4 recent low budget movies that you ought to see on Netflix

One of the best American film producers of the last forty years died a few months ago. Lynda Obst, who began her film career in the 1980s and went on to produce more than a dozen major feature films, was 74. I had the pleasure of getting to know her at a film festival back in the mid-‘90s. She had just released the blockbuster comedy Sleepless in Seattle and was in the final stages of getting Robert Zemeckis’ sci-fi film Contact across the finish line.

Ms. Obst was very kind to me when discussing a small coming-of-age story I had written about competitive kayaking, but put an end to any dreams I may have had about attracting her involvement in the project by saying, “This is a two-million-dollar movie. I can’t even make a movie today for under fifty million.”

For context, this is back when fifty million was considered a lot of money.

Low-budget entertainment can be some of the best entertainment on Netflix

I was encountering a very common problem in the movie-making business. Theoretically, producers want movies with lower production costs that can – again theoretically – yield larger net profits. But that’s not how it works. Producers are looking for the next Barbenheimer and if they have to spend hundreds of millions on it, they are more than willing to do so.

Of course, there will always be inventive producers who are willing to toil in the low-budget fields. Christine Vachon, Jason Blum, and the Duplass brothers are just a few of the names who have kept lower-budget movies alive and well over the past several decades.

Nonetheless, it can be difficult for lesser-known directors to launch projects without a big hook attached. Even if they succeed in completing their movie, how can they get it distributed and seen without the deep pockets of a studio backing them?

And yet, filmmakers remain resilient, and each year, dozens of lower-budget movies do find audiences. We’re going to discuss four recent examples that you can watch on Netflix right now. These aren’t exactly unknown titles – they have some well-known actors involved – but they all fall into what we now consider “low budget.” Three of them were made for under ten million dollars, while the fourth, which was a period piece and thus subject to higher production costs, came in at just over ten million.

Low-budget movies do not typically wow you with visual effects, so they must rely on quality storytelling and intriguing characters. That’s not to say they cannot look good, too, but that’s not why they work. They work because they are really good stories.

The Lost Daughter (2021)

Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut was this adaptation of La Figlia Oscura, a novel by the mysterious writer Elena Ferrante, which first appeared in 2006. Gyllenhaal wrote the screenplay adaptation and then secured the services of an extraordinary cast to film this disquieting psychological suspense story about motherhood and past indiscretions. First and foremost, she cast Olivia Coleman to play the withdrawn, damaged Leda Caruso.

Leda is a loner, and she has come to a remote Greek beach resort to be by herself. But when she has an encounter with a vibrant young mother, Nina (played by Dakota Johnson) it awakens something in Leda which hints at a dangerous obsession. Gyllenhaal intersperses flashbacks to Leda as a young mother, struggling mightily in that maternal role.

She is at various turns sympathetic to Nina and dismissive of her. At times, Leda can be downright cruel. Coleman is one of the few actresses who can play all sides of such a complex character and have an audience feel both sympathy and bewilderment at her attitude. She is aided a great deal by the performance of Jessie Buckley, who plays Leda in the flashbacks.

Other members of the standout cast include Paul Mescal, Peter Sarsgaard, and Ed Harris. Gyllenhaal, Coleman, and Buckley all won numerous awards for their work and the movie received the Best Feature Film prize at the Independent Spirit Awards. It is an engrossing deep dive into a flawed mother which never quite goes in the direction you may expect. It has melodramatic elements, but this runs much deeper than a typical “woman with a past” melodrama.

Emily the Criminal (2022)

Aubrey Plaza has produced four movies, beginning with 2017’s The Little Hours. Emily the Criminal, directed by John Patton Ford, is the most recent. All four movies are very good, showing Plaza’s off-kilter sense of humor and ability to plug into the lives of young women, whether in modern times or in the 14th century.

Emily the Criminal has echoes of Elizabeth Wood’s brilliant 2016 movie White Girl as well as an occasional nod to “Breaking Bad.” It explores the edges of criminal behavior – what motivates it and what pitfalls await those who engage. Plaza plays Emily, a smart young woman who is plagued by debt and one very destructive action from her past. It has left her in a precarious financial position. When she finds an opportunity to bend the law a tiny bit in order to fraudulently make some money, she takes the plunge.

With the encouragement of her good-looking, savvy mentor Youcef (Theo Rossi), Emily will get deeper and deeper into her newfound life of crime. Though reluctant and scared at first, she quickly shows real skill and instinct for living dangerously. It gets violent at times, but the strong, honest portraits of characters in crisis trying to make dreams come true against enormous odds always motivate the action and suspense.

His Three Daughters (2024)

Azazel Jacob’s story could have been mawkish to the nth degree. Three disparate daughters crammed together in a New York apartment waiting for their father to die – old wounds coming to the fore – lots of nostalgia, lots of anger, the potential for lots of tears. The fact that it rarely even approaches the trite is a testament to Jacobs's superb writing and his three actresses’ outstanding work.

Carrie Coon is Katie, the no-nonsense sister who feels put upon to confront the reality of the situation despite the fact that she has scarcely been involved with her dying father until these final days. She spends a good part of the story trying to write his obituary and complaining about what the other sisters have failed to do.

Elizabeth Olsen is Christina, a classic middle child with her own family at home, who spends much of her time trying to keep the sisters from tearing each other limb from limb. Natasha Lyonne is Rachel, a stepdaughter, who is very insecure about her place in the family despite the fact that she has been the one living with and tending to their father.

All three will blow up and will have epiphanies. They will eventually come to terms with their positions relative to each other. There is a surprising amount of humor, particularly directed at the well-meaning hospice caregiver Angel, who spends the entire movie calmly advising them that their father could drop dead at any moment.

With its blend of emotion and humor, His Three Daughters is very reminiscent of the Max show “Somebody Somewhere,” also predicated on sisters coming to terms with a close family death. His Three Daughters, without ever getting maudlin, remains unpredictable and compelling right up until its lovely conclusion.

Wicked Little Letters (2024)

In The Lost Daughter, Olivia Coleman and Jessie Buckley could never share the screen because they played the same character several decades apart. That is not the case in Wicked Little Secrets, a delightfully poisonous comedy about scandalous anonymous letters that threaten to ruin the small town of Littlehampton in 1920. This is the only one of the movies under discussion that cost just over ten million dollars, largely due to the period setting, which requires an additional budget for costumes, scenery, and props. 

Thea Sharrock’s third feature film does not exactly play its mystery plot line for all its worth. You might guess early on who is behind the letter-writing, and Sharrock reveals it for good around the midpoint. The whodunit is hardly the point. The movie is concerned with judgmental societies that subjugate women, confining them to one of several socially approved roles.

Buckley is Rose Gooding, a high-spirited, foul-mouthed young woman – unmarried but with a daughter and involved in an interracial romance. This rankles the feathers of her spinster neighbor Edith Swan (Coleman) who lives under the ugly thumb of an ugly father, played by Timothy Spall.

Everyone assumes that Rose is behind the profanity-laced letters that begin showing up in Edith’s mailbox and soon spread to the rest of the town. Rose risks losing her daughter and her freedom if she can’t convince a prudish town that she is not responsible. There are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments despite the dark subject matter.

In fact, this same premise is at the heart of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1943 film Le Corbeau, only there it is used as a terrifying metaphor for mob rule in the middle of WWII. Wicked Little Lies provides a more pleasant journey, without shying away from the larger issues of prejudice and power that underpin the story.

For the record, Lynda Obst’s final film as producer was Christopher Nolan’s 2014 sci-fi epic Interstellar – with an estimated budget of 165 million dollars. It was a good movie. I’d say that these four movies, in their own small way, are just as compelling and entertaining -and together cost less than 25 million.

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