Every year, great films slip through the cracks. These underrated gems from 2025 deserved a lot more attention than they got.
Gaming
15 Best Xbox Games Of 2025
15. Mickey 17 (2025)
Mickey 17 is Bong Joon Ho's wonderfully odd sci-fi flick that, despite its delays, is chock-full of his signature quirks and anti-capitalist bite. Robert Pattinson is great as a disposable employee cloned repeatedly for a grim mission, but the film finds a sincere heart in his connection with Naomi Ackie. It’s a genre-bending love story that mixes satire, creature feature, and farce into a strangely tender manifesto for empathy. | © Warner Bros. Pictures
14. Sorry, Baby (2025)
Sorry, Baby is a striking debut from Eva Victor, who writes, directs, and stars in this fragmented story about betrayal and its aftermath. It moves effortlessly between biting humor and profound sorrow, finding its power in subtlety and what’s left unsaid. With raw honesty and remarkable command, it feels like the arrival of a major new voice. | © A24
13. On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (2025)
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl is a bleakly funny and surreal drama that begins with a woman finding her uncle's corpse and feeling nothing. As the family gathers for the funeral, the film slowly, acidly unveils the horrendous crimes he committed and the complicit silence that protected him. It's a stirring, uncomfortable satire of the sexist systems and hollow traditions that keep terrible men in places of honor. | © A24
12. Primitive War (2025)
Primitive War is the ambitious dinosaur movie you didn't see coming, tossing a '60s recon unit into a Vietnamese jungle full of prehistoric predators. It’s an unhyped, overstuffed monster mash that delivers exactly what it promises: relentless, gleefully deranged action. On a shoestring budget, it crams in more sheer popcorn fun and bonkers set pieces than most Hollywood blockbusters manage with ten times the money. | © Rialto Distribution
11. The Ballad of Wallis Island (2025)
The Ballad of Wallis Island is a tender, charming film about a folk duo reuniting for a private concert on a remote Welsh island. Old resentments flare between the musicians, while their eccentric, wealthy host proves money can't heal old wounds. With a soothing dynamic and genuine heart, it’s a soft-toned comfort of a movie that feels like a warm, melancholic blanket. | © Universal Studios
10. Dangerous Animals (2025)
Dangerous Animals is a brutally effective survival horror that plays its camp premise completely straight. Jai Courtney is terrifying as a killer who traps a surfer on his boat, forcing her into shark-infested waters. It’s a graphic, claustrophobic nightmare that proves, once again, the most dangerous animal is always human. | © Shudder
9. Relay (2025)
Relay is a smart, suspenseful thriller that undeservedly slipped through the cracks. Riz Ahmed is meticulous as a fixer who uses a deaf relay service to broker anonymous deals for terrified whistleblowers. The simple, clever premise builds real tension, and the genuine connection between Ahmed and client Lily James gives it heart, even if the ending doesn't quite stick the landing. | © Bleecker Street Media
8. Hell of a Summer (2025)
Hell of a Summer is a Gen Z slasher that’s less about gore and more a deadpan hangout comedy, poking fun at its own generation with surprising charm. Co-directed by Finn Wolfhard, it follows a camp counselor stuck in a kind of extended adolescence, surrounded by teenagers he can’t quite relate to. The characters are obnoxious but endearing, making you want to spend time with them even before the masked killer shows up. | © Aggregate Films
7. Drop (2025)
Drop is a sleek thriller that got unfairly lost in the shuffle next to bigger disaster flicks. It’s not about a collapsing building, but a terrifying game of cat-and-mouse where a widow, played by a great Meghann Fahy, is forced to follow orders from a stranger who’s taken her family hostage. Director Christopher Landon turns a potentially preposterous premise into pure, gripping cinema that deserves more credit than it got. | © Universal Pictures
6. Black Bag (2025)
Black Bag is a spy thriller you might have missed, where the real tension plays out in a marriage rather than a dead drop. Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett are electric as intelligence officers locked in a dangerous dance; he’s investigating a list of traitors, and she’s on it. Soderbergh masterfully blends middle-age relationship drama with genuine spy craft, proving that the most thrilling secrets are often the ones shared at home. | © Focus Features
5. Blue Moon (2025)
Blue Moon is a nostalgic portrait of lyricist Lorenz Hart on the night his former partner’s new musical, Oklahoma!, opens without him. Ethan Hawke gives a career-best performance, capturing Hart’s brilliance and his painful grapple with a changing industry and his own personal demons. Rather than a splashy spectacle, it’s a profoundly intimate look at the quiet cost of genius and a collaborative breakup that changed the history of theatre. | © Sony Pictures Classics
4. Companion (2025)
Companion is an anxiety-inducing sci-fi thriller that plays out like a perfect, extended Black Mirror episode. The film follows a weekend getaway where a man brings his AI partner, Iris, only for her awakening sentience to unravel a darkly manipulative relationship. With its candy-colored visuals and jarring shifts in tone, it turns a simple premise into a poetically twisted and visceral character study. This focused film knows exactly how to get under your skin. | © Warner Bros. Pictures
3. The Long Walk (2025)
The Long Walk is a grim and gripping dystopian thriller that didn't get the attention it deserves. Set in a bleak alternate America, it follows 50 boys in a televised walking marathon where the penalty for slowing down is death. Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson deliver raw, heartfelt performances in this unnervingly simple story about endurance and rebellion. It’s the kind of tense, bare-bones nightmare that sticks with you. | © Lionsgate Films
2. Eddington (2025)
Eddington takes a sharp left turn from horror into a tense neo-Western, using a small-town political fight as a lens for our recent, fractured past. With Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal as rivals in a contested mayoral election, the film digs into the pandemic-era paranoia and social divisions that defined 2020. It’s a slow-burn that feels like a tense flashback, holding a mirror to the conspiracy theories and societal cracks we’d maybe rather forget. | © A24
1. Twinless (2025)
James Sweeney's psychological black comedy Twinless flew under the radar, which is a real shame. It’s a clever, surprisingly tender exploration of grief and obsession, centered on two men who meet in a twinless twins support group, only one of them is lying. Dylan O'Brien and Sweeney share fantastic chemistry, delivering raw performances that make this twisted story of human connection both heartbreaking and oddly hopeful. | © Republic Pictures
Every year, great films slip through the cracks. These underrated gems from 2025 deserved a lot more attention than they got.
