Under-the-radar films with 85%+ approval from real audiences — across 15+ languages and 7 decades.
Published March 17, 2026 · ThumbScore Editorial
Everyone knows about The Shawshank Redemption (95%) and Spirited Away (95%). But what about the films that real audiences love just as much — films most people have never heard of?
We dug through our database of 10,000+ films and found 77 movies with a ThumbScore of 85% or higher that have fewer than 5,000 TMDB votes. These are the films that don't show up on mainstream "best of" lists, but everyday audiences rate them just as highly as the all-time greats.
Some of the best-loved films on ThumbScore come from outside Hollywood. Here are the top international hidden gems:
Horror fans — these under-the-radar scary movies scored 87%+ with real audiences:
The magic of ThumbScore's hidden gems list is that it's powered entirely by the opinions of regular moviegoers — not critics, not algorithms, not marketing budgets. A film like Macario (1960) from Mexico has a 92% ThumbScore with only 202 votes. That's real people discovering and loving a 66-year-old film.
These are the films you won't find on Netflix's trending page or in IMDb's Top 250. But they're films that people who actually watch them overwhelmingly enjoy. That's the kind of recommendation you can trust.
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