STREAMING

The Best Free Movies on Plex Right Now (October 2026)

By Matt Oakes · October 26, 2026

Plex is best known as a media server, but its free, ad-supported library quietly carries some excellent movies. These are the ones worth your time, led by All Is Lost, Boyhood, and Another Round, each a film I’ve reviewed or ranked among the best of its year.

Every pick links straight to where it’s streaming free, and the list gets refreshed as titles come and go.

Critics and Audience scores from Rotten Tomatoes; ratings from IMDb. Scores as of October 2026.

ALL IS LOST (2013)

95%Critics 64%Audience 6.9IMDb

Robert Redford, alone on a sinking yacht in the Indian Ocean, with almost no dialogue and no one coming to help. J.C. Chandor’s survival drama is pure, gripping cinema, and Redford gives one of the best performances of his career without saying a word.▶ Streaming free on Plex · Read the full review

BOYHOOD (2014)

97%Critics 80%Audience 7.9IMDb

Richard Linklater filmed the same cast for twelve years to capture a boy growing from first grade to college. The result is a quiet, monumental achievement, and Patricia Arquette is extraordinary as the mother holding everything together.▶ Streaming free on Plex · Read the full review

ANOTHER ROUND (2020)

Four Danish teachers test a theory that humans are born with a blood alcohol deficit, and their tipsy experiment slides from liberating to devastating. Mads Mikkelsen gives one of the great performances of the 2020s, and that final dance is pure, cathartic joy.▶ Streaming free on Plex

BRAWL IN CELL BLOCK 99 (2017)

Vince Vaughn plays a laid-off tow truck driver turned drug courier who lands in prison and has to fight his way to its darkest wing. S. Craig Zahler’s slow-burn grindhouse is brutal, bone-crunching, and anchored by Vaughn’s terrifying, career-redefining turn.▶ Streaming free on Plex

TALK TO ME (2023)

Teens pass around an embalmed hand that lets a spirit ride you for ninety seconds, and film each other doing it. Shakes itself into your conscious and roots deeply. Without a doubt the horror movie of its year. Danny and Michael Philippou’s debut is a possession thriller about teens getting high on contact with the dead, and Sophie Wilde is fantastic.▶ Streaming free on Plex · From my Top Ten of 2023

SWISS ARMY MAN (2016)

73%Critics 72%Audience 6.9IMDb

One of the most bizarre and bizarrely beautiful films to grace the Sundance Dramatic Competition, Swiss Army Man is not a film to be puzzled out in one go but that’s ok. It’s mightily entertaining, features two standout performances and has enough raw originality coursing through its veins to make it truly stand in a league of its own.▶ Streaming free on Plex · Read the full review

UNDER THE SILVER LAKE (2018)

A slacker (Andrew Garfield) searches for a vanished neighbor across Los Angeles and tumbles into a conspiracy of secret codes, pop songs, and buried messages. David Robert Mitchell’s sprawling neo-noir is weird, divisive, and endlessly fascinating.▶ Streaming free on Plex

THE DEATH OF DICK LONG (2019)

Two small-town Alabama dopes try to cover up the embarrassing circumstances of their friend’s death after a night of partying goes very wrong. Daniel Scheinert’s pitch-black comedy is shaggy, squirm-inducing, and far more humane than its premise suggests.▶ Streaming free on Plex

WATCHER (2022)

88%Critics 67%Audience 6.3IMDb

An American trails her husband to Bucharest, doesn’t speak the language, and every night the man across the courtyard is watching back. Her sanity and her marriage unfurl as the specter grows. Maika Monroe is excellent as an American in Bucharest convinced the man across the street is stalking her, and Chloe Okuno’s direction is taut throughout.▶ Streaming free on Plex · Read the full review

THE ART OF SELF-DEFENSE (2019)

A timid accountant (Jesse Eisenberg) joins a karate dojo after a mugging and falls under the spell of its menacing sensei (Alessandro Nivola). Riley Stearns’ deadpan satire of toxic masculinity is hilarious, unsettling, and bone-dry.▶ Streaming free on Plex

X (2022)

94%Critics 76%Audience 6.5IMDb

Ti West sends a crew of amateur adult filmmakers to an elderly couple’s farm in 1979 Texas, where their hosts turn out to have very different appetites. Mia Goth pulls double duty in a grimy, gorgeous tribute to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre that has its own morbid things to say about aging, desire, and being left behind.▶ Streaming free on Plex

THE ASSESSMENT (2025)

A couple (Elizabeth Olsen and Himesh Patel) in a climate-ravaged future must pass a seven-day evaluation to earn the right to have a child, administered by an increasingly unhinged assessor (Alicia Vikander). Fleur Fortuné’s sci-fi chamber piece is chilly, provocative, and anchored by a fearless Vikander.▶ Streaming free on Plex

UNDER THE SKIN (2014)

84%Critics 55%Audience 6.3IMDb

Scarlett Johansson plays an alien prowling Scotland for men to consume, and Jonathan Glazer shoots it like a waking nightmare. Under the Skin is engaging, seductive, and totally f*cked in the head. Mica Levi’s eerie score is half the experience.▶ Streaming free on Plex · Read the full review

PEARL (2022)

93%Critics 83%Audience 7.0IMDb

An electrifying improvement over ‘X’, Ti West’s Technicolor slasher is a darkly funny thirst trap; a gory origin story that sees Mia Goth give an absolute scene-stealing performance as the titular Pearl. Mia Goth co-wrote the film with Ti West, and her unbroken monologue and that end-credits smile are the stuff of horror legend.▶ Streaming free on Plex · Read the full review

ENEMY (2014)

74%Critics 64%Audience 6.8IMDb

Jake Gyllenhaal plays a history professor who spots his exact double in a movie and becomes obsessed with meeting him. Denis Villeneuve’s queasy, sepia-toned puzzle box is seductive and deeply strange, and its final shot is one of the great WTF endings.▶ Streaming free on Plex · Read the full review

BLUE RUIN (2014)

96%Critics 79%Audience 7.1IMDb

A homeless drifter learns the man who killed his parents is getting out of prison and sets out for revenge, very badly. Jeremy Saulnier’s lean, brutal thriller is all tension and no glamour, and Macon Blair is unforgettable as the world’s least capable avenger.▶ Streaming free on Plex · Read the full review

SPOTLIGHT (2015)

97%Critics 93%Audience 8.1IMDb

Spotlight is a classically told investigative thriller featuring confident performances from its able ensemble. Though it adheres to a familiar narrative style, its overwhelmingly excellent craftsmanship makes it a strong feature, and its Best Picture win was well earned.▶ Streaming free on Plex · Read the full review

CLIMAX (2018)

68%Critics 65%Audience 6.9IMDb

A purified blast of masterfully refined schlock, Climax is a depraved and largely unpleasant experience that boasts technical genius, a roaring soundtrack and wholly authentic performances. It’s at once impossible to recommend and one of the most disturbing, effective pieces of filmmaking I’ve seen.▶ Streaming free on Plex · Read the full review

DINNER IN AMERICA (2022)

91%Critics 90%Audience 7.5IMDb

Dinner in America is a rough-around-the-edges ode to love on the fringes of society, where a criminal punk rocker and a bizarre loner court an unlikely flirtation, all while navigating the suburbs, musical aspirations and the law. Expect a brash curb-stomp of a coming-of-age saga and prepare for impact.▶ Streaming free on Plex · Read the full review

MASS (2021)

Two sets of parents meet in a church back room years after a school shooting, one couple’s son the victim and the other’s the perpetrator. Fran Kranz’s devastating chamber drama is a showcase for four extraordinary performances, Martha Plimpton and Ann Dowd especially.▶ Streaming free on Plex · Read the full review

THE SISTERS BROTHERS (2018)

87%Critics 69%Audience 6.9IMDb

The Sisters Brothers subverts every waking expectation one has for the Western genre, currying favor with rich, strange performances and a bold penchant for charging down the dirtroad less traveled. Poetic, eccentric, and surprisingly heartrending at times, consider this one from Jacques Audiard a flashbang must-see.▶ Streaming free on Plex · Read the full review

KUMIKO, THE TREASURE HUNTER (2014)

A lonely Tokyo office worker (Rinko Kikuchi) becomes convinced the money buried in Fargo is real and sets off for snowy Minnesota to find it. The Zellner brothers’ melancholy fable is strange, sad, and beautifully observed.▶ Streaming free on Plex · Read the full review

SHORT TERM 12 (2013)

Brie Larson plays a supervisor at a foster care facility for at-risk teens, balancing their crises with her own buried pain. Destin Daniel Cretton’s breakout is a raw, tender, and deeply moving drama, with early turns from Lakeith Stanfield and Rami Malek.▶ Streaming free on Plex · Read the full review

REVENGE (2017)

92%Critics 62%Audience 6.4IMDb

Coralie Fargeat’s feminist rape-revenge fantasy is a brutal takedown of male-gaze exploitation cinema and a bloody beat-em-up fighter flick to boot. The blood comes in buckets here. Coralie Fargeat’s ultraviolent debut turns the rape-revenge genre on its head, with Matilda Lutz transforming into an unstoppable force in the desert.▶ Streaming free on Plex · Read the full review

BEAST (2018)

On the island of Jersey, a troubled young woman (Jessie Buckley) falls for a rough-edged outsider (Johnny Flynn) who becomes the prime suspect in a string of murders. Michael Pearce’s psychological thriller is seductive and unnerving, and Buckley is a revelation.▶ Streaming free on Plex

HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE (2016)

97%Critics 91%Audience 7.8IMDb

Taika Waititi spreads his wings with Hunt for the Wilderpeople, a genuinely hilarious and emotionally engaging tale of a naughty foster child and his surrogate uncle who venture off into the bush. Sam Neill and Julian Dennison have uncommon comic chemistry in front of the camera while behind it, Waititi shows off some newfound directorial tricks.▶ Streaming free on Plex · Read the full review

MANDY (2018)

91%Critics 68%Audience 6.5IMDb

Nicholas Cage. Murder cults. Biker gangs from hell. Mandy is a balls-out acid-trip that’s kinda artsy and totally cheeseball and fully worth your attention. Cage goes gonzo. Nicolas Cage goes full Cage in Panos Cosmatos’ psychedelic revenge odyssey, complete with a chainsaw duel and one of Jóhann Jóhannsson’s final scores.▶ Streaming free on Plex · Read the full review

SLEEPING WITH OTHER PEOPLE (2015)

64%Critics 56%Audience 6.5IMDb

Two serial cheaters (Alison Brie and Jason Sudeikis) become best friends and make a pact not to sleep together. Leslye Headland’s rom-com is raunchy, smart, and surprisingly sweet, and its leads have chemistry to burn. It’s the rare rom-com that is genuinely funny and genuinely sexy.▶ Streaming free on Plex · Read the full review

BEGIN AGAIN (2014)

83%Critics 81%Audience 7.4IMDb

A down-and-out record exec (Mark Ruffalo) hears a heartbroken songwriter (Keira Knightley) at an open mic and decides to record her album on the streets of New York. John Carney’s warm, music-first comedy is a feel-good charmer with songs that stick.▶ Streaming free on Plex · Read the full review

LOVE & MERCY (2015)

90%Critics 85%Audience 7.4IMDb

Love & Mercy is dark and tender, like a good chunk of turkey, journey into deeper meaning; a filmic psychoanalysis of a man balancing on piano wire at the height of his fame and fortune. Paul Dano and John Cusack share the role of Brian Wilson across two eras, and both are excellent in Bill Pohlad’s inventive biopic.▶ Streaming free on Plex · Read the full review