You Can Stream These 7 Underrated 2025 Movies Right Now

Last year’s most underrated movies (all of which you can stream right now) include a sexy spy thriller; a heartstopping zombie adventure; two horror-inflected family dramas; and the fourth installment in an enduring rom-com franchise. If you somehow missed these spectacular titles, now’s your chance to catch up. There’s a fair chance you won’t hear about many of these titles (save for one) at the Oscars or Golden Globes.

Steven Soderbergh Returned to Ocean’s 11 Territory with Black Bag

Prolific filmmaker Steven Soderbergh released two theatrical titles in 2025 (Neon’s ghostly horror Presence was the first back in January), the best of which was Black Bag. It’s a sleek, effortlessly ambient thriller which plays like a combination of Soderbergh's debut feature, sex, lies, and videotape (1989) and Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005).

Top intelligence agent George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) has seven days to ferret out a traitorous ally before a biological weapon falls into the wrong hands. On the list of suspects are four of George’s closest peers—and his wife, fellow spy Kathryn (Cate Blanchett). He decides to get to the bottom of things by hosting a dinner party, where he spikes the chana masala with a truth serum and waits for the chaos to take hold.

Positioned between an Agatha Christie yarn and a 007 chapter, Black Bag is the sort of thunderous populist entertainment that hardly gets made anymore with this much thought and brio. The all-star supporting cast includes a razor-sharp Tom Burke; Regé Jean Page; Marisa Abela; and two Bond stalwarts--Naomi Harris as a kinky therapist, and a villainous Pierce Brosnan as the agency's head. Abela steals the show, anchoring one of three white-hot dinner-table face-offs, opposite Fassbender, that comes midway through this terrifically entertaining thriller. It's one of Soderbergh's best movies in a decade.

Black Bag is available to rent on Prime Video.

Danny Boyle Revived the Zombie Genre (Again) with 28 Years Later

Danny Boyle returned to the genre he helped to create with 28 Years Later, a decades-on continuation of 28 Days Later (2003) and the off-brand sequel, 28 Weeks Later (2007), which is largely ignored here. Twelve-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams) leaves the relative safety of his uninfected encampment with his ailing mother (Jodie Comer) with the hope of finding a reclusive doctor (Ralph Fiennes) who may hold a cure.

There are few directors but Boyle who can so effortlessly meld high-octane gore with tearjerking pathos, and 28 Years Later finds the filmmaker working in top form. If there were any justice, Boyle and the film would be up for every award under the sun. Working from a cracking script by Alex Garland, Boyle crafted one of last year’s most breathlessly original films. This also boasts the year's best original score/soundtrack, by Scottish hip-hop group Young Fathers. A sequel, directed by Nia DaCosta, is set to hit cinemas on Friday, Jan. 16, before Boyle returns to helm the trilogy-capping installment. We can’t wait.

28 Years Later is available to rent on Prime Video.

Die My Love and If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You Depicted the Untold Horrors of Parenting

Last year, there were two black comedies which depicted with startling clarity and edge the rarely-told horrors of parenting. Lynne Ramsay’s galvanic Die My Love and Mary Bronstein’s sobering If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You are two sides of the same coin, and two films that once seen you’ll probably never want to watch again.

Die My Love deals with a new mother’s (Jennifer Lawrence) post-partum depression and the impact this has on her marriage to a dutiful if unambitious laborer (Robert Pattinson). Anchored by Lawrence’s commanding turn, one of her very finest performances, Ramsay’s astonishing picture dares to go where few other films would tread. It’s violent, intense, and often extremely funny in a particularly unsettling way. As Lawrence’s mother-in-law, suffering from her own breakdowns, Sissy Spacek gives one of the year’s most quietly brilliant performances.

If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You stars Rose Byrne as a put-upon mother dealing with the unspecified illness of her daughter, who we hear but rarely see. Director Bronstein is married to Ronald Bronstein, the writer, producer, and editor behind Marty Supreme and the Safdie’s other anxiety-producing epics.

If I Had Legs operates in much the same key, with lots of characters squawking loudly at one another as situations of escalating depravity (collapsing ceilings, abandoned babies, pancaked pets) unfold. Byrne’s performance is one for the books, a masterclass in emotion that will genuinely make you wonder How did she do that?. As Byrne’s passive-aggressive and eventually aggressive-aggressive therapist, Conan O’Brien dazzles and unsettles in his first dramatic role.

Die My Love and If I Had Legs, I'd Kick You are available to rent on Prime Video.

Bridget Jones 4 Redeemed an Inconsistent Franchise

There are likely not many of us who remember Bridget Jones, and probably fewer who held out any hope that the franchise’s fourth film, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, would be any good at all. (So low were expectations for the movie, it was released directly to Peacock in North America; but it did have a healthy theatrical run overseas.) The last time we saw Renée Zellweger’s hard-smoking, hard-eating heroine was in a lamentable 2016 sequel that favored generous slapstick over much else.

Shockingly, Mad About the Boy is not only the best movie in the Bridget Jones franchise (admittedly not a massive feat), but one of 2025’s most honest and affecting movies about grief and loss. After losing her husband (Colin Firth) on a humanitarian aid mission, Bridget finds herself parenting her two adolescent children while fending off the advances of their school teacher (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and a young musician (Leo Woodall).

Directed by Michael Morris (To Leslie), Mad About the Boy eschews the franchise’s garish slapstick and cultural stereotypes to tell an honest story about moving forth in the wake of incredible loss. There are passages of surprising emotional strength, including something unspeakable involving an owl that will reduce even the most cynical viewers to tears; and franchise staple Hugh Grant, amidst an enviable career renaissance, appears to provide well-tuned levity.

Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is available to rent on Amazon Prime Video.

Sentimental Value Bested Jay Kelly

Two films this year dealt with aging filmmakers accepting career-retrospective awards and wrangling with the toll their successful careers took on their families, particularly their long-suffering daughters. One is Noah Baumbach's unrewarding Jay Kelly, for which George Clooney has recieved some well-deserved acclaim for his performance of the title character. The other is Sentimental Value, Joachim Trier's follow-up to his 2022 marvel The Worst Person in the World and a film which could best be described as "Jay Kelly for grown-ups."

When her father, acclaimed director Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgård), returns to their childhood home with a mission to make a semi-autobiographical feature with a Hollywood star (Elle Fanning), he throws the already tenuous lives of his two daughters--Nora (Renate Rensve) and Agnes (Inga Ibdsdotter Lilleaas)--into a veritable tailspin.

Where Jay Kelly fell back on false piety and lame comedy, Sentimental Value digs deep to tell a complex and rewarding but always entertaining tale of familial bonds forged in generations of shared trauma. One of Trier's sharpest tricks is weaving broad tragedy within simple domesticity, and he never misses an opportunity for lascerating wit. In its gentle and unassuming magical realism, it recalls early Wes Anderson and Jean Pierre Juenet's Amelie (2001). Of all the movies mentioned on this list, Sentimental Value is the only one likely to trouble the Oscar race.

Sentimental Value is in select cinemas nationwide and available to rent on Amazon Prime Video.

The Salt Path Offered a Riveting Portrayal of Real-Life Adventurers

Based on the true story of Raynor and Moth Winn, played here by Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs, The Salt Path is an exceptionally well-made film, most remarkable for its dramatic understatement. After losing their Welsh farm, their home as well as source of income, the Winns set off on Cornwall's Salt Path, which winds for hundreds of miles across the British coast, in search of their new home.

Missing in action are any of the key scenes or big performance moments that would merit awards attention, but that's what sets playwright and theater director Marianne Elliott's debut feature apart from similar tales. Anderson has a single line near the end that baldly states the film's thesis, but that's the only concession to obvious pathos. Together, Isaacs and Anderson produced one of the most realistic on-screen depictions of a long-term marriage; their small gestures effortlessly express decades of love and affection, hand in hand with the annoyances that come with it. It's one of the year's most immaculately crafted pictures.

The Salt Path is streaming on Prime Video and available to rent on all major platforms.