Thanks to Everything Everywhere All at Once and The Whale winning notable 2023 Oscar categories, distributor and producer A24 is the hottest independent film company of the day. Even before this year, scary movie lovers decreed that A24’s output featured the brightest in modern horror cinema. In honor of the sensational hit Talk to Me, here is the list of streaming films representing the pinnacle of A24’s horror revolution.
The Witch
Though the early years of A24 showed releases of amazingly dark, thrilling visionary films that contained horror elements, their lackluster horror-comedies, Life After Beth and Tusk, dragged down the early output despite fitting the A24 brand of featuring auteur directors. That all changed with The Witch, Robert Eggers’s period-accurate New England folk horror, which instantly took A24’s modus operandi to its most terrifying heights yet.
The Witch is streaming now on Max.
Green Room
Snapping up Jeremy Saulnier’s follow-up to his critically acclaimed revenge tale Blue Ruin was a wise find that paid off in an exciting word-of-mouth success. Green Room‘s match-up of recognizable young faces playing a leftist D.C. punk band against Patrick Stewart playing the leader of a pack of Pacific Northwest neo-Nazis makes for a nasty, unforgettable thrill ride.
Green Room is streaming now on Max.
Hereditary
A single shot in Hereditary, surrounded by perfectly crafted dread from every other angle, put auteur Ari Aster’s first film in the running for the saddest, scariest, most heart-wrenching horror film, not just from A24 but of all time. However, Hereditary is the best A24 horror film not for empty thrills but for a story that takes grief, family drama, and the consequences of one’s actions to their most dreadful potential.
Hereditary is streaming now on Max.
Midsommar
A24 invested in Ari Aster’s creative and terrifying potential, shown first in his bizarre dark comedy shorts, by producing his films as well as distributing them, and though their later returns were not as good as with Hereditary (particularly with the massive commercial failure Beau Is Afraid), the company has by now set a precedent for building long-term relationships with filmmakers. Midsommar put more trust into Aster’s hands and ultimately succeeded with another sad tale of loss and grief, this time set around a Swedish paganistic festival.
Midsommar is streaming now on Paramount+ with the Showtime add-on.
The Lighthouse
In The Lighthouse, another second film from a director who debuted with A24, Robert Eggers advanced the mold of The Witch into a realistic showcase of late-1800s New England cabin fever that features well-researched maritime dialogue and two dynamite lead performances. The realism does not hold for long, however, as the isolated lighthouse keepers, played by Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson, quickly descended into a surrealist nightmare that gripped audiences despite the film’s non-traditional elements.
The Lighthouse is streaming now on Paramount+ with the Showtime add-on.
In Fabric
In Fabric, the most underrated of A24’s horror catalog, takes themes from Zola’s Au Bonheur des Dames and modern anti-capitalist sentiments to develop one of the most startling, evocative, surreal, and funny horror-comedies of the last decade. Peter Strickland’s dry British humor and simultaneous love and mocking of vintage European horror work are only for acquired tastes, but those who get In Fabric will stick with it for life.
In Fabric is streaming now on Showtime.
Saint Maud
With the impact of its release diminished by intense marketing pushes that fizzled out thanks to the onset of the COVID pandemic in 2020, Saint Maud was overlooked and made almost no money by the time it finally appeared many months later. Luckily, debuting writer-director Rose Glass saw deserved critical acclaim awarded to the film’s examination of religious fervor in a troubled mind, and the small audience who went out of their way to watch its initial release praised its expansion of the psychological and supernatural melding also found in The Witch.
Saint Maud is streaming now on Prime Video.
The X Series
The latest viral horror success from A24 comes in the form of a surprising slasher trilogy that begins in the late-1970s with a clash between rural Texan farm owners and a group of aspiring pornography filmmakers. X shows the violent struggle between the young final girl Maxine and the repressed farmer’s wife, while Pearl tells the title character’s psychologically thrilling origin story during World War I. Ti West expertly shot both films while creatively developing the saga with actress Mia Goth, who plays both lead roles in the series.
X and Pearl are streaming now on Paramount+ with the Showtime add-on.
