In the dawn of streaming, free movies and TV with ads seemed like the wave of the future. Now, most of the major streamers charge subscription fees and still make us watch ads. On the other hand, there are also streamers like Plex, which offers a strong selection of movies and TV shows that can be still be viewed for free.
Plex also shares its most watchlisted movies on the service, and they have very different degrees of quality. It would be a stretch to call some of those films the best on Plex. But we have narrowed things down by ranking the most watchlisted movies on Plex for April. However, you should be aware that this list is constantly changing, and April’s movies may not be sticking around on Plex in May.
Looking for something else? We’ve also rounded up the best new movies to stream, the best movies on Netflix, the best shows on Hulu, and the best shows on Amazon Prime.
10. Life After Beth (2014)
As you may have guessed by the title of Life After Beth, Beth Slocum (Aubrey Plaza) is dead and her boyfriend, Zach Orfman (Dane DeHaan), can’t get over her premature demise. Of course, it’s hard to move on when someone comes back to life. Maury (John C. Reilly) and Gennie Slocum (Molly Shannon) try to keep their daughter’s resurrection under wraps, but Zack just can’t stay away from Beth.
Even with a second chance in hand, Zach’s relationship with Beth is circling the drain and she’s really not herself anymore. To compound things even further, Beth’s not the only formerly dead person walking around town. And a zombie apocalypse may be underway.
Watch Life After Beth on Plex.
9. Willy’s Wonderland (2021)
Nicolas Cage’s character never gets a proper name in Willy’s Wonderland, but he’s clearly the star of this Five Nights At Freddy’s rip-off that’s arguably better than the film adaptation of that video game. Cage’s unnamed drifter is offered a temporary job by Jed Love (Chris Warner) and Tex Macadoo (Ric Reitz) to work as a janitor in an abandoned restaurant filled animatronic characters that come to life and kill people.
Love and Macadoo clearly meant to make the drifter their latest sacrifice when they locked him the restaurant. But they’ve severely underestimated how hard the drifter will fight for his life, especially when a teenage girl, Liv Hawthorne (Emily Tosta), becomes trapped inside with him.
Watch Willy’s Wonderland on Plex.
8. Kick-Ass (2010)
Before he starred in Kraven the Hunter, Aaron Taylor-Johnson played a wannabe superhero, Dave Lizewski, in Kick-Ass. Dave’s kind of a dork because he really believes that he can be a superhero in real life by putting on a costume. Getting his butt kicked a few times convinces him otherwise, especially when several of his bones are replaced with metal.
Somehow, Dave’s life gets even crazier when he encounters Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and his daughter, Hit-Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz). They’re the real deal, and Hit-Girl is hilariously profane and lethal. Simply by associating with them, Kick-Ass becomes a target of the New York mafia and a unique plan to use Dave’s alter ego to lure the actual heroes to their doom.
Watch Kick-Ass on Plex.
7. Point Break (1991)
Years before she directed the Best Director Oscar for The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow helmed Point Break, a film that really seems like the precursor to the original Fast and the Furious movie. If you’ve seen that flick, then the similarities between the two are really quite striking. Keanu Reeves plays FBI Agent Johnny Utah, a former college quarterback who has been sent to investigate a group of bank robbers who call themselves the Ex-Presidents.
Utah correctly guesses that the robbers are surfers under their masks and goes undercover in the surfing community to flush them out. He even finds a new girlfriend there, Tyler Ann Endicott (Lori Petty), and befriends Bodhi (Patrick Swayze), the most likely suspect in the Ex-President robberies. After making these bonds, Utah’s loyalties are torn between the law and his new friends.
Watch Point Break on Plex.
6. The Road (2015)
There have been plenty of post-apocalyptic stories, but few as grim as Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Most of the genre has something fun for fans to watch, like zombies or killer robots. The Road doesn’t bother with any of that, it just focuses on a father (Viggo Mortensen) and his son (Kodi Smit-McPhee), as they try to survive in a world without hope.
Humans may be in short supply, but there are cannibal gangs in this world who are all too eager to hasten mankind’s journey towards extinction. The boy and his father have been relatively lucky so far, but even their luck can’t last forever.
Watch The Road on Plex.
5. Frequency (2000)
Frequency has kind of an outlandish premise even for a sci-fi thriller. But it works because of the spoken bond between Frank Sullivan (Dennis Quaid) and his son, John Francis Sullivan (Jim Caviezel), even when separated by decades. Somehow, Frank’s HAM radio is picking up the signals from the same radio 30 years in the future from the same radio, which now belongs to John.
Once both men realize what’s happening, John tells his father how to avoid his impending death in the ’60s from a raging fire. That only postpones Frank’s death and creates a new timeline where his wife — John’s mother — Julia Sullivan (Elizabeth Mitchell), was murdered by a serial killer. The connection to the past gives the father and his son one last chance to change history for the better, if they can survive the serial killer in both time frames.
Watch Frequency on Plex.
4. Winter’s Bone (2011)
Prior to headlining The Hunger Games, Jennifer Lawrence had a breakout performance in Winter’s Bone that earned her a nomination for Best Actress at the Oscars. Ree Dolly (Lawrence) is a 17-year-old girl who is saddled with taking care of her younger siblings and mentally ill mother because her father has been in and out of prison for drug charges. The family is barely hanging on when Ree is informed that their house will be foreclosed because her father skipped his bail and used the family home as collateral.
This sends Ree on a desperate mission to either locate her father or prove that he’s dead. To get answers, Ree will have to go to some unsavory places and encounter dangerous people who aren’t interested in helping her out.
Watch Winter’s Bone on Plex.
3. Wind River (2017)
Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen have a mini Avengers reunion in Wind River, a crime thriller written and directed by Yellowstone co-creator Taylor Sheridan. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Agent Cory Lambert (Renner) stumbles upon the body of Natalie Hanson (Kelsey Asbille), an indigenous woman who has frozen to death with minimal clothing.
FBI agent Jane Banner (Olsen) is brought in to investigate Natalie’s death as a potential homicide, and she works closely with Lambert on the case. Their suspicions of foul play seem to be confirmed when Natalie’s boyfriend, Matt Rayburn (Jon Bernthal), is also found dead. But the locals seem determined to ensure that neither Banner nor Lambert get the answers that they’re looking for.
Watch Wind River on Plex.
2. Jackie Brown (1997)
Quentin Tarantino’s third film, Jackie Brown, tends to be overlooked in his credits. But this adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s Rum Punch is just as good as any of Tarantino’s other films. Foxie Brown actress and Blaxploitation icon Pam Grier had her comeback role as Jackie, a stewardess who helps a local crime boss, Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson), smuggle drug money into the country.
When ATF Agent Ray Nicolette (Michael Keaton) catches Jackie with Ordell’s cash, she plays a dangerous game by engineering a final con to get a large sum of money from Ordell and play him and the feds off each other while she escapes the consequences of her actions. She may even have an ally in bail bondsman Max Cherry (Robert Forster), but it would be a mistake for Jackie to overlook Ordell’s fury when he discovers her true intentions.
Watch Jackie Brown on Plex.
1. Apocalypse Now (1979)
Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now is widely considered one of the greatest movies ever made, and an easy choice to land at No. 1 on this list. Coppola loosely based the story on Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and moved the setting up to the Vietnam War. Martin Sheen stars as U.S. Army Captain Benjamin L. Willard, an army assassin who has been given his highest-profile target yet: Colonel Walter Kurtz (Marlon Brando).
Kurtz has gone rogue deep in Cambodia, and he’s taken a number of his soldiers with him in his renegade campaign against all sides. Willard’s orders are to terminate Kurtz’s command, but he understands that he’s really being sent to kill him. Getting there will prove to be extremely difficult, as the war rages around Willard and not everyone under around him wants to see the mission through to the end.
Watch Apocalypse Now on Plex.
