12 Underrated Movies of 2024 You Must See

Any movie that makes people think about Abbas Kiarostami is bound to be interesting. The meta-documentary directed by Kaouther Ben Hania of Tunisia has also been nominated for an Oscar. Her innovative, funny, and emotionally charged picture flips expectations on their heads as it weaves together the true story of four brothers and their strict but matriarch Olfa, so both recommendations feel fully merited in one of the most underrated movies of 2024. But nothing in this place, or anyone, is exactly as it seems. The end product is a captivating blend of emotional realism and filmmaking technique that is just as suspenseful as any mystery-thriller.

It may be a little distressing to see a 2001 race satire turn into one of 2024’s most culturally relevant films if the final product wasn’t so enjoyable. However, Jeffrey Wright’s career-best portrayal of author Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, an author who sets out to expose that system only to get dragged deeper into it, perfectly expresses the message of Percival Everett’s seminal novel “Erasure,” which is that African-American artists are pressured to present the Black experience as a ghetto-based tragedy. The cameos have genuine pathos, notably Sterling K. Brown’s portrayal of Monk’s damaged brother in the supporting roles, leaving this one of the most underrated movies of 2024.

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As Roger Ebert once said, “if movies are empathy machines, then Ava DuVernay’s travelogue is the highly calibrated kind.” It’s a sort of meta-narrative, imagining the process behind Pulitzer Prize winner Isabel Wilkerson’s 2020 book “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.” It has a lot of intellectual weight, but it’s also incredibly moving, confronting harsh realities about oppressive systems while offering solace in quiet romanticism moments from the Selma director in one of the most underrated movies of 2024. Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, who plays King Richard, is fantastic. She is a curious woman who is hurt by personal loss but inspired by historical injustice, kind but unflinching. Origin is an undeniable must-see that you may not have heard of this year.

The 1990s were replete with comedic movies like Office Space, Clerks, and others that relieved viewers of the soul-crushing monotony of McJobs. However, social realists like Ken Loach have had an easier time exploring the zero-hour horrors of late capitalism than even the most talented filmmakers have, who have found it difficult to turn them into jokes.

Radu Jude, a trailblazing Romanian, makes a bold and incredibly humorous exception in one of the most underrated movies of 2024. His darkly humorous road journey through the gig economy mashes together references to cinema history, satirical takes on Andrew Tate’s TikTok, and a perceptive critique of contemporary work life as seen through the eyes of Ilinca Manolache’s feisty, twentysomething production assistant working the shift from hell. The end product is the kind of audacious critique of corporate nonsense that would make Peter Gibbons snicker. 

Another personal yet universal tale of lives in transition is viewed through the humanistic lens of Japanese maestro Hirokazu Kore-eda, and it is embellished with a soft score by the late, great Ryuichi Sakamoto in one of the clearly underrated movies of 2024.

Actually, it’s multiple lenses, as Monster deviates from its original narrative about an allegedly abusive teacher, a troubled student named Minato (Soya Kurokawa), and his concerned single mother by presenting it from a variety of nonjudgmental but progressively complex perspectives. Because of its delicate portrayal of the developing friendship between Minato and his schoolmate Eri (Hinata Hiiragi), it took home the Cannes Queer Palm award. It may also have taken home the Palme D’Or in a year without Anatomy of a Fall.

There isn’t a film this year that will undoubtedly have a more surreal conclusion than Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s rural tale, one of the most underrated movies of 2024. If the filmmaker of Drive My Car, one of Japan’s most gentle human dramatists since Ozu, goes all mystical in the last reel, the lead-up tells a terribly realistic story of business and ecology at odds.

The callous proposal by a Tokyo company to construct a camping area on an undeveloped rural area demonstrates how quickly the equilibrium between humans and the environment may be upset. But what really distinguishes this understated gem is Hamaguchi’s ability to give each character a distinct inner life.

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It may sound like an elevator pitch, but “If David Lynch grew up obsessed with Buffy the Vampire Slayer” is as near as you can get to understanding the second film from burgeoning horror powerhouse Jane Schoenbrun (2021’s We’re All Going to the World’s Fair).

It’s a story about two lonely teenagers who become friends over a television show that might or might not be genuine, but in reality, it’s more of a mood piece with a Day-Glo color scheme and a lot of atmosphere and tension, one of the most underrated movies of 2024. Although gender dysphoria is never specifically addressed, Schoenbrun claims that it is also an allegory for the trans experience, emphasizing the idea of living a life that is not your own. It ends in one of the nicest ways of the year, bare and heartfelt.

Few directors have the confidence of Alice Rohrwacher (Happy as Lazzaro) to find room for the surreal and the grounded. Another mythically tinged picaresque from the Italian director, this one starring Josh O’Connor as a charming but shady British archeologist (like Graham Greene in a dirty suit) searching for Etruscan treasures with a gang of colorful tomb robbers. La Chimera is a jalopy ride across rural 1980s Lazio, filled with surrealist beauty and grimy opportunism in one of the most underrated movies of 2024. The narrative has unexpected bumps and hairpins, and the views are equally breathtaking.

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The Cannes Prize-winning period drama directed by Tran Anh Hung features a passionate combination between Juliette Binoche and her real-life love, Benoît Magimel. With its first thirty-odd minutes of sizzling, chopping, roasting, and saucing, The Scent of Green Papaya Man offers what is essentially “The Intoxicating Aroma of Flash-Fried Loin of Beef” in a film that is so enamored with the sensual pleasures of food that it may leave you gnawing your arm.

In keeping with the best gourmet movies, such as Tampopo, Big Night, Babette’s Feast, and others, it’s not simply about the culinary arts. Brilliant as a talented chef, Binoche has a delicate relationship with the man she works for (Magimel) that she completely controls, making for one of the most underrated movies of 2024. It’s a time warp to bygone eras of pleasure with its vividly rural location in the 19th century.

Andrew Haigh’s eerie love story is so good that it may well be considered the British director’s masterpiece. It will have you crying on the theater floor in one of the most underrated movies of 2024.

The plot revolves around a lonely screenwriter (played brilliantly by Andrew Scott) who gets distracted from his lonely life in an apartment building in London by an enigmatic neighbor (Paul Mescal, all dangerous charm) and an even more enigmatic visit to his childhood home, where his parents (played by Claire Foy and Jamie Bell) are waiting to meet him. Haigh shot the film at his childhood home, which is remarkable because it’s at least semi-autobiographical. This makes the film’s undercurrents—connection, loneliness, and just truly missing mom and dad—feel both universal and personal.

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Matteo Garrone’s (Gomorrah, account of Tales) account of two gangly Senegalese lads seeking to reach Italy by land and sea is a hard-scrabble adventure drama that alternates between being transcendent and mystical and grim and brutal at times.

Though the desert vistas are reminiscent of an epic David Lean work, the experience of migration is never minimized in one of the premier underrated movies of 2024. On the contrary, Seydou and Moussa, who are portrayed with great attractiveness and growing fear by Seydou Sarr and Moustapha Fall, endure great suffering in order to fulfill their aspirations for a better life. It’s definitely worth seeing on the big screen since it’s a poignant, moving, and incredibly topical movie.

A superb artist can present a whole fresh viewpoint on a widely discussed topic. In the same way, Jonathan Glazer’s masterwork on the Holocaust illustrates what ordinary evil actually looks like by using Hannah Arendt’s concept of “the banality of evil.”

A vision of doomed domesticity is the family life of Christian Friedel’s character, Rudolf Höss, the camp commander of Auschwitz, and his wife, Sandra Hüller. Importantly, the horrors are still audible even when they are hidden from view, making for one of the most underrated movies of 2024. Scenes of gardening and children playing are intercut with the cracking of rifle bullets and the shouts of guards in sound designer Johnnie Burn’s soundtrack. As a result, this film is a Come and See of the 2020s.