10 Awesome Recent Movies Nobody Saw Coming
These movies surprised everyone outta nowhere.
It's fair to say that we as audience members can usually sniff out a great movie ahead of time. In the case of 2025, most knew they were in safe hands with the likes of Sinners, Warfare, Predator: Killer of Killers, Mickey 17, and so on.
But then there are those excellent films that just about nobody saw coming, either because they simply flew below the radar or nothing suggested they even had the potential for greatness.
Yet these movies all defied the odds and surprised the hell out of just about everyone.
Even though they spent ages in post-production, lingered in film festival purgatory, and were so scarcely marketed it seemed like the studio knew they were terrible, these movies were actually all pretty damn great.
Nobody expected these films to be as good as they were, and though it might take a while for general audiences to cotton onto the quality on offer here, there's reasonable hope that these movies will all enjoy a long shelf life as cult classics that gain an audience over time. Here's hoping, anyway...
10. Freaky Tales
Freaky Tales is an action-comedy anthology film from filmmakers Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck (Half Nelson, Captain Marvel), with a strong ensemble cast led by Pedro Pascal and Ben Mendelsohn. Hell, there's even a cameo appearance by Tom freakin' Hanks.
The film actually premiered at the Sundance Film Festival back in January 2024 to good-but-not-glowing reviews, after which it spent more than 14 months in release limbo despite being acquired by Lionsgate ahead of its premiere.
Freaky Tales bizarrely played at no other film festivals after Sundance, and was ultimately sent out to die in less than 400 U.S. cinemas with minimal marketing before being dumped equally quietly on streaming.
And yet, Boden and Fleck's film is one of the wildest and most unique movies of the year - a bonkers, blood-soaked Bay Area tableau about revenge, redemption, and music.
But it flew so far below the radar when it finally released back in April that one could easily assume Lionsgate was basically embarrassed by it for some reason. Baffling.