Say Goodbye to This 90% RT Time-Travel Cult Favorite on HBO Max

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Published Mar 22, 2026, 9:40 AM EDT

Rohan Naahar is a Weekend News Writer for Collider. From Francois Ozon to David Fincher, he'll watch anything once.

He has covered everything from Marvel to the Oscars, and Marvel at the Oscars. He also writes obsessively about the box office, charting the many hits and misses that are released weekly, and how their commercial performance shapes public perception. In his time at Collider, he has also helped drive diversity by writing stories about the multiple Indian film industries, with a goal of introducing audiences to a whole new world of cinema.

Some years after Primer demonstrated that certain movies require a doctorate in rocket science to be enjoyed, a similarly small-scale independent film from Europe came along and dismissed that suggestion in just 92 minutes. It did this by making a persuasive case for the concept of internal logic. It doesn't matter if a plot's mechanics withstand real-world scrutiny; all that matters is whether the plot stays true to its own principles. And that's what the European film did with the often-deconstructed idea of time travel. Without using special effects or Bruce Willis, the film earned stellar reviews and eventually garnered a cult following. It remains a fan-favorite and is currently available to stream on HBO Max. But you're going to want to rush, because it's leaving the streamer in only a few days.

The movie was released in 2008 in its home country of Spain, following a 2007 premiere at the Fantastic Fest. This was around four years after Primer premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and earned positive reviews. Written, directed, produced, edited, and scored by the now-disgraced Shane Carruth, who also played the lead, Primer grossed over $800,000 against a reported budget of just $7,000. It now holds a 72% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the critics' consensus reads, "Dense, obtuse, but stimulating, Primer is a film for viewers ready for a cerebral challenge." By comparison, the Spanish film holds a 90% score on Rotten Tomatoes.

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Here's How Long You Have Left To Watch 'Timecrimes' on HBO Max

We're talking about Timecrimes, of course. Directed by Nacho Vigalondo, who also stars alongside Karra Elejade, Candela Fernández, and Barbara Goenaga, the movie follows a man who unwittingly becomes trapped in a causal loop. Rotten Tomatoes' consensus for the film hailed it as "a low-budget thriller that's well-crafted and loaded with dark humor and bizarre twists." In a piece for Collider, Ima Ifun argued that Timecrimes remains largely overlooked even two decades after its release. "Despite being eons ahead of its time, it’s often sidelined in discussions of the best time travel films, overshadowed by the likes of Primer, Predestination, and the usual Hollywood blockbusters," she wrote. Vigalondo went on to make his Hollywood debut with one of the earliest examples of a "screenlife" movie, Open Windows, starring Elijah Wood. He then made the acclaimed small-scale kaiju movie Colossal, starring Anne Hathaway and Jason Sudeikis.