A24 is an independent production company that has become well-known in recent years for releasing a wide variety of widely acclaimed movies, but especially for their psychological horror films. In fact, it’s unlikely that any company can claim to have had a bigger impact on the horror genre in the past decade than A24, except, perhaps, for Blumhouse.
Though the company has produced plenty of movies since being founded in 2012, between 18 and 20 movies each year, they’ve become most well-known for their horror movies. These titles include some of the most talked-about horror movies of the past decade, such as Hereditary, Midsommar, and The Lighthouse. Their movies tend to be atmospheric, psychological, metaphorical, and experimental, though that’s not necessarily always the case. As such, A24 has gotten a reputation of producing “high-brow” or “elevated” horror.
A24 horror movies have revolutionized the horror genre in the post-2010 years, bringing a new era to horror and introducing social and cultural themes that are highly relevant to modern society. In appreciation for A24’s slow-burn explorations of different types of horror, we’ve ranked all of their horror movies from the last seven years from worst to best.
Written and directed by renowned filmmaker Kevin Smith, Tusk follows an American comedy podcaster as he travels to Canada for an interview. He quickly becomes the victim of a serial killer desperately trying to recreate his walrus friend by mutilating people and stuffing them into a walrus suit made of human skin.
Kevin Smith’s mind-boggling offering to the horror genre has such a mismatched tone that the comedy and horror aspects could be from two different films. The movie almost could have worked really well as a serious horror movie or even a really compelling episode of a show like Criminal Minds with Cronenberg-like body horror. Unfortunately, the comedy aspect makes the movie confusing, and it ultimately feels relentlessly strange and disjointed rather than effective.
The first of A24’s horror movies, Enemy is a surrealist thriller directed by French-Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve that stars Jake Gyllenhaal as both Adam Bell and Anthony Claire. It follows schlubby history teacher, Adam Bell, as he discovers a minor actor who looks exactly like him. An adaption of Jose Saramago’s award-winning novella The Double, Enemy is an exercise in audience manipulation, evoking a palpable sense of anxiety and keeping the audience guessing. That said, the ending falls flat, making the movie feel more confusing than satisfying.
The Hole in the Ground follows young mother Sarah and her son, Chris, as they move to a new town. But, when Chris goes missing in the forest one night, he returns only to start acting strangely, leading Sarah to believe he isn’t her son at all. This suspenseful Irish horror film has some great set pieces in the underground cavern, and serves as one of the only decent horror films about an actual mythical changeling. However, the movie is a bit bland and one-note, especially in comparison to some of the other movies from A24.
A horror romantic comedy, Life After Beth usurps classic zombie lore when a young man whose girlfriend has just passed away discovers that his deceased lover has come back from the dead, with no memory of her death. Unfortunately, though she seems just fine at first, she soon begins to undergo a terrifying transformation. While the movie certainly has its campy, comedic moments, a lesser film dealing with the same story material might have veered too far into the ridiculous. Life After Beth actually paints a very enjoyable story of relationship, loss, and moving on. It’s a horror version of 500 Days of Summer, which, surprisingly, works quite well.
The Monster centers on a mother and daughter stranded on a remote forested road when their car breaks down during a journey to go visit the daughter’s father. However, as the pair waits for a tow truck and ambulance, they begin to realize that they’re not alone out there in the woods as a large black dog-like creature begins to hunt them. The poignant and heartbreaking depiction of the abusive, yet codependent relationship between the mother and daughter is echoed by the monster as they have to overcome their difficulties to survive the night.
It Comes at Night is a post-apocalyptic horror movie about a family living in a remote forest home while a highly contagious disease ravages the earth. However, when the family's patriarch discovers a man breaking into their house one night in search of water, the two families end up joining forces to survive, only to discover that the real horror comes from within. The movie is filmed beautifully, and has some great, nightmarish sequences as well as a timely message. However, it's a little dry, and doesn't build enough tension or delivering enough scares to be truly chilling.
A girls' boarding school closing down during winter break sees two young women left behind, while another girl leaves the hospital on her way back to the same boarding school in The Blackcoat’s Daughter. This supernatural psychological horror film is certainly an underrated pick from A24, but the twist isn’t executed very well and leads to an underwhelming and confusing ending that takes away from the overall tension and horror that’s built throughout the rest of the movie.
Following two sisters living in a remote home in the woods, Into the Forest explores the themes of family, survival, and making the most out of what you have in this horror drama. The film takes place in the near future, starring Elliot Page and Evan Rachel Wood as two young adult sisters and Callum Keith Rennie as their father, who has moved them into the wilderness in a home he’s built by hand. But, when a massive, continent-wide power outage leads to a region-wide technological collapse, the girls have to overcome and survive on their own with only each other. The movie is a beautiful, heartbreaking, and atmospheric look at family and survival, and really drives home A24's signature style — nicely crafted, slow-burn horror.
In this modern take on a classic Greek tragedy, The Killing of a Sacred Deer follows a surgeon who befriends a teen boy out of a sense of guilt over being unable to save his father from dying on the operating table. Soon, however, the surgeon learns that the boy’s involvement in his life is much more sinister than seeking a male role model in the medical field. While the dialogue is stylized in a way that can be a bit off-putting at first, the audience quickly finds themselves deeply engaged with the family and the story as things get darker and increasingly more strange.
A horror comedy set in a small town where humans and supernatural beasts like ghosts, witches, and werewolves live together in semi-harmony, Slice follows a series of murders that take place at the local pizza shop as their delivery drivers are killed off one by one. The blend of comedy and horror in this film is expertly established, delivering a silly and thoroughly enjoyable experience as Zazie Beets and Chance the Rapper try to track down the killer and bring them to justice.
Gaspar Noe’s unique cinematic drama experience, Climax, features innovative filmmaking techniques, professional dancers with no acting experience, and a surreal, dreamlike quality that makes the whole movie feel like the acid trip it's meant to embody. The story follows a dance troupe throwing a post-rehearsal party only to discover that someone has spiked their punch with LSD. What follows is a chaotic, horrifying mess of people trying to cope as they all descend into a highly agitated mental state. The resulting film is unique, for sure, but truly an exceptional horror experience highlighting the terrors of real life.
In Fabric is an extraordinary horror comedy ghost story by Peter Strickland (Berberian Sound Studio, Duke of Burgundy) that follows the journey of a cursed dress as it travels from person to person. It can be described as a sort of giallo remake of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, featuring synth music, surreal imagery, and bright, giallo-esque colors. While much of the movie is horror, it does smartly interject some comedy to play up the idea of the haunted dress, and the whole movie works together beautifully.
Green Room follows a punk band who find themselves at a remote club run by neo-Nazi skinheads, which would be bad enough, but when they accidentally witness a murder on the premesis, they find themselves under attack from the Nazis. Starring Anton Yelchin, Joe Cole, Imogen Poots, and Patrick Stewart, the movie is tense, action-packed, and thoroughly thrilling. Anton Yelchin gives an amazing performance as Pat, the bassist and male lead. While most of A24’s horror films have some sort of twist or layers of surrealism and metaphors, it’s refreshing to see a straight-forward horror movie done in a really gritty, effective way.
A folk horror film set in 1630 New England, The Witch focuses on the lives of English settler William and his family, who have been banished from their Puritan Plymouth colony over a religious dispute. However, tragedy after tragedy befalls the family’s already difficult life when their newborn baby, Samuel, is snatched by something from the forest. Soon the family is at each other’s throats, accusing their eldest daughter of witchcraft. The movie paints a beautiful and dismal picture of 17th century early American settlers, their beliefs and culture, including ties to the Salem Witch Trials, and also the experience of women both during the period and the modern day, as the themes can easily be applied to both.
Under the Skin stars Scarlett Johansson as an extraterrestrial who, disguising herself as a human woman, seduces and picks up men in Scotland. Loosely based on Michael Faber’s Under the Skin novel, the movie is a beautiful, haunting picture of an alien perspective on the human world. Under the Skin earned accolades for Johansson's performance, Glazer's direction, and Mica Levi's score. While the message might be lost on some, the film is a deeply affecting look at the human experience, and highlights some interesting and complicated experiences with gender politics.
A two-character dramatic psychological thriller, Roger Eggers’ The Lighthouse stars Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson as two lighthouse keepers struggling to keep their sanity as they remain isolated together on a remote New England island in the 1890s. Originally intended to be an adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe’s fragment, "The Light-House," the final film bears little resemblance to the writing except for the title. It's more directly inspired by a 19th-century incident at Smalls Lighthouse in Wales involving two lighthouse keepers, both named Thomas.
The performances of Pattinson and Defoe are spectacular and really make the movie, helping to build the atmosphere of isolation, tension, and slipping sanity. The story explores themes of Freudian and Jungian psychological analysis, as well as classical Greek mythology, alcoholism, and sexuality through a surreal and even sometimes Lovecraftian lens that’s effectively chilling.
Ari Aster’s second movie, Midsommar, follows a group of friends who travel to Sweden for a festival that occurs once every 90 years, only to find themselves in the midst of a sacrificial ceremony. While the premise is much more straightforward than his first movie, cutting a clear plot line from beginning to end, it has Aster’s signature style of exploring the human experience as horror. Covering themes of grief, love, abuse, and family, the movie is a poignant look at the end of an unhealthy relationship through the lens of a murderous religious cult.
One of the most raved about horror movies of recent years, Ari Aster’s Hereditary explores generational trauma and family dynamics through the eyes of the Graham family. When the matriarch of the family passes away, her daughter and grandchildren begin to discover some truly horrifying secrets about the fate they’ve inherited. Hereditary’s success lies in its atmosphere, with a superb performance from Toni Collette helping to build tension throughout the movie.
Making over $80 million on a $10 million budget, Hereditary became A24's highest-grossing film worldwide, and for good reason. Hereditary is not only a so-called “high-brow” horror film, delivering poignant messages about mental health and generational trauma, it's also being a genuinely scary movie that sticks with the viewer long after it's over. The movie harkens back to classics of horror like The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby, bringing them to the modern era — undoubtedly, Hereditary is the cherry on top of A24's current line-up.
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January 09, 2021 at 06:00AM
