Indie production company and distributor A24 has curated an exceptional lineup of horror films since originating in the 2010s, with films like Midsommar, Hereditary, and the X trilogy becoming massive hits and beloved genre staples.
Though the company has released a multitude of movies across genres—notably the Oscar-winning films Moonlight and Everything Everywhere All at Once—the company's bread-and-butter continues to be horror movies. In fact, A24 has distributed so many great horror films over the years, that "A24 horror" has evolved into a subgenre of its own. These are a few of our favorite underrated A24 horror movies.
Saint Maud (2019)
- Writer/Director: Rose Glass
- Cast: Morfydd Clark, Jennifer Ehle, Lily Frazer, Lily Knight, Marcus Hutton, Turlough Convery, and Rosie Sansom
- Streaming: Prime Video
This 2019 British horror film doubled as the feature film debut of director Rose Glass, who also penned the script. Morfydd Clark (Starve Acre) stars as the titular character, a naïve young nurse working as a private carer. A traumatic past incident pushes Maud toward Christianity, leading her to become increasingly religious and devoted, to the point she develops an almost obsessive desire to save herself and her ward from eternal damnation, no matter what it takes to do so.
The film received acclaim upon release and garnered multiple accolades, most notably from the British Film Academy Awards and the British Independent Film Awards, where it earned 17 nominations. Clark is exceptional in the lead role. She's what makes the film work so well, sewing together obsession bordering on derangement in one neatly devout package.
It Comes at Night (2017)
- Writer/Director: Trey Edward Shults
- Cast: Joel Edgerton, Christopher Abbott, Carmen Ejogo, Riley Keough, and Kelvin Harrison Jr.
Joel Edgerton leads this gripping psychological horror film about a viral contagion and an allegorical ode to the vice-like nature of grief. Released in 2017, It Comes at Night became entirely too relevant a few years later during the COVID-19 pandemic when the film saw a resurgence in popularity due to its premise of an unknown disease plaguing the Earth, leaving a group of survivors to fend for themselves deep into the woods.
Striking a chord with the paranoid nature of a plague, the two families at the heart of It Comes at Night must decide who they can trust and how to manage with limited resources, along with making devastating choices when their loves one fall to the airborne disease. The slow pace and build-up of dread across its 90+ minute runtime is fitting of a typical A24 slow-burn, meaning this movie won't be for everyone, but I think most of us will have a newfound appreciation for it in our post-pandemic world.
The Killing of the Sacred Deer (2017)
- Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
- Writers: Efthimis Filippou and Yorgos Lanthimos
- Cast: Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Barry Keoghan, Raffey Cassidy, Sunny Suljic, Alicia Silverstone, and Bill Camp
- Streaming: Max
Renowned surgeon Steven Murphy (Colin Farrell) has a picture-perfect suburban life with his beautiful wife (Nicole Kidman) and their two children when Martin (Barry Keoghan), a teenager with a grudge, enters the scene and upends everything. Martin is a deeply troubled young man with a personal vendetta against Dr. Murphy for something that happened with one of his former patients and he intends to make things right, by forcing the surgeon to make an impossible decision.
Lanthimos delights in putting his characters into twisted situations that no human can imagine reconciling and that's no different here. His trademark dry dialogue and somewhat clinical approach add to the film's overall sense of absurdity and pitch-black humor. You'll laugh uncomfortably as a pit in your stomach forms, waiting for the next chilling realization to drop like a brick.