25 Underrated Movies of the 2020s You Probably Missed

Let’s be honest about what “underrated” means here. These aren’t bad movies that deserve reappraisal. They’re good-to-great films from 2020 through 2025 that either got buried by the algorithm, lost the marketing lottery, or just had the misfortune of opening the same weekend as a superhero movie. Some won awards overseas and never crossed over. Others got strong reviews and then evaporated from the conversation within a week.

Here are 25 of them, loosely grouped by vibe. If you’ve seen all of these, you don’t need this list. But I’d bet real money you haven’t.

Dramas That Got Lost in the Shuffle

1. The President’s Cake (2025)

An Iraqi drama about a school “draw day” where students are selected to bring items to mandatory birthday celebrations for Saddam Hussein. It sounds like a setup for heavy-handed political allegory, but director Hasan Hadi keeps it rooted entirely in the perspective of nine-year-old Lamia. The tension comes from childhood logic colliding with adult terror. There’s a moment where Lamia rehearses her smile in a mirror that will sit with you for days. Somehow rated 9.5 on our site and almost nobody has heard of it.

2. Aftersun (2022)

Charlotte Wells’ debut reconstructs a Turkish holiday a woman took with her young father through camcorder footage and fragmented memory. Paul Mescal does something remarkable here, playing a man slowly unraveling while trying to give his daughter a perfect vacation. The karaoke scene where he sings “Losing My Religion” is devastating precisely because it looks like nothing is happening. Frankie Corio, who was eleven when this was shot, gives one of the most natural child performances of the decade.

3. I’m Still Here (2024)

Walter Salles returned after a long absence with this Brazilian drama about a woman whose husband disappears during the 1971 military dictatorship. Fernanda Torres carries the entire film on her face, her performance shifting from confusion to grief to quiet fury across decades. The bureaucratic scenes where she tries to get answers from officials are infuriating in the best way. It won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film but barely registered with American audiences.

4. 12th Fail (2023)

Based on the true story of IPS officer Manoj Kumar Sharma, this Indian drama follows a young man from a village where cheating on exams is standard practice as he repeatedly fails and restarts his path toward becoming a police officer. Vikrant Massey is phenomenal in the lead, selling years of setbacks without ever making the character feel like a victim. The study montages alone are more suspenseful than most thrillers. It became a word-of-mouth hit in India but most Western audiences have never encountered it.

5. Minari (2021)

A Korean American family moves to rural Arkansas to start a farm, and the whole thing plays out with the quiet specificity of a home movie. Youn Yuh-jung won the Oscar for playing the foul-mouthed grandmother, but the real revelation is Alan Kim as the youngest son, whose mix of confusion and delight mirrors the audience’s experience. Lee Isaac Chung based it on his own childhood, and you can feel the difference between lived experience and research in every frame.

6. The Last Duel (2021)

Ridley Scott’s Rashomon-style medieval drama about France’s last sanctioned trial by combat bombed at the box office, which is a crime. The three-perspective structure isn’t a gimmick - each retelling shifts details in ways that make you reexamine what you just watched. Jodie Comer is extraordinary in the third act, and Ben Affleck plays a dissolute count with a bleached-blond mullet that somehow works. Matt Damon and Adam Driver go full commitment in the brutal final duel sequence.

7. Nawi (2024)

Set in Kenya’s remote Turkana region, this follows a thirteen-year-old girl whose father plans to marry her off instead of letting her continue school. Director Vallentine Chelluget shot on location with mostly non-professional actors, and the authenticity is overwhelming. Michelle Lemuya Ikeny, in the title role, communicates more with a look than most actors manage with a monologue. It’s a small film about a very specific place that somehow feels universal.

8. Sound of Metal (2020)

Riz Ahmed plays a metal drummer losing his hearing, and the sound design alone justifies watching this. Director Darius Marder puts you inside Ruben’s dissolving soundscape, cutting between crystal-clear audio and muffled, distorted fragments. Paul Raci, as the leader of a deaf community, gives a performance so warm and lived-in that you forget he’s acting. The final scene, where Ruben sits on a bench and makes a choice about silence, is one of the best endings of the decade.

International Cinema That Deserved Bigger Audiences

9. Drive My Car (2021)

Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s three-hour Japanese drama about a theater director processing his wife’s death through a production of Uncle Vanya. Yes, it’s long. Yes, large stretches involve people driving and talking in a red Saab 900 Turbo. It’s also one of the most emotionally precise films of the 2020s. The rehearsal scenes, where actors read their lines in monotone before finding the emotion, become a metaphor for grief that sneaks up on you completely.

10. The Worst Person in the World (2021)

Joachim Trier’s Norwegian film tracks four years in the life of Julie, a woman in her late twenties who can’t commit to anything, not a career, not a relationship, not even a consistent opinion about having children. Renate Reinsve is magnetic in the role, funny and selfish and deeply recognizable. The party sequence where she runs across Oslo while time freezes around her is pure cinema joy. Anders Danielsen Lie’s performance in the hospital scene toward the end is the kind of acting that rearranges your insides.

11. Kokuho (2025)

A Japanese epic set in 1964 Nagasaki about a yakuza orphan who dedicates himself to kabuki theater. Sang-il Lee directs with patience, letting the transformation from street kid to artist unfold across decades. Ryo Yoshizawa disappears into the role so completely that his early scenes and late scenes feel like different actors. The kabuki performance sequences are shot with an intimacy that makes you feel like you’re watching from the front row.

12. It Was Just an Accident (2025)

Jafar Panahi, still making films under impossible conditions, delivers this tight drama about an Iranian mechanic who recognizes a customer as his former prison torturer. The entire film is built on looks and half-gestures, the mechanic unable to confirm what he knows, the other man either oblivious or performing obliviousness. Panahi keeps the camera close and the tension constant. It runs under ninety minutes and doesn’t waste a second.

13. The Secret Agent (2025)

Kleber Mendonca Filho sets this in 1977 Brazil during Carnival, following a technology expert on the run from the military dictatorship. Wagner Moura, known to most American audiences as Pablo Escobar from Narcos, plays a completely different kind of fugitive here, quiet and calculating. The Carnival setting isn’t just backdrop. The noise and chaos of the streets become both cover and threat. Mendonca Filho uses the celebration’s energy to build a paranoia that’s almost physical.

14. Band Together (2025)

A Spanish drama about a small seaside town’s traditional music band trying to reunite two years after a fishing boat disaster killed several members. Daniel Sanchez Arevalo finds the exact line between grief and dark humor that makes films like this work. Javier Gutierrez anchors the ensemble with a performance that’s all suppressed pain and forced smiles. The final concert sequence earns every emotional beat because the film spent its runtime letting you know these people.

Genre Films That Deserve More Love

15. Prey (2022)

A Predator movie set in 1719 among Comanche people shouldn’t be this good, but Dan Trachtenberg made it work anyway. Amber Midthunder carries the film as Naru, a young warrior who tracks and fights the alien with intelligence instead of firepower. The final trap she sets is brilliant, and the film respects both the Comanche setting and the creature-feature genre without condescending to either. It went straight to Hulu and got lost in the streaming pile, which is a shame because it’s the best Predator film since the original.

16. Talk to Me (2023)

Australian horror from the Philippou brothers about teenagers who get addicted to channeling spirits through an embalmed hand. Sophie Wilde gives a fierce lead performance, and the possession scenes have a physical intensity that makes you flinch. The real horror isn’t supernatural, it’s watching grief and addiction feed each other. The dinner table scene is the scariest individual moment in horror from 2023, and I’ll fight anyone who disagrees.

17. Bones and All (2022)

Luca Guadagnino made a cannibal road movie love story with Timothee Chalamet and Taylor Russell, and somehow it’s one of the most tender films of 2022. Mark Rylance shows up as a deeply unsettling older cannibal, and his scenes vibrate with menace. The film uses its grotesque premise to ask real questions about inherited damage and whether love is enough to overcome what’s broken in you. The Midwest landscapes are shot like a horror-tinged Terrence Malick film.

18. The Northman (2022)

Robert Eggers’ Viking revenge epic cost $90 million and made $69 million worldwide, which means most people skipped it. Their loss. Alexander Skarsgard plays a Viking prince on a blood oath to avenge his father, and Eggers films the whole thing like a fever dream pulled from Norse mythology. The berserker raid sequence shot in a single take is staggering filmmaking. Nicole Kidman has a late-film monologue that flips the entire story on its head.

19. The Creator (2023)

Gareth Edwards made an original sci-fi film about a war between humans and AI for $80 million, which is absurdly cheap for how gorgeous it looks. John David Washington leads a mission to find and kill a weapon that turns out to be a child, and the film uses its Southeast Asian settings to ask colonial questions that most big-budget sci-fi avoids entirely. Madeleine Yuna Voyles, the kid, gives a performance that anchors the emotional stakes. It flopped and that’s a genuine loss for original blockbuster filmmaking.

20. Promising Young Woman (2020)

Carey Mulligan plays a woman who drops out of medical school after her best friend’s assault and spends her nights pretending to be blackout drunk at bars to confront predatory men. Emerald Fennell directs with candy-colored pop aesthetics that make the rage underneath even sharper. The final act goes somewhere genuinely unexpected, and Bo Burnham’s nice-guy performance is perfectly calibrated to make you uncomfortable. The Paris Hilton needle drop is chef’s kiss.

Lighter Stuff, Hidden Comedies, and Weird Ones

21. Palm Springs (2020)

A Groundhog Day riff set at a Palm Springs wedding that works way better than it has any right to. Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti have genuine chemistry, and the film finds surprisingly dark emotional territory in between the time-loop comedy. J.K. Simmons shows up as a fellow looper with a grudge, and his subplot adds a whole other dimension. It premiered at Sundance, sold for a record price, went to Hulu, and then most people forgot it existed. Don’t be most people.

22. Hustle (2022)

Adam Sandler in serious-ish mode as a washed-up basketball scout who discovers a player in Spain and tries to bring him to the NBA without his team’s approval. Juancho Hernangomez, an actual NBA player, is shockingly good in the lead opposite Sandler. The training montages use real basketball skill instead of movie shortcuts, and the final showcase game is genuinely tense. Jeremiah Zagar directs with the energy of a sports doc and the heart of a character study.

Ralph Fiennes as a deranged celebrity chef serving a multi-course meal designed to punish the ultra-rich foodies at his exclusive restaurant. Anya Taylor-Joy plays the outsider who wasn’t supposed to be there, and her refusal to play along becomes the film’s engine. The individual courses are both hilarious and horrifying. The cheeseburger scene at the end is so satisfying it almost counts as a jump scare. Mark Mylod finds the exact right tone between satire and genuine menace.

24. Rental Family (2025)

Brendan Fraser as an American actor in Tokyo who ends up working for a “rental family” agency, playing stand-in roles for strangers who need a father, husband, or friend for the day. Director Hikari treats the premise with tenderness instead of playing it for laughs, and Fraser brings the same wounded sincerity that made The Whale work. The scene where he plays a dead man’s father at a memorial is quietly wrecking. Takehiro Hira as his agency boss is the year’s most underappreciated supporting performance.

25. The Last Viking (2025)

Mads Mikkelsen and Nikolaj Lie Kaas reunite for another Anders Thomas Jensen dark comedy, this time about a recently released convict trying to find stolen loot with his mentally ill brother who’s forgotten where it’s buried. Jensen’s signature blend of extreme violence and absurd humor is fully intact. Mikkelsen plays straight man to an entire cast of lunatics, and his slow-burn frustration is half the fun. If you liked Riders of Justice or The Green Butchers, this is more of that specific brand of Danish chaos.

That’s the list. Twenty-five films across six years that deserved bigger audiences than they got. Some of these are streaming right now, some you’ll need to hunt for, and a few might require subtitle tolerance from people who usually skip foreign films. All of them are worth the effort.

If you want to browse more, our full collection has thousands of films with ratings, trailers, and details. Go find something great that nobody’s talking about.