Free movies on YouTube? You’d be surprised (We were!) by how many free movies you can watch on YouTube right now – hundreds, to say the least. No wonder YouTube remains in the top lists of the best Firestick apps, Kodi addons, IPTV services, and movie streaming sites despite the growing popularity of streaming platforms such as Netflix, Hulu, and whatnots. From blockbuster films to highly acclaimed independent movies to the 80s cult and all-time classics, you’ll find these full movies on YouTube if you have the patience and ‘advanced’ skills to search for them.
Well, we’ve done most of the legwork for you and came up with a long list of free movies to watch on YouTube that will keep you entertained for quite some time. We tried to come up with a good mix of recent releases, underrated but worth watching, and all-time favorites. We’ve even categorized them as follows:
Remember that many of these movies are copyright-protected and accessible only to specific countries. So we recommend that you use the best VPN to maximize your YouTube streaming experience. If you’re watching via Firestick or Kodi, we wrote our VPN reviews and top recommendations in another post.
So, without further ado, let’s begin going through our list of the best free movies to watch on YouTube!
Main Cast: Freddie Highmore, Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey, Sam Riley, Liam Cunningham, Luis Tosar, Axel Stein, José Coronado, Famke Janssen
Director: Jaume Balagueró
Runtime: 1 hr 58 minutes
<alt: The Vault 2021 film poster>
The Vault is a Spanish action-thriller film about an engineer (played by Freddie Highmore) who was recruited by a mysterious woman to steal a legendary lost treasure locked in an impenetrable fortress hidden under the Bank of Spain.
Main Cast: Jason Statham, Holt McCallany, Jeffrey Donovan, Chris Reilly, Josh Hartnett
Director: Guy Ritchie
Runtime: 1 hr 59 minutes
Jason Statham plays the role of a new, seemingly aloof security guard for a cash truck. He surprises his co-workers when he exhibits military combat skills during a heist, leaving the crew intrigued about who he really is.
Main Cast: Liam Neeson, Laurence Fishburne, Benjamin Walker, Amber Midthunder, Marcus Thomas, Holt McCallany, Martin Sensmeier, Matt McCoy, Matt Salinger
Director: Jonathan Hensleigh
Runtime: 1 hour 48 minutes
This American action movie that you can watch on YouTube for free follows the treacherous journey of Mike McCann (Liam Neeson) and his brother, Gurty (Marcus Thomas). They join a team of truck drivers on a mission over frozen lakes and winter roads to deliver a crucial component to save workers trapped in a remote diamond mine in the far northern regions of Canada.
Main Cast: Sol Kyung-gu, Jung Woo-sung, Han Hyo-joo, Jin Kyung, Lee Junho
Directors: Cho Ui-seok, Kim Byeong-seo
Runtime: 1 hour 58 minutes
Cold Eyes is a Korean action film about detectives from the surveillance team of a Special Crime Unit tracking down a robbery gang led by a very skillful and dangerous mastermind.
Unfortunately, this film is no longer accessible on YouTube.
Watch Cold Eyes with English Subtitles on YouTube
Main Cast: Liam Neeson, Diane Kruger, January Jones, Aidan Quinn, Bruno Ganz, and Frank Langella
Director: Jaume Collet-Serra
Runtime: 1 hour 53 minutes
Liam Neeson plays a professor, Dr. Martin Harris, visiting Berlin for a convention with his wife. After a severe car accident, he wakes up with partial amnesia, finds his wife unable to recognize him, another man taking his identity, and mysterious assassins hunting him. Alone in a foreign country, he must go on the run while trying to untangle the truth behind his baffling predicament..
Main Cast: Melissa George, Ed Speleers, Karel Roden, Eamonn Walker, Sean Harris and Kate Magowan
Director: Julian Gilbey
Runtime: 1 hour minutes
A Lonely Place to Die is another of those free movies on YouTube that are surprisingly good. It starts out as a seemingly hiking adventure story of 5 mountaineers until they discover a young Serbian girl buried in a small chamber. The movie’s pace then pivots into a thrilling, action-packed game of cat and mouse between the group and the girl’s kidnappers.
Main Cast: Edward Norton, Liv Tyler, Tim Roth, Tim Blake Nelson, Ty Burrell, William Hurt
Director: Louis Leterrier
Runtime: 1 hour 52 minutes
This film features Edward Norton as The Hulk, preceding the role of what many now associate with another actor, Mark Ruffalo. This free movie that you can watch on YouTube is about the scientist Bruce Banner, desperately seeking a cure for the gamma radiation that contaminated his cells and turned him into The Hulk. While he tries to stay in hiding from his nemesis, Gen. Thunderbolt Ross, he soon has to come face-to-face with a new enemy known as The Abomination.
Main Cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Anne Heche, Gaby Hoffmann, Don Cheadle, Keith David
Director: Mick Jackson
Runtime: 1 hour 44 minutes
This American disaster film is action-packed with Tommy Lee Jones playing the role of Emergency Management department head Mike Roark, along with Anne Heche as geologist Dr. Amy Barnes. They must race against time to save the city of Los Angeles from fiery molten rock runs unleashed by a major earthquake.
Main Cast: Anne Parillaud, Jean-Hugues Anglade, Tchéky Karyo, Jeanne Moreau, Jean Bouise, Jean Reno, Philippe Leroy-Beaulieu, Roland Blanche, Jacques Boude
Director: Luc Besson
Runtime: 1 hour minutes
Any action film, or at least the majority of them, from Luc Besson (the producer of the popular action film series, Taken) is certified to be fast-paced, thrilling, and entertaining. Nikita is certainly one of them, and thankfully, one of the best free action movies on YouTube that you can watch at the moment. It tells the story of a teen criminal, Nikita (Anne Parillaud), who gets convicted of murder. Instead of serving her sentence, government handlers recruit her as a professional assassin with a new identity.
Main Cast: Jackie Chan, Yuen Siu-tien, Hwang Jang-lee
Director: Yuen Woo-ping
Runtime: 1 hour 38 minutes
Who doesn’t know Jackie Chan? Well, if you don’t, perhaps you’re familiar with Rush Hour? If not, then at least know that Jackie Chan is one of the few foreign actors who have made it to Hollywood. Back in Hongkong, Jackie Chan is an extremely popular actor, filmmaker, martial artist, and stuntman. His blockbuster movies are known for acrobatic, comedic, and death-defying fight scenes. This classic Chinese martial arts movie is one of his early ones. You’d be surprised at how this ‘old’ movie can very well compete with most modern-day free action movies on YouTube, and one that viewers of any age will surely love.
Main Cast: Rosamund Pike, Shiloh Fernandez, Camryn Manheim, Illeana Douglas, Nick Nolte
Director: Fouad Mikati
Runtime: 1 hour 35 minutes
This psychological thriller is about a nurse, played by Golden Globe and Primetime Emmy Award for best actress Rosamund Pike, who was raped on a blind date. Traumatized, she hatches an elaborate scheme to exact revenge against her rapist.
Main Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Max Thieriot, Gil Bellows, Elisabeth Shue
Director: Mark Tonderai
Runtime: 1 hour 41 minutes
This is another free psychological thriller full movie that’s fun to watch on YouTube – with no less than Academy Award best actress winner Jennifer Lawrence in the starring role! The plot has surprising twists, and the characters are well-portrayed by equally respected actors.
Elissa and her mom, Sarah, had just moved into their dream house in a small town. Elissa meets an aloof and enigmatic boy, Ryan, and falls for him, but the closer they become, the deeper they’re all pulled into a dangerous puzzle.
Main Cast: Kate Beckinsale, Jim Sturgess, David Thewlis, Brendan Gleeson, Ben Kingsley, Michael Caine
Director: Brad Anderson
Runtime: 1 hour minutes
Stonehearst Asylum is quite the hidden gem among full thriller movies to watch on YouTube for free. It has an ensemble cast of highly-acclaimed actors in the likes of Kate Beckinsale, Ben Kingsley, and Michael Caine, to name a few. The film is loosely based on the 1845 short story “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether” by Edgar Allan Poe. It is set in 1899 about a new employee at a mental hospital who becomes attracted to one of his colleagues. He will soon find out the real identities of the asylum’s staff.
Main Cast: Bradley Cooper, Leslie Bibb, Brooke Shields, Roger Bart, Ted Raimi, Vinnie Jones
Director: Ryuhei Kitamura
Runtime: 1 hour 38 minutes
The Midnight Meat Train is another hidden gem among our search for free movies to watch on YouTube. It is well-acted by a great cast with an intriguing plot that will keep you hooked to the end. Leon Kaufman is a struggling photographer who crosses paths with Mahogany, a mute serial killer who preys on late-night subway commuters. The eerie feel throughout this movie is reminiscent of Japanese and Korean horror films.
Main Cast: Diane Lane, Billy Burke, Colin Hanks, Joseph Cross, Mary Beth Hurt
Director: Gregory Hoblit
Runtime: 1 hour 41 minutes
In this psychological thriller, Special Agent Jennifer Marsh, who works in the cybercrime unit, handles a case involving a tech-savvy, sadistic killer who live-streams his crimes on his website; the more hits the site gets, the faster the victim dies. Marsh’s team must now find all creative ways to catch the elusive killer before time runs out.
Main Cast: Mena Suvari, Nick Cannon, Ving Rhames
Director: Steve Miner
Runtime: 1 hour 26 minutes
This fast-paced, action-packed, thriller-horror free movie on YouTube is a loose remake of George A. Romero’s 1985 film of the same name. The military seals off a small American town to contain a flu-like epidemic, but things soon turn for the worst as those afflicted become zombies craving human flesh.
Main Cast: Demi Moore, Hans Matheson, Henry Ian Cusick
Director: Craig Rosenberg
Runtime: 1 hour 50 minutes
Golden Globe award-winning actress, Demi Moore, plays a best-selling crime novelist, Rachel Carson, who recently lost her young son. Devastated and filled with guilt, she needs to meet a publication deadline at the same time. She decides to move into a vacant country house, hoping for a change of scenery and to focus on finishing her new novel. She soon begins a relationship with a charming local, but the mysteries surrounding their interaction make her question her sanity.
Main Cast: Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Donald Sutherland, Embeth Davidtz, James Gandolfini, Elias Koteas
Director: Gregory Hoblit
Runtime: 2 hours 4 minutes
Here’s another full thriller movie with a star-studded cast that you can watch for free on YouTube. Multi-Academy Award winner Denzel Washington plays a Philadelphia police detective investigating occult murders with the suspicion that a wicked spirit is behind the killings.
Main Cast: Terry O’Quinn, Jill Schoelen, Shelley Hack
Director: Joseph Ruben
Runtime: 1 hour 29 minutes
A widow named Susan (Shelley Hack) falls for Jerry Blake (Terry O’Quinn), a loving, seemingly perfect gentleman and potential family man. But her headstrong daughter, Stephanie (Jill Schoelen), is highly suspicious of his intentions.
Main Cast: George C. Scott, Trish Van Devere, Melvyn Douglas, John Colicos, Jean Marsh, Helen Burns, Madeleine Sherwood
Director: Peter Medak
Runtime: 1 hour 47 minutes
This Canadian supernatural psychological thriller is a cult classic. The Changeling is also one of the early Canadian-produced films to have major international success. The story revolves around a bereaved New York City composer who relocates to a mansion in Seattle. He soon discovers that his new home is haunted and has a dark history involving one high-profile US politician.
Main Cast: Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Bryan Cranston, Cedric the Entertainer, Taraji P. Henson, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Wilmer Valderrama, Pam Grier
Director: Tom Hanks
Runtime: 1 hour 39 minutes
Here’s another unbelievably free movie on YouTube with a cast of multi-awarded actors. Larry Crowne (Tom Hanks) is a once esteemed big-box store employee who loses his job because of his lack of college education. Out of work and facing an impending foreclosure, Larry enrolls in college, where he meets colorful yet endearing characters and finds a potential romance with one of his instructors, Mercedes Tainot, played by Julia Roberts.
Main Cast: Rachel Weisz, Adrien Brody, Mark Ruffalo, Rinko Kikuchi, Maximilian Schell, Robbie Coltrane
Director: Rian Johnson
Runtime: 1 hour 54 minutes
This free comedy movie on YouTube is quite the hidden gem. Besides being star-studded and well-acted, The Brothers Bloom has very delightful characters and clever plot twists. The film revolves around two brothers (Stephen and Bloom) who made a living as con men. Bloom decides to get out of the business finally, but Stephen convinces him to complete one final hustle, which doesn’t go exactly as planned.
Main Cast: Thalia, Paul Rodríguez, Rosana DeSoto, Danny Aiello, Robert Constanzo, Kamar de los Reyes, Rick González, Richard Hillman
Director: Reuben González
Runtime: 1 hour 38 minutes
This movie should be on your watchlist if you’re looking for the best free comedy movies on YouTube. Mambo Café is offbeat and hilarious with a little bit of everything – wacky comedy, family drama, crime, action, and romance. A Puerto Rican family who owns a failing restaurant in Spanish Harlem devises a plan to attract business. They arrange to have the mob kill one of their customers, leading to a series of events that almost end in a disaster.
Main Cast: Drew Barrymore, David Arquette, Michael Vartan, Leelee Sobieski
Octavia Spencer, Molly Shannon, Jessica Alba, John C. Reilly, James Franco
Director: Raja Gosnell
Runtime: 1 hour 47 minutes
Watching this free romantic comedy movie on YouTube will likely bring nostalgia of seeing Jessica Alba, Octavia Spencer, and James Franco in their early big-screen movie roles. And, of course, that iconic baseball field kissing scene!
Never Been Kissed features a baby-faced copywriter at the Chicago Sun-Times going undercover as a student at her former high school as part of her exposé on contemporary teenage culture. She ultimately falls for her dreamy English teacher.
Main Cast: Julia Roberts, Richard Gere, Joan Cusack, Héctor Elizondo, Rita Wilson, Paul Dooley
Director: Garry Marshall
Runtime: 1 hour 56 minutes
If you loved the movie Pretty Woman, you will equally love Runaway Bride. Besides the almost identical cast, the chemistry between Richard Gere and Julia Roberts is just oozing as an on-screen romantic couple.
This movie is about a journalist, Graham, who probes into the life of Maggie Carpenter – a serial bride-to-be who has run away from three fiancés on their wedding day. Now on her upcoming fourth trip to the altar, Graham cannot miss the chance of witnessing yet another ‘runaway’ stint and write about it! Will he succeed in his mission or fall head-over-heels to the irresistible bride?
Main Cast: Danny DeVito, Rhea Perlman, Embeth Davidtz, Pam Ferris, Mara Wilson
Director: Danny DeVito
Runtime: 1 hour 38 minutes
This film adaptation of a Roald Dahl work tells the adventures of Matilda Wormwood, a gifted girl with crude parents. When Matilda realizes she has telekinetic power, she uses her power to fight back against her unkind parents and defend her friends from their bullying school principal.
Main Cast: Charlie Sheen, Emilio Estevez, Leslie Hope, Keith David, Darrell Larson, Dean Cameron, John Getz
Director: Emilio Estevez
Runtime: 1 hour 38 minutes
Men At Work remains one of the best free movies you can find on YouTube despite being from 1990. This action-packed comedy film is about two garbage men, Carl Taylor and James St. James, who discover a local politician’s corpse in one of their cans. This triggers the duo to turn into detective-wannabes in solving the case on their own.
Main Cast: Danny DeVito, Joe Piscopo, Harvey Keitel, Ray Sharkey, Captain Lou Albano
Director: Brian De Palma
Runtime: 1 hour 40 minutes
This free comedy movie on YouTube delivers what it’s supposed to bring: a lot of laughs, gags, and great characters. The film is about two small-time mobsters who lose $250,000 at the track using a credit card stolen from their boss. When the Mafia boss finds out, he orders them to kill each other.
Main Cast: Eileen Brennan, Tim Curry, Madeline Kahn, Christopher Lloyd, Michael McKean, Martin Mull, Lesley Ann Warren
Director: Jonathan Lynn
Runtime: 1 hour 37 minutes
Clue is a hilarious mystery film that’s based on the board game of the same name. The story happens on a single night with six guests who are being blackmailed for a dark secret from each of their pasts. After being introduced to their common blackmailer, the lights switch off, and soon after, they find the blackmailer killed while each one holds a weapon in their hands. Now they need to figure out who among them is the murderer.
Main Cast: Bill Murray, Harvey Atkin, Kate Lynch, Russ Banham, Kristine DeBell, Sarah Torgov, Chris Makepeace
Director: Ivan Reitman
Runtime: 1 hour 34 minutes
Here’s another one of those free comedy movies on YouTube that will surely evoke nostalgia among mature audiences. Meatballs is noted for many things, among others: Bill Murray’s first film appearance in a starring role, launching the career of Ivan Reitman as a film director, the highest-grossing Canadian film of all time in the United States and Canada.
The plot centers on Tripper, the head counselor at a budget summer camp called Camp Northstar, who must lead his young charges in the annual Olympiad competition against their rival Camp Mohawk.
Main Cast: Belén Rueda, Lluís Homar, Julia Gutiérrez Caba
Director: Guillem Morales
Runtime: 1 hour 57 minutes
Julia’s Eyes or Los Ojos de Julia is a Spanish horror thriller film about a woman named Julia who is haunted by the death of her twin sister, Sara. Julia is convinced that Sara did not commit suicide and something sinister is behind the tragedy. She then finds out that her boyfriend was seeing Sara. More secrets are revealed as she struggles with the fact that she is losing her sight very soon.
Main Cast: Alina Babak, Valeriya Dmitrieva, Igor Khripunov
Director: Svyatoslav Podgayevskiy
Runtime: 1 hour 32 minutes
This foreign movie is loosely based on the legend known as The Queen of Spades, an ominous entity who can be summoned by drawing a door and staircase on a mirror in the darkness and saying her name three times. A family in Russia must find every way possible to save their daughter from this demonic spirit.
Watch Queen of Spades The Dark Rite with English Subtitles on YouTube
Main Cast: Kumiko Asō, Haruhiko Kato, Koyuki, Kurume Arisaka
Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Runtime: 1 hour 59 minutes
Pulse or Kairo is a Japanese horror movie that you can watch on YouTube for free. It features two seemingly unrelated stories that revolve around ghostly encounters on the computer and the Internet.
Main Cast: Kathy Bates, Jessica Tandy, Mary Stuart Masterson, Mary-Louise Parker, Cicely Tyson
Director: Jon Avnet
Runtime: 2 hours 16 minutes
Fried Green Tomatoes is an American free movie on YouTube with an unbelievably strong ensemble cast of highly-esteemed actresses. It is a story of courage and resilience of women by way of the tales of an old woman Ninny Threadgoode about her free-spirited sister-in-law Idgie and the bond Idgie shared with her friend Ruth.
Main Cast: Patrick Dempsey, Helen Slater, Dan Schneider, Marius Weyers, Barbara Babcock
Director: Mel Damski
Runtime: 1 hour 42 minutes
A serious, wannabe writer Chris starts college at UCLA and shares a room with Alex, who turns out to be Alexandra, a beautiful, carefree party girl. This free comedy movie on YouTube will make you fall in love with two charming characters who ultimately help improve each other’s lives despite their differences. As a bonus, you will see a young Brad Pitt in a tiny role if you just watch the scenes closely.
