7 Films About Time Travel That You Have To See After X-Men: Days Of Future Past

7) 12 Monkeys (1995)

Terry Gilliam is a director known for his capacity for the bizarre and eccentric. Films like The Fisher King and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus strive to blur the lines between reality and fantasy, culminating in a dream-like quality. In fact, it says a lot about his filmography that the 1995 sci-fi classic, 12 Monkeys, stands as his most straight-forward piece of work to date. Yes, he had dipped his toe into the time travel sub-genre before with the classic Time Bandits, and indeed, we were tempted to put that on the list instead of this film, but in terms of the spectacle, 12 Monkeys is, by far and away, the more substantial of the two.

To start with, it’s so dark. From the subject matter to the mise-en-scène, the movie is an exploration into the darkest corners of the human condition and the human conscience. Complete with Giliam’s trademark cantered angles and set design, 12 Monkeys is a grimy visual feast typical of the director, complete with a wonderfully compelling narrative.

Set in a dystopian future where a disease has wiped out humanity and left the Earth uninhabitable, society is forced to live underground and use time travel to pinpoint and gather information on the source of the outbreak before it tore through the globe. The man sent back? Convict James Cole (Bruce Willis in one of his all-time best performances), a reluctant volunteer who encounters just as many problems in the past as he does the present, namely the fact people think he’s insane and the only person (a terrifically unhinged Brad Pitt) who believes him is … well, insane.

12 Monkeys is a wonderfully abstract film as one would expect from Terry Giliam, an attribute which is only amplified by the time travel element. As is expected with science-fiction, the film has a lot to say about the human race as a species; where we’re heading and why we’re heading there. It’s smart, it’s funny and it’s brilliant. Go see it!