Must-Watch Hidden Gems: Underrated Films to Elevate Your Streaming Queue
James Rogers
Updated on May 17, 2026
By Published Apr 23, 2026, 11:30 AM EDT
Shawn S. Lealos is an entertainment writer who is a voting member of the Oklahoma Film Critics Circle. He has written for Screen Rant, CBR, ComicBook, The Direct, The Sportster, Chud, 411mania, Renegade Cinema, Yahoo Movies, and many more.
Shawn has a bachelor's degree in professional writing and a minor in film studies from the University of Oklahoma. He also has won numerous awards, including several Columbia Gold Circle Awards and an SPJ honor.
He also wrote Dollar Deal: The Story of the Stephen King Dollar Baby Filmmakers, the first official book about the Dollar Baby film program. Shawn is also currently writing his first fiction novel under a pen name, based in the fantasy genre.
To learn more, visit his website at .
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offers so many movies that smaller ones are often crowded out, and the streamer's deep catalog of titles includes some great hidden gem movies. There are so many titles on Netflix that it forces endless scrolling. When the streaming giant promotes its own original movies, , those are big-budget releases that Netflix wants to recoup its money on. This helps Chris Evans and Ryan Reynolds movies, but it further buries lesser-known releases.
In fact, some of the best are smaller films that didn't get a big announcement from the streamer. Instead, they ended up with a quiet release and subscribers had to accidentally stumble upon them. In other cases, Netflix acquired festival movies that never got a theatrical run and adds them to its library, where, once again, they end up buried beneath the big theatrical releases that arrive every month. These include everything from action thrillers and sci-fi mind-puzzles to crime films, fantasy movies, indie horror releases, and character dramas.
The best thing about the streamer is that for any movie night. However, when it comes to finding something new, the choices are so large that it is frustrating to seek out the critically acclaimed and cult favorites that end up hidden deep in the algorithm. The good news is there are several great movies hidden on Netflix, and these include everything from fantasy movies in a dystopian future to the story of a young girl seeking revenge against a group of home-invading neo-Nazis.
Becky (2026)
Becky is a revenge thriller that plays out like Home Alone, but with more bloody attacks and plenty of death scenes. Directed by Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion, Lulu Wilson stars as Becky, a rebellious teen whose weekend at her family's lake house is interrupted by a gang of escaped convicts. The casting here is notable, as comedy star Kevin James (Paul Blart: Mall Cop, The King of Queens) stars as the gang leader, a swastika-tattooed villain who has no problem killing anyone to get what he wants.
Wilson is the highlight of the movie. At 13-years-old when shooting the movie, Wilson is given most of the crowd-pleasing fight scenes. Like Kevin McCallister in Home Alone, she sets lots of traps, but hers murders the neo-Nazis to save herself and her beloved dogs. Despite a 72% Rotten Tomatoes score, it flew under the radar thanks to its release during the pandemic. However, it is a tight thrill-ride, and it even received a sequel called The Wrath of Becky.
Spaceman (2026)
One of the biggest movies of 2026 is the sci-fi adaptation Project Hail Mary, which sees a scientist sent into space to find a way to save the Earth as a microbe has attacked several stars in the universe, except for one. Netflix has a similar movie, also based on a novel, that came out two years earlier with a similar premise of a lonely man in the deep reaches of space who meets an alien along the way. While nowhere , Adam Sandler's Spaceman is still a quality watch, especially as a sci-fi drama.
This is not a typical Adam Sandler movie. Instead, Sandler plays a Czech cosmonaut on a mission to the edge of the solar system. He is alone, and six months into the mission, he realizes his marriage is falling apart, with his wife on Earth (Carey Mulligan) preparing to move on without him. He meets a spider-creature named Hanuš (voiced by Paul Dano) and what results is a somber, philosophical drama. Sandler's most interesting movies are usually the ones where he steps outside his comedy routines, and Spaceman is a great movie for anyone who loves more meditative sci-fi like Arrival or Ad Astra.
Damsel (2026)
Millie Bobby Brown stands as one of Netflix's most popular homegrown stars, breaking out in Stranger Things and leading her own movies with the two Enola Holmes adaptations. However, her fantasy movie Damsel doesn't get enough credit from critics. The movie has Brown playing a princess named Elodie who realizes after marrying a prince that he and his family had plans to sacrifice her to a fire-breathing dragon as part of their family's blood debt.
Damsel is a movie with the star of Stranger Things acting alongside a giant talking dragon (voiced by Shohreh Aghdashloo), and what results is a fantasy movie with one of the best dragons seen on screen since Game of Thrones. The movie had big views when it first hit Netflix, with 35.3 million views in its first three days, but it has since ended up buried among the choices after two years. As a rare female-led fantasy film, it deserves much more recognition than it receives.
Okja (2017)
Four years before winning an Oscar for directing Parasite, Bong Joon Ho directed a quiet genre-hopping adventure called Okja. The movie follows a young Korean girl (Ahn Seo-hyun) who has helped her family raise a genetically-engineered super pig in a competition. However, when she learns the company running the competition plans to kill the pig in the end, she races to rescue him from certain death.
The movie has an impressive cast, with Tilda Swinton playing two separate characters, and the supporting cast featuring Paul Dano, Jake Gyllenhaal, Lily Collins, and Steven Yeun. With so many stars, it is disappointing to know that this is a hidden gem on Netflix for most of the service's subscribers. With themes including corporate greed, farming ethics, and environmental issues, the film has an important story to tell, and it is a perfect entry point for people wanting to see more of Bong's movies.
The Dead Don't Die (2019)
Jim Jarmusch is an art-house director who has a massive cult fan base, but he remains someone who is off-putting to many mainstream audience members. That means his films are always worth watching, although they don't get as much promotion as other releases. In 2019, he released his deadpan zombie comedy, and as is the case with most of Jarmusch's films, it has a star-studded cast delivering some of the most bizarre dialogue in any movie.
The main stars as Bill Murray and Adam Driver as small town police officers who realize something weird is happening, and it turns out to be a zombie uprising. Add in Tilda Swinton, Chloë Sevigny, Steve Buscemi, Selena Gomez, Danny Glover, Iggy Pop, Tom Waits, and RZA, and . What helps The Dead Don't Die stand out is that it is actually a meta-comedy, and the end is ridiculous and perfect at the same time.
Shimmer Lake (2017)
Shimmer Lake was released in 2017 by director Oren Uziel (22 Jump Street). The movie is a tightly paced neo-noir about a small-town sheriff investigating a bank heist. The movie shares similarities to Memento, as it plays out in reverse, with each day playing out before moving on to the day before, so every new scene recontextualizes everything that had happened before. Unlike many Memento copycats, this works extremely well and plays fair with the film's puzzle pieces.
The cast is impressive, with Benjamin Walker, Rainn Wilson, Rob Corddry, Ron Livingston, and Wyatt Russell, and while many of those stars are comedy actors, they play it straight in this entire film. While the movie hit Netflix in 2017, the streaming service never promoted it, and it has been available for nine years now. This is a movie comparable to Memento or Fargo and deserves a better reputation.
Gunpowder Milkshake (2026)
Gunpowder Milkshake was a larger-budgeted movie when it hit Netflix as an original in the United States, but for some reason, it never brought in the audience that it deserved compared to other lesser-quality films that received massive views. Karen Gillan led the cast after her breakout roles in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Nebula and the Jumanji franchise as Ruby Roundhouse. Here, Gillan plays an assassin who ends up the target after she chooses to save a child rather than return money she retrieved from her latest target.
Gillan and young star Chloe Coleman share fantastic chemistry and the fight choreography remaining constantly entertaining. The Netflix movie also has an incredible female-led cast, with names like Lena Headey, Angela Bassett, Carla Gugino, and Michelle Yeoh all getting a chance to show their action skills. Paul Giamatti also stars as the conflicted handler, and this is a great movie that plays in a similar vein to John Wick and Atomic Blonde.
Wind River (2017)
Before he became a massive breakout star on television with shows like Yellowstone, Taylor Sheridan worked on some great movies, and one of the lesser-known hidden gems on Netflix is Wind River. That is disappointing because , as it told a story based on the high number of murders on Native American reservations that often go unreported. In this case, a U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service agent and an FBI agent investigated the murder of a young woman on the West River Indian Reservation.
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Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen star as the agents, and seeing the two Marvel stars together should have sold the film, but it is an underrated dramatic thriller. The final text scroll about the number of missing and murdered Indigenous women in the United States shows the importance of this issue. Wind River is highly comparable to Sheridan's work on Yellowstone, but in a tight 107-miniute film.
Upgrade (2018)
Directed by the co-creator of the Saw and Insidious franchises, Leigh Whannell, Upgrade is a high-action sci-fi cyberpunk revenge thriller. One way to look at the movie is that it is a brutal sci-fi horror thriller that compares well with the Spider-Man spin-off movie Venom. Logan Marshall-Green stars as Grey, a man who is in an accident in a self-driving car, and who can only watch as his wife is brutally murdered in front of him before he is shot and paralyzed.
The movie has him receiving a tech implant that is . However, STEM begins to take control of Grey's body and upgrades him to almost superhuman levels. The film has a smart sci-fi story, with a twist to explain the implant and the reason Grey was chosen. It stands up well to movies like Blade Runner 2049 and Ex Machina, but with much more action.
Polar (2019)
Polar stars Mads Mikkelsen as Duncan Vizla, a legendary assassin known as the Black Kaiser. However, two weeks away from his retirement, his main employer decides he could save money by hiring assassins to kill Duncan rather than pay him the $8 million he owes him. Vanessa Hudgens (High School Musical, Spring Breakers) also stars as a young woman whose family Duncan previously killed, and who he sets out to save.
The biggest reason to watch Polar is Mikkelsen. He delivers a commanding, menacing, and eventually a redemptive performance that helps the film stand out from other similar revenge thrillers. Critics slammed the movie on Rotten Tomatoes, with an 18% score, but the audience score of 70% shows Netflix subscribers rate it higher than professional critics. Its R rating for violence keeps it buried, but it is a fantastic hidden gem on Netflix.
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