Best movies like Primer

What happens if it actually works?

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Primer Starring Shane Carruth, David Sullivan, Casey Gooden, Anand Upadhyaya, and more. If you liked Primer then you may also like: The Thirteenth Floor, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Upstream Color, Next, The Jacket and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.

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Friends and fledgling entrepreneurs invent a device in their garage which reduces the apparent mass of any object placed inside it, but they discover that it has some highly unexpected capabilities - ones that could enable them to do and to have seemingly anything they want. Taking advantage of this unique opportunity is the first challenge they face. Dealing with the consequences is the next.

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Know any good movies to watch like Primer 2004. With a similar plot or stoyline. Suggest it.

The Thirteenth Floor

Los Angeles. A wealthy man, known as Mr. Fuller, discovers a shocking secret about the world he lives in. Fearing for his life, he leaves a desperate message for a friend of his in the most unexpected place.

2001: A Space Odyssey

Humanity finds a mysterious object buried beneath the lunar surface and sets off to find its origins with the help of HAL 9000, the world's most advanced super computer.

Upstream Color

A man and woman are drawn together, entangled in the lifecycle of an ageless organism. Identity becomes an illusion as they struggle to assemble the loose fragments of wrecked lives.

Next

Las Vegas showroom magician Cris Johnson has a secret which torments him: he can see a few minutes into the future. Sick of the examinations he underwent as a child and the interest of the government and medical establishment in his power, he lies low under an assumed name in Vegas, performing cheap tricks and living off small-time gambling "winnings." But when a terrorist group threatens to detonate a nuclear device in Los Angeles, government agent Callie Ferris must use all her wiles to capture Cris and convince him to help her stop the cataclysm.

The Jacket

A military veteran goes on a journey into the future, where he can foresee his death and is left with questions that could save his life and those he loves.

The Butterfly Effect

A young man struggles to access sublimated childhood memories. He finds a technique that allows him to travel back into the past, to occupy his childhood body and change history. However, he soon finds that every change he makes has unexpected consequences.

The Butterfly Effect 2

After his girlfriend, Julie, and two best friends are killed in a tragic auto accident, Nick struggles to cope with his loss and grief. Suffering from migraine-like seizures, Nick soon discovers that he has the power to change the past via his memories. However, his time-traveling attempts to alter the past and save his one true love have unexpected and dire consequences.

Clockstoppers

Until now, Zak Gibbs' greatest challenge has been to find a way to buy a car. But when he discovers an odd wristwatch amidst his father's various inventions and slips it on -- something very strange happens. The world around him seems to come to a stop, everything and everybody frozen in time. Zak quickly learns how to manipulate the device and he and his quick-witted and beautiful new friend, Francesca, start to have some real fun.

Back to the Future Part III

The final installment of the Back to the Future trilogy finds Marty digging the trusty DeLorean out of a mineshaft and looking for Doc in the Wild West of 1885. But when their time machine breaks down, the travelers are stranded in a land of spurs. More problems arise when Doc falls for pretty schoolteacher Clara Clayton, and Marty tangles with Buford Tannen.

I'll Follow You Down

After the disappearance of a young scientist on a business trip, his son and wife struggle to cope, only to make a bizarre discovery years later - one that may bring him home.

Looper

In the futuristic action thriller Looper, time travel will be invented but it will be illegal and only available on the black market. When the mob wants to get rid of someone, they will send their target 30 years into the past where a looper, a hired gun, like Joe is waiting to mop up. Joe is getting rich and life is good until the day the mob decides to close the loop, sending back Joe's future self for assassination.

Project Almanac

A group of teens discover secret plans of a time machine, and construct one. However, things start to get out of control.

Safety Not Guaranteed

Three magazine employees head out on an assignment to interview a guy who placed a classified ad seeking a companion for time travel.

Time After Time

Writer H. G. Wells pursues Jack the Ripper to modern day San Francisco after the infamous serial killer steals his time machine to escape the 19th century.

Timecop

An officer for a security agency that regulates time travel, must fend for his life against a shady politician who has a tie to his past.

Timeline

A group of archaeological students become trapped in the past when they go there to retrieve their professor. The group must survive in 14th century France long enough to be rescued.

Happy Accidents

A comedy that pays tribute to the science fiction genre -- specifically, the sub-genre of time travel. But here the alternate reality is contemporary New York City where past and future experiences of trust, commitment and denial are cleverly put to the test. Just as Ruby is beginning to relish her first-ever healthy relationship, Sam begins muttering about being a time traveler from the year 2470.

Sound of My Voice

A journalist and his girlfriend get pulled in while they investigate a cult whose leader claims to be from the future.

Frequency

When a rare phenomenon gives police officer John Sullivan the chance to speak to his father, 30 years in the past, he takes the opportunity to prevent his dad's tragic death. After his actions inadvertently give rise to a series of brutal murders he and his father must find a way to fix the consequences of altering time.

Source Code

When decorated soldier Captain Colter Stevens wakes up in the body of an unknown man, he discovers he's part of a mission to find the bomber of a Chicago commuter train.

Time Lapse

Three friends discover a mysterious machine that takes pictures 24 hours into the future and conspire to use it for personal gain, until disturbing and dangerous images begin to develop.

Donnie Darko

After narrowly escaping a bizarre accident, a troubled teenager is plagued by visions of a large bunny rabbit that manipulates him to commit a series of crimes.

Cube

A group of strangers find themselves trapped in a maze-like prison. It soon becomes clear that each of them possesses the peculiar skills necessary to escape, if they don't wind up dead first.

Paycheck

Michael Jennings is a genius who's hired – and paid handsomely – by high-tech firms to work on highly sensitive projects, after which his short-term memory is erased so he's incapable of breaching security. But at the end of a three-year job, he's told he isn't getting a paycheck and instead receives a mysterious envelope. In it are clues he must piece together to find out why he wasn't paid – and why he's now in hot water.

Cube 2: Hypercube

The sequel to the low budget first film Cube. This time the prisoners find them selves in a more advanced cube environment that they must escape from before they are killed. A science fiction film where space and time have more than one path.

Cyborg 2087

In the future world of the year 2087, freedom of thought is illegal and the thoughts of the world's populations are controlled by the government. A small band of "free thinkers" send a cyborg back in time to the year 1966 to prevent a scientist from making the breakthrough that will eventually lead to the mass thought control of the future. Our time traveler soon discovers he is not alone when government agents from the future try to prevent him from carrying out his mission.

The I Inside

Simon Cable wakes up in a hospital bed, confused and disoriented. He soon discovers from doctors that he has amnesia and is unable to remember the last two years of his life. Cable investigates what has happened to him and slowly pieces together his enigmatic past.

ARQ

Two old friends living in a dystopic future become trapped in a mysterious time loop — one that may have something to do with an ongoing battle between an omnipotent corporation and a ragtag band of rebels.

The Discovery

In the near future, due to a breakthrough scientific discovery by Dr. Thomas Harbor, there is now definitive proof of an afterlife. While countless people have chosen suicide to reset their existence, others try to decide what it all means. Among them is Dr. Harbor's son Will, who has arrived at his father's isolated compound with a mysterious young woman named Isla. There, they discover the strange acolytes who help Dr. Harbor with his experiments.

Europa Report

A crew of international astronauts are sent on a private mission to Jupiter's fourth moon.

Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel

Follows three social outcasts -- two geeks and a cynic -- as they attempt to navigate a time-travel conundrum in the middle of a British pub. Faris plays a girl from the future who sets the adventure in motion.

Moon

With only three weeks left in his three year contract, Sam Bell is getting anxious to finally return to Earth. He is the only occupant of a Moon-based manufacturing facility along with his computer and assistant, GERTY. When he has an accident however, he wakens to find that he is not alone.

My Science Project

Michael and Ellie break into a military junkyard to find a science project for Michael's class, and discover a strange glowing orb which absorbs electricity. When the orb begins to blend past, present, and future, its up to Michael and Ellie to stop the orb and save mankind.

Synchronicity

A daring physicist travels into the past to stop a mysterious woman from stealing his invention. But once there, he uncovers a surprising truth about the machine, the woman, and his own fractured reality.

The Time Machine

A scientist builds a machine that will enable him to travel back and forth in time, but when he puts it in motion, he gets more than he bargained for.

Replikator

In a poisoned world where sunshine kills, a hit squad from the Zyklor Corporation interrupts the testing of a matter replikator capable of duplicating living tissue for the purpose of extending human life. When the smoke clears, scientist Ludovic finds himself framed for murder and on the run from an exact duplicate... of himself. Joining forces with ex-lover Kat Moscow and cynical Detective Valiant, Ludovic follows the bloody path of destruction wrought by a monster with his face.

Anna

A man with the ability to enter peoples' memories takes on the case of a brilliant, troubled sixteen-year-old girl to determine whether she is a sociopath or a victim of trauma.

Mandroid

In his hidden laboratory deep in Russia, Dr. Karl Zimmer has invented the Mandroid, a humanoid robot which follows the motions of a man in a special control suit. He has offered the invention to the USA, who have sent Smith and Wait from the CIA for inspection. However Zimmer's partner Drago has different plans, wants to sell Mandroid to the military. The night he tries to steal Mandroid, he becomes exposed to the highly toxic Superconn. But he can flee and won't give up on Mandroid, even though he's terribly disfigured.

Time Trackers

When an evil scientist steals his colleague's time machine his colleague's beautiful, brilliant daughter, aided by an L.A. cop and a hapless admirer, pursues him back to twelfth century England where - disguised as a damsel in distress - she enlists the help of a knight errant whose secret past holds the key to her future.

Extracted

Thomas Jacobs invents a way to watch people's memories from the inside. Going against his morals, he accepts an offer to enter a heroin addict's memories to literally see if he committed a crime. However,a malfunction causes his consciousness to become trapped inside the criminal's mind. He remains a prisoner in the addict's memories for more than four years until he discovers the possibility of escape.

Comet

When a chance encounter brings together the cynical Dell and the quick-witted Kimberly, the stage is set for a tempestuous love affair that unfolds like a puzzle. As the film zigzags back and forth in time-from a meteor shower in LA, to an encounter in a Paris hotel room, to a fateful phone call — an unforgettable portrait of a relationship emerges.

Time Chasers

Inventor Nick Miller dreams of traveling through time, of stopping war and curing humanity's problems. He invents the Transport, a time machine, to better the world. When he sells his invention to a defense contractor, the time machine is used by its evil CEO as a sinister weapon. Nick soon discovers that the future has been changed into a desolate wasteland controlled by gangs. Robertson has sold use of the Transport to anyone who wants to take advantage of knowing the normal course of history. The only way Nick can stop the destruction of the future is to erase his past. If somehow he can prevent his past-self from creating the Transport, the threat will be averted. In this pulse-pounding race through time that takes you from the future of 2041 to the Revolutionary War, Nick must risk everything to try and save the future!

Shifter

A young woman struggles with the painful and gruesome side effects of an experiment with time travel gone wrong that causes her to lose control and shift through time at random.

Time Trap

A group of students become trapped inside a mysterious cave where they discover time passes differently underground than on the surface.

Parallels

An underground MMA fighter must confront his sister and his past in an adventure through parallel universes

James vs. His Future Self

When an uptight time-travelling obsessed young scientist is visited by his nihilistic future self, he's told that he needs to give up his dream of becoming the world's first time traveler, or else. But when he won't go along with the plan, it becomes a wicked battle of man versus himself - literally.

Madelines

Working in their garage, indie entrepreneurs Madeline and Owen discover the secret of time travel. There's only one hitch: a bug in the code creates a new copy of Madeline at the same time every day.

Coherence

On the night of an astronomical anomaly, eight friends at a dinner party experience a troubling chain of reality bending events.

Aporia

Since losing her husband, Sophie has struggled to manage grief, a full-time job, and parenting her devastated daughter, but when a former physicist reveals a secret time-bending machine, Sophie will be faced with an impossible choice.

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