Even the good movies were bad. 2024 was one full diaper, which is why the best movies of the year were mostly feel-bad fare. I am writing this just hours after David Lynch’s death was announced, so 2025 may be “the year the diaper overfloweth.” This isn’t performative melancholy, I swear.
I had the pleasure of sitting down with some lovely folks for KIOS’s The Entertainment yesterday. It took about 30 seconds for us to agree that dread and horror of various kinds are dominating our predominant mainstream art form. Vibes aren’t just icky, they are off-the-charts no bueno right now. And yet…
I just read a delightful book called Space Opera by Catherynne Valente. In it, she noted that “the opposite of fascism isn’t anarchy, it’s theater.” She was talking about an intergalactic Eurovision contest, but her point holds. In bad times, cinema shouldn’t and can’t pretend things are hunky dory. But it can still comfort and inspire, challenge us to dream bigger and better, or at the very least commiserate with our suffering.
I mean, not these movies below. These movies made things worse.
The 5 Worst Movies of 2024
5 – Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver
What is wild is that I found myself forgetting these movies while watching them. Despite Netflix allowing the siren song of smartphone distraction, I resisted. I watched the first one twice. But my brain refused to ingest what it was being force-fed. Without actively looking at plot descriptions, I legitimately cannot remember a single thing that happened, other than some of the stupid names. Did you know two of the characters have the last name Bloodaxe? One of them is called Balisarius, which I refuse to believe isn’t a Pokémon.
4 – Madame Web
The death of the comic book movie genre is being greatly exaggerated, despite the fact that Madam Web is one hell of a motive for its murder. There’s an oft-repeated sitcom joke where a character has to find something good-but-small to praise in a horrible play or movie that their friend did. “The lighting was atmospheric,” they’ll say. The lighting sucked in Madam Web. Any compliment is a lie. It is palpable what a horrible time everyone had making the movie, a wildly unpleasant experience that can only be topped by having to watch it.
3 – Megalopolis
If there’s a way of reading Megalopolis as anything other than a very costly self-high-five, it would require expending effort the film doesn’t deserve. It is, above all else, a dud. Tiresome, silly in ways that are not risk-taking and brave, and grating in theme and purpose. Blandly forgettable, the only thing that I will remember about the movie from now is the debacle involving one of its trailers. If you hadn’t heard, the PR team used AI to lean into the bad buzz for the film. They pulled quotes from famous movie critics who had blasted previous Coppola films. Except, they weren’t real. The AI biffed it or they did it on purpose to generate attention. If they want to run a new ad to build hype before the streaming release, they can feel free to use this: Megalopolis is simply embarrassing.
2 – Nosferatu
I haven’t liked a single one of director Robert Eggers’s films. Huzzah to those who do, may we part in peace. The very things others hold up as virtues, I see as grating vices. His much-praised use of darkness and shadow? Call me a kook, but I like to see the movies I see. His obsession with historically accurate details in his films? I don’t care if that’s how the roof was really thatched, your story sucks. His use of “erotic” to describe films that have varying degrees of sexual assault? We do not agree on what that term means.
1 – Strange Darling
Although the admonition “Don’t yuck someone else’s yum” is empathetic and kind advice to which I try to adhere, writer/director JT Mollner’s Strange Darling forces me into an exception. I don’t wish to have not seen Strange Darling. I wish for it to not exist. Were it in my power to unmake this self-important, cruel bit of fetishized misogyny, I would disappear it in a heartbeat. I would neither hesitate to make that one of my three wishes from a genie nor ever regret having wished it. The worst part is that I can’t tell you precisely why.
The 10 Best Movies of 2024
For the last 20 years or so, the phrase “from director Tim Burton” was more warning than promise. When reading it on a movie poster, the voice in my head sounded exactly like someone who narrates a prescription drug commercial. “Do not watch if you’re allergic to pale people, crooked architecture, or Johnny Depp.” What a shock to find that Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is fairly hilarious and genuinely charming.
It feels like the answer to “would you rather be alone in the woods with an unknown man or a bear” should be “Did you know that one time, in the 1970s, a highly prolific serial killer went on The Dating Game and won?” It could also be “You should watch Woman of the Hour.” Because you should watch Woman of the Hour no matter what. Anna Kendrick’s directorial debut is legitimately remarkable. It is proof that you can craft a thrilling, tense film about unspeakable crimes without either sanitization or salaciousness. It also fiddles with chronology in a way that doesn’t feel like a Christopher Nolan crutch/gimmick but thoughtfully builds a narrative. It does all this in 95 minutes, which is pitch perfect proof that economy of storytelling is the simple favor all filmmakers should provide.
8 – Heretic
A deranged lunatic using religion as an excuse to torture women is also the plot of Heretic, arguably the best use of Hugh Grant’s face since his mug shot, a memory that also feels upsettingly timely. The film is essentially a sandwich where the bread is monologues and the meaty filling is slightly shorter monologues. Rabid word devourers will feel gluttonous, slurping up the menacing brain games. It’s a bloodless Saw written by Aaron Sorkin’s nepo baby, a philosophy grad student. Of course, I loved it.
7 – Late Night With the Devil
This is the only film in the top 10 that I didn’t crank out a full review for, which isn’t an indictment of the movie. Sometimes I have to sleep, and I haven’t been paid to do this since 2023… It got (rightfully) slapped around for using AI when it (A) didn’t need to and (B) should have, by its title alone, been aware of what befalls people who align themselves with unholy things. By no means perfectly executed or conceptually transcendent, what the filmmakers achieve is a wholly immersive feeling. By the time the rollicking last half hour kicks in, you’re already too far gone to ask any questions. You know a movie belongs on your list when writing a blurb about it makes you want to watch it all over again.
6 – Civil War
Civil War misses out on being the most stressful A24 film by the width of an uncut gem. But make no mistake: You are simply not going to have a good time watching writer/director Alex Garland’s near-future lament. To quote this movie’s president and a real-life one, “many people are even saying” that this movie is a warning. Sadly, I think they’re misreading it. This feels more like a full-on, shoulder-slumping defeat. It is an autopsy of the mistakes we are drowning in.
5 – Conclave
Based on Robert Harris’s book, writer Peter Straughan and director Edward Berger have crafted a crackerjack closed-room thriller in which God maybe has her finger on the scale. Set in the immediate aftermath of a pope croaking, Conclave plays with politics, does the whodunnit dance, and copies courtroom drama. It’s got so much talking, you guys. It’s mostly just talking. Talking and frowning. Talking and frowning and pacing and anguished decision-making. It’s everything adults hate in real life and love in films!
4 – Longlegs
Jump scares are to horror what farts are to comedy: They are inarguably effective but arguably the lowest-hanging (magical) fruit. The highest echelon of terror fare comes when audiences aren’t temporarily afraid but deeply disquieted. Longlegs ain’t packed with jump scares. It is silent but deadly. It is gonna disquiet you. It’s gonna disquiet the hell out of you. The trailers understandably sold audiences on a Silence of the Lambs parallel, but that FBI thriller feels like a children’s bedtime story by the time Longlegs is through.
Fury Road is all gas, no brakes. Furiosa is someone learning to drive stick, all herky-jerky in its exhilaration. Fury Road is a delightful feminist cudgel, a surprising twist for a series previously led by noted non-feminist Mel Gibson. Furiosa doesn’t have much of a bigger point, beyond the unneeded further condemnation of the gross and bad things man can do. Fury Road is a masterpiece. Furiosa makes that masterpiece better. It is arguably the most effective prequel ever made in that regard. And had it come first, neither film would have been as good. What a weird, wonderful pair these two make.
2 – The Substance
It is a kaleidoscope of grotesqueries, a cornucopia of nightmares that range from worrisome dental problems to “wait, that its mouth!” Some films rely on subtly and nuance, others bludgeon viewers with metaphors shaped like sledgehammers. Both can work if done right, and The Substance is brutality done super-superbly right. Again, that is if you are cool with seeing a lot of things typically kept inside of people on the outsides of people.
That final act is a doozy. It is the kind that makes you immediately want to watch the whole thing again. And why not? It goes down easy, with a soundtrack that summons the very essence of Lilith Fair and a luminous visual flare. Two feature films in and Jane Schoenbrun has already established a signature style and palate that doesn’t feel like thievery passed off as homage, a la Quentin Taratino or Edgar Wright.
What’s amazing is how perfectly they convey the sense of dread at the core of the narrative. It is claustrophobic and terrifying. Again, while the tragedy has an explicitly trans nature, Schoenbrun taps into universal fears of a life mis-lived, the suffocation of never having been alive in the truest sense. Here, at this awful inflection point where so many seem to be unable to recognize what is at stake for young trans people, what a powerful way to drive home a life-or-death point.
Other Critical Voices to Consider
Sarah G. Vincent had a lovely, complex top 20 list this year. And she saw Monolith, which I thought nobody else did!
Siddhant Adlakha has a banger of a list, even if he has a tie for number one (which is cheating).
Walter Chaw went 50 deep on his list, which is staggeringly impressive.
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