Join today to claim your daily loot

Aubrey Plaza's Top 15 Movies Ranked From Worst to Best

1-15

Ignacio Weil

TV Shows & Movies - September 25th 2026, 13:00 GMT+2

Childs play 2019 aubrey plaza 1 — 15. Child's Play (2019)

Giving Chucky Wi-Fi was always going to be a risky pitch, but this remake at least had Aubrey Plaza around to make the human side worth caring about. As Karen Barclay, the exhausted single mother who unknowingly brings home a murderous Buddi doll for her son, Plaza plays things considerably straighter than usual. That restraint works: while Mark Hamill’s Chucky handles the techno-horror, she gives the increasingly ridiculous situation a believable sense of parental panic. It is hardly the jewel of her filmography, but she is better than the movie requires her to be. | © Orion Pictures

Cropped An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn — 14. An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn (2018)

Jim Hosking does not make comedies so much as strange transmissions that happen to contain jokes, and Aubrey Plaza looks surprisingly comfortable inside his wavelength. Her Lulu Danger is stuck in a miserable marriage when a mysterious performer from her past, Beverly Luff Linn, suddenly resurfaces and turns her already odd existence sideways. Plaza barely needs to raise her voice to make Lulu fascinating; a stare, an uncomfortable pause, or one oddly delivered sentence usually does the job. The movie’s deliberately awkward anti-comedy will repel as many viewers as it charms, but Plaza never treats its absurdity like she is above it. | © Park Pictures

Cropped The Little Hours — 13. The Little Hours (2017)

A medieval convent populated by nuns who swear like furious modern bartenders should have exhausted its joke in about ten minutes. Somehow, *The Little Hours* keeps finding new ways to escalate the blasphemy. Plaza plays Sister Fernanda, easily one of the least spiritually serene people ever to put on a habit, alongside Alison Brie and Kate Micucci as the trio terrorizes poor Dave Franco. Loosely inspired by stories from *The Decameron*, Jeff Baena’s comedy succeeds because nobody winks at the camera. Plaza delivers threats, lust, jealousy, and general nun-based chaos with the absolute seriousness of someone handling church business. | © Destro Films

Life after Beth MSN — 12. Life After Beth (2014)

Most romantic comedies become complicated when an ex comes back. *Life After Beth* takes that expression rather literally. Aubrey Plaza plays Beth, whose grieving boyfriend Zach is delighted when she inexplicably returns from the dead — at least until resurrection starts producing some increasingly unpleasant personality changes. Plaza gets to push her familiar intensity into full zombie territory, moving from affectionate girlfriend to volatile nightmare with hilarious speed. Jeff Baena’s horror-comedy does not always know whether it wants to be sweet, grotesque, or completely ridiculous, but Plaza commits equally hard to all three and makes Beth much more than a one-joke undead girlfriend. | © American Zoetrope

Cropped Spin Me Round — 11. Spin Me Round (2022)

Alison Brie gets the disastrous Italian corporate retreat, but Aubrey Plaza briefly strolls into *Spin Me Round* and makes the entire trip feel considerably more dangerous. She plays Kat, the sharp-tongued assistant to Alessandro Nivola’s wealthy restaurant-chain owner, and quickly becomes part of the mystery surrounding what exactly these employees have been flown overseas to experience. Plaza’s screen time is frustratingly limited, yet her night-out sequence with Brie carries more electricity than much of the movie surrounding it. The film keeps teasing a darker, stranger thriller hiding underneath its comedy; Plaza is one of the people who makes you wish it had fully committed. | © Duplass Brothers Productions

Cropped My Old Ass — 10. My Old Ass (2024)

Plaza does not actually dominate *My Old Ass*, and that is precisely why her performance works so well. Maisy Stella leads the film as Elliott, an 18-year-old who encounters her 39-year-old self during a mushroom trip, with Plaza appearing as the older and considerably more informed version. What begins as a very funny gimmick gradually acquires emotional weight, and Plaza knows exactly when to let the deadpan mask slip. Her relatively limited screen time prevents older Elliott from becoming a walking exposition machine; instead, she feels like a glimpse of everything youth cannot understand yet. The payoff hits much harder than the premise suggests. | © LuckyChap Entertainment

Honey Dont 2025 aubrey plaza 1 — 9. Honey Don’t! (2025)

Aubrey Plaza feels perfectly at home in Ethan Coen’s sleazy, sun-baked noir as MG Falcone, a Bakersfield cop who begins an affair with Margaret Qualley’s private investigator Honey O’Donahue. Plaza plays MG with a cool, guarded edge that makes her immediately intriguing, even when the screenplay leaves parts of the character frustratingly unexplored. Her chemistry with Qualley gives the movie some of its liveliest scenes, making MG memorable despite the messy mystery surrounding her. | © Focus Features

Cropped The To Do List — 8. The To Do List (2013)

Teen sex comedies usually revolve around clueless boys trying to lose their virginity before some arbitrary deadline. *The To Do List* hands that old formula to Aubrey Plaza and immediately makes it more interesting. She plays Brandy Klark, an academically gifted high-school graduate who approaches sexual experience with the terrifying organizational discipline of someone studying for finals. The joke is not that Brandy wants sex; it is that she treats intimacy like a syllabus she can complete through sufficient preparation. Plaza’s combination of confidence and social awkwardness is perfectly calibrated for the role, turning potentially crude material into a surprisingly sharp comedy about being embarrassingly inexperienced. | © The Mark Gordon Company

Cropped Happiest Season — 7. Happiest Season (2020)

Riley was not supposed to become the person half the audience wanted Kristen Stewart to run away with, but Aubrey Plaza apparently missed that memo. In Clea DuVall’s Christmas romantic comedy, she plays Harper’s ex-girlfriend, who understands all too well what Abby is going through after Harper forces their relationship back into the closet around her family. Plaza never oversells Riley as an obvious romantic alternative. She is simply funny, sympathetic, comfortable in her own skin, and noticeably easier for Abby to talk to than almost anyone else in the house. A supporting character accidentally becoming the emotional safe zone of the movie feels very Aubrey Plaza. | © TriStar Pictures

Cropped Safety Not Guaranteed — 6. Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)

Before Hollywood fully figured out what to do with Aubrey Plaza, *Safety Not Guaranteed* realized the sarcasm worked better when something vulnerable was hiding underneath it. Plaza stars as Darius Britt, a dissatisfied magazine intern assigned to investigate a classified ad seeking a companion for a supposed time-travel mission. The advertiser, played by Mark Duplass, initially looks like an easy target for a quirky human-interest piece, until Darius starts taking him seriously. Plaza slowly lets curiosity and affection sneak through her defensive attitude, giving the film a genuine emotional center. It was an early sign that her deadpan persona could carry far more than comedy. | © Big Beach

Cropped Scott Pilgrim vs the World — 5. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)

Julie Powers barely needs any screen time to establish that she hates Scott Pilgrim, probably hates most of his friends, and may simply regard happiness as a personal insult. Aubrey Plaza turns that hostility into one of the movie’s best recurring punchlines. Edgar Wright’s hyperactive adaptation is overflowing with memorable supporting players — Chris Evans, Brie Larson, Kieran Culkin and Brandon Routh among them — yet Plaza still leaves a mark through little more than brutal line delivery and industrial-strength disapproval. Julie feels like the only person in Toronto who has stepped outside the comic-book fantasy long enough to notice that Scott is incredibly annoying. | © Universal Pictures

Cropped Operation Fortune Ruse de Guerre — 4. Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (2023)

Guy Ritchie surrounds Jason Statham with spies, billionaires, weapons deals, yachts, and Hugh Grant chewing through scenery, yet Aubrey Plaza somehow finds room to operate at her own frequency. She plays Sarah Fidel, the team's communications and computer specialist, who can hack a system while treating international espionage with the irritation of somebody covering an inconvenient office shift. Plaza’s banter with Statham gives *Operation Fortune* some of its lightest moments, and she never seems intimidated by the testosterone-heavy machinery around her. The caper itself is fairly conventional Ritchie, but Sarah brings exactly the right amount of amused contempt to the mission. | © Miramax

Cropped Emily the Criminal — 3. Emily the Criminal (2022)

No quirky detours, no ironic safety net, no lovable eccentricity to hide behind. *Emily the Criminal* gives Aubrey Plaza debt, anger, a criminal record and an economy that keeps slamming doors in her face. Her Emily Benetto enters a credit-card fraud operation because legitimate employment offers her little beyond humiliation, and Plaza makes every step deeper into crime feel disturbingly practical rather than glamorous. She is terrific at showing the calculations happening behind Emily’s eyes: fear is present, but so is the realization that she may actually be good at this. The result is one of Plaza’s toughest and most controlled performances, in a thriller that never needs to shout. | © Low Spark Films

Cropped Black Bear — 2. Black Bear (2020)

Trying to describe *Black Bear* without ruining its game is difficult, which is probably exactly how the movie wants it. Aubrey Plaza plays Allison in Lawrence Michael Levine’s slippery psychological drama, where relationships, performances and power dynamics keep being rearranged until certainty becomes useless. The role asks Plaza to be funny, manipulative, wounded, cruel and frighteningly exposed, sometimes while leaving the audience unsure which version is authentic. It is the sort of performance that completely dismantles the idea that she simply plays variations on April Ludgate. Plaza also produced the film, and her willingness to get genuinely uncomfortable on camera gives the whole experiment its bite. | © Oakhurst Entertainment

Cropped Ingrid Goes West — 1. Ingrid Goes West (2017)

*Ingrid Goes West* takes nearly every quality audiences associated with Aubrey Plaza — awkwardness, intensity, deadpan humor, unpredictable behavior — and turns them into something much darker. She plays Ingrid Thorburn, a lonely woman who becomes obsessed with Instagram influencer Taylor Sloane and moves to Los Angeles to manufacture a friendship with her. Elizabeth Olsen is excellent as the carefully curated Taylor, but the movie belongs to Plaza. Ingrid can be hilarious, terrifying and heartbreakingly pathetic within the same sequence, and Plaza never reduces her to a simple psycho-stalker punchline. Social media has changed since then; the desperation to be seen has not. | © Star Thrower Entertainment

1-15

Aubrey Plaza has built one of the strangest and most unpredictable filmographies of her generation, jumping from deadpan comedy to psychological horror without ever feeling completely out of place. Some of her movies barely know what to do with that wonderfully awkward energy, while others seem designed around it. From broad studio comedies to unsettling indies and career-best dramatic turns, we’re ranking 15 Aubrey Plaza movies from the weakest of the bunch to the ones that show exactly why she remains so difficult to typecast.

Facebook X Reddit WhatsApp Copy URL

Aubrey Plaza has built one of the strangest and most unpredictable filmographies of her generation, jumping from deadpan comedy to psychological horror without ever feeling completely out of place. Some of her movies barely know what to do with that wonderfully awkward energy, while others seem designed around it. From broad studio comedies to unsettling indies and career-best dramatic turns, we’re ranking 15 Aubrey Plaza movies from the weakest of the bunch to the ones that show exactly why she remains so difficult to typecast.