TIMECRIMES

In the Spanish countryside, a middle-aged man named Héctor and his wife Clara live in a home that they are renovating. Héctor scans the forest behind their house with binoculars and sees a young woman take off her T-shirt, exposing her breasts. When his wife goes shopping, he investigates and finds the woman on the ground, naked and unconscious. He is stabbed in the arm by a mysterious man with bloody bandages on his face. Fleeing and breaking into a mysterious nearby building, Héctor contacts a scientist by walkie-talkie, who warns him of the bandaged man and guides him to his location, promising safety. With the bandaged man just outside, the scientist convinces Héctor to hide inside a large mechanical device. When Héctor leaves the machine, he discovers that he has traveled approximately an hour back in time.

The scientist explains that the machine is an experimental time machine and refers to Héctor as "Héctor 2". The scientist tells Héctor 2 that they need to stay where they are and let events unfold. Despite the scientist's warning, Héctor 2 drives off in a car, passing a cyclist, who he recognizes as the woman Héctor 1 saw in the forest. Héctor 2 chases the woman, only to be run off the road by a van, cutting his head, which he wraps using the bandage from his arm wound. He then realizes the bandaged man from before is himself. The woman approaches to see if he is all right. Héctor 2 replicates events by making the woman undress in view of Héctor 1. When she runs away, Héctor 2 catches her, inadvertently knocking her out. Héctor 2 lays her out naked on the ground and then stabs Hector 1 in the arm when he arrives. The woman escapes.

Héctor 2 returns to his home, where he hears a scream and chases a woman through his house and onto the roof. When Héctor 2 attempts to grab her, she slips and falls to her death. Seeing the body from the roof, Héctor 2 is horrified, believing he has killed his own wife. Héctor 2 contacts the scientist over the walkie-talkie and convinces him to lure Héctor 1 to the lab with warnings that he is being pursued. Driving to the lab, Héctor 2 insists that he must travel back one more time, despite the scientist revealing that there is a Héctor 3, who told him he must stop Héctor 2 from doing just that.

After removing his bandages, Héctor 2 convinces the scientist to send him back several seconds before Héctor 2 initially appears. This causes him to become Héctor 3, who uses a van to run Héctor 2 off the road, but crashes as well, knocking himself out. Upon waking, Héctor 3 informs the scientist he has failed to stop Héctor 2. Héctor 3 encounters the woman again, startling her into screaming, though she does not recognize him as her assailant. Since Héctor 2 has heard her scream, Héctor 3 and the woman flee to Héctor's house. They become separated. Héctor 3 finds and hides his wife, then realizes what has to happen / will happen / has already happened. He finds the woman, cuts her ponytail off, gives her his wife's coat and tells her to hide upstairs. Héctor 2 chases her onto the roof. Héctor 3 sits on his lawn with his wife as Héctor 2 accidentally kills the woman, then drives off – heading back to the lab to become Héctor 3. Emergency vehicles are heard approaching in the distance.

The film ends with Héctor (Héctor 3) taking actions to ensure the past events unfold as necessary, including deceiving others and orchestrating the fate of the characters to close the time loop.

The conclusion underscores the deterministic nature of time travel in the film’s universe—Héctor’s efforts to change events only lock him further into a cycle of self-fulfilling actions. The ending lands as a bleak meditation on fate, personal responsibility, and the inescapability of one’s choices, with every attempt at control tightening the loop rather than breaking it.