Halloween Treats: A Sample of 2024 Horror

by Cláudio Alves

There's no better way to celebrate the spookiest holiday of them all than by indulging in the perverse pleasures of horror cinema. But what to watch? While classics are reliable, keeping up with the latest gems is fun, too. Every year, new delights are added to the nightmare canon, and 2024 is no different, with many scary movies among the best releases of the past few months. With that in mind, let's dive into the horror pool and see what precious gems we discover hiding in its depths - ones already available to stream at home, alone in the dark. For brevity's sake, I focused on English-language fright fests and films not yet reviewed at The Film Experience, starting with I Saw the TV Glow…

I SAW THE TV GLOW, Jane Schoenbrun

Some horror films disturb through sudden shock, using and abusing the oft-lambasted jump scare, relying more on the audience's instinctual response than engaging with the true terror within. Other bad dreams of the moving image do things differently, disturbing more than they jolt. These tend to burrow under the skin, chilling to the bones with nasty ideas and complex moods. They often appeal to the terrible things that live in one's head, so well hidden in its recesses that they go by unnoticed, background noise that's difficult to decipher or even put into words. One type of horror offers an instant adrenaline rush and ensuing catharsis. The other is more like a slow smothering.

Watching Jane Schoebrun's sophomore feature, I felt myself smothered, suffocated by its visions, and slowly running out of air. The final scene and credits roll didn't so much provide finality as they signaled a return to comforting everyday life. A return to somewhere and sometime when the disquiet inside remains there, undisturbed and unilluminated. When you can breathe in and out without that darkness pressing on the chest. Not that I share the specific anxieties of Schoembrun's protagonists or the ones the director experienced firsthand on their transition journey. I Saw the TV Glow is very specifically a work of trans horror, but its qualities aren't unreachable to someone with a different identity. It's not insular.

Instead, it's open, arms reaching out to embrace everyone into the void of self-denial, internalized prejudice and other destructive forces in us all. The story is simple enough – two lonely souls meet as kids in the late 90s, bound together by a kinship born from their devotion to a TV show, The Pink Opaque. Owen is told not to watch such a girly show, but there's no way to resist, especially when it's the only thing that seems to connect with the child. They grow into teenagers, just as isolated as before, and Maddy plans to leave, run away from an abusive home. Much begging takes place, but Owen can't follow. He won't follow. Eight years pass, Maddy returns, a changed person with tales of secrets hidden in screen narratives and stories of rebirth on their lips.

Once again, Maddy asks Owen to join on the journey. Again, the desperate and depressed boy can't bring himself to do it. So, he stagnates, rotting into the self, so fixated on hiding and ignoring what's inside that there's not much left of a person by the end of it. In other words, I Saw the TV Glow is a queer narrative that refuses the usual conclusions, leaving itself unresolved, its characters ignorant of their own identities. Moreover, it contemplates such queer realities and draws horror from them, dangling the possibility of liberation to better present a protagonist that can't bring themselves to reach out and grab onto salvation. It's a spiral of despair Schoenbrun orchestrates with impressive craft, an admirable control of tone and emotion. 

Just like We're All Going to the World's Fair exhibited a rare understanding of the internet through a young person's perspective, so does I Saw the TV Glow approach its themes from a place of generational specificity and pop culture insight. Consider how the Buffy-like Pink Opaque is both lifeline and age marker, a dream and a pathway to disassociation transcends fandom or commonplace nostalgia to capture something uglier, more solipsistic and isolating. Consider the beautifully oppressive form, candy-colored, even infantile, the visualization of paralysis in the face of change. This is never clearer than in the film's best and creepiest scene, a haunting monologue by Brigette Lundy-Paine's Maddy. 

Teetering on the edge of suicidal ideation, Maddy's dispassionate passion twists the miracle of self-acceptance with the destructive forces that often manifest on the road to change. Barbed for your displeasure, this kindness draws blood. The same could be said about the finale, which can be read as a warning to those who may be condemning themselves to oblivion out of fear. At the same time, the horrors of I Saw the TV Glow and that chest-buster of an ending don't lock away the possibility of a brighter future. Schoenbrun gestures toward it, making Owen's tragedy all that more painful. Even drunk on distilled despair, this flick won't obscure the way out of its horror. There is still time – remember that.

I Saw the TV Glow is streaming exclusively on Max. You can also rent it from Apple TV, Amazon, Flix Fling, the Microsoft Store, and Spectrum On Demand.

THE SUBSTANCE, Coralie Fargeat

Truth be told, I already reviewed The Substance elsewhere. For a full long-form review, visit the International Cinephile Society. That doesn't prevent me from sharing some thoughts here. 

Much has been said about Fargeat's epic-length horror and how it presents a culture where feminine beauty standards are poison killing women from the inside out. Even more has been written about its influences, with Cronenberg and Kubrick getting too many mentions when Yuzna feels more tonally aligned with what the French director has in mind. Indeed, The Substance isn't nearly as self-serious as some reviews would make it out to be, operating on the level of fairytale logic rather than a more precise Hollywood satire. Its connection to the real world is tenuous at best, and the media landscape it paints feels deliberately nonsensical.

Well, this is also a world where an aging star can inject herself with a drug and birth a new self from her back. Those are not faults, mind you. Not for me, at least. Fargeat's vision does what genre movies do best, by honing on fundamental human truths and vivisecting our subconscious without risking the same traps of traditional drama. Its simplicity, mayhap even its dumbness, works like a strategic choice that disarms the audience and opens them up to the ugliness it's intent on revealing. Not necessarily the ugliness of aged flesh and its fantastical grotesqueries. Rather, it reveals paroxysms of self-hatred like few recent movies have done.

The picture's especially astute in depicting how we can become cruel to past versions of ourselves once we feel bettered in some tangible way. There's no harsher critic than the one you glimpse in the mirror. No crueler one either, or more blisteringly unreasonable. One could accuse The Substance of enacting that same cruelty, falling down on its characters with nasty judgment. However, Fargeat undercuts that reading by positioning Demi Moore's best-ever performance front and center. As much as the geysers of blood spewed in the finale might linger in the mind, no moment in the movie is more memorable than Moore's preparation for a date.

Self-regard is the pit from which all The Substance's greatest monsters emerge, and watching Moore's Elisabeth Sparkle get overpowered by them is gut-wrenching like nothing else in the movie. I'd go as far as saying the star's emotional anchoring makes decaying bodies more comforting than the threatening perfection of Margaret Qualley's prosthetic-augmented physique. But even if none of that sounds appealing on a conceptual level, The Substance has plenty of other merits. On a purely formal level, Fargeat has put together a pristine spectacle where every space and figure appears curated, if not designed from scratch, for maximum impact.

You've certainly seen Qualley's ludicrous spandex sexiness and Cinderella drag, Demi Moore's bright yellow coat, all those Overlook-esque corridors and scarlet bathrooms – there's no scarier place in this scary movie than the bathroom. Wait, that's not accurate. The scariest place is the seat in front of Dennis Quaid as he munches down on shrimp cocktail after shrimp cocktail. In the immortal words of Cate Blanchett presenting the Makeup Oscar: That's gross.

The Substance is streaming exclusively on MUBI. You can also purchase it from Amazon.

After those standout scares, allow me to present a few more recommendations. These films aren't as special as I Saw the TV Glow and The Substance, but they still have much to offer. I'll try to be short and sweet, capsule-review-style. 

A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE, Michael Sarnoski

It turns out that the key to making a compelling A Quiet Place movie was moving away from the Abbott family altogether. Getting Michael Sarnoski in the director's chair also helped, of course, resulting in a tense little sci-fi thriller crossed with a character-based tragedy. Though its reflections on mortality may never go deeper than surface-level, Sarnoski's got a good eye for evoking a deep-set melancholy in his staging and Lupita Nyong'o is able to suggest what the script can't provide. She also has incredible chemistry with Joseph Quinn and the film's true star – Frodo, the cat. Honestly, if you're a cat lover, this flick is essential viewing, with that four-legged thespian provoking equal parts adoration and frustration in an apocalyptic setting. That's how cats are, and we've known since Alien that the way to horror greatness is the way of the feline. 

A Quiet Place: Day One is available to rent on Apple TV, Amazon, Flix Fling, the Microsoft Store, and Spectrum On Demand.

IN A VIOLENT NATURE, Chris Nash

A pendant snatched from a derelict shack brings about the awakening of the undead. From that point forward, a lurking mass of rotting flesh will walk through the wilderness in search of his stolen talisman, killing everyone in his way. In other words, Chris Nash proposes a conventional slasher where the audience is stuck to the killer's POV. Or, more accurately, stuck to his back, a stalker camera finding the logical midpoint between Béla Tarr and Friday the 13th. It's slow, maddeningly so, working best as a formal experiment than an engaging piece of cinema. And yet, it's hard to hold that against the film when its intentions are so forthright. One could call it pretentious, but it's not pretending to be anything it isn't. Personally, I found myself drawn to In a Violent Nature's cinematographic variations, the disciplined camera movement, and immersive sound work—also, some of the year's best and most horrifying gore.

In a Violent Nature is streaming on AMC+ and Shudder. You can also rent it from Amazon, Apple TV, the Microsoft Store, and Spectrum On Demand.

LONGLEGS, Osgood Perkins

One of the year's biggest success stories finds Osgood Perkins playing with the legacy of the Satanic Panic at a time when such moralistic outrage seems to be on the rise again. Not that Longlegs is interested in engaging with the present or the context in which its audience lives. Better to lose its mind on an imagined past, art directed to an inch of its life and so ceremoniously displayed you feel like watching the movie is part of some ritual to summon Beelzebub. That would undoubtedly please the titular character, a Nicolas Cage dipped in bleach and lye with a glam rock style, so erratic in behavior that his presence feels spiritually dangerous. On the whole, the movie may be a tad too airless, but it's aged well in my memory, a fine wine with a few drops of strychnine thrown in for good measure.

Longlegs is available to rent from Amazon, Apple TV, the Microsoft Store, and Spectrum On Demand.

ODDITY, Damian McCarthy

It starts in familiar territory. A woman left alone at night is confronted by an ominous stranger knocking on her door. Later, some diabolical violence befalls her, and another homicide soon follows. The presumed killer and his victim are both six feet under by the time the actual narrative starts, for Oddity is haunted by their fate yet not defined by it. Indeed, this is a story of revenge wrapped around a folk horror package, full of good ideas and smart visual storytelling strategies that could do with a bit more polish, some burnish, a dash of color. Not that the Irish tale's deadened look is incoherent with its narrative or the tonal balance struck by its best performances – a creepy double act by Gwilym Lee. An intriguing experience throughout, I left Oddity thirsting for more. It's the rare movie that could have benefitted from an extended runtime to let its ideas cook longer.

Oddity is streaming on AMC+ and Shudder. You can also rent it from Amazon, Apple TV, the Microsoft Store, and Spectrum On Demand.

THE FIRST OMEN, Arkasha Stevenson

Immaculate who? Despite sharing an alarming amount of plot points, twists, and thematic connective tissue with Sydney Sweeney's vehicle, The First Omen is the superior nunsploitation flick for 2024. Detailing a young woman's descent into a Catholic cult intent on delivering the antichrist, Arkasha Stevenson's film often strikes the viewer as a game of directorial ingenuity, reviving tried and true premises with a slightly different angle, a flick of gilding, guts spilled (literally) and spider-like tresses. I won't soon forget a claw emerging from the most intimate of places, Sônia Braga's overqualified supporting turn as a fanatic, or Nell Tiger Free delivering her best scream queen realness, complete with a Possession-esque meltdown. All that being said, the film would benefit from a severing with The Omen franchise. It's strong enough to stand on its own, and every attempt at tying it back to those other movies feels forced. 

The First Omen is streaming on Hulu. You can also rent it from Amazon, Apple TV, the Microsoft Store, and Spectrum On Demand.

STRANGE DARLING, JT Mollner
That's a total of seven films to keep you entertained. But if you need more scary cinema, there are a bunch of other 2024 delights worth seeing, even when their parts are better than the whole. If you're in the mood for Dan Stevens's character actor weirdness, Abigail and Cuckoo are perfect for you. Speaking of lunatic performances, there's nothing quite like Kathryn Hunter's gonzo commitment to The Front Room, an affront to every metric of good taste that features such immortal lines as "I'm a racist baby, goo-goo, gah-gah." The only competition in terms of outrageousness comes in Lee Daniels' The Deliverance, a calamitous boondoggle where Glenn Close matches her director's energy and then some. Stopmotion has incredible effects, Strange Darling is a stunning achievement in 35mm cinematography, and Arcadian may possess the year's best creature design. Russell Crowe is rather strong in The Exorcism as is David Dastmalchian in Late Night with the Devil, while James McAvoy is mighty easy on the eyes throughout Speak No Evil. MaXXXine and Apartment 7A offer some eye candy of their own, mainly in the form of retro styles and a flair for the glamourous dramatic. Costume fans should also check out Lisa Frankenstein, an undercooked pastiche bedecked in delicious 80s fashions.

RED ROOMS, Pascal Plante
Below, you can find links to previous horror-themed 2024 reviews from the Team Experience and where to watch each movie. 

• ALIEN: ROMULUS – Apple TV, Amazon, the Microsoft Store, Spectrum On Demand.
• BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE – Apple TV, Amazon, the Microsoft Store.
• NIGHTBITCH – Coming soon, on December 6th, to a theater near you.
• RED ROOMS – Apple TV, Amazon, Spectrum On Demand.
• RUMOURS – Currently in theaters.
• THE VOURDALAK – Hoopla, Apple TV, Amazon, Spectrum On Demand.
• TRAP – Max, Apple TV, Amazon, the Microsoft Store, Spectrum On Demand.

Did you watch any scary movies this Halloween? Got any recommendation?