Part of the magic of the movies is that they can take us anywhere, but not every movie is an epic that spans a person's lifetime or tracks the rise and fall of an empire. Some of the best movies only need 24 hours to find all the drama, laughs, or scares to create an unforgettable classic.
In a way, having a movie that takes place in just one day (or one night, or some combination of both) makes a certain amount of sense. They might not always be real-time, but by focusing on just a 24-hour span, these movies make the audience feel connected with how immediate and intimate the action on the screen feels. A lot can happen in a day, and the 32 movies below are the best films that understand how much great cinema there is to be found in one rotation of the Earth.
32. Groundhog Day
Year: 1993
Director: Harold Ramis
Is it cheating to put Groundhog Day on a list of movies that take place in just one day? Technically, everything that happens to weatherman Phil Connors (Bill Murray) takes place on February 2nd. It’s just that he relives February 2nd over and over and over again, stuck in a time loop that lasts the equivalent of decades. Hilarious with a dark edge and plenty of earnestly philosophical implications, Groundhog Day is a classic comedy for a reason. (Don't worry: The rest of this list isn't just Groundhog Day repeated again and again.)
31. Cloverfield
Year: 2008
Director: Matt Reeves
What makes this J.J. Abrams-produced movie special is its sense of scale. Typical Kaiju movies, like the Godzilla series, tend to emphasize how big the giant monster destroying the city is. By keeping to its found-footage conceit, Cloverfield ensures that our POV is that of these average citizens of New York, fleeing in confused, overwhelming terror during the worst night of their lives as an alien monster attacks the city. A wider focus or a longer time that more fully told the story of this monster attack would be self-defeating, as it’s the immediacy of this one, chaotic event that makes Cloverfield so visceral.
30. The World’s End
Year: 2013
Director: Edgar Wright
In the final film of Edgar Wright’s Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy, Simon Pegg plays a man who really should’ve grown up and quit drinking years ago. However, Gary King is determined to keep living in the past, so he gets his old buddies to attempt an epic pub crawl they failed to complete during their wild youths. Over the course of the evening, as they make their way from bar to bar, the old friends realize how much things have changed. Oh, and also, there seems to be some sort of Invasion of the Body Snatchers-esque alien invasion happening.
29. Bodies Bodies Bodies
Year: 2022
Director: Halina Reijn
A group of friends decide to wait out a hurricane with a party in a mansion owned by one of their families, but when they decide to play a murder mystery whodunit game, things take a turn when one of them ends up dead for real. The rest of the night devolves into chaotic infighting and paranoia as these Gen Zers turn against each other, each wondering which one among them is the killer. Amandla Stenberg, Rachel Sennott, Pete Davidson, Maria Bakalova, and (amusingly) Lee Pace star.
28. 200 Cigarettes
Year: 1999
Director: Risa Bramon Garcia
You’d think that this ensemble comedy, which counts Paul Rudd, Christina Ricci, Kate Hudson, Courtney Love, Dave Chappelle, and both Afflecks among its cast, would be a classic. And maybe that would be the case if 200 Cigarettes wasn’t notoriously impossible to rent or stream. But, if you do manage to get your hands on a physical copy, there’s plenty to love in this fun story about a group of young adults all trying to make it through New Year’s Eve in 1981, New York City.
27. Saturday Night
Year: 2024
Director: Jason Reitman
This showbiz flick takes place more or less in real-time on October 11, 1975, the evening that Saturday Night Live’s first-ever episode would air. The Fabelmans' Gabriel LaBelle stars as SNL producer Lorne Michaels, who must do everything he can to keep his talented, outlandish cast of future icons like Chevy Chase and Gilda Radner in check while also fending off demands from network executives who don’t have faith in the untested sketch comedy show. Saturday Night gets a smidge treacly, but it’s a propulsively funny look at one of the more storied evenings in pop culture history.
26. Trap
Year: 2024
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
It’s actually not that big a deal that the first trailer for M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap spoiled the twist. Josh Hartnett plays a loving father of a daughter who takes his kid to a pop concert only to learn that the entire show is a trap because the authorities believe a dangerous serial killer is in attendance. The twist? Hartnett’s #GirlDad is secretly the Butcher! Trap is much more than just this fairly early reveal, though, and most of the movie is high-stakes thrills as you wonder how the Butcher is going to get out of this one time and time again. You might even find yourself rooting for him.
25. The Vast of Night
Year: 2019
Director: Andrew Patterson
This indie sci-fi flick takes place over one night in 1950s New Mexico when a disc jockey (Jake Horowitz) and his switchboard operator girlfriend (Sierra McCormick) pick up signals that could be alien visitors. As they go all across town trying to solve the mystery, these signals soon become more than just sound waves. Inspired, loosely, by a “real” UFO incident, The Vast of Night is an eerie, stylish throwback to an older, retro era of sci-fi with impressively modern cinematography.
24. Crawl
Year: 2019
Director: Alexandre Aja
Kaya Scodelario stars as a college swimmer who goes back home to ensure that her estranged father (Barry Pepper) is heeding warnings to evacuate as a Category 5 hurricane barrels in. Once there, she finds her dad injured in the crawlspace—and there’s a huge alligator down there with them. As the water begins to rise due to the flooding and even more gators come looking for a meal, the father-daughter duo must find a way to avoid getting chomped on.
23. Margin Call
Year: 2011
Director: J. C. Chandor
A fictionalized account of the 24 hours before the 2008 financial crisis began in earnest, Margin Call stars Zachary Quinto as a young investment banker who stumbles upon something in the numbers that doesn’t look right. He passes it up the chain to boss after boss (Paul Bettany, Kevin Spacey, and finally Jeremy Irons), and the firm scrambles to make sense of the data—and to try to do what they can to stay ahead of the looming financial disaster by any means necessary. Margin Call is as thrilling as any movie that’s just about people in suits talking about financial moves can possibly be.
22. Shiva Baby
Year: 2020
Director: Emma Seligman
Danielle (Rachel Sennott) is an aimless young woman who attends a shiva (part of the Jewish funeral process) for a family friend, only to discover that her ex-girlfriend and her current sugar daddy are both in attendance. Her parents are there, too, and so is the sugar daddy’s wife, and the tension mounts as Danielle tries to navigate a fraught and excruciating awkward afternoon. At just 78 minutes long, Shiva Baby is quite slight, but that’s also about probably all you can take because it's so wonderfully uncomfortable and anxiety-inducing that it’s a borderline horror movie.
21. Mikey and Nicky
Year: 1976
Director: Elaine May
Peter Falk and John Cassavetes star as the titular Mikey and Nicky in Elaine May’s crime drama about a run-down petty crook, Nicky, who is convinced that the mob is going to have him killed because he stole a little money. Not knowing what else to do, he calls his oldest friend, Mikey, for help. The two friends, who seem to be drifting apart, spend the evening catching up and trying to get Nicky, who is erratic and difficult, to safety. Will this night end in renewed friendship or sadness?
20. Duel
Year: 1971
Director: Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg was only 24 years old (!) when he made his debut film, but this television movie is proof that Spielberg, arguably the greatest living director, was the real deal from the start. Duel follows David Mann, a salesman (Dennis Weaver) driving for business through Southern California, when he makes the innocent mistake of passing a semi-truck. The unseen driver of the truck develops a vendetta and spends the rest of the film trying to run down or otherwise terrorize David in his little sedan underneath the desert sun. It’s basically Jaws with a truck.
19. Collateral
Year: 2004
Director: Michael Mann
One of the great Los Angeles movies (and one of the relatively few that has nothing to do with Hollywood), Michael Mann’s Collateral stars Jamie Foxx as Max, a cab driver who has the misfortune of picking up a hitman (a subtly terrifying Tom Cruise) as a passenger. The killer, Vincent, holds Max hostage and forces him to drive him around LA all night while he takes out his targets. Jada Pinkett Smith and Mark Ruffalo also star in this cool, intense thriller.
18. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Year: 1986
Director: John Hughes
It’s right there in the title. Matthew Broderick’s supremely confident high schooler decides to play hooky, getting his best friend and girlfriend (Alan Ruck and Mia Sara, respectively) to ditch class with him and have the time of their lives in Chicago. Meanwhile, Ferris’ sister and his school’s dean of students are determined to catch him in the act. An ‘80s comedy classic from the great John Hughes, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is an effortlessly fun and charismatic story of youth, luck, and one really, really fun day. It's also still one of the best teen movies of all time.
17. After Hours
Year: 1985
Director: Martin Scorsese
One of Martin Scorsese's more idiosyncratic films, After Hours stars Griffin Dunne as a normal guy who finds himself in New York City's SoHo neighborhood late at night. What starts as a flirtation soon turns into a series of misadventures—the sort you can only get into after a certain time of night in the big city. Teetering right on the edge between zany and surreal, After Hours is a madcap black comedy that might just make you want to call it an early night the next time you're out.
16. Assault on Precinct 13
Year: 1976
Director: John Carpenter
John Carpenter's sophomore film has the vibe of a Western mixed with a zombie movie, set in South-Central Los Angeles. A soon-to-be-shuttered police precinct (the titular 13th) comes under attack by members of a gang who have sworn a blood oath to take out the cops. Lieutenant Ethan Bishop (Austin Stoker), who is in charge of the understaffed station, must team up with some of the criminals in the cells, including Darwin Joston's Napoleon Wilson, if they can hope to survive the onslaught of attackers.
15. The Warriors
Year: 1979
Director: Walter Hill
In this cult classic flick, New York City has been essentially overtaken by colorful gangs. When the leader of one of the most powerful groups calls for a summit of all the gangs at a park way up in the Bronx, he's shot and killed. The Warriors, a gang from Coney Island, are framed for his murder, and now they must make it all the way from the very top of the city to the very bottom, avoiding every other gang and the cops who are pursuing them on this crazy night.
14. Rope
Year: 1948
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Rope doesn't just take place in one night. The whole film is just one take—or at least that's what Alfred Hitchcock would want you to believe, as the classic psychological thriller is filmed in a way that makes it look like one continuous scene. In reality, there are a few editing tricks that stitch the four lengthy takes that make up the film into one fairly fluid viewing experience, but the real-time aspect of the movie is certainly effective. When two friends (John Dall and Farley Granger) kill a former classmate just to see if they can get away with the perfect murder, they host a dinner party with their victim's body hidden away in a trunk unbeknownst to the guests. But, will they get away with it, or will their old prep school headmaster (James Stewart) catch wind of what they've done?
13. Run Lola Run
Year: 1988
Director: Tom Tykwer
Does a movie count as taking place in just one day if it takes place on the same day, in three different ways? Franka Potente stars in the title role of this acclaimed German thriller, playing a woman whose boyfriend (Moritz Bleibtreu) has gotten into criminal trouble. The only chance she has at saving him is by somehow getting hold of 100,000 Deutsche Mark in the next 20 minutes. The propulsive, stylized movie follows her in three different timelines as she makes different choices in her efforts to obtain the needed funds. Run Lola Run puts a new spin on the old adage "What a difference a day makes."
12. High Noon
Year: 1952
Director: Fred Zinnemann
Gary Cooper stars as Will Kane, the marshal in a small Wild West town who has just got married to a lovely bride (Grace Kelly) and is about to retire. However, when word spreads that an outlaw he put behind bars has escaped and is headed to the town for vengeance, Kane must try to rally the citizens of the town into a posse before the crook's train arrives at noon. That proves easier said than done, as the townsfolk aren't willing to put themselves at risk. As the clock ticks closer and closer to noon, the tension—and danger—mounts.
11. Wet Hot American Summer
Year: 2001
Director: David Wain
This cult classic spoof of raunchy teen comedies, set during an absurdly packed last day of a summer camp in Maine in the early '80s, boasts an insanely stacked cast, many of whom weren't famous yet when the film premiered (and bombed) in 2001. Amy Poehler, Bradley Cooper, Paul Rudd, Michael Showalter, Molly Shannon, Christopher Meloni, and Elizabeth Banks are just a few of the counselors at Camp Firewood. Over the course of the last day of camp, the stars manage to subvert just about every trope you can image in hilariously silly ways.
10. Miracle Mile
Year: 1988
Director: Steve De Jarnat
Harry (Anthony Edwards) has finally met the girl of his dreams (Mare Winningham), and she's agreed to go on a date with him when her night shift at a coffee shop near Los Angeles' La Brea Tar Pits is over. However, Harry oversleeps and then answers a call at a payphone from somebody who claims that World War III has begun and that nuclear missiles will be raining down on LA in just over an hour. Panicked, Harry rushes, trying to find his date and get them to safety before the bombs fall—if the bombs are even real. Miracle Mile is a gripping, underrated thriller.
9. Night Is Short, Walk on Girl
Year: 2017
Director: Masaaki Yuasa
Masaaki Yuasa's vibrant, outlandish anime movie is an ode to the wonders of saying "Yes!" to wherever a night takes you. A young university student (Kana Hanazawa) decides to make the most of a night in Kyoto, encountering such wonders as party crashing, midnight book fairs, guerrilla theaters, and drinking games against supernatural beings. Meanwhile, an older student who has a crush on her, heads out into the same evening to make his move and has a drastically different time as their nights intertwine. Night Is Short, Walk on Girl is at times baffling, but it's ultimately a uniquely affirming tale about youth and the magic of one special night.
8. Before Sunrise
Year: 1995
Director: Richard Linklater
The first installment of Richard Linklater's Before trilogy is one of the most acclaimed and celebrated love stories in all of cinema. Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Céline (Julie Delpy) meet on a train to Vienna and decide to spend the evening together. As they walk around one of Europe's most romantic cities, the pair talk about love, life, and more as they consider what to make of this evening—and each other. Linklater, Hawke, and Delpy would revisit the duo twice more in sequels released over the next two decades, Before Sunset and Before Midnight, but they don't take away from the magic of Before Sunrise and the one night it takes place on, a moment in time with unbridled possibility.
7. Dog Day Afternoon
Year: 1975
Director: Sidney Lumet
What should have been a quick, in-and-out bank robbery turns into an all-day affair in Sidney Lumet's seminal crime drama. Al Pacino plays Sonny Wortzik, a rookie crook who attempts to rob First Brooklyn Savings Bank. (The film is based on a real robbery that occurred three years before its release.) When things quickly go south, Sonny and his partner Sal (John Cazale) find themselves trapped in the bank with their hostages for hours and hours as the tension ratchets up in this immaculately crafted heist flick.
6. Clue
Year: 1985
Director: Jonathan Lynn
A big IP adaptation of a board game sounds like the worst of what modern Hollywood has to offer, but this '85s comedy predates the trend and is the exception. Based on the classic murder-mystery Parker Brothers game, Clue is a wonderfully silly, clever, and unassuming whodunit starring a cast of '80s comedy greats, like Tim Curry, Christopher Lloyd, and Madeline Kahn. When a group of seeming strangers is invited to a scheduled mansion on a rainy evening and given colorful pseudonyms (Professor Plum, Colonel Mustard, etc), the night turns deadly when Mr. Boddy's, uh, body is discovered. Clue was originally released theatrically with three different endings revealing the culprit; any version you watch or stream at home will have all three possibilities.
5. Tangerine
Year: 2015
Director: Sean Baker
Sean Baker, director of the Oscar-winning Anora, filmed this 2015 movie entirely on iPhones, but it's much more than just a cinematic gimmick. (And it looks pretty great, for what it was worth.) Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) is a trans hustler who gets out of jail on Christmas Eve just in time to discover that her boyfriend is cheating on her. Together with her friend Alexandra (Mya Taylor), she traverses Hollywood looking for him in this energetic, very funny, and very compassionate look at an underrepresented community.
4. Night of the Living Dead
Year: 1968
Director: George A. Romero
Few cinematic nights are scarier than the Night of the Living Dead. One of the most important and best horror movies ever made (and arguably the first "true" zombie movie), George A. Romero's masterpiece was an independent film made on a shoestring budget, but none of that takes away from how disturbing it is. Duane Jones and Judith O'Dea star as two individuals who, along with a few others, find themselves trapped in a rural Pennsylvania farmhouse when the dead start emerging from the earth to feast on the living.
3. Die Hard
Year: 1988
Director: John McTiernan
Debate all you want if Die Hard is a Christmas movie or not: it is definitely a movie that takes place in just one day. Bruce Willis stars as John McClane, a New York cop who lands in Los Angeles to visit his estranged wife just in time to find himself in the middle of a hostage crisis when terrorists, led by Alan Rickman's Hans Gruber, take over the building where her company Christmas party is being held. As the night progresses, McClane must use all his cunning to overcome the odds and save the day in this, one of the all-time best action movies.
2. 12 Angry Men
Year: 1957
Director: Sidney Lumet
Henry Fonda leads this cast of a dozen in Sidney Lumet's iconic legal drama, which takes place on one, sweaty afternoon as members of a jury deliberate their verdict. Almost all of them think the defendant, an 18-year-old boy accused of killing his father, is guilty, but Juror 8 (Fonda) has his doubts. It's up to him to convince his fellow members of the jury that there are indeed reasonable doubts. One of the greatest films ever made, 12 Angry Men is a masterpiece, proving that you don't need a huge scale to have a massive movie; a handful of great actors working off a great screenplay in one room over one afternoon can be enough.
1. Do the Right Thing
Year: 1989
Director: Spike Lee
It's the hottest day of the summer in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, a masterful look at race in America. In Brooklyn's Bedford–Stuyvesant neighborhood, tensions are simmering between the African American population and the owners of an Italian-American pizzeria, and Mookie (Lee, who stars in addition to directing) soon finds himself right in the middle when things eventually come to a tragic, cathartic, and seemingly inevitable end. John Turturro, Rosie Perez, Bill Nunn, Danny Aiello, and Martin Lawrence also star in Do The Right Thing, a Great American Film that's as entertaining as it is important.
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