When thinking about the many many things that thrilled, scared, and deeply affected me in 2024, a common thread running through them is a lack of subtlety and restraint. They, and the world in general, have shouted loud and clear that life is too short for futzing about with subtext and side-glances and passive-aggressive digs at established structures and conventions. Perhaps those on the wrong side of the line have always known this, or at least got wise to this fact much earlier, but the creators and defenders of art and love and true freedom – the freedom to be true to oneself and not suffer bullshit – internalized this in 2024 as well. More than anything, it feels like 2024, for better or worse and at least culturally, really went for it.* And these are some things that, I believe, went for it the most. Movie-wise, especially but not exclusively, 2024 seemed to be intent on topping itself.

I Saw The TV Glow dir. Jane Schoenbrun

Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw The TV Glow became the 2024 movie I loved almost the most but found so deeply affecting and challenging that I found it difficult to recommend. How do you tell someone to watch a movie that fucked you up, brain-wise, for almost a week after walking out of the theatre? In turns meditative and intense, the story of Justice Smith’s Owen and Bridgette Lundy-Paine’s Maddy haunted my thoughts and dreams for most of the year. 

Longlegs dir. Osgood Perkins

When I saw Longlegs over the summer, I thought that was the movie of 2024 for me. It zeroed in on so many of my horror movie triggers – slow zooms into still images, faces (like that of Nic Cage’s titular character) that seem just slightly removed from reality, and fonts with too little kerning as appears on the Longlegs poster and marketing materials, to name a few – that it felt like it was made just for me. I’ve always vibed with Oz Perkins, from his The Blackcoat’s Daughter (2015)  to his I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives In the House (2016), to Gretel and Hansel (2020) but Longlegs is a different thing. It’s a police procedural that dispenses with most of the mystery that you might expect to carry such a story, instead relying on powerful performances by Maika Monroe, Blair Underwood, Alicia Witt, and of course Nic Cage. Longlegs was very much on track to be my horror film of the year. That is, until…

Cuckoo dir. Tilman Singer

Cuckoo, the second feature from Tilman Singer whose debut feature Luz (2019) was a wonderful pipe bomb into the horror scene, disoriented me so completely and equally to Longlegs, but in a delightfully distinct way. Buoyed by the incredible Hunter Schafer and the tooty flute-playing Dan Stevens, Singer’s film gaslit me and made me feel like I was the one with the screws loose (jury’s still out on that), imagining that the constantly-shifting antagonists that pursue Schafer’s Gretchen were after me too. This one sat with me for the remainder of the summer, and going into fall I didn’t think much of anything would out-scare and out-squirm it. But then…

The Substance dir. Coralie Fargeat

Okay, I’ve been putting these in the order in which I saw them, but you have to know that The Substance is waaaaaay at the top of this list for 2024. I saw a lot of great horror movies this year, but nothing left me so shaken, so immobile in stunned silence, than Coralie Fargeat’s sophomore feature did when I saw it, almost by chance, at The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). I tried and tried to get a ticket to this one when it was first announced for the Festival, but not only were all available screenings quickly snapped up, but their seats began to appear on the open market for hundreds of dollars. And this is a movie that was set to go into wide release mere days after the Festival was over! Seeing opportunity and jumping at the chance, TIFF added a few more screenings that I managed to get into and it ruined me -in the best way – for movies for the rest of the Festival and the year. Nothing came close. Real body horror displays a real appreciation for the body – both it’s form and it’s function – even as it tears it apart and transforms it. Unlike torture films which are just concerned about the desecration part. The Substance is perhaps my new favourite ‘comfort’ body horror (we’ve all got one of those, right?) and goes right on the shelf next to Inside (2007), the Cronenbergs, and Julia Ducournau’s Raw (2016) and Titane (2021). You can read my review, which went live within hours of my seeing the film, but my reverence for Ms. Moore, Ms. Qualley, and even Mr Quaid’s** performances that went for it the most in 2024 has only grown since then. From the moment that chicken leg came out of you-know-where, I knew that The Substance would be a movie I’ll be going back to again and again.

Nosferatu dir. Robert Eggers

Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu reveled in small details and provided a sumptuous, fresh take on the 1922 Murnau adaptation of Bram Stoker’s story more than a century later. It was one of my most anticipated of the year and while it didn’t hit quite like The Substance for me, it built an engrossing, gorgeous world to get lost in all over again. And like any great remake, it inspired me to revisit the prior adaptations and remind myself why I loved those too. Bill Skarsgard earns a spot on the Orlok shelf with Schrek, Kinski, whomever modeled for the Count Chocula box, and Gary Oldman with a beautiful but still horrifying take on the iconic – and iconically mustachioed – monster. Seeing Nosferatu in IMAX gave the film fresh life (and death) and immersed me in the world of Stoker’s tale in unexpected ways. It was a truly, truly Draculicious way to close out the year for me.

Timeless Toni Storm (All Elite Wrestling)

This year in pro wrestling was dominated by outstanding matches from some of the best to ever do it, but there was one character that stood out over all the rest to me and that’s the classic-Hollywood-inspired Timeless Toni Storm. Riffing on everything from Sunset Boulevard to All About Eve to Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill! Storm was almost always portrayed with a monochrome filter whenever she was onscreen and dominated AEW in 2024. Toni would cut wildly unhinged promos, threatening to give her opponent a “labiaplasty with [her] fist” and then pelting the interviewer with a thrown shoe. Before being tragically betrayed by her protege Mariah May, left bloody and without her world title, she dominated the ring for the better part of the year and crafted and executed one of the best wrestling gimmicks I’ve ever seen. As of this writing, she’s back and suffering from a case of amnesia that has made her forget the past three years, and thinks she has just debuted as a pro wrestler. Wrestling is better than the things you like.

Arcane Season 2 (Netflix)

Three years after the first season, Netflix’s Arcane series returned for a second and expanded the scope and world of Piltover in a brilliant way, while retaining what is for my money the best animation onscreen (big or small) this year. It added more earwormy music and expanded the amount and intricacy of its musical interludes, and brought all of our favourite Season 1 characters*** back together. Despite the fact that I’ve never played even a moment of League of Legends, the game on which Arcane is based, it drew me in and had me watching episodes again and again. Closing the loop, sort of, on the tale of Vi, Jinx, Jayce, Viktor, and all the rest, it was one of those pesky things that keeps me only hovering, but never actually pressing, that ‘cancel account’ button as Netflix dives headfirst into enshittification.

Dungeon Meshi/Delicious In Dungeon (Netflix)

And on that note, another Netflix thing! I’m not a huge watcher of anime, but Studio Trigger’s Delicious in Dungeon caught both my kids and I by complete surprise. Based on what Carol says is a wonderful manga and it appears to be adapted faithfully here, Delicious in Dungeon is a considered look at food and friendship. The adventures of Laios, Marcille, Senshi, Chilchuck, and all those delicious monsters in that dungeon was one of the highlights of my year, and I never wanted it to end. As Carol says, it “captures some of the squicksomeness of eating and the particular humor and horror of having to eat gross things” and really made me think about whether I could, or would, eat a Huge Scorpion.

Peaks and valleys, though.  You can’t truly appreciate the great stuff without being able to contrast it with things that just plain didn’t work for you, and for me the low points of the year came from two filmmakers that I have always held in pretty high regard. In both Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis and Alex Garland’s Civil War, I find two filmmakers that I respect a whole lot, putting whole lot of money and craftsmanship into projects whose messages, such that they are, ultimately get lost in their own hubris. Both well-made and generally well-acted (though Megalopolis is arguable) but lacking much of any real, ahem, substance, they both fell flatter than any other film I saw this year. 

In at least the case with Civil War, it felt like a film that didn’t ‘go for it’ hard enough, unlike the films I loved the most this year, and left me feeling nothing. This ‘apolitical political thriller’ looks great, and provided some very tense moments, but I struggled a lot with the story and the premise, and grew to dislike it more and more as I thought about it. It’s a movie that deeply wants you to care about it’s main characters, but seems to undercut that instinct at every turn. For a project from a director in Alex Garland whose work I’ve loved almost universally, this was a bit of a jarring disappointment in a year where a tense and poignant political film layered in meaning would’ve been extremely welcome.

I had fairly low expectations of Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis when it played TIFF this year, and the ostentatious, star-studded project certainly ‘went for it.’ But Megalopolis ultimately felt like a mess of a film that was, and testimonials from cast and crew seem to back this up, completely unfocused and largely misguided. They even screwed up the marketing campaign for the film in a uniquely 2024, AI-tinged way. This Ancient Rome-by-way-of-New York story and it’s most famous and decorated director displaying the kind of hubris that really pays off when it’s good, just didn’t. There’s really no reason why anyone expected that Shakespeare crossed with Philosophy 101 crossed with the Marvel universe while also featuring a live performer in the theatre uttering a single line to the screen would be a mega-hit if not for Coppola’s previous successes. I wanted so much for this to work, not least because introducing live elements into the movie theatre experience might actually get people to stop using their phones so much in those theatres. Alas.

2024 featured some crushing losses and deep disappointments, it’s true. A campaign year in the United States that opened the door to the worst possible result, an ongoing genocide, and the seemingly total erosion of media literacy and, perhaps, literacy in general. But for me, it was art that pulled me out of 2024’s many funks. Cinema, television, and pro wrestling were the places I ran for cover as the world started to wear thin. And the things I’ve mentioned here barely scratches the surface. There’s the wonderful Emilia Perez, Stopmotion, Dune: Part 2, Only Murders In The Building, and probably ten other things that I’ll think of at the very moment I hit Publish on this piece. There was so much to love and to remind us that art and artists will probably be our last refuge as the other things fail us. I hope that you also found your things of 2024, and that they reminded you, like they did me, to just throw caution to the wind and go for it. Whatever that means to you.

*I suppose that a lot of the world did so politically too, but with significantly less entertaining and enjoyable results. 
**Playing largely the same asshole in the auditorium over in Reagan as well.

***Fingers crossed that none of your favourites were the ones that died!

Sachin Hingoo’s 2024 New Years Resolution is to find one of those tooty flutes.