Best A24 movies

Moonlight▲ Rising

Three actors play one boy across a single blue-lit ocean swim, a schoolyard beating, and a diner reunion, and somehow it feels like one unbroken heartbeat. The Best Picture mix-up at the Oscars will forever be attached to it, but the film itself needs no asterisk — it's a quiet, aching masterpiece about Black masculinity and queer love that rewired what an indie could win. It belongs near the very top because it made tenderness feel radical.

Release Year: 2016Director: Barry JenkinsGenre: DramaRotten Tomatoes Score: 98 %Box Office (Worldwide): $65,000,000Oscar Wins: 3Best Picture Nominee: ✓

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Everything Everywhere All at Once▲ Rising

Two googly eyes stuck on a rock, staring into the void together, somehow deliver the most devastating emotional gut-punch in the entire multiverse-hopping chaos. It swept the Oscars, turned Michelle Yeoh's laundromat owner into a bagel-fighting, hot-dog-fingered folk hero, and proved a24 could go maximalist without losing its soul. This one earns the top slot because it's the rare film that's both the internet's favorite meme generator and a genuine tearjerker about mothers and daughters.

Release Year: 2022Director: Daniel Kwan & Daniel ScheinertGenre: Sci-fi/Comedy/DramaRotten Tomatoes Score: 95 %Box Office (Worldwide): $140,000,000Oscar Wins: 7Best Picture Nominee: ✓

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Lady Bird▲ Rising

Greta Gerwig throws Saoirse Ronan out of a moving car in the opening minute and never lets the momentum drop from there, mining a Sacramento senior year for pure, specific ache. The mother-daughter arguments over prom dresses and college applications hit harder than most war epics, and the film's generosity toward its 'wrong side of the tracks' heroine changed how coming-of-age stories get told. It's on this list because it's the rare movie that feels like your own diary, no matter whose life you actually lived.

Release Year: 2017Director: Greta GerwigGenre: Comedy-DramaRotten Tomatoes Score: 99 %Box Office (Worldwide): $79,000,000Oscar Wins: 0Best Picture Nominee: ✓

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Hereditary▲ Rising

A decapitated head rolling out of a car window, a mother scuttling across the ceiling like an insect — Ari Aster turned grief into full-blown, screaming nightmare fuel and redefined what 'elevated horror' could mean. Toni Collette's unhinged dinner-table monologue alone should've won her an Oscar, and the film's miniature-dollhouse dread lingers for weeks. It deserves its spot as the movie that proved A24 horror wasn't a gimmick but a genuine artistic movement.

Release Year: 2018Director: Ari AsterGenre: HorrorRotten Tomatoes Score: 90 %Box Office (Worldwide): $80,000,000Oscar Wins: 0Best Picture Nominee: —

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The Lighthouse▲ Rising

Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe, marooned on a rock, descend into flatulent, mermaid-hallucinating, axe-wielding madness, all shot in a suffocating black-and-white square frame that makes the whole thing feel like a fever from 1890. Dafoe's seafaring curses became instant meme fodder, but underneath the insanity is a genuinely unsettling meditation on isolation and masculinity. It earns its place for being maybe the weirdest, most committed swing in the entire A24 catalog.

Release Year: 2019Director: Robert EggersGenre: Horror/DramaRotten Tomatoes Score: 90 %Box Office (Worldwide): $18,000,000Oscar Wins: 0Best Picture Nominee: —

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Uncut Gems▼ Falling

Adam Sandler, sweating through a pawn shop full of stolen opals, places one more bet he swears will fix everything, and the Safdie brothers turn that anxiety into a relentless, propulsive fever dream. The final minutes — that phone call, that gunshot — land like a sucker punch you saw coming and still couldn't brace for. It's here because it's the purest distillation of A24's talent for making chaos feel like art, with Sandler delivering the dramatic performance of his career.

Release Year: 2019Director: Josh & Benny SafdieGenre: Crime/ThrillerRotten Tomatoes Score: 92 %Box Office (Worldwide): $50,000,000Oscar Wins: 0Best Picture Nominee: —

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Past Lives▼ Falling

Two childhood sweethearts reunite decades later in a New York bar, her husband quietly watching from a few feet away, and the film lets the ache of what-could-have-been sit there, unresolved and unbearably real. Celine Song's debut trades melodrama for devastating restraint, making the final wordless walk back to a cab one of the most quietly heartbreaking endings in recent memory. It belongs on this list because it proved A24 could do mature, adult heartbreak just as well as it does genre thrills.

Release Year: 2023Director: Celine SongGenre: Romance/DramaRotten Tomatoes Score: 96 %Box Office (Worldwide): $25,000,000Oscar Wins: 0Best Picture Nominee: ✓

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Ex Machina▼ Falling

Ava's slow, deliberate unzipping of her synthetic skin to reveal wires and light underneath is the moment sci-fi cinema quietly leveled up, turning a three-person chamber drama into a masterclass in dread. Alicia Vikander's uncanny performance and Oscar Isaac's unhinged dance scene made this one of the most quotable, most unsettling meditations on AI ever put to screen. It's on the list as proof A24 could do cerebral, effects-driven sci-fi on a shoestring and still out-think the blockbusters.

Release Year: 2014Director: Alex GarlandGenre: Sci-fiRotten Tomatoes Score: 92 %Box Office (Worldwide): $36,000,000Oscar Wins: 1Best Picture Nominee: —

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