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There is nothing wrong per se with a good ol’ time travel movie. They provide an opportunity for the protagonist to try and change the past or the future, sometimes over and over again. But does this movie add something new to the extensive library of time travel tropes?

Drug dealer Adam is planning to double-cross his boss Dezsõ and make a big hit by fleeing the country with 200 vials of illegally harvested growth hormones. He and his girlfriend Anna have decided this is their best way to get out of the drug scene and set themselves up for the future. Things of course don’t go as planned; first Anna turns out to be pregnant and she is now not willing to take the risk of the drug deal, and soon Deszõ comes looking for revenge on Adam as he seems to know what he is up to.

Hurok is Hungarian for ‘Loop’, and the title gives it away already – as things spiral out of control, Adam somehow finds himself in a time loop and re-lives the same events multiple times.

The acting isn’t exactly great, but the plot works and the photography and editing bring a nice gritty edge to the experience. As an action movie it is not as exciting a time loop movie as Edge of Tomorrow, and its concept isn’t as intriguing as Predestination’s, or as complex as Primer’s, but there is something that is different from most other time travel movies. Usually there is some kind of explicit device or event that triggers the time travel – be it hitting 88 mph in a DeLorean in Back to the Future, or dying in Edge of Tomorrow, or simply setting the dials to a specific date on The Time Machine. However in Hurok, time seems to loop continuously for Adam, and he and the audience don’t know why or how or when or how long this happens for. And that is just enough to add a bit more interest to this movie as you try to figure out the cause and effect and the paradoxes.

A small but nice add to the time travel genre.

★★★☆☆