Body horror received one of its best entries since Revenge), and awarded Best Screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival. In the vein of The Picture of Dorian Gray (but with different shades of feminist politics), the film follows the extreme measures that a TV fitness show host (Demi Moore) is willing to take to reclaim the glory reserved by a sexist industry for younger and more attractive women. After a questionable injection, her place is taken by a younger, more beautiful version of herself (Margaret Qualley), with the hunger for life and ambition typical of her age. It doesn't take long for the delicate balance between the two to shatter (a clever on-screen representation of dysmorphia and ageism), leading to increasingly grotesque, brutal, and above all, entertaining results.
In recent decades, South Korean cinema has exported films that explore complex themes – class, psychology, history – beneath fascinating surfaces. Exhuma is a phenomenal example of this, with a deceptively simple premise at the start: a group of shamans is hired to deal with what seems like a curse on a wealthy family. However, as they dig deeper, the plot thickens, revealing Korea's dark past with Japanese colonialism. Undoubtedly, one of the best horror movies of 2024 – and one of the most ingenious.
Latin American horror has also been making waves in recent years, and one of the best horror movies of 2024 comes from Argentina. In When Evil Lurks, (Cuando acecha la maldad) the lines between supernatural horror and mundane hatred blur when two brothers must fight to survive and protect their family as demon-infected beings, known as the "embichados," begin to proliferate, bringing out the darkest side of the inhabitants of a rural Argentinian town. There aren't many films as bleak as this one.
Spider-centric horror is back, this time from . Infected has a deceptively simple premise: a young man fascinated with insects brings a dangerous spider home, it escapes, and everything goes very, very wrong for him and all his neighbors in the building. At its core, it also operates as an allegory for the consequences of negligence, carelessness, and marginalization within families and entire societies. But putting that aside, it also works as a chilling creature feature that will make you squirm in your seat, wondering if there are spiders crawling on your skin...
Clearly made on a shoestring budget, I Saw the TV Glow proves that what matters is a unique vision to achieve a result that, frankly, can only be described as emotional, surreal, hypnotic, bizarre, and terrifying, in the purest Lynchian fashion. The story follows two friends (Justice Smith and Brigette Lundy-Paine) who bond over their love for a TV show, which leads them to discover their inner truth. Not only is it one of the best horror movies of 2024, but it’s also one of the best LGBTQIA+ films of the year.