Extremely Short Time Span / Live-Action Films

Live-Action Films whose action takes place in less than three days

• This tends to happen in most films featuring a Lotus-Eater Machine or Cuckoo Nest.
  • Groundhog Day: The main character lives (and relives) the same 24 hours over and over again for 10 years.
  • Jacob's Ladder: Packs more than 20 years into a dying man's final thoughts.
  • The Last Temptation of Christ: Over three decades packed into the three hours it takes Jesus to die on his Cross.
  • The Devil's Advocate has nearly the entire movie turn out to be this, with several months of action turning out to be All Just a Dream that takes place in one man's head during a brief trip to the restroom. The man's fantasy aside, this film has about 2 hours and 20 minutes of screen time correspond to no more than 15 minutes of in-universe time. Alternatively, Satan hit the Reset Button, since he showed up again just before the end credits.
• As hinted by the title, 2 Days in the Valley takes place within about 48 hours from start to finish, in that time about half a dozen characters die and several more survive close brushes with death, and many of the characters find their lives changed forever as a result of the events.
• 11:14 is an extreme version. It's a full-length movie, but due to being "Rashomon"-Style with a huge cast, the events of forty minutes (from 10:54 to 11:34 PM) covered in Real Time, fills a feature-length film.
• 1941 (1979): The extended edition of the movie is about two hours and twenty minutes long, but the movie begins at 7:01 a.m. on December 13th and ends somewhere between 8:00 and 10:00 on the morning of December 14th. About 2/3rds of the movie takes place between 7:00 p.m. and midnight.
• 12 Angry Men takes place over one afternoon in Real Time.
• 2:37 takes place over the course of a single school day, leading up to a suicide at 2:37 p.m.
• Spike Lee's 25th Hour, which takes place over a day, but with several flashbacks.
• 3:10 to Yuma (1957): The film begins around noon the day of the stagecoach robbery and ends about 2 minutes after Dan and Ben meet the 3:10 to Yuma the next day.
• 30 Minutes or Less: The main part of the movie takes place in 24 hours or so.
• 68 Kill unfolds in slightly less than a day and a half: starting in the morning (Chip is getting ready for work in the opening scenes) and ending in the late afternoon of the following day (judging from the sun's position as Chip is heading west on the highway).
• 8 Women: The story takes place in one day, from morning to evening.
• 88 Minutes (actually a little more than 88 minutes).
• Excluding the Time Skips at the beginning and end, the entirety of 99 River Street takes place over just a few hours in one night.
• The entirety of Adventures in Babysitting takes place over a matter of hours, from the late afternoon to a little after 1 AM.
• About the Little Red Riding Hood begins early in the morning and ends late in the evening of the same day.
• The Aggression Scale takes just over 48 hours. Ballavance gives Lloyd 48 hours to kill everyone who had access to the money and return to the cash to him. Bellavance and his son are still in his office during the final scene, indicating that it cannot be more a few hours past the deadline.
• Airheads takes place over 2 days with an epilogue that takes place about a month afterwards.
• Despite the title, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day actually covers two days: Alexander's very bad day followed by his family's very bad day (which also happens to be Alexander's birthday).
• Aliens in the Attic takes place over the course of two nights and two days.
• American Graffiti takes place over the course of a single night and into the morning.
• The introductory sequence and subsequent Time Skip aside, the entirety of Angst takes place over a day.
• The Polish film Ashes and Diamonds takes place over two days, May 8th and 9th 1945.
• The Assistant takes place over less than a day, beginning early in the morning - perhaps around 4am - and ending at night, around 10pm.
• Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) takes place during a single day, with most of the movie happening during the evening and the night.
• The events of Avalanche unfold over the course of the opening weekend of the resort.
• From the perspective of its protagonist, the Back to the Future trilogy seems to take place in the course of a couple of weeks, at most. Otherwise, it took about 130 years. From an outside perspective, his adventures happened over two days. Your choice. The first film begins in October 25, 1985 at 8:25am and Marty travels to 1955 at 1:35am on the 26th. There he spends a week (from November the 5th to the 12th) only to return to 1985 11 minutes before he originally left. He wakes up on the morning of October 26 and travels, along with the Doc and Jennifer, to 2015 where he spends just under three hours. Then he spends about six hours in the alternate 1985 during the night of October 26-27, the whole of November 12, 1955 again but this time he spends the night. He departs 1955 on November 16 after Doc fixes the DeLorean and heads to September 2, 1885, where he spends five days and then he returns to October 27, 1985 at 11am. At the end, he spent 16 days time traveling in two days, with the time periods he travels to spanning 130 years. And while the first and third film both have him spend about a week in both time periods, the entirety of the second film specifically occurs over a period of about 25 hours from his perspective, which itself starts only about 9 hours after the climax of the first film. Lampshaded by Doc when they go back to 1955.
  Marty: This is heavy, Doc! It feels like I was here yesterday!
  Doc: You WERE here yesterday, Marty! You were!
• Bad Day at Black Rock: The 'Day' of the title is literal, with the events of the movie encompassing about 24 hours.
• The Disney Channel Original Movie Bad Hair Day 2015 takes place over the course of one entire day - the day of Monica's prom. Excluding the prologue.
• The majority of the action in A Bay of Blood unfolds over two nights. It is not clear how much time elapses between the Contessa's death and the start of the main action, but it does not seem to be more than a few days.
• Werewolf film The Beast Must Die covers the three nights of the full moon.
• Before Trilogy: Before Sunrise takes place over the course of about twenty-four hours. The sequel Before Sunset ups the ante by going Real Time. So does the third, Before Midnight.
• Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes takes place in real time, spanning the course of about 65 minutes.
• The Big Clock: From George Stroud's opening narration, we know that the the events take exactly 36 hours.
• As implied by the title, the action of The Big Night covers the events of one night: the night of George's 17th birthday.
• Bill & Ted
  • Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure: Due to San Dimas Time, the boys have only a single night to come up with their history class final.
  • Bill & Ted Face the Music: Bill and Ted have precisely 78 minutes to come up with the song that will save the universe.
• The Birdcage, based on La Cage aux folles, takes place within two full days with the epilogue wedding set sometime later.
• Given Black Hawk Down is set to a battle that took a single day, it's expected - and even the scenes before the struggle are two days prior to the Battle of Mogadishu at maximum.
• Blade Runner may not have as short a timespan as the book (see Literature), but still takes only a couple nights from start to finish (especially if Deckard is summoned the same day Leon starts the movie with).
• The Blob (1958) happens in one night.
• Discounting the prologue, the main events of Bloody Reunion take about 48 hours. (The final scene takes place an undetermined time later, but probably no more than a few days.)
• Body takes place over the course of Christmas Eve.
• The Body (2012) spans over one night until the next morning, roughly 8 hours - from the time Jaime poisons Álex until the latter goes into cardiac arrest^note see Perfect Poison. The passage of time is shown by multiple shots of clocks throughout the film.
• Barring the prologue, the events of Botched take less than a day. And as Richie is sent straight to Moscow following the botched diamond robbery, even including the prologue, the entire thing can take no more than about 3 days.
• The Breakfast Club takes place over the course of a few hours of March 24th, 1984, starting in the morning and ending in the late afternoon.
• Bring Me the Head of the Machine Gun Woman takes place in less than 24 hours. Santiago is given 24 hours to bring in the Machine Gun Woman, and at no time in the ensuing chaos does night fall.
• Buffalo '66 takes place over 24 hours, flashbacks notwithstanding.
• The action of The Bunker (2001) covers 24 hours or slightly less.
• The Cabin in the Woods takes place in one hell of a day - mostly after nightfall.
• Can't Hardly Wait takes place over a 24-hour period, although there's a brief flashback or two. Not only that: the introduction is about five minutes long, during a high school graduation ceremony. The "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue is the following morning, likewise about five minutes long. The rest of the movie is at a party, all after dark on the day in between.
• Cellular takes place in real time.
• Cemetery Gates covers about 24 hours. The break-in at the lab occurs sometime during the night. Hunter and his friends travel to the cemetery in the morning, and the film ends the following dawn.
• Technically-speaking, Chaos Walking (2021) takes place over one long day given the sun doesn't set nearly as often on New World as it does on Earth (it doesn't set once through the whole film^note in a deleted scene Todd says the last time the sun set was a decade ago. Because of this, it's hard to tell how much time passes exactly, though seeing as the protagonists are shown stopping to sleep a few times, we can assume that at least 48 hours must've passed.
• The bulk of Cloverfield (barring the "tape skip" flashbacks) takes place over a single night and the following morning.
• Clownhouse occurs over less than 24 hours. Starts in the morning and ends before dawn the next day.
• Clue takes place in a single evening, with no flashbacks.
• The plot of Coherence spans over one night up until the next morning.
• With the possible exception of the opening scenes before Arnie is introduced, the entirety of Commando takes place over the course of 24 hours. Most of it takes place in less than that, as the core of the story is a Race Against the Clock in which John Matrix has roughly eleven hours to find out where his kidnapped daughter is being held before the kidnappers realize that he isn't complying with their demands and kill her.
• Collateral takes place over the course of a single night.
• Cold Prey takes place over two days.
• Both Crank and the sequel Crank: High Voltage unfold in less than 24 hours.
• The screen adaption of The Crimson Rivers manages to pack a lot of plot into mere 24 hours. In fact, it is only confirmed by Word of God in a post-release commentary.
• Crown Vic follows two LAPD officers over the course of one night.
• Daughters of the Dust takes place on the last day before the Peazant family move off their ancestral island home of St. Helena to the US mainland.
• The events of the Day of the Outlaw cover about one day. One of the film posters even used the Tag Line "Twenty Four Hours Of Hell In The Life Of A Trapped Town".
• Dazed and Confused takes place in a little over one day.
• The events of Dead Birds unfold in approximately 24 hours, with the majority of the action taking place overnight.
• Barring the epilogue, all the events of Death Factory occur on the same day.
• Death decides that it will only take him three days to find out why the human race fears him so in Death Takes a Holiday.
• The Coming of Age Story December begins the night of President Roosevelt’s "Day of Infamy" speech and ends relatively early the next day.
• Deep in the Valley: Tracy tells Carl he has been missing for two days, indicating his time Trapped in TV Land was the same as the real world.
• Apart from the prologue, Demolition Man takes places over about two days. Most of the plot happens on the very first day.
• Demon Knight unfolds over the course of a single night. The final scene of Jeryline boarding the bus is probably the following morning but, even if it is not, the fact she is still in the desert indicates that it cannot be more than a few days later.
• Deranged (2012) takes less than 24 hours. Gabriella picks her friends up from the airport, they drive the few hours to the villa, and the film ends before dawn.
• Devil starts in late afternoon and ends at night, so it takes place only in a couple of hours.
• Dick Tracy's Dilemma covers a little over 24 hours. The film starts with the robbery of the fur warehouse. The insurance company has to produce the furs or pay out on the policy within 24 hours, and when Tracy visits Humphreys the next night, Humphreys says the deadline is almost up. No more than two or three hours elapse from that visit to the climax.
• A hallmark of the Die Hard franchise:
  • Die Hard begins in late afternoon and ends before sunrise.
  • Die Hard 2 spans a single night.
  • Die Hard with a Vengeance is mostly across a single day, though it's unclear whether the opening and closing sequences are before\after this busy day.
  • Live Free or Die Hard has the majority of events on a span of 36 hours (Bruce Willis and director Len Wiseman even discussed during production how John McClane and his hacker companion go through all this with barely a snooze).
  • A Good Day to Die Hard takes place in one evening and the following morning.
• Dog Day Afternoon takes place during a single afternoon and evening.
• Do the Right Thing takes place on a hot summer afternoon.
• Draft Day starts 12 hours before the 2014 NFL draft and ends after the first round picks (ignoring the epilogue).
• The events of Dredd take place over a 24 hour period (starting at dawn and ending the next morning).
• Dr. Strangelove takes place over one night.
• Duck Butter: The whole film takes place over a day, as Nima accepts Sergio's challenge about "fast-tracking" a relationship to 24 hours.
• Eagle Eye is set across three hectic days - then the ending skips to what happened to the characters in the following months.
• Earthquake takes place within one day.
• The events of Eden Lake unfold over a single weekend.
• Eleven Minutes Ago takes place over the course of the wedding reception. The main character, on the other hand, is experiencing it in eleven minute chunks over the course of years. It's a little Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey.
• The Elf: The majority of the film happens over the course of Christmas Eve, with the epilogue on Christmas Day.
• Empire Records is set across one very eventful day: April 8th, a.k.a. Rex Manning Day. Though the opening scene takes place the previous night, this may arguably be the same day since it is after closing and Empire Records is "Open 'Till Midnight".
• Escape from New York and Escape from L.A.: Snake Plissken has 24 hours (in New York)/48 (in Los Angeles) to complete his missions by use of Explosive Leash which in the first case is defused Just in Time, and in the latter was a lie.
• Escape Room (2017) unfolds over the course of the night of Tyler's 30th birthday: beginning with protagonists having dinner in the early evening and ending just before dawn.
• The first two Evil Dead movies take place over the course of one night a piece. Army of Darkness seems to takes place in the span of about the next three days (minus the epilogue), making the entire movie trilogy, which was released over the course of eleven years, happen in under a week. It's then contrasted with a gap of around thirty years before the story picks up again in Ash vs. Evil Dead (to match up with the real-life twenty-two-year Sequel Gap).
• Aside from the opening scene, Exam takes place over the course of under two hours, more or less within the 80 minutes of the test.
• Falling Down takes place in a single day, starting in the morning and finishing in the afternoon. Some countries change the title to reflect this; for example, the Spanish title is Un día de furia (A Day of Fury).
• Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: Although the end of the film jumps ahead one week, the rest of it takes place over two days.
• Ferris Bueller's Day Off in less than 12 hours.
• The Fifth Element opens with a prologue in 1914, but once it moves to the futuristic setting, basically everything takes place over two days (and that's with an interplanetary travel which is said to take four hours). The exception is the final scene, which is unclear how long afterwards it takes place (though since one character mentions that the heroes are "tired after their ordeal," it's probably only a few hours).
• Leaving aside the prologue, the action of Firestorm (1998) plays out over the course of a day.
• The Friday series, where each movie takes place exclusively... on a Friday.
• Most movies in the Friday the 13th series take place in a day and Part 2, Part III and The Final Chapter all collectively take place in a single period of about three to five days.
• Getaway begins one morning and ends the next.
• The Lithuanian film The Girl and the Echo takes place within one day. This is mirrored in its alternative title, Paskutine Atostogu Diena ("Last day of Holydays").
• Go takes place primarily over the course of one crazy night, with a little bit of the day before and the morning after thrown in.
• The Goonies lasts either 24 hours or a little more depending on if the final scene takes place in the morning or the afternoon.
• Grand Hotel takes place over about 48 hours, or two days and nights at the hotel, as all the characters in the Ensemble Cast check in and proceed to go through major life-changing events.
• Gravity takes place over about 4 hours, as the debris field attacks are 90 minutes apart, and Stone re-enters just after the third.
• The main action of Great White takes place over three days. Even including The Teaser, the entire film only covers approx. five days (after finding the body, Benny estimates the man has been dead for about a day and a half).
• In Gremlins, while the time in-between the prologue and the movie proper is hard to pin down, the bulk of the movie is shown to take place within three-to-four days, with the majority taking place within twelve hours overnight.
• Grim Prairie Tales: The Framing Device of this Anthology Film encompasses a single night. None of the individual tales spans longer that two days.
• Guess Who's Coming to Dinner opens in the afternoon and concludes with the characters sitting down for the titular dinner.
• The Guilty takes place in Real Time during the last hour and a half of Asger's shift at the dispatch center.
• Guns, Girls and Gambling takes three days. Following the In Medias Res opening, John Smith's narration starts to explain How We Got Here and flashes back to 'Yesterday', before deciding that was a bad place to start, and then flashing back further to 'The Day Before Yesterday'.
• La Haine takes place over the course of less than one day. We are clued in via Title Cards showing progressing timestamps.
• Halloween II (1981) takes place on the same night the first film ended. And the first film itself only covers Halloween morning until midway through the evening (aside from the opening scene showing kid Michael killing his sister). The original script for Halloween spread across three days, but shortening to just one made it cheaper. So both Halloween (1978) and Halloween II (1981), while released three years apart, take place from October 30 to November 1st, 1978.
  • In general, each film featuring Michael Myers covers about two days, with Michael becoming active on October 30, arriving at Haddonfield in the evening, and wreaking havoc for the rest of that night. Although Halloween Kills, aside from flashbacks to the original movie, follows Halloween II in happening on the same Halloween night of its predecessor.
• The Hangover takes place across three days (the Wolf Pack goes to Vegas, the day after the wild night, the wedding day). The sequel is longer, at least 4 or 5 days.
• The action in Hangman's Knot unfolds over 2 to 3 days. (It's not clear exactly how long Major Stewart and his men spend travelling after Peterson is killed, but it can't be more than a day or so.)
• Hard Rain takes place over just a few hours.
• Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle starts in the late afternoon and ends the following morning.
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 takes place over about twenty-four hours, aside from the flashbacks and the epilogue. This is in stark contrast to the other films, which each take place over about a year. This is also true with the book, as noted below in Literature.
• Harsh Times takes place over a single 24-hour period.
• A Haunting in Venice unfolds over almost exactly 24 hours. The movie starts on the morning of October 31, with the majority of the action occuring over Halloween night, and ending on the morning of November 1, with Poirot arriving back at his apartment at almost exactly the time he had left it the previous morning, as evidenced by the pastry delivery.
• The Hazing encompasses 12 hours or less. The film starts in the late afternoon of Oct. 31st, and ends at dawn the following day.
• Barring the prologue (which plays out in Real Time on one night during The American Civil War), Headless Horseman occurs over one Halloween.
• High Noon: The film begins early in the morning and ends a couple of minutes after noon.
• The events of High Plains Invaders unfold over the course of a single day (seemingly morning to early evening, although the overcast conditions make it hard to be sure).
• Hiroshima Mon Amour takes place over 36 hours, as the French actress and her Japanese lover spend time together right before her scheduled departure home.
• The Hit List unfolds in a little over two days. The film starts late at night as Jonas decides not to complete his current contract and goes off to murder O'Bannion. The following day Allan suffers his Humiliation Conga and meets Jonas in a bar that night. The next day Jonas starts killing the people on Allan's hit list. The siege at the police station occurs that night, and the film end on the aftermath the next morning.
• Holy Motors plays out within the course of 24 hours.
• Host has its events happen over less than one hour, occurring during a Real Time Zoom call that lasts about 50 minutes before ending.
• The 1986 portion of Hot Tub Time Machine plays out during one night.
• All three stories in the Anthology Film Horrific take place in less than a day.
• The House of Yes mostly takes place over a single, Thanksgiving night.
• The events of Husk encompass about 12 hours, starting in the early afternoon and ending in the early hours of the following morning.
• The Immortals takes place over a single night.
• The entirety of Independence Day explicitly takes place in a three day span, from July 2nd to the 4th. The sequel has almost everything fit on the 4th of July as mankind is celebrating 20 years since the first movie's victory.
• Infinite Storm takes place over the course of a day for most of the film.
• Into the Night's main action, from Ed Okin driving to the airport to he and Diana being debriefed at the hotel, unfolds over about 24 hours. (If the opening and closing stretches are factored in, the film roughly spans 72 hours at most.)
• The events of I Saw What You Did take less than 24 hours, and are probably closer to 12. It starts in the mid-afternoon and ends in the early hours of the following morning. Kit's father picks her up at 11:30 pm, which means that the final denouement cannot occur any later than one or two hours after midnight.
• It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World takes place in a single day. Spiritual Successor Rat Race too, though apparently it's a longer period (it even gets dark) and features one flashback.
• Jack the Reaper takes no more than 12 hours. The story starts in the school parking lot on Saturday morning. At the end of the film, one of the paramedics records the time as being 7:30 pm.
• Every John Wick movie takes place over 2-3 days, and each one starts shortly after the previous one ended (the fact that 3 starts less than an hour after 2 ended is actually a plot point). So the entire series so far has taken place over the course of 2-3 weeks, at most.
• Johnny Reno: As the Opening Scroll states, the events of the film cover just two days in Johnny's eventful career.
• Barring the short epilogue, the events of Judas Kiss take about 24 hours.
• Taking away the beginning and ending, Jumanji takes place in three different days: one in 1969, another in 1995 where the bulk of the movie happens, followed by a return to 1969 and an epilogue in 1995.
• While Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle twists time a little bit by mostly taking place inside the game, the real world events are in a day in 1997 and another in 2017.
• Judgment Night, as the name implies, takes place over the course of one eventful night.
• Jurassic Park
  • The majority of Jurassic Park (1993), starting with when the helicopter lands on Isla Nublar, takes place from one morning to the next. And even the moments before it are set in that same month.
  • Jurassic World, aside from the opening scene with the birth of the Indominus rex, takes place around 24 hours. The movie begins in the mid-late morning, most of the events occur during the afternoon and the evening before finally concluding on the following morning.
• "Knock-Knock" begins on Friday morning and ends on Sunday morning.
• Labyrinth has fun with this. In the goblin world, Sarah's quest needs to be completed in 13 hours, and she instantly loses a few of them midway through when she feigns confidence and tells the villain — a Reality Warper — that the Labyrinth is "a piece of cake". Meanwhile in Sarah's world, less than five hours pass while she's away (the opening scene there takes place shortly before 7 p.m., the final scene shortly after midnight).
• Barring the last scene (which happens a undetermined, but short, time later), the events of Lady on a Train encompass about 48 hours.
• Last Train from Gun Hill: The events in Gun Hill take less than a day: with Morgan arriving on the morning train and leaving on the eponymous last train at 9 PM at the end of the film. The events leading up to him travelling to Gun Hill cannot be more than two days or so.
• The Australian film Last Train To Freo is set entirely on a train traveling from Midland to Fremantle in Perth and takes about as long as that journey would take (although they do have the train break down for about ten minutes to give the story a little more time).
• Left for Dead: Although it is not clear how long Clem was unconscious in the outlaw camp, the events of the film can take no longer than two days (and are probably closer to one).
• Most of Liar Liar takes place over one day (as in from sunrise to sunset).
• Life Blood: Apart from the prelude in 1969, the film chronicles Brooke and Rhea's first 24 hours as vampires.
• The Living Wake takes place over 12 hours, at most. (It starts in the morning, and ends at 7:30 that night. It's not clear exactly what time it is at the beginning, but it can't be earlier than 7:30 or so.)
• Excluding the flashbacks to Lizzie Borden's life, the action of Lizzie Borden's Revenge unfolds over a single night.
• The Locals takes less than 24 hours. Grant and Paul leave Auckland in the late morning or early afternoon, take an extremely ill-advised shortcut, and spend a terrifying night stranded in backwoods New Zealand, with the film ending at sunrise.
• Lockjaw: Rise of the Kulev Serpent: Excluding the prologue, the film covers slightly less than 24 hours.
• The events of Lone Hero cover about two and half days.
• Long Weekend: Exactly What It Says on the Tin. The film takes place over a long weekend: starting on Friday afternoon and ending on late Monday afternoon.
• Barring the prologue, the events of The Loved Ones take less than 24 hours: starting at the end of the school day and finishing early to mid morning the following day.
• Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, with the exception of the final scene, takes place over a few hours of the titular Ma Rainey's recording session.
• Most of Mad Max: Fury Road takes place in around two days. (it's unclear how long it takes between Max's capture and his "conscription" as a blood bag)
• Magnolia focuses on a group of intersecting characters during the course of one day.
• The Man Who Could Work Miracles encompasses about 48 hours. At the end Fotheringay presses the Reset Button, and everything rewinds to the start, meaning that—in one sense—only a few minutes pass.
• Margin Call takes place in a 24-hour period.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • The franchise has three movies taking place at the same time. The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, and Thor all take place roughly within the span of the same week. The Consultant has Coulson still in New Mexico (after the events of Thor) when Stark goes talking to Thunderbolt Ross in Hulk. The miniseries The Avengers Prelude: Fury's Big Week confirms that Blonsky became the Abomination at the same time as Thor was breaking into the S.H.I.E.L.D. compound, which was the day after the Stark Expo.
  • Most of the individual movies also take place over a few days at most. Post-The Avengers, this helps justify why none of the heroes go to their friends for help: There's just not enough time.
  • To show how much the MCU crams into so few days, Avengers: Infinity War is set across just two days - Thanos's men arrive in New York City just as Peter Parker is returning from a field trip, that same night they attack Vision in Edinburgh^note Scotland is five hours ahead of New York, who is brought the next morning to the Avengers HQ in New York, and it's barely afternoon when the climactic battle occurs in Wakanda.
• Meet the Parents, excepting the opening scenes and final scene, mostly takes place over the course of two days, with most of the action falling on the second day.
• Memento takes place over the course of about two days, if you don't count the flashbacks to Sammy's story and the attack Leonard and his wife.
• The Menu takes place over the course of a single evening at the restaurant Hawthorne, which is said to last about 4 to 5 hours.
• Barring the prelude, Midnight Movie takes place over one night: starting just before midnight and ending before dawn.
• French film Le Million takes place over a single afternoon and evening, as the characters scramble to find a lost coat that contains a winning lottery ticket.
• Miracle Mile takes place in one night.
• As the title suggests, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day takes place over one day.
• The Mist takes place in a only a couple of days, even thought it's kind hard to tell the days because of...the mist.
• The events of Mohawk seem to take a little over 24 hours, although the dreamlike nature of some of the scenes make it hard to be sure.
• Monster Party: Two days, with most of action occurring in a few hours during the dinner party on the second day.
• Moonstruck: The movie takes place over a little over two days.
• Murder by Death takes place over a single evening.
• My Soul to Take: Besides the Distant Prologue and less than a minute of the following scene (where characters are counting down to midnight) the whole film takes place in the sixteenth anniversary of the events of the prologue.
• With the possible exception of the final scene, most of Mystery Team takes place over the course of a few days.
• The action of The Naked Witch seems to encompass about 2 days (although the very poor day for night shooting makes it hard to be sure).
• The Negotiator: Except for the beginning where Danny arrests a shooter and then is accused of murdering his partner, the entire action in the second act take place from afternoon to nighttime when Danny Roman holds Niebaum and a few of his colleagues hostage.
• Nerve encompasses what may be the most stressful night ever.
• Never Rarely Sometimes Always mostly takes place during a 48-hour period as Autumn and Skylar travel from their small Pennsylvania town to a Planned Parenthood clinic in New York City.
• New Town Killers covers a period of slightly over 12 hours.
• The events of Niagara occur over 3 days: the time the Cutlers had for their belated honeymoon.
• The Johnny Depp film Nick of Time takes place in real time. About 90 minutes.
• Night of the Demons (2009): The 'Night' of the title is literal. The events occur over Halloween night; starting after dark and ending at dawn.
• Why do you think it's called Night of the Living Dead? Everything from Barbra's and Johnny's visit to the graveyard to "That's another one for the fire" does indeed take place over one night.
• Nine Dead, aside from a few short scenes at the beginning about how the nine captives were abducted, entirely takes place over the course of about 80 minutes.
• The Notorious Daughter of Fanny Hill covers one very busy day in the life of Kissey Hill: from getting up in the morning till some time after dark.
• The plot of Orange County happens all in just one full day.
• Oslo, August 31st takes place over a single day (though that day is actually the 30th, with the film ending on the morning of the 31st).
• P2 takes place on a single Christmas Eve night.
• As befits a film about a daily newspaper, The Paper covers 24 hours.
• The Passion of the Christ: The film (aside from a few flashbacks and the final scene) takes place from Christ's arrest at 3 a.m. Thursday night to his death at 3 p.m. Friday afternoon.
• The Phantom of Crestwood unfolds in less than 24 hours. It starts at about midday and ends at at about 7 the following morning.
• Phone Booth unfolds more or less in Real Time (with a couple of minor jumps), with Split Screen being used to show what is happening simultaneously in different locations.
• Pig Hunt covers one weekend.
• Pineapple Express takes place in two or three days.
• The Live-Action remake of Disney's Pinocchio manages to cover an even shorter timespan than the original animated film's 2-3 days and compresses it all down to only 24 hours, all while still managing to fit in all of the same events of original animated movie and more. The movie lampshades this in a priceless exchange between Pinocchio and Geppetto once they finally meet again:
  Pinocchio: I'm sorry I got kicked out of school!
  Geppetto: You got kicked out of school?!
  Pinocchio: And I joined the puppet show and became famous!
  Geppetto: You became famous?!
  Pinocchio: But then I got scooped up and we jumped off a cliff into the sea! And now, we're here!
  Geppetto: (beat) You did all that in ONE DAY?!
  Pinocchio: Yes!
  Geppetto: My goodness. I haven’t done a fraction of that in my whole life.
• Pool of London covers three days. The film opens with the Dunbar docking in the eponymous Pool of London on Friday afternoon, and ends with her sailing on the morning tide on Monday.
• Predators begins at the morning of one day and it ends at the morning of the next... but given it's not Earth, days are not necessarily 24 hours.
• Preservation unfolds in less than 48 hours.
• Korean film The President's Last Bang, a dramatization of the assassination of President Park Chung-hee, takes place over less than a day, the afternoon-evening-night of Oct. 26-27, 1979.
• The majority of Primer takes place over about three days. Multiple times. Probably.
• Project X (2012) takes place over 24 hours or so.
• Prom Night (1980) takes place over the course of a single school day leading up to the prom, and then the prom itself that evening. The opening scene takes place six years prior before a Time Skip. Likewise the 2008 reboot takes place exclusively on prom night, except for the opening scene a year prior. Averted for the three in-name-only sequels.
• Barring the prologues of both films, A Quiet Place and its sequel takes place over the course of about a week. The first film explicitly takes place during two days, and Part II takes place during around four days.
• The Raven (1963): Dr. Bedlo arrives at the Craven estate around dusk one morning and the characters ride to confront Scarabus the next day. They reach his castle at night and the remaining action and final scene take place before morning. All told, the film seemingly encompasses less than 36 hours.
• Excluding The Teaser, Razors: The Return of Jack the Ripper takes place over two days.
• Rebel Without a Cause takes place in a little over an extremely eventful 36 hours in which two people die and a teenager catches beef with the most popular kid in school, makes a best friend, and falls in love within his first day of a new school..
• Red Eye takes place over the course of about four very stressful, hectic hours. (And about three of those hours take place on an airplane.)
• Red Hill starts on the morning of Constable Cooper's first day in Red Hill, and ends at sunrise the next day. It is a very eventful day.
• With the possible exception of up to the graveyard scene, the entirety of Repo! The Genetic Opera takes place over the course of one day.
• Reservoir Dogs. The majority of the movie is set during a scant few hours immediately following the heist.
• Revenge (2017) takes place over one weekend.
• The Rocketeer: Despite all of the plot developments and intrigue, it's implied that the entire movie takes place over approximately 48 hours.
• The Rocky Horror Picture Show mostly takes place in one night apart from it starting with a wedding that afternoon.
• Rocky Mountain covers approx. 36 hours.
• Rogue (2020) starts with the assault on the jihadist compound in mid-afternoon and ends at dawn the next day when the helicopter arrives to extract the survivors.
• Room in Rome takes place in a single night and the following morning.
• A Room in Town covers about three days of time, in which lives are completely ruined and forever changed.
• Rope takes place more or less in Real Time, covering the length of a dinner party, as well as a few minutes before and after.
• The Run All Night plot begins during an afternoon and ends the following morning.
• Run Lola Run covers the "same" twenty minutes three times, with an intro sequence and a few flashbacks in between.
• The Sadist takes place over ninety minutes, almost in Real Time.
• Santa Hunters: Apart from the first scenes with Alex and Elizabeth at their school, the movie takes place on Christmas Eve day overnight into Christmas morning.
• About half of the movies in the Saw franchise, not counting the various flashbacks, take place over the course of just a few days. To elaborate, Saw III and Saw IV take place simultaneously, Saw V starts during the events of Saw IV, Saw VI begins just minutes after the end of Saw V, and Saw 3D begins during the events of Saw VI. While these films do feature time jumps, they are a few hours at most, not days or weeks. All told, a full five of the ten (at the time of this writing) Saw movies could have, concievably, taken place over the course of a single weekend.
• Scarecrows opens on the hijacked plane in the late afternoon. It is dawn when the final showdown occurs. A news bulletin playing over the closing credits indicates that the plane touched down no more than an hour or so later.
• Scavenger Hunt (1979): The movie starts in the late morning with the reading of the will, and ends just after 5 pm when the points from the Scavenger Hunt are tallied. Total time elapsed is probably not more than six hours.
• Scenic Route also takes place in only a few days.
• Scooby-Doo: Monsters Unleashed: Apart from the opening scene taking place the night before and a following act set inside an old mansion during the day, about two thirds of the film happen over the course of a very long and packed night. Counting the final scene being set in the morning after the Big Bad is defeated, the entire conflict spans maybe a day and a half for the gang.
• Sheitan starts on the evening of Dec. 23 and ends on midnight Christmas Eve.
• Shampoo takes place over the course of one day, with some footage of the next day.
• Other than the prologue and epilogue, Shaun of the Dead takes place over two life-changing days.
• Shrooms covers two or three days; depending on exactly when the opening scene on the plane takes place, and how long Tara is unconscious in the woods before being found.
• The entirety of Silver Lode plays out over the course of a single day in near-enough Real Time, with no appreciable change in the time of day evident from the lighting or other factors.
• Skyscraper, with the exception of the opening introduction, the film starts in the morning, the evil plot gets underway in the afternoon, and the main action takes place overnight, all within 24 hours.
• Sleepy Hollow High starts at midnight (the radio announcer says its approaching the witching hour) and ends at the finish of the school day (the last scene is Shannon and Diana walking home after school).
• Excluding the prologue and epilogue, Slaughter High encompasses a little over 24 hours: running from when Carol gets up in the morning, until slightly after noon the following day (April 1st).
• Small Town Santa: The movie happens over the day and night of Christmas Eve.
• Smokin' Aces takes place in less than 24 hours, ending at the night of the same day it began, from different points of views, with a couple of flashbacks here and there.
• Aside from the opening elevator sequence and a subsequent Time Skip, Speed takes place over a single action packed morning.
• Speed Zone opens on the day before the Cannonball road race. The movie ends just after the race does about two days later. There are no flashbacks in between.
• Stag's events cover one night, following the events of an extremely eventful stag party. It starts in the late afternoon and ends at around sunrise the next morning.
• The Standoff At Sparrow Creek: The film takes place over less than twelve hours, and that counts the minute or so at the beginning where Gannon shoots a deer during the daytime and then the scene cuts to that night.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan: The bulk of the film appears to take place over the course of two consecutive days, the first of which is Kirk's birthday (March 22, 2285). There is then a short Time Skip (it's unclear how long) to Spock's funeral and the coda observing the Genesis Planet.
  • Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home: The strain of the time warp to 1986 threatens to de-crystalize the Klingon bird-of-prey's dilithium crystals, which, according to Scotty, would become unusable in around 24 hours, which means they have that long to track the humpback whales and restore the dilithium crystals.
  • Star Trek: First Contact takes place in approximately 24 hours, with the Enterprise arriving in the evening of April 4, 2063 and then departing after first contact is made the following evening on April 5.
  • Star Trek (2009): Even though the first half hour-or so passes over 25 years, the second and third acts occur roughly within just a day and a half. The epilogue is presumed to be some time very shortly after.
  • Star Trek Into Darkness seems to take place in a couple of days (not counting the epilogue) even though it would probably take more time to travel from Earth to Qo'noS in the series, but in the movies it only takes a couple of hours tops, unless Scotty's "I was gone for one day!" comment was an exaggeration.
  • Star Trek Beyond opens with Kirk making a log entry on stardate 2263.02 (January 2, 2263) and closes on Kirk's thirtieth birthday on stardate 2263.04 (January 4, 2263) with the very last scene rapidly fast-forwarding through the construction and launch of the USS Enterprise-A.
• Star Wars:
  • A New Hope appears to take place over the course of a few days, which Darth Vader lampshades shortly before the Battle of Yavin. (There were apparently some scenes written that took place days or weeks earlier, and they were expanded for the later radio version, but they didn't appear in the movie.)
    "This will be a day long remembered. It has seen the end of Kenobi; it will see the end of the rebellion."
  • The major part of Revenge of the Sith takes place over three days.
  • Like A New Hope, The Force Awakens also takes place only in a couple of days; The Last Jedi is an Immediate Sequel that itself takes place over a few days; and The Rise of Skywalker starts a year later and takes place over a single day.
• Still Walking unfolds over one summer day.
• Sweet Smell of Success plays out over the course of less than two days.
• Tales of Halloween covers the events of one Halloween, combined with a couple of short flashbacks.
• Terminator
  • The Terminator takes place over 2-3 days, apart from an epilogue set a few months later; the story begins on a Thursday night, and the last shot before the epilogue takes place on Sunday morning.
  • Terminator 2: Judgment Day takes place over about 48 hours, from the arrival of the terminators to the final showdown two nights later.
  • Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines takes place in the span of about 12 hours.
  • Except for the prologues, Terminator Salvation seems to take about 2-3 days, but is less clear on it.
  • From Kyle Reese's point of view, Terminator Genisys also spans about 2-3 days, during which he time travels twice.
  • Terminator: Dark Fate begins with a Distant Prologue 22 years in the past, but the bulk of the story takes place over the course of about 3 days.
• The events of Terror By Night unfold on an overnight train trip from London to Edinburgh, and the movie ends before the train reaches Edinburgh.
• Barring the prologue, the action of Terror Train takes place over a single night.
• Apart from the prologue showing Kelly's injury, the events of Tiger House take 12 hours.
• The events of Train take about three days. The party occurs the first night, the second night is on the train, and the third night is at the medical facility: putting the events of the climax on the morning of the next day. The brief epilogue (a few minutes) takes place an unspecified time later.
• Training Day, as the name suggests, begins in the morning and ends at dawn.
• The action of Transit takes less than 48 hours (confirmed when Nate states that the robbery took place 'yesterday').
• Triangle plays out in less than a day.
• The events of Trick 'r Treat unfold over the course of several hours on Halloween night. This is somewhat masked by the film's Anachronic Order.
• TRON takes place during a few hours, from late afternoon to late evening. The bulk of the action occurs in a period of only a few seconds - in the real world; in the computer it seems longer. The same goes for its sequel, which takes place over the course of one night.
• Unknown (2006) takes place over the course of less than 6 hours.
• Vantage Point covers roughly 23 minutes, shown from 8 points of view throughout the movie.
• Varsity Blood covers about 36 hours. The film starts in the afternoon of Oct. 30, and ends at what must be the early hours of Nov. 1.
• The events of Vice (2015) seem to encompass about 48 hours (although the City Noir setting makes it appear to be Always Night).
• Violent Saturday unfolds over two days; starting on Friday and ending on the evening of the eponymous Saturday.
• Volcano: The entire film takes place over the course of less than twenty-four hours, the bulk of the action in about two hours, from 5:10 AM to around sunrise.
• The Warriors: All the action takes place over the course of about 12 hours; the protagonists have to travel by both train and by foot from the Bronx to Coney Island (it takes around eight hours if you're walking, which they end up doing more than they expected), running into a lot of mishaps along the way. A single radio DJ manages to report on the action for the entire duration of their journey during her shift. They make it back to Coney for the movie's climax as the sun is rising.
• A Wedding (1978): The film covers less than a day, despite tons of characters having character arcs and the movie running at over two hours.
• Wendigo takes place over a single weekend.
• We're No Angels (1989): The movie begins the night of the jailbreak and ends two mornings later.
• Absurdist summer camp comedy Wet Hot American Summer takes great pleasure with this trope. 95% of the film takes place over the course of a single day (August 18th, 1981, with the opening and ending scenes taking place on the previous night and next morning respectively), even showing regular updates about the time of day, but an absurdly large quantity of events are packed into that day, stretching the timeline almost beyond belief.
• Who Framed Roger Rabbit happens over the course of two eventful days. A notable Deleted Scene would've made it three.
• The Wicker Man (1973) begins, depending on which cut you watch, on the evening of April the 28th or the morning of April the 29th, and ends at sunset on May the 1st.
• The Widow (2020): The bulk of the movie spans one day and one night.
• Barring the prologue in Ancient Persia, Wishmaster takes place over two days. This is confirmed by Alex's final wish when she wishes that Mickey Torelli hadn't been drinking on the job two days ago.
• The World's End takes place over three days: The Teaser, the Distant Finale, and everything in between.
• Zola, despite all the wild events that happen, takes place over one weekend.