Blood, Sweat and Cheer; Lowlifes; and Slay.
Photo: Tubi
Nobody expects much from Tubi, but the free ad-supported streaming service premieres nearly as many original feature films each month as Netflix. Yes, there’s a lot of cheap, pandering garbage, but that’s true on major streaming services, too, and Tubi has no pretensions to awards qualifications or pop-culture relevance. It’s just offering viewers a good time for free.
The low profile and low expectations give Tubi the freedom to pick up a whole range of interesting obscurities, though, sourced from film festivals, international distributors, and scrappy independent filmmakers. The best Tubi original movies represent the creativity and resourcefulness that come from being underfunded and underestimated. Here are ten that would be worth watching on any platform.
Year: 2023
Run time: 1hr 28m
Director: Philip Barantini
If internet vigilantes had come after Richard Jewell, it might have looked something like this taut, tense home-invasion thriller, which weaponizes social-media speculation against a hapless London animator. Harri Bhavsar (Chaneil Kular) leaves for a weekend of dog-sitting at his parents’ sprawling country house, unaware that he’s about to be named online as the perpetrator of a deadly train-station bombing. Barantini depicts the runaway momentum of racist online vengeance with the same level of menace as the physical attack on Harri’s home, both causing irreparable, long-term damage.
Year: 2023
Run time: 1h 35m
Director: Traci Hays
The faux-Lifetime movie is a key subcategory of Tubi originals, and while most of them dully imitate the familiar woman-in-peril formula, this unhinged thriller embraces full-on campiness. Pretty Little Liars alum Tammin Sursok gives a delightfully deranged performance as a middle-aged mother who poses as her own teenage daughter in order to live out a high-school dream of being popular and joining the dance squad. Somehow, no one notices the obvious 30-something whose clever disguise is adding clip-on bangs. Hays creates a candy-colored high-school fantasia where even the inevitable murders are upbeat and peppy.
Year: 2023
Run time: 1h 31m
Director: Bryian Keith Montgomery Jr.
Writer-director Montgomery combines a bit of neo-noir, a bit of Blaxploitation, and a bit of ’90s Quentin Tarantino in his twisty crime thriller, starring Hailey Kilgore as the title character. She’s an aspiring singer whose boyfriend concocts a scheme for them to steal enough money to get her started in L.A., but of course the plan spirals out of control. Damon Wayans is amusingly hammy as a sleazy used-car dealer, and Pam Grier is imposing and regal as a deaf crime boss. The off-kilter characters and fractured chronology keep Cinnamon’s storytelling fresh and exciting.
Year: 2023
Run time: 1h 31m
Director: Nick Kozakis
Title aside, this Australian film has more in common with bleak Aussie crime thrillers like The Snowtown Murders and Hounds of Love than it does with the typical exorcism movie. Based loosely on a real-life event, Godless follows the horrifyingly misguided efforts of a rural Christian community to purge the so-called demons infesting an obviously schizophrenic young housewife (Georgia Eyers). Tim Pocock is chilling as the charismatic self-proclaimed exorcist who berates and tortures this mentally ill woman, keeping a whole congregation under his spell as they do irreparable harm in the name of salvation.
Year: 2024
Run time: 1h 30m
Directors: Tesh Guttikonda and Mitch Oliver
What starts out as a basic backwoods horror movie quickly subverts expectations with the big-city tourists positioned as the threats to the harmless, well-meaning redneck family. It could be a one-joke premise, but the filmmakers take their time with genuine character development on both sides of the killer/victim divide. The movie delivers inventive kills, appealing performances, a brutal ending, and clever dialogue. At one point, the lesbian daughter tells her homophobic cannibal dad: “I’d rather eat pussy than people!”
Year: 2024
Run time: 1h 24m
Director: Max Isaacson
A Day-Glo neo-western set in a small Hawaii town, Paradise opens with protagonist Ella Patchet (Patricia Allison) getting ejected through the swinging doors of a saloon and ends with a quick-draw showdown between Ella and the town’s corrupt mayor (Tate Donovan). Ella is on a mission of revenge after the murder of her sheriff father (Bashir Salahuddin), who stood up to drug dealers trying to use the island outpost as a waypoint for smuggling. Tia Carrere steals a few scenes as a queenpin wearing a bedazzled eye patch, and Allison brings the right balance of determination and snark to her ferocious sharpshooter hero.
Year: 2022
Run time: 1h 44m
Director: Tearepa Kahi
It’s unfortunate that Tubi has filed a film with such a distinctive perspective under such a generic title (internationally, it’s known as Muru, and The Raid also happens to be the title of another, much better-known action movie among others), but that shouldn’t lead anyone to believe it’s just another throwaway action movie. Opening titles label it a “response” rather than a re-creation of a 2007 New Zealand police raid on a Maori community, and writer-director Kahi crafts a suspenseful fictionalization full of righteous fury. Veteran character actor Cliff Curtis gets a deserved spotlight as a local beat cop trying to defend his home from oppressors like the government bureaucrat sitting in an office drinking whiskey and ordering a cover-up for police brutality.
Year: 2024
Run time: 1h 39m
Director: Jem Garrard
“Drag queens vs. vampires” is such a brilliantly dumb concept that it’s surprising no one has tried it before. But writer-director Garrard (creator of the criminally underrated Syfy series Vagrant Queen) knew exactly what kind of movie they were making, casting four RuPaul’s Drag Race alums as a troupe of drag queens accidentally booked to perform at a roadside biker bar. The drag queens and the bikers team up against an onslaught of vampires, who turn into fabulously glittery dust when staked. Garrard promotes harmony and inclusiveness while serving fierce looks and fearsome monsters.
Year: 2022
Run time: 1h 17m
Directors: Alejandro Rojas and Juan Sebastián Vasquez
Largely set in a handful of nondescript rooms in the bowels of an airport, this gripping Spanish drama has the pared-down directness of a stage play as main characters Diego (Alberto Ammann) and Elena (Bruna Cusí) suffer the indignities of interrogation by Customs and Border Patrol agents after arriving in the U.S. Upon Entry isn’t just a timely critique of American immigration policies, though; it uses the insidious, invasive questioning of the insensitive American agents to cast doubt and mistrust on the central romantic relationship. The potential personal and legal consequences are equally devastating.
Year: 2023
Run time: 1h 33m
Directors: John Adams, Toby Poser, Zelda Adams
The Adams family (married couple John Adams and Toby Poser and their daughters Zelda Adams and Lulu Adams) have become indie-horror darlings thanks to their lovingly homemade films, including The Deeper You Dig and Hellbender. Where the Devil Roams is their most ambitious project to date, starring John, Toby, and Zelda as a family of touring sideshow performers who commit murders in between gigs. Set in the 1930s, it’s an impressionistic supernatural saga as young Eve (Zelda) steals a mystical talisman of resurrection. The Adamses are rock musicians as well as filmmakers, and their often abstract film captures the dreamy feel of 120 Minutes–era music videos.
