Although it was released last week and quickly rose to #1 on Netflix's Top 10 Movies chart, the time-travel horror film “Time Cut” has not exactly been a hit with those who have seen it. Critics have criticized the film harshly, giving it a 19% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and RT's audience rating (34%) is not much better, with TG's Alix Blackburn calling it “lacking in intensity and emotional depth.”

“Time Cut” features stars from two major Netflix series, with Madison Bailey of “The Outer Banks” in 2003, when a mysterious killer is trying to murder several teens, including her sister (Antonia Gentry of “Ginny & Georgia”). She plays a high school student who inadvertently travels back in time. Director and co-writer Hannah McPherson takes a bland, lifeless approach to the material, with watered-down, almost bloodless carnage and an almost incoherent understanding of the rules of time travel.

If you were disappointed by “Time Cut” or are completely put off by it, here are five better horror films with similar hooks instead.

The most obvious alternative to “Time Cut” is this entertaining film from last year, with essentially the same premise. Kiernan Shipka plays a teenager who accidentally travels back in time from 2023 to 1987, where she reunites with her teenage mother (Olivia Holt) and tries to stop a serial killer who is about to attack her previously peaceful small town.

“Totally Killer” has a much livelier tone than “Time Cut,” with stronger pop culture references and a good-natured, self-deprecating sense of humor. Colorful and fast-paced, Sipka and Holt play the earnest teen and the mean girl who barely recognizes her as the mother-to-be in a kind of buddy comedy. The central mystery is a bit lackluster, but the comedy and sweet mother-daughter relationship are sharp and endearing.

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The time-travel element of this horror-comedy from director Christopher Landon (producer of “Time Cut”) is a bit unusual, as the main character, Tree Gelbman (Jessica Rothe), looks like Bill Murray in “Groundhog Day” 's Bill Murray), who can't get out of experiencing the same day over and over again. It is her birthday, but it is also the day she is murdered by a masked killer who stalks college campuses.

After being killed several times, Tree decides to solve her own murder, making positive changes in her life in the process. Rothe gives a confident and charismatic performance as the sarcastic but likable Tree, while Landon finds a creative approach to familiar elements of both the slasher and time loop subgenres. The film covers the same events over and over again, but always feels fresh. [Teenage protagonist Max Cartwright (Taissa Farmiga) travels back in time and enters the world of the horror film “Camp Blood Bath” (1986), starring her late mother Amanda (Malin Aukerman). Max and her friends are well aware of what happens in “Camp Blood Bath,” but trying to avoid the movie's villain creates new dangers.

“Final Girls” is a smart satire on the heyday of slasher films and the tender bond between mother and daughter. Director Todd Strauss-Schulson balances the low-budget horror style of the 1980s with a modern sensibility, providing a fun and rewarding contrast between past and present, and between reality and cinema.

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There is no journey back and forth between eras or dimensions in horror legend Wes Craven's masterpiece. Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson opened the era of meta-horror, and a long-running franchise, with this clever and genuinely scary small-town slasher.

The costumed killer known as Ghostface, who insists on playing horror trivia before killing his victims, may have the key to taking him down in video store employee and movie nerd Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy). Ghostface's main target is heartbroken teenager Sydney Prescott (Neve Campbell), and everyone in her life is a suspect. Scream is a cleverly constructed murder mystery that deftly skewers horror clichés and delivers some of the most memorable performances in horror history.”

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Most horror movie characters just want to survive as long as they can, but the characters in director and co-writer Drew Goddard's horror comedy find that their survival is part of a much larger plan. Goddard literally deconstructs the genre by gradually pulling it back from its overused title location and revealing a grand conspiracy that leads to primitive human rituals.

If horror characters often feel like they are just going through the motions, “The Cabin in the Woods” creates a comprehensive explanation of why things have to be the way they are. Energetic performances and a grand finale tie those plots to the survival of humanity itself.

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