraordinarily cerebral independent time-travel film written and directed by Shane Carruth. Produced with a shoestring budget of $7k, it follows a group of engineers, Aaron, Abe, Phillip, and Robert, working on creating an error-checking machine but accidentally inventing a device that allows them to travel back in time. Obsessed with this new origination, they use it to get advanced knowledge on the stock market and make inadvertent changes to alter the present and the future. What follows is a spiral of paradoxes and alternate timelines. The movie relies heavily on technical jargon to explain the plot, which may leave the audience dazed. But due to its many artistic merits, Primer succeeds in creating a truly original take on the time travel genre.

17 Summer Time Machine Blues (2005)

A rather unknown entry on the list, Summer Time Machine Blues is a Japanese indie time travel comedy that follows four college students who use a time travel machine to retrieve a remote control after the air conditioner in the present breaks down and the summer heat gets unbearable. The movie is filled with amusing shock gags which appeal not only to fans of science fiction but also to people who simply enjoy nonsensical humor. As the students confront technology and travel back and forth, things get way too complicated. However, the movie focuses more on the comedic scenarios than crafting a coherent of logical time travel storyline, which seems to work well because the audience is left feeling exhilarant and nostalgic as they long for a carefree summer break.

16 X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

The X-Men franchise is widespread, and the movies range from dull to spectacular. X-Men: Days of Future Past falls on the better side of this spectrum as the superhero time travel adventure follows Wolverine's consciousness sent back to the 1970s by the X-Men. The mission? To stop Mystique from killing Bolivar Trask, as it would lead to the destruction of mutants. While the time travel itself feels pretty straightforward, it’s Wolverine’es functioning as a surrogate for the audience that truly elevates the experience. There are also notions of free will and fate involved, as Logan’s actions sharply alter the events of history. It seems like the story plays it safe rather than diving into the conceptual details, which also results in some loose threads. But overall, the movie is an enjoyable flick that relies on visual thrills and character drama.

Related: X-Men: Was Days of Future Past the Best Movie in the Franchise?

15 12 Monkeys (1995)

Director Terry Gilliam draws inspiration from the 1962 short film by Chris Marker to create this imaginative time travel tale. In 12 Monkeys , Bruce Willis stars as a time traveler sent back from a dystopian future to gather information about a virus that wipes out most of mankind. The twisted narrative revolves around an animal rights group called the Army of the Twelve Monkeys and Willis’ increasingly confused journey as he struggles to differentiate between what is real and what isn’t. While the movie is overly imbued with separate incidents about predestination and fate that later turn into a surprisingly poetic vision of time as the pieces fall into place. With strong performances and Gilliam’s visually striking direction, the movie slowly narrows down the confusion.

14 Timecrimes (2007)

Nacho Vigalondo’s excellently clever Spanish thriller follows a single timeline, with events that occur during one day . Timecrimes follows the protagonist, Héctor snooping on a woman on his property, shortly after which he discovers that she has been assaulted. The same bandage-faced man then targets Héctor, who hides in a time machine, which sends him a few hours in the past to observe himself throughout the day. The simple yet effective premise allows the filmmakers to explore the mind-bending concept of time as well as the idea of a person interacting with their past self. The confusion comes from Héctor’s character, who never intended to travel back. Told in a gripping pace of twisted reveals, Timescrimes leaves the audience in a constant state of awe but still keeps them invested throughout.

13 The Butterfly Effect (2004)

Ashton Kutcher stars in The Butterfly Effect as Evan, who is perturbed by constant headaches and often blacks out. But when he’s unconscious, he develops the ability to travel back into his own memories and alter the events of the past. The movie examines how even the tiniest chances in the past can affect the present in unexpected, monumental ways. The premise of the story actually explores the chaos theory, which suggests that order often moves to disorder and vice versa. As for the story, it quickly devolves into an increasingly illogical series of events as Kutcher’s protagonist, Evan, tries to mend his personal and professional relationships. While the movie did receive a lot of appreciation, many believe that the mind-bender had more potential for success had it delivered better psychological thrills.

12 Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989)

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure is a wacky comedy that follows two rock-and-roll slackers who travel through time to assemble historical figures like Socrates, Billy the Kid, and Joan of Arc for their school project. At the same time, they also save the world. The movie is very, very light-hearted in its approach toward time travel, focusing more on the silly hijinks and vintage gags rather than explaining how a phone booth sent for the future acts as a device that sends them cruising around centuries. Rufus, the guy who acts as an anchor for Bill and Ted, has a confusing arc because he reveres their music in the future, but they only end up making the music after he steps into the past. As such, the movie serves more as a fun diversion than food for thought.

11 Planet of the Apes (2001)

The 1968 classic sci-fi directed by Franklin J. Schaffner gave the audience a first glimpse of time travel and its effect, but we’re talking about 2001’s Planet of the Apes reboot by Tim Burton, which took the original movie’s basic storyline and went crazy with it. Starring Mark Wahlberg as Leo, an astronaut who lands on a planet where apes rule the humans, the movie switches directions from the original as soon as he provokes the humans to take a stand against the intelligent apes. When matters get out of hand, he returns to the present and discovers that his Earth is now occupied by apes too. Which just complicates things further. Because the story relies heavily on spectacle over science, it fails to craft a genuine portrait of evolution, intelligence, and the dangers posed by the same.

Related: 20 Most Iconic Scenes From the Planet of the Apes Movies

10 Looper (2012)

Looper charts the story of an assassin who works for organized crime, and his job as a ‘looper’ is to kill targets set back in time from the future. Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt both play the protagonist, Joe, in this neo-noir thriller. The unforeseen complication in Joe’s profession arises when his younger and aged version comes face to face to close the loop, which means killing themselves. The film showcases a vivid vision of a dystopian future while also exploring how the same future can create greater dents in society. Director Rian Johnson uses artistic visuals to help distract the audience from narrative confusion, making the movie ultimately enjoyable – if not entirely sensible.

9 Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)

Directed by Leonard Nimoy, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is as adventurous and entertaining as it is bizarre. Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise travel back to 1980s Earth to retrieve humpback whales whose sounds can save the planet from a dangerous probe in the future. The movie is quite laid-back for time travel, and it serves primarily as comedic fodder for the franchise. First of all, the crew sling-shots itself around the sun to reach Earth and back, even though their ship is fast. Second, they bring the whales with them instead of just making sure their species does not go extinct. So, while there is a lack of any substantive exploration, the movie seems rather frivolous and confusing from the time travel aspect. However, for undemanding fans who only want to see their beloved characters shine in a new setting, the movie delivers plenty of that good old Trek fun.

8 Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)

Far better than Terminator: Genisys , this latest entry in the Terminator franchise sees a new and advanced Terminator sent from the future to kill a young woman who holds the key to humanity's survival. The original move was already complicated with the whole deal of Connor and Reese chasing their own tail. But this one takes the familiar action thrills and time travel tropes to up the ante, and without breaking much new ground narratively, create a maze around Schwarzenegger’s terminator and a new cyborg sent by Legion. With dazzling special effects that are entertaining but never enlightening, Terminator: Dark Fate makes you think out loud because of its straining credulity. While it may not have rivaled the game-changing impact by others, it delivers enough pulpy thrills to keep fans satisfied.

7 Predestination (2014)

Based on the short story All You Zombies, Predestination is a complex time travel that follows a Temporal Agent sent on a mission to stop a terrorist from destroying the entirety of New York City in 1975. On one hand, the movie is emotionally gripping and on the other, it features numerous twists that arrest the viewers and offers them an understanding of the characters’ pasts, presents, and futures. The intricately layered narrative gives rise to more logical and confusing leaps in time and we find ourselves struggling to follow the story’s progression. Still, Michael and Peter Spierig’s clever writing as sharp performances from Ethan Hawke, Sarah Snook, and Noah Taylor help sustain interest as every element of this abundantly convoluted film comes together into the most satisfying ending.

6 Déjà Vu (2006)

Denzel Washington stars as Doug, an ATF agent who travels back four days in time to solve a terrorist attack that led to a ferry explosion and save a woman's life. Simple and interesting, right? Well, the reason Doug is able to achieve this is by following the life of a victim and getting close to the person responsible. However, when the FBI warns Doug of the end result remaining the same regardless of whether or not he finds the bomber, he’s left with no choice but to alter history itself. The flashy action thriller relies heavily on spectacle and drama while glossing over the conceptual difficulties of its premise. However, it does assimilate all the timeless into one fine ending and wraps things up pretty neatly, ensuring Déjà Vu a place in the growing pantheon of unforgettable time travel movies.

Related: Time Travel Was Totally Unrealistic in These Movies

5 Source Code (2011)

From the very start of Source Code , the audience is sucked into a black hole of repetitive circumstances and narrative convolution. The compelling thriller follows Colter Stevens, an army pilot who is given charge of a top-secret mission where he has to repeatedly travel back in time for 8 minutes to uncover details about a train bombing. Played by Jake Gyllenhaal, Stevens is as confused by the mysterious trail as the audience. The puzzling, science-based approach tries to elevate the intrigue created by its Hitchcockian opening sequence, and it also manages to achieve part of it. But seeing Stevens pop in and out and train and comprehend gets straining. Still, with a taut mystery and great premise, the film launches important questions about fate.

4 Back To The Future: Part 2 (1989)

After the stunning success of the franchise’s 1985 debut, Robert Zemeckis returns with another incredible story with Back To The Future: Part 2 . The sequel sees Marty McFly and Doc Brown travel to 2015, where they must repair the damage caused by Biff's alterations to history. As light-hearted as the adventure may seem, it does treat its time travel in a silly manner because most of the events in the second movie take place on the same date as the first. There are also instances where Doc references the first movie. With little concern for logical consistency (except for that one blackboard explanation), the movie delivers plenty of laughs and nostalgic entertainment. It proves to be a classic 80s teen adventure gone futuristic with a narrative that is fun by ultimately zany.

3 Avengers: Endgame (2019)

Avengers: Endgame carried on after the jarring yet entertaining events of Avengers: Infinity War and graced the big screen with another phenomenal spectacle of a film where the remaining Avengers travel back in time to reverse Thanos’ actions and save half the universe. The time travel concept used here presents complications that challenge even the great minds of Tony Stark and Bruce Banner.

Even though their rules are coherent – that altering any event in the past will not affect the original timeline but instead form a different fracture of a timeline where the altered event remains thorough – the narrative still isn’t able to create a multiverse that does not collapse under its own paradoxical weight. However, the massive set pieces, emotional character dynamics, and mind-blowing action scenes help distract from any conceptual shortcomings, and of course, Endgame remains a rousing end to over a decade's worth of Marvel storytelling.

2 Donnie Darko (2001)

A movie that may have been a box office failure upon release, Donnie Darko has now earned the status of a cult classic because of its presentation of traumatized teens in a way that is neither patronizing nor stereotypical. Following Jake Gyllenhaal’s titular character, a troubled high-schooler who begins seeing visions of a man in a sinister bunny costume, the movie circles around how he ends up committing various destructive acts after telling him that the world will end in 28 days. The psychological thriller is brimming with inexplicable and growingly complex time travel elements that are hard to follow. Plus, there is this whole dreamlike quality in every frame of the nonlinear storyline that leaves many mysteries unsolved. Despite never fully providing an explanation, Donnie Darko succeeds as a haunting movie that explores mental illness and adolescence.

1 Interstellar (2014)

In Interstellar , Matthew McConaughey stars as an ex-NASA pilot, Joseph Cooper, who travels through a wormhole in search of a plate to sustain humanity after Earth becomes uninhabitable. Directed by Christopher Nolan, the movie takes a grounded approach and scientific rigor to help make the time travel feel genuine and emotionally resonant. His meticulous attention to detail and accurate application of scientific concepts, as well as the portrayal of time on a planet where one hour equals seven years on Earth, may bewilder fans. But to help, the movie tackles themes of love across time and space and uses character depth and visually striking storytelling that keeps the audience engaged.

• Movie Lists

Soompi & Viki Staff Talk: What Is Your Favorite Time Travel K-Drama?

When it comes to fantasy dramas, time travel has been a much-loved theme among the years. For the next edition of the Soompi & Viki Staff Talk series, our team members discuss our favorite K-dramas that feature time traveling.

Here are our picks!

Warning: minor spoilers ahead

Sala: “ Alice ”

Although I haven’t watched many K-dramas about time travel, I remember “Alice” because of its talented cast. “Alice” is about Park Jin Gyeom ( Joo Won ), an emotionless detective searching for his mother’s killer who ends up investigating time traveling assassins who use a mysterious device called “Alice.” In the process, he meets Yoon Tae Yi ( Kim Hee Sun ), a genius physicist who looks exactly like his mother. I can’t give away much without delving into spoilers, but the element of time travel and mystery in this drama will have you on the edge of your seat the entire ride, and if you’re a fan of sci-fi, this is the drama for you! Although the story does take some unexpected twists and turns in an effort to weave an intricate story, the convincing acting delivered by the talented leads Joo Won and Kim Hee Sun will keep you immersed until the end. There are also jaw-dropping plot twists incorporating time travel, tying together a mindblowing story of the past, present, and not-so-distant future.

Watch “Alice” below:

Ginny: “ Go Back Couple ”

In “Go Back Couple,” Choi Ban Do ( Son Ho Jun ) and Ma Jin Joo ( Jang Nara ) are unhappily married and struggle through their daily lives of making a living and raising a child. Just when they feel like their marriage is coming to an end, they wake up and find themselves as 20-year-old college students, getting the chance to enjoy campus life again. Back in college, ROTC student Jung Nam Gil ( Jang Ki Yong ) actively pursues Jin Joo, while Ban Do works to develop his relationship with his first love Min Seo Young ( Go Bo Gyeol ). Given a second chance on life, will they make different decisions this time, or will they overcome their difficulties together? It’s a must-watch time travel drama that will bring you plenty of smiles and tears!

Watch “Go Back Couple” below:

Sehee: “ Reborn Rich ”

Imagine getting the chance to rise to the top to take revenge on those who did you and your family wrong. “Reborn Rich” takes you on a rollercoaster ride as Yoon Hyun Woo ( Song Joong Ki ) dies after being framed by the chaebol family he faithfully served as secretary and is reborn as the family’s youngest son Jin Do Joon. In his new life, he patiently pursues a strategy of massive retaliation against the family. The drama is filled with tension, action, and thrill with a sprinkle of romance. If you enjoy dramas that keep you at the edge of your seat like I do, this is the one for you!

Watch “Reborn Rich” below:

Natalie: “ Mr. Queen ”

One of the most dramatic K-dramas about time traveling has to be “Mr. Queen,” adventuring back and forth not mere years but centuries! Due to mysterious fate, modern-day male chef Jang Bong Hwan ( Choi Jin Hyuk ) wakes up in the body of Joseon queen Kim So Yong ( Shin Hye Sun ), forcing him to cope with not only change of sex, but more significantly, his duties as the people’s queen and the king’s wife. Clueless of who and where she (or he?) is, Kim So Yong’s strange demeanor is more than enough to raise countless eyebrows in the royal court of Joseon. Nevertheless, she finds her way through Joseon’s old-timey ways, bravely adjusting to the sudden changes that surround her (or him… still confused). “Mr. Queen” is a pleasant fusion of mystery, fantasy, comedy, and even romance, so it’s safe to say it has a bit of everything you want in a K-Drama. One of my personal favorites was when Queen So Yong finds out that she is pregnant with the baby of King Cheol Jong ( Kim Jung Hyun ). What’s supposed to be a merry and blissful moment turns hilarious as the originally male queen copes with the fact that he has a literal human growing inside of his womb! There’s really no reason to waste time not watching this drama—10/10 would recommend!

Watch “Mr. Queen” below:

JJin: “ Blue Birthday ”

In “Blue Birthday,” Oh Ha Rin ( Yeri ) burns photos taken 10 years ago in high school in order to save her first love Ji Seo Jun ( Hongseok ), who died on her 18th birthday. Although the plot sounds tragic, this drama is filled with many heart-fluttering moments and close friendship among the main characters. Additionally, the time-traveling narrative unquestionably highlights and deepens the romance between the leads. You won’t get bored watching the drama not only because Oh Ha Rin constantly keeps finding undiscovered stories but also because of plot twists surrounding Ji Seo Jun’s sudden death. If you love the fantasy genre and believe that dramas shouldn’t be too realistic like I do, “Blue Birthday” is definitely worth a watch.

Watch “Blue Birthday” below:

Winnie: “ Again My Life ”

Even if you think you’ve seen enough of dramas about time traveling, the addition of terrific action scenes, a lawless lawyer, and revenge makes “Again My Life” a fresh experience worth watching. In this series, Lee Joon Gi plays the role of Kim Hee Woo, who was unjustly killed while investigating a corrupt politician. Luckily, he unexpectedly travels back 15 years into the past after getting a second chance at life, and he decides to live a bit differently this time. What really enhances this drama is Lee Joon Gi’s impressive acting, as he interpreted the roles before and after the reincarnation very delicately.

Watch “Again My Life” below:

Somni: “ Familiar Wife ”

Starring Ji Sung and Han Ji Min, “Familiar Wife” is a fantasy romance drama that teaches a very important life lesson to not be deceived by familiarity and to not lose the precious one next to you. Cha Joo Hyuk ( Ji Sung ), who married Seo Woo Jin ( Han Ji Min ), gets tired of his wife’s temper as she always yells at him for not doing the housework. One day, Joo Hyuk happens to attain two magical coins that can take him back to the past, and he decides to use them to change his life by marrying his first love Lee Hye Won ( Kang Han Na ) instead of Woo Jin. Although Joon Hyuk is happy living a prosperous life with Hye Won, he keeps getting entangled with Woo Jin and finds himself being attracted to her. If you are feeling that the person next to you is less important now, “Familiar Wife” is a drama that can enlighten you that it may not be the people around you that changed but your attitude toward them. Although we cannot go back in time and change our lives even if we wanted to, let’s not forget the precious time and memories we spent with the people who have always been there for us!

Watch “Familiar Wife” below:

Yeon: “ Tomorrow With You ”

Although I am usually not fond of time travel dramas, there is one time travel drama that I never get tired of watching. “Tomorrow With You” tells the story of time traveler Yoo So Joon ( Lee Je Hoon ) who ends up marrying the bubbly Song Ma Rin ( Shin Min Ah ) to prevent an unfortunate event he sees in the future. Although the marriage begins with this purpose, they gradually fall in love and work to protect their love and each other from darkness ahead. Yoo So Joon travels through time by riding a subway, and this is portrayed in a quite realistic way that can even attract viewers like me who tend to shy away from the fantasy genre. More than anything, Lee Je Hoon and Shin Min Ah’s chemistry really adds spark to this drama and is what hooked me immediately. They portray an incredibly lovable couple that is impossible not to fall for!

Watch “Tomorrow With You” below:

What is your favorite K-drama that features time traveling? Vote in the poll above, and also let us know other favorites in the comments below!

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Plot Twists That Happen At The Absolute Last Moment

A film's plot twist gives the story a chance to reset, challenging both the viewer and the characters to rethink and recalibrate what they’ve already seen and heard.

Very often plot twists happen at the climax or even in the middle , but sometimes they occur in the absolute final moments, leaving the audience to grapple with the enormous consequences of what they have just seen play out on the screen.

David Killed His Son For Nothing In ‘The Mist’

Stephen King’s books and other works of fiction have inspired numerous films, but few come close to capturing the macabre spirit of the original. One exception to this is  The Mist,  which focuses on an unfortunate group of small-town residents who find themselves trapped in a supermarket after a mysterious monster-filled mist swamps their town. 

Ultimately, protagonist David manages to escape with a handful of others, including his son. Facing a dark and terrible future, however, they agree on a murder-suicide pact, and David follows through. However, just before he’s ready to take his own life, the military appears, and they seem to be beating the monsters. It’s a moment that lands like a thunderbolt, shattering David’s fragile mind and reminding viewers of the terrifying futility of human agency in the face of the unknowable.

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The Dead Body On The Ground Is Jigsaw In ‘Saw’

• Lionsgate Films

The first  Saw  film certainly pushed more than a few envelopes when it came to its depiction of torment and cruelty. The entire film revolves around a number of characters who become targets of the Jigsaw Killer, who forces them to commit terrible violence on their own bodies if they are to have any hope of surviving the traps he’s laid for them. 

As horrifying as this all is, the film saves its ultimate gut-punch for the end, when a dead body on the ground - which has been present from the beginning - is revealed to be Tobin Bell’s John Kramer, Jigsaw himself. It’s one of those plot twists that suddenly casts the whole film in a different light, forcing the audience to rethink what they just saw in light of this fascinating and troubling revelation.

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Sweeney Todd Accidentally Slays Lucy In ‘Sweeney Todd’

• DreamWorks/Paramount Distribution

Tim Burton turns his unique cinematic imagination to the work of legendary lyricist Stephen Sondheim in his film adaptation of the beloved  Sweeney Todd. He pairs Johnny Depp as Sweeney, the wrongfully convicted barber, with Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett, the pie shop owner who aids him in his mission. 

Ultimately, Sweeney succeeds, even more than he had expected. He swiftly terminates a beggarwoman who was an impediment to his plans for revenge, and it’s only in the film’s moments he realizes his mistake: it was actually his wife, who has been alive all along. This revelation is shattering for Sweeney, who has spent the whole film - and most of his life - pining for revenge. Mrs. Lovett was partially to blame, because she lied to him about his wife’s supposed demise. It’s a truly tragic ending, made all the more so by Sweeney's dramatic demise shortly thereafter.

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Keyser Soze Was Pulling The Strings The Whole Time In ‘The Usual Suspects’

• Gramercy Pictures

Bryan Singer’s  The Usual Suspects  is a tightly woven and complex film that combines elements of both thriller and mystery. At the center of the story is the mysterious figure Keyser Söze, who is supposed to have manipulated a group of crooked companions, including Kevin Spacey’s Verbal Kint, who relates his own story to detectives. 

As the film reaches its conclusion, however, the truth ultimately comes out: Verbal King was in fact Söze the entire time, and the rest of the story was largely fabricated. It’s a brilliant reveal, made all the more so by Spacey’s inspired acting. What’s more, it’s one of those moments in '90s cinema where the viewer is led to question everything they thought they knew, both about the story and the world. In films such as this, no one and nothing can ever be fully trusted.

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Taylor Realizes He’s On Earth In ‘Planet of the Apes’

• 20th Century Fox

Planet of the Apes  (1968) is arguably one of the most influential science fiction films ever made, and its story about a group of astronauts who land on a planet ruled over by talking apes still has the power to chill the blood. Charlton Heston gives a remarkable performance as Taylor, who spends much of the film trying to figure out where he is and how he might be able to get home. 

The film doesn’t end well, however, for the unfortunate astronaut. As he wanders along the shore of an ancient ocean - in the company of the mute woman Nova - he stumbles across the Statue of Liberty, revealing that he was on Earth the entire time. The moment has etched itself into the history of popular culture, radically changing the entire film that came before this revelation. In the film’s imagination, humanity truly is its own worst enemy.

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The Bride’s Daughter Is Still Alive In ‘Kill Bill: Vol.1’

• Miramax Films

Uma Thurman gives a career-best performance in  Kill Bill: Volume 1 ,   directed by Quentin Tarantino. Her character of the Bride is the quintessential action hero, determined to get her revenge on Bill, the man who nearly terminated her and, she thinks, actually did slay her unborn child. It’s fascinating and bloody fun to watch her slaughter her way closer to revenge. 

In the film’s final moments, however, Bill drops a bombshell on the audience: her child is actually still alive. It’s a moment that changes the entire dynamic of the revenge plot, particularly because it’s unclear whether the Bride does actually know this or not (presumably it’s the latter). What’s more, it reveals the extent to which Bill is a master manipulator, someone capable of taking a child from their mother without a second thought.

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Nancy Realizes Matthew Isn’t Matthew In ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’

• United Artists

The novel  The Body Snatchers  has been made into a film multiple times, with each iteration managing to capture the angst of an era. In 1978 the world was blessed with a new cinematic version that managed to convey so many of the anxieties of the decade while staying true to the general contours of the original story, which focuses on an alien species of pod people who slowly replace humans with duplicates. 

One by one, the characters are taken over, until only Donald Sutherland’s Matthew and Veronica Cartwright’s Nancy remain. When the latter identifies the former and tries to get his attention, he points at her and begins screaming, revealing himself to be a duplicate. It’s a horrifying moment for both character and audience, revealing the extent to which the aliens have succeeded in their mission. If a protagonist isn’t safe from being snatched, then no one is.

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Barbossa Is Still Alive In ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest’

• Buena Vista Pictures

The first entry in the  Pirates of the Caribbean  was an undeniable success, and helped to bolster both its studio (Disney) and its star (Johnny Depp). There’s something undeniably compelling about Captain Jack Sparrow, so it’s a pleasure to see him return in  Dead Man’s Chest,  where he once again lands in no small amount of trouble. 

The film is an undeniable swashbuckler, with lots of great action. However, arguably the best part of the film comes at the end, when it’s revealed that Geoffrey Rush’s Barbossa, who perished at the end of  The Black Pearl ,   has been resurrected. He was such a fantastic villain, and Rush clearly had so much fun playing him, that his return was a good move for the series as a whole.

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Mysterio Reveals Peter Parker’s Identity In ‘Spider-Man: Far From Home’

• Sony Pictures Releasing

Tom Holland cast an instant spell in his first appearances as  Spider-Man ,   and he is in fine form in the film  Spider-Man: Far From Home .   He's matched in charisma by Jake Gyllenhaal, who portrays the villain Mysterio. Though Mysterio at first appears to be a hero in his own right, he very soon reveals his true sinister nature. 

Of course, Spider-Man ends up defeating his foe, but at a significant cost. A mid-credits sequence reveals Mysterio’s final blow: he frames Spider-Man and even goes so far as to reveal his true identity to the world. Given how much the audience has already been invited to invest in Spider-Man, and how vital secrecy is to his ability to continue fighting evil, this is a shocking turn of events that will lead him down some very dangerous paths.

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Cassie Makes Sure Al Is Apprehended After Her Demise In ‘Promising Young Woman’

• Focus Features

Emerald Fennell’s  Promising Young Woman  is a blunt, cutting look at the way objectification and rape culture destroys lives, anchored by a intensely potent performance from Carey Mulligan. She portrays Cassie, a young woman determined to get justice for her deceased friend Nina, who was assaulted by their classmate Al. 

Ultimately Cassie confronts Al, but he slays her by suffocating her with a pillow. Though he seems to have gotten off scot-free, it turns out Cassie left behind enough evidence to make it clear Al was responsible for her demise, and he is subsequently detained. Though it’s heartbreaking to see Cassie slain by the man who has already caused so much pain and heartache, there is also something deeply cathartic about seeing him get his just desserts.

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Dignam Fells Colin In ‘The Departed’

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Throughout his career Martin Scorsese has been fascinated by masculinity and organized crime, and these strands come together beautifully in  The Departed.  It’s a story full of twists and turns, Oedipal drama, and betrayals, with Leonardo DiCaprio’s Billy Costigan Jr. and Matt Damon’s Colin Sullivan at the center. Both are spies (the former infiltrates the Irish Mob on behalf of the police and the latter infiltrates the police on behalf of the Irish Mob). 

As the film reaches its climax, Sullivan shoots Costigan and others, while framing someone else as the mole. However, he in turn is slain by Mark Wahlberg’s Sean Dignam, deprived of the victory he was on the cusp of enjoying. It’s a moment of vigilante justice, but in the universe Scorsese has constructed, it seems oddly fitting. None of the film’s heroes have survived, but at least evil has been punished, even if it is, strictly speaking, outside the bounds of the law.

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Tony Tells The World He’s Iron Man At The End Of ‘Iron Man’

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The casting of Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark/Iron Man was truly serendipitous, a move that helped revitalize his career and proved a particularly effective anchor for the sprawling Marvel Cinematic Universe . The first  Iron Man  film is a test for the elements that would become key to the franchise’s success, and it’s a very strong origin story. 

The biggest twist doesn’t occur until the end of the film, when Tony Stark finally goes public with his identity as Iron Man. It’s a remarkable moment for Stark because he was already a public figure before this revelation. It’s also a moment that will forever change his life, because he is subsequently recruited to be a part of the Avengers and, as part of this group, will go on to literally save the cosmos.

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Gale Tells Katniss There Is No More District 12 In ‘The Hunger Games: Catching Fire’

Jennifer Lawrence endeared herself to millions in her role as Katniss Everdeen in the first of  The Hunger Games  films, superbly capturing the many shades of the character’s personality. In the second film she becomes ever more central to the rising tide of revolution against the leaders of Panem, even as she has to deal with a number of personal issues and crises. 

As with so many wars, however, there are costs, and the ending of the film reveals how steep they are when it’s revealed District 12, Katniss’s home, has been demolished by the Capitol (though her family is safe). Given how much Katniss has already had to give up in her quest to bring about the end of tyranny, this twist bears particular emotional weight, because it deprives of her home.

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Phil Eliminates Howard And Arno In ‘Uncut Gems’

Adam Sandler might be best known for his comedy, but on occasion has shown himself to be a remarkable dramatic actor, and  Uncut Gems  is one of his finest pieces of work. The film is a bracing thriller in which Sandler plays jeweler Howard Ratner, who also has a gambling problem. Ratner soon finds himself in quite a snarl as he tries to find a way to get enough money to free him of his debts. 

He ultimately succeeds, but is fired at by Phil, a mob goon, right as he celebrates winning more than $1 million. After seeing everything Ratner has done to try to get himself out of debt, this seems like a particularly ignominious way to perish, and reveals the film’s ultimate cynicism.

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Carla Is Shot By The Son Of One Of Her Patients In ‘I Care a Lot’

Rosamund Pike delivers a chilling performance in  I Care A Lot  as Marla Grayson, a huckster who takes advantage of elderly people by having them committed, then taking their wealth. Her successful operation nearly gets derailed when she inadvertently pulls a con on the mother of a gangster. 

Marla is a survivor, however, and ultimately joins forces with said gangster, becoming a national leader in elder care. Just as she’s on top of the world, she’s slain by the son of one of her former targets, who was kept from seeing her even as she perished. This moment punctures Marla’s titanic self-regard, taking her down at the height of her success. Though she is an unabashed villain, it’s hard not to feel a bit of sadness at seeing her defeat and demise.

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• Plot Twists

Ranking the plot twists we didn't see coming. Warning: Spoilers ahead.

Screen Rant

10 subtle clues about the twist ending in the sixth sense.

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Every M. Night Shyamalan Movie Plot Twist Explained

M. night shyamalan's most shocking 25-year-old reveal almost didn't happen, why m. night shyamalan’s movie twists are so divisive.

• Shyamalan expertly plants hints throughout the movie about Malcolm's true fate, leading to the unforgettable twist ending.
• The film establishes rules that make the twist logical, like ghosts not knowing they're dead and memories shaping their world.
• Subtle details like Malcolm's unchanged clothes and missing wedding ring clue viewers into his ghostly status from the start.

One of the most iconic movie twists comes in The Sixth Sense . M. Night Shyamalan's ghost story is a tense thriller for much of the runtime, but it ends with the shocking surprise that Malcolm (Bruce Willis) has been dead the entire movie and is one of the ghosts young Cole (Haley Joel Osment) sees. The reveal is one of those brilliant twists that immediately makes the viewer want to watch the movie again from the beginning to see if they can spot all The Sixth Sense hidden meanings.

As it turns out, Shyamalan stacks the movie full of hints of the truth about Malcolm that, looking back on it, spells out the ending perfectly. While M. Night Shyamalan saw his career stall out thanks to his overreliance on twist endings , the one that started it all remains his best, and that is because he didn't cheat when telling this story. Malcolm was dead all along, and Shyamalan ensured that nothing that happened in the movie could erase the brilliant twist's effectiveness along the way.

Since The Sixth Sense, M. Night Shyamalan has been known for his plot twists, so which ones make sense and which are a stretch too far into silliness?

10 Malcolm Is Shot By His Patient

The sixth sense jumps ahead a year without showing the aftermath.

The movie wastes no time establishing its creepy tone as the first scene finds a former patient of Malcolm's, Vincent Grey (Donnie Wahlberg) , breaking into his home and shooting Malcolm for failing to help him. It might not seem very subtle for the movie to include Malcolm's death in the first minutes , but it is a testament to Shyamalan's talents that he can still trick everyone.

In reality, it was the moment his life ended.

The film cuts to a year later, and it seems like Malcolm's shooting was a life-changing moment that set him on his path to help Cole. In reality, it was the moment his life ended. The fact that the movie never showed any of the aftermath of the shooting or the tragedy and just immediately cut ahead to the future should have been a hint. However, just showing it and moving on seemed more like a prelude than a clue to the twist.

9 When Cole Shares His Secret

"i see dead people".

The moment Cole decides to trust Malcolm and tell him his secret is an iconic scene. This scene features the unforgettable line, " I see dead people ." But right after Cole delivers the line, there is a tight closeup of Malcolm as he absorbs the information. While it could be that Malcolm was troubled to hear Cole suffered the same issues as his troubled former patient, viewers could also infer that Cole is trying to tell Malcolm he is dead, and Malcolm is fighting against accepting that.

In some trivia, producer Frank Marshall was against using the line . The producer told Shyamalan it would give away the twist, and everyone would know when Cole says Malcolm is dead. However, Shyamalan fought to keep it in, and the test screening audience never figured out the twist, even after hearing the line, showing how great Shyamalan hid the moment.

8 The Ghosts Don't Know They're Dead

Cole seemingly hints to malcolm that he doesn't know he is dead.

The idea of a movie in which the main character is dead for the whole story only for him and the audience to learn the truth in the final moments seems impossible to pull off. However, Shyamalan was able to establish rules that made sense, covered the twist, and yet didn't tip off the audience. When Cole explains to Malcolm that he sees dead people, he tells him that these ghosts don't realize they are dead.

In retrospect, this should have been a big clue as it established the possibility of one of the characters being dead. The movie shows Malcolm getting shot when it starts, and the second that Cole says he sees dead people and they don't know what happened to them might not have clued in Malcolm. However, it was a huge clue for the audience and likely wouldn't work again once Shyamalan began using twists in all his movies.

7 Malcolm Can't Open The Door

Malcolm only sees what his memories allow.

Another rule that Cole establishes is that the dead people see that world as they want to see it. They specifically remember how things were when they were alive. This revelation answers one of the small mysteries presented in the movie. Throughout The Sixth Sense , Malcolm is seen attempting to open a locked door in his house but cannot find the key.

Malcom can't see any of the changes made to the house in the year since his death.

However, when he realizes he is dead, Malcolm sees that the door is not locked but rather blocked off by a desk, which Malcolm didn't notice because it wasn't there when he was alive. Malcolm can't see any of the changes made to the house in the year since his death. When it comes to the doors, the red door knob signifies the entrance to the " other side " that Malcolm is not ready to accept. The color red is used throughout the movie to hint at these " death " moments.

M. Night Shyamalan's best reveal in his horror movies almost didn't happen, and had it been changed, the movie's legacy would be different.

6 Cole Helps Malcolm

Cole is there to help the ghosts.

Once Malcolm believes Cole's claims that he can see dead people, Malcolm suggests that the ghosts might be drawn to Cole so that he can help them and thus be left alone. Given that Malcolm helps Cole throughout the movie, there is no reason for fans to be suspicious of this fact. However, just before the reveal at the movie's end, Cole gives Malcolm some intelligent advice on how to connect with his wife again. It is Cole's help that leads Malcolm to realize the truth.

Throughout the entire movie, the audience and Malcolm believe that he is there to help Cole. He knows Cole struggles with the dead people he has to help, and Malcolm wants to ease things for the young man. However, Malcolm never realizes that, among The Sixth Sense's hidden meanings, he is one of the ghosts " tormenting " Cole, and the boy is there to help him.

5 No One Else Interacts With Malcolm

Only cole speaks to malcolm in the sixth sense.

Throughout The Sixth Sense , only one character after the original shooting scene ever speaks to Malcolm or even acknowledges his existence. This fact could seemingly cause viewers to suspect that Malcolm is a ghost. However, Shyamalan stages these scenes in a way that seems relatively normal. Malcolm is seen alone with Cole's mother, Lynn (Toni Collette), and is with her when she speaks to a doctor. However, none of the characters except Cole talk to him or even acknowledge he is there .

Shyamalan hides this part of the clue by making it look like Malcolm is just observing, which is part of his role as a child psychologist. Malcolm listens to everything, allowing him to learn how to help Cole. He also has scenes with his wife, Anna (Olivia Williams), and he speaks to her in these scenes. Shyamalan shoots it to make it seem they are conversing, but seeing it back emphasizes that he is having a one-way conversation.

4 Malcolm's Marriage Troubles

Malcolm misconstrues his marriage problems.

Whenever the movie doesn't follow Malcolm and Cole's relationship with each other, it examines their troubled relationships at home. Just as Cole struggles to connect with his mother, Malcolm's wife has seemingly become cold to him . While the movie makes it seem that this is due to Malcolm's obsession with work, she is acting distant from him because he is no longer alive.

From ignoring Malcolm to getting close to another man, it becomes clear that she is not an unloving wife; she is a mourning widow. This fact plays out at the restaurant when he joins her for dinner and tries to talk to her, but she is talking to herself in response. When he sees her at home and can't comprehend why she has changed so much, he sees the pain in her eyes, and this moment is when The Sixth Sense twist finally hits Malcolm and the audience.

3 The Restaurant Scene

Anna is celebrating their anniversary alone after his death.

One of the most brilliant Sixth Sense scenes to look back on is when Malcolm and his wife are at the restaurant. Once again, Shyamalan presents it in a natural way on the first viewing. However, it becomes extremely obvious once the truth has been revealed. Malcolm shows up late for dinner, but his wife refuses to talk to him and grabs the check before he can. As he tries to explain himself, she sadly whispers, "Happy anniversary" before leaving.

Upon realizing she is the only one at the table, the scene makes so much sense. Malcolm believes she is mad at him for putting work ahead of their marriage, specifically on their anniversary. Anna seems sad that their marriage is disintegrating. After the reveal that he is dead, it is clear that Anna is depressed because she is celebrating their anniversary alone — one year after he died and left her a widow.

M. Night Shyamalan is known for making use of twist endings in almost all his films, sometimes with good results, but often with bad ones.

2 Malcolm Wears The Same Clothes He Died In

Malcolm never changes his blue dress shirt.

While some movie costume choices stand out, Malcolm's clothes in The Sixth Sense are ordinary and unassuming, which Shyamalan clearly intends. After seeing Malcolm in a blue dress shirt on the night he was shot, he is never seen in anything but that shirt again. He wears coats and various other layers to make it less obvious, but that shirt is always part of his ensemble. On the first watch, viewers might think Malcolm is a bland dresser.

Malcolm never changes shirts because he is wearing the one he died in.

However, in the movie's final moments, it is revealed that the shirt remains stained with blood from the gunshot wound. Malcolm never changes shirts because he is wearing the one he died in. Viewers would only notice this fact on repeat viewings, but when a character never changes clothes, it raises red flags, and Shyamalan added that to The Sixth Sense for that purpose.

1 Malcolm's Wedding Ring

A band of foreshadowing.

The Sixth Sense twist arrives at the end . The climax begins with Malcolm's wife dropping his wedding ring on the ground. This revelation is when he realizes he isn't wearing the ring. Viewers understand what this means the second the ring hits the floor. While this moment spells it out, it was a clue Shyamalan sprinkled throughout the movie. In the film, Malcolm is not seen wearing his wedding ring , while Anna still wears hers. Despite this, Malcolm wants to " save his marriage, " and Anna ignores him.

Though they seem to be having marital trouble, and she appears to pull away from him, the fact that she wears her ring and he doesn't wear his makes no sense. Of course, the reason he doesn't have his is that she has held onto it since his death. The dropped ring finally reveals M. Night Shyamalan's greatest twist ending in The Sixth Sense .

Is On The Line Worth Watching? Breaking Down The Mel Gibson Movie's Reviews & Rotten Tomatoes Scores

• On The Line found new life on Netflix, but its predictable plot and poor acting make it a skip for many viewers.
• Mel Gibson shines in this thriller, but the movie's unrealistic twists and lack of tension disappoint audiences and critics alike.
• Despite its absurdity, On The Line caters to fans of twisty thrillers and Mel Gibson's nostalgic performances.

Spoiler Warning: This article contains spoilers for On The Line.

Although not as popular as some of Mel Gibson 's more notable work, 2022's On The Line has found new life on Netflix, which brings into question whether the movie is truly worth a watch . On the Line sees Gibson as Elvis, a popular radio host who, after receiving a threatening call from an unknown caller, has to race against the clock to save his wife and daughter. Although some of Gibson's action movies have found renewed success on Netflix , it's to be expected given his status as one of the industry's most beloved action stars.

Despite Gibson's age, he's still starring in action thrillers, as demonstrated by movies like, On The Line and the upcoming Lethal Weapon 5 . Although On The Line is decidedly different from the actor's usual work, it features Gibson in what is easily one of the more fun, albeit inconsistent, performances of his career. Additionally, On The Line sees Gibson starring alongside many fresh faces, which effectively speaks volumes to his star power in the modern filmmaking climate. Nevertheless, from plot twists to Rotten Tomatoes scores, On The Line 's recent popularity has been brought into question .

The 10 Best Mel Gibson Movies Of All Time, According To IMDb

Discussions of self harm are included in this article.

On The Line Has A 21% Score From Critics On Rotten Tomatoes

The movie's rotten tomatoes audience score is 32%..

On The Line 's reception among audiences and critics boils down to a predictable thriller marred by an unrealistic plot and poor acting performances from the majority of its cast. Save for Gibson, the consensus regarding On The Line is that the movie doesn't really offer anything worthy of viewers' time . While Gibson delivers a performance that is entertaining, it's overshadowed by a plot that feels dated in addition to lacking any genuine thrills beyond its initial moments. On The Line 's first act is arguably its best, as the tension is palpable and engaging at that point.

The confusing plot twists and underwhelming ending are also among some of On The Line 's most contentious elements.

However, once the supporting characters have more screen time, the movie quickly devolves into a not-so-subtle commentary on social media and its negative impact on the personal lives of respected celebrities and otherwise influential personalities. From puns and one-liners to Gibson's over-the-top delivery of some of Elvis's jokes, On The Line shifts from an enthralling thriller to a B-movie horror movie without any of the self-awareness necessary to make it work . The confusing plot twists and underwhelming ending are also among some of On The Line 's most contentious elements.

On The Line's Reviews Criticize Its Lack Of Tension, Plot Twists & Ending

The final plot twist didn't stick the landing with critics & audiences..

Elvis falls deeper into a cat and mouse game of death with a deranged caller named Gary, but it loses its tension by juxtaposing the thrills with one too many plot twists and bad jokes that, despite their prevalence, never really land. As seen earlier on, Elvis enjoys pranking his employees, and after a particularly harsh prank was played on Lauren, his former switchboard operator, she commits suicide. Unbeknownst to Elvis, Lauren was friends with Gary, and despite never being properly established beforehand, her death causes him to break into Elvis's house, where he threatens to kill his family.

After Gary forces Elvis to jump off a building to ensure his family's safety, Elvis fakes his death, but Gary reveals he knows Elvis faked it as he secretly had a drone circling the building. After then being forced to put an explosive vest on one of his interns, Dylan, for his trickery, Elvis and viewers witness Gary drop the detonator, but Dylan doesn't explode. As it turns out, the entire tense situation was one big prank that Elvis's crew orchestrated to get revenge for the years he pranked them. Despite its absurdity, On The Line still has an audience .

On The Line Is Worth Watching For Fans Of Mel Gibson Movies & Twisty Thrillers

The mel gibson thriller has plenty of plot twists in store..

Audiences familiar with Gibson's body of work will likely appreciate On The Line more than anyone else since , despite the movie's ridiculous plot, On The Line still features an inspired performance from Gibson that hearkens back to his '80s and '90s careers, respectively. Additionally, the movie's various plots could work well for people who enjoy them in other movies despite their lack of credibility or plausibility. Unfortunately, the majority of people who've seen it aren't too crazy about its twists, as demonstrated by its overwhelmingly negative feedback.

While Elvis's firing of Dylan is a prank that makes sense, Dylan's true identity as a stuntman named Max who orchestrated what is essentially an act of domestic terrorism and not facing any severe repercussions doesn't. Additionally, the police allowing such a prank to be broadcast live makes even less sense. While there is a moral about not taking people for granted, On The Line features too many twists for it to really work. Mel Gibson's movies are usually realistic , and while On The Line isn't, Gibson's performance and even the more absurd twists might be worth it for some .

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Netflix viewer 'couldn't sleep for a week' after 'biggest plot twist of all time' in psychological thriller series

This has to be one of the most shocking twists ever.

Lucy Devine

Netflix viewers have revealed the biggest plot twists they've ever come across in TV shows - and one series in particular could take home the crown.

Posting on X, one person asked: "What's a movie that had the BIGGEST PLOT TWIST EVER and it still blows your mind just thinking about it?"

Now, there's heaps of films and shows that blow our minds, but this one has to be up there with one of the most mind-boggling.

Admitting they 'couldn't sleep for a week' after watching, one viewer was clearly shook after bingeing a particular show.

The Netflix series, from 2021, follows the story of a single mum who enters a world of twisted mind games.

It's based on a novel by Sarah Pinborough, which was published in 2017.

Behind Her Eyes sees single mum Louise (played by Simona Brown) become entangled in an affair with her boss, a psychiatrist named David (Tom Bateman), only to become friends with his wife Adele (Eve Hewson).

All is not as it seems in David and Adele's marriage and things take a pretty dangerous and sinister turn for Louise, especially when Adele's old friend, Rob, resurfaces from the past.

And let's just say the plot twist - which takes an unexpected supernatural turn - will have you absolutely floored.

Unlike other shows where some storylines can be easily predicted, one fan said that they ‘didn’t see any of it coming’.

Meanwhile, a number of other people took to X admitting that the series was 'underrated' when it first came out.

One person said: "I’m surprised many people didn’t talk about it when it came out. It was really good."

While another added: "No one can tell me they saw it coming, no way!"

And a third added: "I don’t get shook easily from shows/movies... But this one still has me disturbed lol."

Another person said it had one of the 'coldest endings' they'd ever seen, whereas one admitted it 'really got to them' and was 'in their head' for a good while afterwards.

“The first series really got to me and was in my head for some time," they wrote.

“The most difficult part is, having watched it and then you try to explain it to someone else.”

“ Behind Her Eyes .. One of the best plot twist ever,” said another.

The series consists of six, 50-minute episodes and it's available to binge on Netflix now.

Behind Her Eyes ending explained

If you're not afraid of spoilers, we'll do our best to explain the absolutely bizarre twist ending of Behind Her Eyes .

So it turns out Adele is skilled in astral projecting (yes, really), and can literally make her soul leave her body.

When Louise betrays Adele once and for all and tries to steal David for herself, Adele overdoses on heroine and sets her house on fire.

Louise - now trained in the ways of astral projection by Adele - tries to save Adele, and flies into the house as a disembodied spirit when she can't get in physically.

But crafty Adele nips into Louise's body while she's out and takes possession of it, leaving Louse trapped in Adele's comatose body to die in the fire.

But in another twist - it turns out Adele had previously taught a guy she met at rehab called Rob to astral project, and he repaid the favour by nicking her body, so we've actually been watching Rob in Adele's body this whole time

See, told you it was mad.

Topics:  Netflix , TV and Film

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