The 2020s have brought us films that burst with new ideas and push what’s possible. Here are 20 2020s movies that show originality isn’t dead!
The 2020s are more than halfway over, and I hope that makes you feel the flat circle of time as much as I do. Among many bigger problems that have people worried this decade, even something as leisurely as film has taken a hit as stagnant or samey “content” is churned out to hook people with what they’ve already seen. Which begs the question: what new directions do I want movies to go? What do I want to have put in front of me to show originality isn’t dead in Hollywood? Well, let’s look through the 2020s so far and see for ourselves.
There have been a lot of fantastic movies during this decade, but I’m specifically seeking out films that show it’s still possible to have fresh approaches to familiar types of stories. They put surprising spins on old conventions, show new ideas from unexpected places, or even push the boundaries of what we thought may have been visually possible. Essentially, they’re the films I point to and say, “Let’s keep trying more of this, please.” And if you’re tired of the same old thing, maybe you’ll have the same reaction upon seeing them too.
As you’d assume, most of these movies are 100% original stories. But I’m also including a few that are based on pre-existing material, because they nonetheless contain very original, innovative approaches to their writing and filmmaking that I want to see become more of the norm. If IP-driven films aren’t letting up, we might as well acknowledge how they can stay fresh. With that said, let’s look at 20 2020s movies that show originality isn’t dead!
1. Sinners (2025)
Let’s start with our two most recent films, the first of which being 2025’s Best Picture contender, Sinners. The film features Michael B. Jordan (Creed III) in a dual role as twins Smoke and Stack. They open a juke joint in the 1930s Deep South, only for vampires to crash the party and tear it all down.
Sinners is a movie about characters first and foremost. Everyone is charming, rich with backstory, and skilled enough to get by as Black people in a very segregated American setting. The vampires aren’t just creepy monsters that bite. Their presence is as big a threat to the characters’ culture as the very real blood-sucking practices of that time.
If you complain about social politics in your genre picture, look no further to see how someone can pull it off while still making the movie fun. Sinners touches on topical issues but also works as a character-driven story, a popcorn horror flick, and a musical period piece. This and our next film play around with how great music can serve a purpose in their stories. All because director Ryan Coogler was allowed to bring his distinct voice to a vampire movie of all things. Give that privilege to other talented filmmakers, and you may have way more original hits than you’d expect.
2. KPop Demon Hunters (2025)
Sinners may have been a hit last year, but KPop Demon Hunters was a phenomenon. In lesser hands, this film about a trio of K-pop singers who fight demons disguised as a rival boyband would have sounded not just dumb, but like a hollow attempt to capitalize on Gen Z’s love of Korean music. After all, its soundtrack has permeated pop culture even more than anything else in the film. But I don’t think this movie would have been nearly as big had the writing and animation not been equally on-point.
The main character (Arden Cho) has a surprisingly strong arc involving her identity and how personal the battle becomes for her. The songs are actually important to the plot and add to the emotional journey she’s going through, and the film satirizes a lot of practices in the music business while still treating them with sincere weight. KPop Demon Hunters was clearly greenlit with its limitless marketing potential in mind. But if that marketing is an intrinsic part of what makes the movie so good in the first place, I’m all for getting more of these smash hits for the youth of today to gush over… Although I apologize if you’re sick to death of “Golden.”
3. Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)
Anyone who knows me saw this one coming a mile away. Everything Everywhere All at Once is a once-in-a-generation movie that took film as a whole to a crazy, inventive, mind-bending new level. Evelyn Wong (Michelle Yeoh, of Wicked: For Good) is an unsatisfied family woman who discovers she’s the key to solving a multiversal crisis with the help of her family’s alternates from another dimension. To briefly describe how or why would be impossible, but it’s bats**t insanity that throws everything and the kitchen sink at you without an ounce of reservation.
This is an excellently staged martial arts movie, an intelligent sci-fi film, an existential look at what life means, and an intimate multigenerational family drama all at once. The title does not lie. Everything Everywhere All at Once combines these disparate ingredients and not only succeeds, but pushes live-action cinema beyond what a lot of people thought could be done with it. Even the Academy agreed, making this the first science fiction film to win Best Picture. More films need to be this fearless and take these kinds of genre-bending risks. Even if they don’t pay off, they could open doors to a whole wave of incredible maximalist storytelling.
4. River (2023)
On the other side of the sci-fi coin is a minimalist, genius spin on the time-loop formula. In River, everyone within and around a Kibune inn finds themselves caught in a two-minute time loop. Because everyone physically resets while retaining their memories through each loop, they all need to work together to find a way out through these restrictions. River is from Junta Yamaguchi, the writer/director of Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes. While many of its ideas and even actors are reused here, this is still its own small beast.
Every two-minute loop is done in one shot to capture the nonstop urgency and frustrating repetition every character goes through, but the film itself never becomes dull. It’s insanely fun to watch some people cleverly work around the loop while others are driven to madness and a few don’t even realize they’re in a loop at all. And of course, everyone learns the value of letting time move forward even if they don’t like where it’s going. If you can get past a disappointing explanation for the loop and the outright bad exposure (presumably due to the tiny budget), River is such a smart and charming little film that makes me hope Yamaguchi can one day get wider recognition.
5. The Substance (2024)
Old-school body horror flicks like The Thing and The Fly capitalize on gruesome practical effects in ways I thought we wouldn’t get again… until I saw The Substance. Demi Moore (I Love Boosters) plays an aging star who takes a mysterious substance that creates a younger version of her, so long as they swap back-and-forth as instructed. You can guess how well they follow that rule. As the substance is abused and exploited, we’re taken down a path filled with horrific abominations, grisly makeup, and buckets of blood.
The movie basically screams for you to not succumb to our lead’s crippling lack of self-confidence, desperation to be loved, or addiction to the highs of… well, any substance that harms you. But the world at large isn’t let off the hook for its shallow, ageist, misogynistic practices either. The Substance is a throwback to films of old, but few movies have tackled these contemporary themes in such a blatant and extreme way. And as great as it is to see small-scale horror dominate the box office right now, movies like The Substance show that there’s still room left to go with the big guns.
Speaking of small-scale horror…
6. I Saw the TV Glow (2024)
We’ve had hits like Obsession, Longlegs, and Weapons. But for me, I Saw the TV Glow is the best horror film of this scale to come out of the 2020s so far. The film is about a pair of teenagers who bond over a late-night action show. But when one of them (Jack Haven) vanishes, it leaves the other (Justice Smith, of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves) questioning whether the show exists as fiction in his reality or the other way around. This is not an easy film to unwrap by any stretch. It’s intentionally written and acted to sound awkwardly slow and unnatural, and the answers of what’s actually happening are never clear.
But these risky choices, along with the off-kilter dreamlike cinematography, work so well to emphasize how alien the characters themselves feel in this world. You question if they’re just really awkward kids, if being in the wrong place has broken their spirits, or maybe both. Director Jane Schoenbrun based the film off their own trans experiences, and the film in its entirety is an abstract manifestation of the emotions they’ve experienced. Like The Substance, it throws back to movies of a bygone era – especially those of the late David Lynch – while mixing them with concepts we’re more ready to analyze now than ever. Let’s see how much farther Schoenbrun and others can take that approach.
7. Challengers (2024)
How would you like your sports movie with a hearty dose of toxic love triangle, nonlinear storytelling, and dance music playing to two naked guys talking in a sauna? Challengers will likely surprise everyone no matter what they go in expecting, and I love it for that. The film is about two tennis players and former friends (Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist, of Wake Up Dead Man and West Side Story respectively) who compete not just in the US Open, but for the heart of their mutual old flame (Zendaya, of The Drama). The story plays out like a tennis match, right down to bouncing between the past and present to unravel this trio’s history.
Every relationship in the film is twisted, unhealthy, but born out of the competitive fire and untamable passion in all three of these people. The film takes its time establishing such an uneasy mood but maintains a kinetic energy through the acting, music, and some of the most exciting ways to film a tennis match until Marty Supreme came along. If Challengers sounds very unconventional as either a romance drama or a sports movie, that’s exactly why it’s here. It takes chances and plays heavily with form, giving us a wild ride the likes of which I’ve never quite seen before. It’s a big swing that delivers a grand slam of a time.
8. Strange Darling
Sticking to films where the nonlinear editing is practically a main character, Strange Darling turns the immaculate technique of stitching scenes together into one giant prank. The film opens with a woman (Willa Fitzgerald, of Regretting You) fleeing from a man attempting to hunt her down (Kyle Gallner, of Smile 2). From there, the film jumps ahead and then back in time to slowly fill in the gaps. In doing so, Strange Darling is hiding the actual story right under your nose, obscuring the truth through expertly timed sequences shot by first-time cinematographer Giovanni Ribisi.
Every time I assumed the movie would follow tropes I’d gotten sick of by that point, it used all those assumptions against me. Which is partially the broader point of the story: don’t automatically believe you know what’s happening just because it fits some pre-made narrative in your head. That’s not to say there’s no rewatch value, as you’ll still love the great performances, endless tension, and grisly violence while admiring how it was arranged. But the surprise factor is what really makes it fresh. And given this whole list is about movies that shake things up, how could I not include one that’s all about tricking you?
9. Annette
The movie musical has seen a resurgence in the past 15 years, and the 2020s continued that streak. The strangest one, though, is probably 2021’s Annette. This rock opera is about an entitled stand-up comic (Adam Driver, of Star Wars: The Last Jedi) who murders his successful wife (Marion Cotillard, of The Dark Knight Rises) out of jealousy. He then tries to exploit the musical talent of their puppet daughter Annette. Yes, she is a literal puppet. Obvious symbolism is obvious, but that’s also one of the many delightfully bizarre choices this musical makes.
This is a very abstract movie, but every shifting environment and weird visual adds to a defined core about a vain man’s crooked attempts at glory. It helps that musicals already have a somewhat flexible reality compared to other genres, so you might as well run with it. Even if you don’t get why you’re seeing or hearing what Annette throws at you, it’s so gorgeously colored and extravagantly produced that you may go along with it anyway. We’ve had some recent movie musicals go off the wall, but none quite as much as this one. With what technology and online marketing could do, the potential of something even crazier is limitless.
10. Flow (2024)
Flow represents so much of what I want from animation. It’s a kid-friendly film without making any compromises against adults, it bucks a lot of animation and storytelling conventions, and it makes the most of what little it has. The film is about a group of animals who travel together after their homes are wiped out by a flood. As in, regular animals with no dialogue. They communicate and emote solely through body language, and director Gints Zilbalodis’s team nails each animal’s distinct movements so scarily well that I was clutching my seat any time they were in peril.
Flow has hints of taking place in some dystopian future, with a lot of set pieces and even a character’s disappearance going unexplained. I personally love that the cute kitty cat movie is so ambiguous, especially because that doesn’t deter from how loveable and distinguished every character is. Despite the visibly small budget, Zilbalodis directs and edits the film so immersively that he overcomes all his limitations. Disney has always been the de facto animation leader, but we’re in a time where great animation can come from just about anywhere. Let’s see that happen, because Flow has proven it can pay off big time.
11. Wolfwalkers (2020)
From a work of CG animation to hand-drawn; Wolfwalkers is about an apprentice hunter named Robyn (Honor Kneafsey) who befriends a native girl that can transform into a wolf (Eva Whittaker). When Robyn is granted this power, she’s pitted against her father’s mission to wipe out the whole wolf pack. Like Flow, you can see the roots of this film’s smaller budget, but they’re overcome with a rugged linework and painterly colors that perfectly fit with the old Irish forest setting. The Spider-Verse blend of 2D and 3D is great and all, but there’s something so endearing about the mainly hand-drawn nature of these kinds of movies.
The kid characters are energized without going overboard, filled with rich personalities, and brought to life through fantastic voicework. The story sounds traditional, but it adds smart touches to avoid becoming clichéd. Wolfwalkers frees itself from so many things I dislike about the works of Disney and Pixar without needing to, for lack of a better phrase, “grow up” its material. Though animation is in a fairly decent spot quality-wise, films like this show there’s still space for variety in style and tone, especially when you embrace such charming simplicity.
12. The Menu (2022)
It’s tough to have me laughing and on edge at the same time, as hard as a lot of movies have tried. The Menu is maybe the best film to ever pull it off, with a great premise to boot. Anya Taylor-Joy (Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga) is brought by her boyfriend (Nicholas Hoult, of Superman) to an esteemed restaurant run by acclaimed chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes, of 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple). However, the chef’s “offerings” get stranger and possibly more dangerous. That’s all I’ll say about the plot, because going in totally blind makes the whole experience so much better.
This is the darkest of dark comedies. It illustrates how to do satire without winking too hard at an audience, even making you wonder what kind of a movie it even is all the way up to the halfway point. The film is ultimately a takedown at creators who obsessively drink their own Kool-Aid, as well as consumers who dismiss the hard work that goes into satisfying them. Taylor-Joy works great as the fish out of water surrounded by wealthy customers and the most pretentiously bitter “artists” you’ll ever see, and she absolutely owns the film’s ingenious ending. This is as perfect a blending of two different tones that I can imagine, and to say any more would ruin the delectable dish waiting for you.
13. Bottoms (2023)
I almost chose Bodies Bodies Bodies as the designated Gen Z comedy, but Bottoms is definitely the film that swung the hardest between the two. PJ (Rachel Sennott) and Josie (Ayo Edebiri, of After the Hunt) form an all-girl fight club at their high school to get themselves dates. As soon as you hear the school intercom describe them as ugly lesbians, you should pick up that Bottoms is written as a very heavy exaggeration of the modern high school experience rather than anything “realistic.” We’ve all felt like the system itself is calling us ugly, or that the big, strong football team is really filled with insecure manbabies who cry when mildly disrespected.
Bottoms commits entirely to this world, classifying it as a maximalist comedy at least in its script. With wildly inappropriate jokes being thrown out this frequently, it’s a miracle that almost all of them hit. The exaggerations add to the catharsis of these girls going against the grain and even the sadness when they start turning on each other. It’s been said that a lot of older taboo comedy wouldn’t fly today, but Bottoms is proof that you can still be naughty and politically incorrect to an extreme degree as long as there’s a purpose to it all. So, by all means, keep seeing how much you can stretch the limits of humor.
14. No Other Choice (2025)
Directing veteran Park Chan-wook takes a searing stab at the employment situation in Korea with the tale of Man-su (Lee Byung-hun, of Squid Game), a once thriving family man suddenly laid off from a papermaking company. When a new opening at another firm opens up, Man-su schemes to kill his prospective competitors to ensure he lands the job. No Other Choice isn’t the first film to tackle the ravenousness of job markets, but it is the first one to do it with three people screaming incomprehensibly over each other at gunpoint through a blaring 80s K-pop song… at least, I assume it is.
That scene is a microcosm of everything the film does that should not work: sudden tonal shifts within the same scene or even same line, multiple plot points almost designed to not belong together, and scene transitions that have an equal chance of mesmerizing or disorienting you to enhance our lead’s frantic mindset. Not a single frame feels like it wasn’t assembled to have something of meaning to look for, breathing tons of life into an already uncomfortably relatable story. No Other Choice speaks very much to the problems of right now, but it’s so distinctly, sincerely entertaining that its timelessness is guaranteed.
15. Josephine (2026)
This film isn’t even out yet, but I saw it at Sundance and couldn’t leave it off the list. Josephine is about a six-year-old girl (Mason Reeves) who sees one of the worst acts of violence imaginable happening to someone in a park. It’s something that most adults would have a brutal time processing, let alone someone this young. But Josephine, in an ideal world, would set a new template in how to handle upsetting, traumatic subject matter in a movie. You have to tread extremely carefully to do these life lessons justice, but director Beth de Araújo is clearly tapping into her own experiences with the needed talent and bravery.
With kids having more access to the world than ever, and with so much of that world being frightening and cruel, Josephine is one of the most difficult but most necessary watches I could imagine coming out right now. It speaks to a lot of parents’ nightmares, a lot of children’s confusion, and how many complications we should acknowledge versus how much we should keep our mindsets simple. Films that address their creator’s personal traumas are everywhere, but they’re rarely as thorough and unfiltered as this one. Maybe if they were, we’d have a more universal understanding of one another.
16. Barbie (2023)
We’re now moving to “unoriginal” films that are still executed in original, innovative ways. Barbie handily fits the bill by proving that movies made to sell products can be smart, funny, subversive, and heartfelt. Barbie herself (Margot Robbie, of Wuthering Heights) is living large in Barbieland, only to be called to the real world when she starts “malfunctioning.” And against all odds, the film then takes a scalpel to issues like patriarchy, identity, motherhood, and the nature of being human, with a spontaneous musical number from Ryan Gosling (Project Hail Mary) as Ken to boot.
Director Greta Gerwig has never stuck to the norm, but millions were still taken aback by what a journey her film about Mattel dolls turned out to be. No one else would have thought to take the idea in the directions this movie does, while still making it the crowd-pleasing comedy people want out of a live-action Barbie film. If The Lego Movie isn’t the prime example of a product placement movie that transcends its status, it’s Barbie. And if films like A Minecraft Movie and the Mario movies had tried half as hard as Barbie did, the landscape of IP and nostalgia bait would feel much more original.
17. Oppenheimer (2023)
Might as well cover the other half of Barbenheimer while we’re here, because Oppenheimer literally and figuratively blasted past what I thought a biopic like this was capable of. This depiction of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy, of Small Things Like These) covers his life through university, personal affairs, the creation of the atomic bomb, and the fallout afterwards. And that’s not even including Oppenheimer’s governmental ally turned enemy Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr., of Avengers: Infinity War), or how both stories are told out of order and even alternate between black-and-white and color.
We’ve seen great biopics navigate decades’ worth of a single person’s life. But I’ve never seen one do it with such a risky structure, overwhelming dialogue, and unbelievably efficient editing from Jennifer Lame that gives you mountains of information without becoming rushed. Most biopics would reduce this much material down to bullet points like a Wikipedia article, either not diving deeper or not giving you much of an intensive experience. Oppenheimer towers over all of them, demanding these kinds of movies do their historical subjects justice by upping their game and using every tool we have in today’s environment.
18. The Zone of Interest
The Zone of Interest, though based on a Martin Amis novel, is entirely its own creation when put to screen by director Jonathan Glazer. It’s about the family of German Nazi officer Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) living their lives next to the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1943. Unlike countless films about the Holocaust that show its evils up close and personal, this one speaks of them entirely through the seemingly mundane lives that upheld them. Out of context, this would look like a normal family leading normal lives. You never see any of the actual atrocities onscreen.
The Zone of Interest disturbingly lets its backgrounds, casual talks, and even costume design tell you everything. Most of all, the droning noises that go maddeningly unaddressed make for some of the best sound design in any film, period. The family’s complacency, blind privilege, and willing isolation from something literally right next door do what so few films have accomplished to a level this high: say everything by almost saying nothing. The Zone of Interest proves that no matter how much black stains on history have been discussed, there’s always something new to condemn and learn from them.
19. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)
For all the purely original animated films we’ve looked at, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is the one that’s pushed the medium hardest so far this decade. Sometime after becoming Spider-Man, Miles Morales (Shameik Moore, of Dope) comes across a secret society of Spider-People led by Miguel O’Hara (Oscar Isaac, of Ex Machina), which throws everything he knew about his role in the multiverse into question.
Into the Spider-Verse was already an animation groundbreaker, but Across doubles down with its use of endlessly dynamic colors, various art styles, and nonstop visual details that’s just as much style as it is substance. I obviously don’t expect every animated movie to match this, but most bigger studios don’t seem to realize how many advantages animation can have over live-action with the right minds behind it. Every single one of those advantages is right here in this movie, all wrapped around some of the best storytelling and action you’ll get in any film. This is, for my money, the peak of what animation can do in the 2020s.
As for the peak of what live-action can do…
20. Dune: Part Two (2024)
We’re ending with the least “original” film on the list, but Dune: Part Two is the kind of gigantic live-action spectacle that we rarely see nowadays. The film is adapted from one of science fiction’s most revered books, which is about Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet, of A Complete Unknown) joining a desert tribe to get revenge on his father’s killers. So, a lot of the groundwork was done long ago. The way the Dune universe was brought to life on the big screen, however, is what I want more studios to look at. So many new tentpole films make such sloppy, undisciplined use of CGI that they might as well have been animated full-stop. Even ambitious, largely original movies like RRR fall into this trap.
Dune: Part Two is what happens when effects are perfected, fused with great technique, and there to support gritty, tangible action and environments. Paul’s ride on a sandworm is a contender for the most breathtaking moment in any 2020s movie. When juggernauts like Jurassic Park and the Lord of the Rings movies came out, I’m willing to bet audiences everywhere got the same sense of overwhelming awe that I got when watching this for the first time. Whenever a studio aims to wow us, I want to see as much commitment as I saw here, because Dune: Part Two showed us what can be done with today’s filmmaking when that commitment shines through.
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