In an era when Hollywood often leans on sequels, remakes, and the comfort of familiar formulas, truly original films feel increasingly rare. Nevertheless, over the last decade, a handful of filmmakers have broken through the noise to deliver stories that are wholly their own. These are films that blend genres, upend expectations, and stick in your mind.
The titles below represent the most daring, distinctive, and defiantly different movies of recent years. They cover a wide array of genres and tones, but all take big risks, making use of strange structures, bold aesthetics, and unpredictable narratives. In a sea of increasingly similar big-screen efforts, these movies stand out as outliers, instant classics that go against their genre’s conventions to deliver unique and ultimately unforgettable cinematic experiences.
10
‘Saint Maud’ (2019)
“To save a soul, that’s quite something.” Rose Glass‘ debut feature is a tightly wound psychological horror that somehow feels both familiar and utterly alien. Saint Maud centers on a deeply religious hospice nurse (Morfydd Clark) whose desire to save her patient’s soul curdles into a dangerous form of devotion. Through this character, Glass weaves madness, Catholic guilt, and moments of spiritual ecstasy into a small, almost claustrophobic world where every shadow and whisper feels charged with meaning.
The director is helped by a talented, committed lead. Clark (who would later play Galadriel in The Rings of Power) delivers an astonishing performance, oscillating between fragility and unnerving conviction. Her state of mind is lonely and terrifying, the line between divine calling and delusion dangerously blurred. This feeling is heightened by the killer sound design and the muted color palette. The final seconds of Saint Maud are among the most shocking of the decade, cementing the film as a modern classic in minimalist horror storytelling.
9
‘Under the Silver Lake’ (2018)
“Why do we assume that all this information is what we’re told it is?” David Robert Mitchell‘s follow-up to It Follows trades urban paranoia for sun-bleached surrealism. Under the Silver Lake is part neo-noir, part hallucinatory scavenger hunt, and part millennial existential crisis. Andrew Garfield plays Sam, a listless Los Angeles drifter who becomes obsessed with finding a mysterious woman who disappears from his apartment complex. What follows is a descent into conspiracy theories, cryptic codes, and bizarre encounters, including a dog-killing serial killer, a naked owl-woman, and a shadowy cabal controlling the entertainment industry.
The movie itself is a puzzle. Mitchell loads it with hidden messages and Easter eggs, daring the audience to chase meaning just as desperately as Sam does. The result is a portrait of modern obsession, where the line between uncovering hidden truths and losing one’s mind is razor-thin. An ambitious oddity that lends itself to endless interpretation.
8
‘Get Out’ (2017)
“I got hypnotized last night.” Get Out arrived like a thunderbolt. Its combustible mix of horror, comedy, and social commentary resonated with the zeitgeist, earning it massive box office returns, Oscar nominations, and a thousand thinkpieces. It makes wicked use of a deceptively simple premise — a young Black man (Daniel Kaluuya) visiting his white girlfriend’s (Allison Williams) family estate — to expose deep racial anxieties. In the process, it perfectly reflected social tensions that had been roiling just beneath the surface.
Originality here lies in how Jordan Peele fuses genre thrills with cultural commentary, making a horror movie that’s as thought-provoking as it is entertaining. He also melds real-world horrors with surreal imagery: the “Sunken Place” has become one of modern cinema’s most enduring metaphors, and the film’s uncanny politeness turns casual microaggressions into weapons of suspense. Few genre debuts have felt this bold, this confident, or this necessary.
7
‘A Ghost Story’ (2017)
“We build our legacy piece by piece…” David Lowery‘s A Ghost Story is one of the most unconventional explorations of grief in recent cinema. Its premise is absurd on paper: a man dies, returns as a sheet-covered ghost, and silently haunts his former home. But in execution, it’s hypnotic, poetic, and devastating. Depicting the ghost as nothing more than a dude under a sheet is a statement of intent. The film is visually minimalist but emotionally rich. Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara barely speak, yet the film communicates volumes about loss and the meaning we leave behind.
As the ghost drifts through centuries, watching life pass him by, A Ghost Story expands into a meditation on the smallness of human existence within the vast sweep of time. The aesthetic choices perfectly complement the themes. Lowery stretches scenes to uncomfortable length (for example, a single take of Mara eating a pie lasts nearly five minutes), forcing the viewer to sit with stillness and absence.
6
‘The Shape of Water’ (2017)
“Unable to perceive the shape of you, I find you all around me.” Set against the Cold War paranoia of the 1960s, The Shape of Water tells the story of Elisa (Sally Hawkins), a mute janitor who discovers (and falls in love with) a mysterious amphibious creature (Doug Jones) held captive in a government facility. Jones is a master when it comes to playing monsters, while Hawkins is amazingly expressive, her silent presence more eloquent than pages of dialogue.
Guillermo del Toro‘s genius lies in taking a premise that sounds absurd and imbuing it with sincerity, romance, and political subtext about otherness and empathy. The Shape of Water refuses to be boxed in: it’s part monster movie, part love story, part Cold War spy thriller, and somehow, it all works. Few directors could tell a story this strange with such tenderness, and fewer still could win the Oscar for Best Picture doing it.
5
‘I’m Thinking of Ending Things’ (2020)
“Maybe I’ve actually known all along.” I’m Thinking of Ending Things is pretty darn strange, even by Charlie Kaufman‘s standards. It centers on a young woman (Jessie Buckley) traveling with her boyfriend (Jesse Plemons) to meet his parents, a premise that quickly fractures into surreal tangents, shifting timelines, and unsettling monologues. The leads anchor the chaos with performances that morph alongside the film’s shifting reality.
It becomes a surprisingly profound affair, full of food for thought, and open to wide interpretation. Kaufman uses long, meandering conversations to explore existential dread, loneliness, and the constructed nature of memory. Scenes slip between genres without warning: romantic drama, psychological horror, and even musical theater. A sense of unease pervades everything. And, all the while, the film refuses to offer clarity. Instead, it demands that viewers sit in discomfort. For all these reasons, I’m Thinking of Ending Things is the kind of movie that some will find maddening and others will find mind-blowing.
4
‘Poor Things’ (2023)
“If I know the world, I can improve it.” Like Kaufman, Yorgos Lanthimos is a filmmaker who revels in the odd, and Poor Things ranks among his most offbeat efforts yet. It’s a Victorian fever dream with a steampunk edge, shot through with sexuality, grotesquerie, and liberation. An Oscar-winning Emma Stone leads the cast as Bella Baxter, a woman resurrected with the brain of a child. Her journey of self-discovery becomes an anarchic blend of erotic awakening, philosophical debate, and absurdist comedy.
Lanthimos fills the screen with ornate production design and warped lens work, making the world feel both lush and slightly off-kilter. The film’s episodic structure mirrors Bella’s evolution, as she crosses paths with exploitative lovers, corrupt aristocrats, and radical thinkers, each encounter sharpening her sense of autonomy. It’s as much a feminist fable as it is a surreal comedy, unafraid to embrace the bizarre. Here, highbrow ideas collide with lowbrow humor, and elegance brushes up against vulgarity.
3
‘Swiss Army Man’ (2016)
“Maybe everyone’s a little bit ugly.” Everything Everywhere All At Once was showered in praise and awards, but Swiss Army Man is arguably the better film. The feature debut from Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan opens with a farting corpse and somehow transforms that premise into one of the most heartfelt films of the decade. Paul Dano plays Hank, a man stranded on a deserted island, who discovers Manny (Daniel Radcliffe), a dead body with peculiar abilities, including jet-propulsion flatulence, compass erections, and the ability to talk.
While it begins as pure absurdity, Swiss Army Man slowly evolves into a commentary on loneliness, shame, and the need for human connection. The Daniels use grotesque and ridiculous images to smuggle in moments of genuine beauty. Songs swell over montage sequences, and philosophical conversations unfold between man and corpse. Ultimately, Swiss Army Man dares to be silly and sincere at the same time, treating fart jokes and heartbreak with equal gravity.
2
‘Mad God’ (2021)
“I leave you the sea, the good sea. The earth is good, too.” Phil Tippett‘s Mad God is an unfiltered plunge into the subconscious of a master visual effects artist. Shot over decades in painstaking stop-motion, it’s a dialogue-free nightmare of rusted machines, mutated creatures, and decaying civilizations. Tippett crafts a world that feels both ancient and post-apocalyptic. The “story” is more a series of haunting tableaux than a conventional narrative, each scene designed to overwhelm with texture and detail.
Without words to guide us, the film becomes a hypnotic, unsettling experience. Part art installation, part fever dream, it is an example of total artistic freedom. Unbound by studio interference or commercial expectations, Tippett delivers something purely personal and utterly alien. Mad God feels like a forbidden reel of film from another dimension, the kind of creation that could only come from decades of obsession and a refusal to compromise.
1
‘Beau Is Afraid’ (2023)
“You will experience great highs and profound lows…” While it fell short of the high bar set by Ari Aster‘s debut, Beau Is Afraid still deserves kudos for being fiercely original. Bucking fans’ expectations, Aster gave us a three-hour odyssey through the neuroses, guilt, and surreal misfortunes of one man. Joaquin Phoenix plays the title character, a timid, anxiety-ridden figure whose attempt to visit his mother spirals into an increasingly absurd and terrifying journey. The film moves through wildly different environments, each one reflecting and amplifying Beau’s paranoia. They include a chaotic cityscape, a sinister suburban home, and a dreamlike forest theater.
Here, Aster marries dark comedy with psychological horror, peppering the narrative with grotesque visual gags and deeply uncomfortable character interactions. Beau Is Afraid refuses to stick to one tone, constantly destabilizing the viewer. At times it feels like a nightmare, at others like a sad confession. Love it or hate it — and there seems to be more of the latter than the former — Beau is Afraid is unlike anything else released in recent years.
