The best A24 films, ranked — including Uncut Gems, Hereditary and Midsommar
Our pick of the finest movies so far from the studio that never seems to miss
In a little over a decade since it was formed by three film-loving friends in an office on Broadway, New York City, A24 has gone from putting out slightly quirky indie movies to becoming a powerhouse studio, scooping up Oscars every year and producing some of the most groundbreaking, challenging films in history.
While the first few efforts might be best overlooked (we’re talking Spring Breakers, The Bling Ring) A24 soon brought on genuine creative talents in directors like Denis Villeneuve, Yorgos Lanthimos and Robert Eggers, and together with a social-only, low budget marketing strategy, began to regularly hit gold.
Taking an ‘outsider’ approach to everything they do, allowing their filmmakers to push boundaries, bend genres and take risks has resulted in A24 becoming a byword for high-quality movies, with a rabid fanbase eagerly awaiting each new release.
We reckon these are the ten best A24 films so far - do you agree?
10. Ex Machina (2014)
A24’s first real breakout hit was probably ten years ahead of its time. Oscar Isaac plays an egomaniac, narcissist tech company CEO convinced that meshing humans and AI is perfectly safe and important for the world’s future. Sound familiar?
To prove this he invites programmer Dom Gleeson to his massive mansion to see if he’ll fall for Alicia Vikander despite her being a robot, which, unsurprisingly, he does - before everything goes very pear-shaped. Tense, darkly comic and featuring academy award-winning effects, Ex Machina is a worryingly essential watch a decade on.
9. The Lighthouse (2019)
Nothing about The Lighthouse should work to be honest - the very thought of watching two bearded, gruff-voiced men stuck in a lighthouse in which barely anything happens for months entirely in black and white is not a particularly exciting one.
And yet somehow, mostly thanks to two incredible showings from Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe, The Lighthouse becomes a gripping, tension-packed exercise in watching a relationship, and two minds, crumble.
8. Talk to Me (2022)
A haunted, severed hand that can contact the dead might sound fairly hokey as the basis for an effective horror film, but this Aussie-made shocker was genuinely scary with a truly memorable twist at the end. And with its release coming right at the end of Covid it made it properly unsettling to shake someone’s hand again, lest you found yourself inadvertently caught up as a ghost on the other side of the world in the middle of a teen seance.
Talk to Me was so popular that it even ended up out-performing the legendary Hereditary at the box office to become A24’s biggest horror flick to date.
7. Heretic (2024)
Hugh Grant showed us the maniacal flip side of his camp Paddington 2 baddie in a brilliantly clever thriller that became a word-of-mouth hit for A24 at the end of ‘24. Two young women going door-to-door simply trying to spread the word of Jesus arrive at Hugh’s house (big mistake) only to find themselves caught up in a literal maze of unhinged behaviour from which there appears to be no escape.
Twists, turns, some full-on gore and a thorough deconstruction of whether or not Radiohead stole the song Creep make this a top-notch Friday night watch.
6. X (2022)
The first of a trilogy of films from Ti West, X is a non-stop ride of sex and gory horror that recalls the likes of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Rob Zombie’s The Devil's Rejects. Set in the late 1970s it follows a ragtag bunch of young porn movie makers as they take a roadtrip to a rural farmhouse for their latest shoot - only to find themselves brutally hunted down one by one by the frankly terrifying old lady who lives there.
It’s a film that seems to embody what A24 is all about - nothing is off-limits, everything feels very low budget, but the storytelling, directing and acting are of a standard that’s rarely matched by the big Hollywood studios.
5. Midsommar (2019)
From the moment an elderly man in robes flings himself off a cliff and lands with a sickening thump face down on a huge rock, you know things are not going to be fun for the rest of this movie.
Writer and Director Ari Aster barely gave us time to get over how upset we were after seeing Hereditary as he followed it up just a year later with this absolutely unhinged horror about a happy-clappy Swedish cult that thinks nothing of putting people inside giant bear outfits and burning them alive. Standard.
4. Uncut Gems (2019)
Few people expected Adam Sandler capable of a performance like he put in for this Safdie brothers-directed comic thriller, which is A24’s third highest-grossing film of all time. But somehow the man who played Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison is fantastically convincing as a panicked New York jeweller trying to dig his way out of a series of increasingly dangerous holes.
It’s a relentless, anxiety-inducing watch, as Sandler erratically gambles his wife, mistress, money and his life on trying to successfully flog a precious black opal stone for a million bucks.
3. The Zone of Interest (2023)
As a harrowing illustration of how humans can normalise doing evil if it benefits their own existence, this film from Sexy Beast director Jonathan Glazer is hard to beat. In it, the seemingly mundane day to day life of a Commander at Auschwitz who lives in a house next to the concentration camp plays out as the sickening horrors of what the Nazis are carrying out on his doorstep are heard (but never seen).
Filmed on the original site of the atrocities, The Zone of Interest picked up two Oscars including Best International Film. It stays with you.
2. Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)
A24’s highest-grossing film to date is this dizzying mash-up of martial arts, multiverses, family drama and occasionally, people with hot dogs for fingers. ‘Everything’ is an apt description of a movie that brings together animation, kung-fu, office politics, science fiction and bagels that allow time travel, all set to a thumping soundtrack.
150 minutes later, you find yourself sitting open-mouthed wondering how on earth someone even thought of it, let alone managed to film it and make it work. A dazzling cinematic achievement, it took seven academy awards from eleven nominations.
1. Hereditary (2018)
Although A24 is rightly lauded as a studio that has become expert in producing horror movies of the highest calibre, Hereditary still stands out as something very special indeed.
Deeply, deeply disturbing, director Ari Aster’s debut is packed full of genuinely iconic moments, jump scares, horribly unsettling themes and an astonishing performance from Toni Collette.
It genuinely gets scarier each time you watch it, as though the first time isn’t bad enough.
