5 Hidden Gem Movies You Need to Stream on Netflix, Prime Video and More in April 2026
Burned out on Oscar darlings and box-office behemoths? Skip the algorithm and cue up the hidden gems and overlooked features hiding on your favorite streamers—handpicked by our streaming experts.
If you need a break from the awards darlings and the IP behemoths, I’ve got you. Streaming is packed with great movies that somehow slip past the hype machine. Here are five that deserve more eyeballs right now — all killer, no filler, and each with a specific vibe that might scratch an itch you didn’t know you had.
- Mistress America (2015) — Prime Video
- Revenge ( 2018) — Tubi
- I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020) — Netflix
- Alien: Covenant (2017) — HBO Max
- Kajillionaire (2020) — Peacock
Mistress America (2015) — Prime Video
New Barnard freshman Tracy (Lola Kirke) is struggling to click with New York City, so she reaches out to Brooke (Greta Gerwig), the older, impossibly magnetic woman who’s about to become her stepsister. Tracy falls hard for Brooke’s improvised, live-out-loud approach to life — and then, inspired, quietly mines Brooke’s chaos for a short story. When Brooke discovers she’s become material, the friendship hits a wall.
The movie is zippy, chaotic, and surprisingly tender, with two star-making turns that lock in perfectly. Noah Baumbach directs with his usual precision and soft edges, and he and Gerwig co-wrote the script together — a creative partnership that isn’t quite at the soaring high of Frances Ha, but still lands as a beautifully tuned duet. Gerwig’s warmth meets Baumbach’s sly, darker humor, and the result is brisk and sharp without losing its heart.
Revenge (2018) — Tubi
Jen (Matilda Lutz) heads to a desert hideaway with her wealthy, married boyfriend Richard (Kevin Janssens). His buddies Stan (Vincent Colombe) and Dimitri (Guillaume Bouchede) crash the trip for what’s supposed to be a harmless hunt. Things get tense, then horrifying, and Jen is left for dead. She isn’t. What follows is her brutal, laser-focused payback.
Before French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat made The Substance — which went on to snag an Oscar nomination — she came out swinging with this stripped-down, ferocious debut. It flips the ugliest tropes of exploitation and rape/revenge films into something pointed, stylish, and unapologetically feminist. Lutz absolutely anchors it, turning a familiar genre setup into a startling, propulsive survival story.
I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020) — Netflix
A young woman (Jessie Buckley) drives through a snowstorm with her boyfriend, Jake (Jesse Plemons), to meet his parents (Toni Collette and David Thewlis) at their remote farmhouse. On the way, she turns over a single thought in her head: maybe this relationship is done. Once they arrive, reality starts to warp — time slips, identities blur, and the visit mutates into something uncanny.
Charlie Kaufman’s loose take on Iain Reid’s novel is dense and purposefully disorienting, but never dull. Clues pile up, contradictions stack, and not every mystery is meant to be solved. That’s the point: the mood and psychological dread do the heavy lifting. It’s unnerving in the best way — a singular, heady experience that lingers.
Alien: Covenant (2017) — HBO Max
The colony ship Covenant is en route to Origae-6 with a hold full of sleeping settlers and embryos when a sudden solar flare wrecks the plan and kills several colonists. The waking crew, alongside their onboard android Walter (Michael Fassbender), picks up a human signal from an uncharted world and decides to investigate. Out there, they find David (also Fassbender), the lone survivor of the doomed Prometheus expedition — and a planet that looks welcoming right up until it isn’t.
Ridley Scott ’s Alien prequels both get shrugged off more than they should, but Covenant is the stealth MVP: nastier, eerier, bloodier, and, yes, funnier than Prometheus. It deepens the series lore and the Xenomorph’s origins with gorgeous, ominous craft — the cinematography and production design are top-tier. Also, Fassbender’s double act as Walter and David is a strange, charged showcase that you kind of have to see to believe.
Kajillionaire (2020) — Peacock
Old Dolio (Evan Rachel Wood) was raised by small-time scammers (Debra Winger and Richard Jenkins) who treat her more like a junior partner than a daughter. During an airport luggage scheme, they meet Melanie (Gina Rodriguez), who happily tags along for the cons — and ends up cracking open Old Dolio’s very carefully armored world.
Miranda July does her singular thing here: oddball, tender, lightly surreal. It’s funny, melancholic, and quietly devastating, all at once. Wood’s monotone, deadpan delivery could be a gimmick in lesser hands; instead, it’s deeply human, playing beautifully against Rodriguez’s sunnier, more grounded energy. Beneath the quirks is a bruised, moving story about connection and what it takes to unlearn a lifetime of survival mode.