Netflix has a habit of burying its best movies under an avalanche of trending content. This weekend, we are skipping the algorithm and going straight for three hidden gems that genuinely deserve your time.
We have a road trip comedy that sneaks up on you emotionally, a Taiwanese family saga that will wreck you when the facade finally gives way, and a wartime horror movie that uses its setting to say something much bigger than the scares.
We also have guides to the best new movies to stream, the best movies on Netflix, the best movies on Hulu, the best free movies, and the best movies on Amazon Prime Video.
The Fundamentals of Caring (2016)
- Genre: Drama, Dark Comedy, Road Trip
- IMDB rating: 7.3/10
- Rotten Tomatoes (critics): 80%
Ben is a retired writer who has buried himself under grief after a personal tragedy. To pull himself out, he signs up to be a caregiver and ends up looking after Trevor, a sharp-tongued 18-year-old with muscular dystrophy who has never left the house. What starts as a professional arrangement turns into an unlikely road trip across America, picking up stranded strangers along the way.
Paul Rudd carries the movie with a quiet, grounded warmth that stops it from tipping into sentimentality. The comedy lands because it comes from a real place, and the emotional beats feel genuinely earned. What strikes me most is how the film refuses to make Trevor just a device for Ben’s healing but gives him his own full, complicated arc.
You can watch The Fundamentals of Caring on Netflix.
A Sun (2019)
- Genre: Drama, Crime
- IMDB rating: 7.6/10
- Rotten Tomatoes (critics): 94%
Tokyo Film Festival
A Taiwanese family slowly fractures under the weight of two sons heading in completely opposite directions. The older, A-Hao, is the golden child his father holds up as the ideal. The younger, A-Ho, ends up in juvenile detention after a violent crime. Over two and a half hours, the film follows what happens to everyone left behind and when the family’s carefully maintained facade finally gives way.
It is a highly underrated movie on Netflix that never got the attention it deserved, despite earning multiple major award wins and nominations across international film festivals. There is also a plot twist roughly midway through that completely reshapes everything you thought the film was about, and the way it handles grief after that point is unlike anything I have seen in a long time.
You can watch A Sun on Netflix.
Under the Shadow (2016)
- Genre: Horror, Thriller, Drama
- IMDB rating: 6.8/10
- Rotten Tomatoes (critics): 99%
Netflix
Set in 1988 Tehran as the Iran-Iraq War grinds on, Under the Shadow follows Shideh, a woman whose medical career was cut short by the revolution, now stuck at home with her young daughter while her husband is deployed to the front. When a missile strikes their apartment building without exploding, the neighbors whisper about cursed djinn spirits, and then strange things start happening.
The film works on two levels at once – as a tense supernatural horror story and as a portrait of a woman trapped by her circumstances from every direction. The scares are earned through atmosphere rather than cheap jump scares. What I find most compelling is how the monster and the oppression feel like the same threat wearing different faces, leaving you to draw your own uncomfortable parallels.
You can watch Under the Shadow on Netflix.
