What to Watch
Underrated Movies of the 2010s: Twelve That Slipped Past
By Jordan A. · · Updated · 6 min read
"Underrated" gets used to mean "won an Oscar but I only just saw it", which is how films like Moonlight end up on lists like this. So here's the actual bar: released between 2010 and 2019, never had a wide opening or an awards campaign that stuck, and still gets recommended by people who saw it, quietly, years later.
Fourteen films, sorted by what they're good for rather than ranked. Each entry says what it is, who it suits, and a fact you can verify, because half the pleasure of a film like this is knowing who made it before you press play.
If you want to be unsettled
Under the Skin is the one that has aged into a classic without ever getting popular. Scarlett Johansson drives a van around Glasgow, picking up men, and the film explains nothing. Much of it was shot with hidden cameras and non-actors, which is why it feels wrong in a way you can't place.
2013, directed by Jonathan Glazer, co-written with Walter Campbell, based on Michel Faber's 2000 novel.
Who it's for: people who want a film to work on them rather than tell them things. Not a background watch.
It Comes at Night was marketed as a monster movie and is instead a film about two families in a house during a plague, and how quickly trust fails. Audiences who wanted the monster were furious. They were wrong.
2017 psychological horror, written and directed by Trey Edward Shults, starring Joel Edgerton, Christopher Abbott, Carmen Ejogo, Kelvin Harrison Jr. and Riley Keough.
Who it's for: viewers who liked the dread of Hereditary more than the jump scares. Go in expecting nothing to be explained.
A Ghost Story is a man under a sheet standing in a house while decades pass. It sounds like a joke and it's one of the saddest films of the decade, including a single unbroken shot of Rooney Mara eating a pie that is somehow the emotional center of the whole thing.
2017, written and directed by David Lowery, starring Casey Affleck, Rooney Mara and Will Oldham.
Who it's for: anyone with patience and something to grieve.
If you want a thriller that hurts
Blue Ruin is a revenge film about a man who is very bad at revenge. It was funded through a Kickstarter campaign, which shows in the best way: no stars, no gloss, no scene held longer than it needs.
2013, written and directed by Jeremy Saulnier, starring Macon Blair.
Who it's for: people who find most revenge films too competent. This one is about consequences.
Green Room is Saulnier again, two years later, with a punk band trapped in a venue owned by neo-Nazis. Anton Yelchin leads and Patrick Stewart plays the villain quietly, which is far worse than loudly.
2015 horror-thriller, written and directed by Jeremy Saulnier, starring Anton Yelchin, Imogen Poots, Alia Shawkat, Joe Cole, Callum Turner and Patrick Stewart.
Who it's for: viewers who want tension in a confined space. Watch it after Blue Ruin and the pairing makes both better.
Mandy is the Nicolas Cage film people mean when they defend Nicolas Cage. A lumberjack's life is destroyed by a cult, and the film responds by turning into a heavy metal album cover for ninety minutes.
2018 surrealist action horror, directed by Panos Cosmatos, co-written with Aaron Stewart-Ahn, starring Nicolas Cage and Andrea Riseborough.
Who it's for: people who want maximalism. Absolutely not a first-date film.
If you want science fiction on no budget
Coherence takes eight friends at a dinner party, a passing comet, and a premise that unravels in real time. It was shot in a house with a tiny crew and it is more frightening than most films with a hundred times the money.
2013, written and directed by James Ward Byrkit in his feature debut, premiered at Fantastic Fest in September 2013.
Who it's for: anyone who likes a single-location puzzle. Know nothing else going in.
Upstream Color is the harder version of that idea, a film about identity, parasites and pigs that refuses to hold your hand at any point. Shane Carruth wrote, directed, produced, scored and starred in it.
2013, written, directed, produced by and starring Shane Carruth, his second feature after Primer (2004).
Who it's for: people who enjoy assembling a film afterward. Everyone else, start with Coherence.
Colossal is the strangest studio-adjacent film of the decade: Anne Hathaway plays an alcoholic who discovers that a giant monster attacking Seoul copies her movements. It's a comedy for twenty minutes and then it isn't.
2016 black comedy monster film, written and directed by Nacho Vigalondo, starring Anne Hathaway, Jason Sudeikis, Dan Stevens and Tim Blake Nelson.
Who it's for: viewers who want a metaphor delivered with a straight face.
If you want to feel better afterward
Sing Street is a Dublin teenager starting a band in 1985 to impress a girl, and it has the best original songs of any film this decade. John Carney made Once and Begin Again first, and this is the one that works completely.
2016 coming-of-age musical, written and directed by John Carney, starring Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, Lucy Boynton, Jack Reynor and Aidan Gillen.
Who it's for: everyone. This is the safest recommendation on the page.
The Nice Guys is a 1970s Los Angeles detective comedy with Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling, and it flopped, which remains inexplicable. Gosling's physical comedy alone justifies it.
2016 neo-noir buddy action comedy, directed by Shane Black, co-written with Anthony Bagarozzi, starring Russell Crowe, Ryan Gosling and Angourie Rice.
Who it's for: anyone who wants to laugh and doesn't mind a body count.
Support the Girls follows one day in the life of a manager at a roadside sports bar, played by Regina Hall in a performance that should have changed her career. It's about work, dignity and holding a fragile thing together for eight hours.
2018, written and directed by Andrew Bujalski, starring Regina Hall, Haley Lu Richardson and Shayna McHayle.
Swiss Army Man is the one where Paul Dano is stranded on an island with Daniel Radcliffe's corpse, and it is a genuinely moving film about loneliness. It's the debut from the pair who later made Everything Everywhere All at Once.
2016 surrealist comedy-drama, written and directed by Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan in their feature debuts.
Tangerine follows two trans sex workers across Los Angeles on Christmas Eve, and it was shot entirely on iPhones, which is trivia until you notice how much energy it buys the film.
2015 independent comedy-drama, directed, produced and edited by Sean Baker, co-written with Chris Bergoch.
Where these stream
Small films move constantly, and several of these spend long stretches available only as rentals or on ad-supported services. Where each streams changes, so the title page on BingeNext shows current US options.
Start here
If you want the crowd-pleaser, Sing Street. If you want to be scared without gore, It Comes at Night. If you want a great double bill, Blue Ruin then Green Room. If you want to sit in silence afterward, A Ghost Story or Under the Skin.
The reason films like these are hard to find is that nothing markets them to you twice. BingeNext's movie mode takes two or three films you already love and returns picks with the reason each fits and where it streams. It takes about a minute.
Topics covered: underrated, 2010s, movies, recent-gems, streaming
About the author
Jordan A., Founder, BingeNext
Jordan A. is the founder of BingeNext and is responsible for every guide published on this site. He built the recommendation engine after one too many nights lost to the streaming menu. Dates, season counts and where-to-watch details in these guides are checked against official sources before publishing, and corrections are welcome at Jordan@Bingenext.com.