How A24 Saved Horror

A Dying Genre

For a while it was thought that the horror genre was dead because in the early 2000s there was a decline in quality. Certain overplayed subgenres were taking off like “torture porn” with the Saw franchise, absurd parodies with the Scary Movie franchise, and the most unoriginal of them all, remakes. They ran those through with all the classics like Halloween (2007), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), Friday the 13th (2009), etc. All the good ideas for movies seemed to have been taken. Hollywood almost didn’t care about the medium anymore and was shooting out as much junk as possible. This became normal for the industry and people like myself thought it was over… that was until a little indie film company named A24 arrived.

 

A24 was founded in 2012 by a couple film veterans, Daniel Katz, David Fenkel, and John Hodges. They weren’t known right off the bat for horror as their first outlook for an audience was aimed at youthful age groups. Some of those popular ones were interesting sights to see like Spring Breakers which brought in the Disney Channel faces of Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens. The following year came The Bling Ring and The Spectacular Now would soon follow which were all received well from the public. This company was already off to a good start with fresh new talent being given full creative control, producing unique movies, and then ultimately down the line, the madness of horror would take over.

Horror Becomes a Mainstay

Some of A24’s early horror movies consisted of not-so-straight-forward ones like Enemy (2014) and Under the Skin (2013) which were both extremely experimental projects. Enemy for instance, is about a man who seeks to confront a famous doppelganger of his after watching a movie. Under the Skin is about an alien disguised as a woman who goes around, seductively killing men. Both of these films were filled to the brim with confusing scenes that were meant to act as thematic metaphors of their respective movies. Then we got the highly disturbing Tusk (2014) which was received with divisive reactions. Even though all of these movies are good in their own ways the mainstream audience wasn’t picking up on it yet and goes to show that the company had to wait a while to get the official big break.

It wasn’t until 2018 when a nice, family friendly comedy called Hereditary came out and grossed around $80 million worldwide, a lot for the company at the time. Hereditary was a godsend for contemporary horror, a real tension-filled slowburn that knew how to get the hairs on your neck to stick up with an absolute bonkers ending. The film even turns the tables on horror tropes by killing off the little girl who we thought would be the main character due to her being on the poster. The director of this movie, Ari Aster, would go on to make Midsommar (2019) and Beau is Afraid (2023) for the company and is now regarded as one of the most respected filmmakers today. His fresh, new take on filmmaking would inspire many other horror junkies with what we unofficially call “elevated horror” — a subgenre that explores the artistic uses of horror.

New Adventures

Finding consistency with horror, winning Oscars, and gaining universal appeal, A24 has achieved a wide range of success in the past decade. They’ve stacked up quite the filmography and changed the appetite of mass audiences with people finally paying attention to weirdo art pieces, and mainly put out surreal horror now. Just last year, the highly appraised Talk to Me (2023) was released and took audiences on quite a fun ride with its extraordinary take on the characters-getting-cursed subgenre. YouTube veterans, RackaRacka, also known as Danny and Michael Philippou, spent years making sadistic horror comedy sketches, so many people were surprised to see they put out a big time movie especially with A24. This film focused on an embalmed hand that, when you hold onto it, you become temporarily possessed. The group of kids in the movie found fun in it because it gave them an almost high feeling which honestly would happen in the real world if kids did this. The main girl in the film, Mia, played by Sophie Wilde, was traumatized due to her mother killing herself, so with grief and guilt as a theme it gave the audience someone to connect with as it wasn’t just any old horror movie. The ending is honestly the cherry on top, making everything full circle in a bleak but satisfying fashion. It would go on to gross $92.2 million worldwide sparking a sequel and prequel short film in the works. 

Just this year, I Saw the TV Glow was released which was directed by Jane Schoenbrun who had made another horror centric movie, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (2021). The cool thing about A24 is if a filmmaker makes a good movie with a different studio for their first couple movies, A24 will reach out to finance/distribute that fresh talent for their next project. Emma Stone even helped produce the movie and that’s insane since she doesn’t primarily do horror. I Saw the TV Glow is a more psychological horror drama that follows Owen (played by Justice Smith) who is introduced to a late night TV show about a supernatural world beneath their own and soon his realities start to blur. “Unique” doesn’t do this movie justice. The script is genius as it doesn’t spoon feed you what is actually going on and makes you try to guess. As with any casual viewer, you might need to rewatch it a couple times which is when you’ll find out it’s about questioning our identities and how pop culture can be a gateway to understanding yourself. The film takes its time with a very hazy, dreamlike flow and cryptic scenes sure to make you uncomfortable. It’s poetic since it’s about someone that’s not comfortable in their own skin. Maybe we’re all filled with TV static?

The most recent of horrors from the renowned studio is actually one of their first trilogies, the X Trilogy. It first all started when Ti West came out with a 70s throwback slasher promptly named, X, back in early 2022. The plot consisted of a small group of shoddy filmmakers making a porno at a strangers farmhouse where mysterious killings happen. This film would turn Mia Goth into an iconic scream queen as she stole the show playing two different characters as the protagonist and antagonist. It was perplexing to see an end credits scene showing a sneak peak at a sequel named, Pearl, focusing on a young version of the killer in the film. What was even more crazy is the fact it would come out later that same year, this time shifting into a more psychological character study of the antagonist from X, but set in 1918. With that, the final film, MaXXXine, a direct sequel to X, was released this year. The film follows Mia Goth’s character finding fame in Hollywood as an actress. Meanwhile a mysterious killer from her past starts mayhem. Following the pattern of changing tones, this one went with an 80s crime detective thriller vibe to keep it fresh. The trilogy was, for the most part, critically acclaimed, MaXXXine was a bit divisive with fans, but was nonetheless a solid entry. It felt really fresh to see three different movies set in the same universe in such a short amount of time, I guess you could call it the horror based Cornetto Trilogy. 

A Rejuvenated Industry

All in all, A24 did the impossible; they went from becoming a niche film company, making some polarizing content, and would go on to establish themselves as a prestigious big name furthering their content output. At the same time they revamped the horror genre to crazy levels of originality. They even seem to have inspired other studios to let filmmakers have free range because once their movies took full storm, everyone was doing wild things. You’d be able to see this with Zach Cregger making Barbarian (2022) for 20th Century Studios and Oz Perkins making Longlegs (2024) for Neon. It’s gotten to a point where if I’m watching a movie and see that classic logo pop up I get excited because I know it’s going to be a good movie. People can thank A24 for keeping the horror genre alive because without them who knows what films would be coming out today.