The 15 Most Underrated Films of 2015

Movies don’t exist in a vacuum. When a film gets unleashed upon the world it comes alongside millions of dollars worth of marketing, rampant speculation, and a slew of other factors that make it difficult to judge what we’re actually seeing fairly, on its own merits. And although many films are accurately pegged as classics or junk when they first come out, the history of the art form is riddled with examples of classic motion pictures that were critically reviled, box office bombs, or both when they were originally released.

Don’t believe me? Fight Club was a critical and box office failure. The Shining was nominated for two Razzie Awards, including “Worst Director.” Audiences stayed away from It’s a Wonderful Life in droves, and many critics dismissed Frank Capra’s masterpiece as sentimental claptrap. Buster Keaton’s The General, now considered one of the funniest motion pictures ever produced, was somehow accused of not being funny. I could go on like this.

So although it’s not necessarily the case that every film that critics or audiences ignored, dismissed or outright hated in 2015 will one day be considered an all-time classic, it’s important to remember that time is sometimes kind to motion pictures that come out with too much baggage. That baggage may come from bad marketing, bad press, bad reviews or lack of audience interest, but eventually that baggage will be unpacked, sorted away, and all we’ll have left are films that – in the years to come – audiences will get to experience more objectively, free from the hive mind, mob mentalities and negative buzz that sometimes surround them.

Related: The 15 Most Forgettable Films of 2015

With that in mind, it’s time reveal our picks for the most underrated films of the 2015. These are the movies that deserve a second chance with audiences who either scorned them (perhaps because they were expecting something different than they actually got), ignored them because they were told that they sucked, or didn’t hear about them at all. If you heard that these movies were terrible, you may have heard wrong. We will happily take a stand and say that, whether they’re genuinely great or simply better than you might think, these movies all deserve to be given another chance to find an audience.

The 15 Most Underrated Films of 2015:

Top Photo: Walt Disney Pictures

William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week on The B-Movies Podcast and watch him on the weekly YouTube series Most Craved and What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.

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