4 Best A24 Movies of All Time, Ranked

A24 doesn’t make movies the way other studios do. They don’t chase franchises or bank on brand recognition. They bet on weird, personal, sometimes deeply uncomfortable films and somehow turn them into cultural events. Since their first release in 2013, A24 has become the most recognizable indie brand in Hollywood. Take Everything Everywhere All at Once as proof: a movie about a laundromat owner hopping between universes that won seven Oscars. The studio’s catalog ranges from devastating dramas to body horror to existential comedies, and the best A24 films share one thing: they trust the audience to keep up.

Ranking 30 of them means drawing some hard lines. Some of these picks will be obvious. Some will start arguments. Good. That’s the A24 spirit. Every single film on this list was produced or distributed by A24. No “A24-adjacent vibes” padding, no “well, it feels like an A24 movie” cheating. The real thing only.

The Peak of the Mountain

1. Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

This is A24’s crowning achievement. The Daniels made a movie about a laundromat owner hopping between universes that somehow became the most emotionally devastating film of the decade. Ke Huy Quan’s comeback alone would’ve been enough, but Michelle Yeoh gives the performance of her career, and the hot dog finger universe is the funniest thing A24 has ever put on screen. Seven Oscars, all deserved. No other A24 release has come close to this combination of ambition, heart, and sheer creative insanity.

2. Moonlight (2016)

Barry Jenkins’ triptych about a Black gay man growing up in Miami is the film that proved A24 could win Best Picture. Three actors play Chiron at different stages of his life, and the transitions between them feel like watching someone’s soul get compressed and hardened by the world. The diner scene in the third act, when Chiron finally lets someone see him again, is one of the most tender moments in modern cinema. Juan teaching young Chiron to swim is the image I think of whenever someone asks what A24 means.

3. Hereditary (2018)

Ari Aster’s debut announced a new voice in horror with the force of a car crash. And I mean that literally, because that scene in the car is still the most shocking thing I’ve seen in a theater. Toni Collette was robbed of an Oscar nomination. Her dinner table breakdown is acting at the edge of human capability. The film plays like a family grief drama for its first half before pulling you into something ancient and terrible. A24 horror at its most uncompromising.

4. Lady Bird (2017)

Greta Gerwig’s directorial debut captures Sacramento and the end of high school with a specificity that makes you homesick for a place you’ve never lived. Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf have the most realistic mother-daughter dynamic ever put on screen. The arguments, the silent car rides, the phone call at the end. Gerwig gets the small details exactly right: the way Lady Bird lies about where she lives, the theatre kid boyfriend, the slow realization that the home you desperately want to leave is the place that made you.

5. Ex Machina (2014)

Alex Garland’s directorial debut asks a simple question and then pulls the floor out from under you. Domhnall Gleeson plays a programmer invited to administer the Turing test on an AI played by Alicia Vikander, and the film slowly reveals that every character is manipulating every other character. The dance scene with Oscar Isaac is weirdly joyful in the middle of all the dread. That final shot of Ava stepping into the crowd? Perfect ending. No notes.

6. The Witch (2015)

Robert Eggers’ debut transported audiences to 1630s New England and refused to blink. A Puritan family unravels after their infant disappears, and the film never quite tells you whether the evil is supernatural or psychological, until it does. The final scene in the woods is one of the most chilling sequences in horror history. Anya Taylor-Joy became a star here, and the film’s commitment to period-accurate dialogue made it divisive on release. It was right. Audiences caught up.

7. Uncut Gems (2019)

The Safdie Brothers turned Adam Sandler into a revelation. Howard Ratner is a Diamond District jeweler with a gambling addiction so severe that watching this movie feels like having a sustained panic attack. The basketball betting sequences are almost unbearably tense. Sandler plays Howard with manic energy and zero vanity, chasing the next score even as every door slams shut around him. That ending is one of the boldest in recent memory. A24 let the Safdies make a film that’s physically exhausting, and it’s brilliant.

8. The Florida Project (2017)

Sean Baker’s portrait of childhood poverty in the shadow of Disney World is devastating precisely because it doesn’t feel like a “poverty movie.” Brooklynn Prince plays six-year-old Moonee with infectious energy, running around the pastel-colored motels of Kissimmee like it’s a playground. Willem Dafoe’s motel manager Bobby is a man trying to hold everything together with duct tape and decency. The final scene breaks the fourth wall and breaks your heart simultaneously.

9. Midsommar (2019)

Ari Aster’s follow-up to Hereditary is a breakup movie disguised as folk horror. Florence Pugh plays a grieving woman who follows her terrible boyfriend to a Swedish commune’s midsummer festival, where things go exactly as wrong as you’d expect. What makes it special is that Aster shoots everything in blinding daylight. There’s nowhere to hide. The maypole dance, the cliff scene, Dani’s final smile. It’s deeply upsetting and somehow cathartic.

10. Room (2015)

Lenny Abrahamson’s adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s novel is told largely from the perspective of a five-year-old boy who has never seen the outside world. Brie Larson won the Oscar for her performance as his captive mother, and she earned every bit of it. The escape sequence is heart-stopping, but the real gut punch comes after: the difficulty of re-entering a world that moved on without you. The scene where Jack sees the sky for the first time is one of those movie moments that rewires something inside you.

The Films That Shaped A24’s Identity

11. Eighth Grade (2018)

Bo Burnham’s debut feature nails the specific agony of being thirteen in the social media age. Elsie Fisher plays Kayla, a shy girl making YouTube videos about confidence she doesn’t actually have. The pool party scene is so painfully awkward that adult audiences have reported wanting to leave the theater. Burnham treats his teenage protagonist with total respect and never punches down. A24 gave a first-time director complete creative freedom, and he delivered one of the best coming-of-age films of the decade.

12. First Reformed (2017)

Paul Schrader returned to form with this story of a Protestant minister consumed by environmental despair. Ethan Hawke is extraordinary as Reverend Toller, a man whose faith is crumbling as he confronts the reality of climate change. The levitation scene is genuinely transcendent. Schrader wrote Taxi Driver and you can feel that same character study DNA here, a lonely man spiraling toward a radical act. A24 released this when bigger studios wouldn’t touch it.

13. The Farewell (2019)

Lulu Wang’s film about a Chinese-American family hiding a terminal diagnosis from their grandmother is funny, sad, and culturally specific in ways that feel universal. Awkwafina delivers a dramatic performance that shocked everyone who only knew her from comedies. The wedding banquet sequence is a masterclass in showing public joy and private grief existing in the same room. Based on Wang’s own family experience, it’s one of A24’s most personal films.

14. Minari (2020)

Lee Isaac Chung’s semi-autobiographical story of a Korean-American family starting a farm in 1980s Arkansas is gentle filmmaking with a steel spine. Yuh-Jung Youn won the Oscar for her performance as the grandmother who arrives from Korea and watches wrestling and drinks Mountain Dew. Steven Yeun is excellent as the father chasing an American dream that keeps slipping sideways. The film never sentimentalizes the family’s struggle. It just watches, carefully and with love.

15. Spring Breakers (2012)

Harmony Korine’s fever dream about college girls who rob a restaurant to fund spring break is the most polarizing film A24 ever released. James Franco’s Alien, with the cornrows and the Scarface references and the “look at my stuff” monologue, is one of the weirdest performances in modern cinema. It’s garish, repetitive, and hypnotic on purpose. Some people think it’s a satire of consumer culture. Some people think it’s garbage. Both readings are valid, and A24 wouldn’t have it any other way.

16. Under the Skin (2013)

Jonathan Glazer’s sci-fi horror film stars Scarlett Johansson as an alien disguised as a woman driving around Scotland, luring men to their deaths. The black void sequences are unlike anything else in cinema. Glazer used hidden cameras to film Johansson interacting with real, unsuspecting people on the streets of Glasgow, and the result blurs fiction and documentary in unnerving ways. Mica Levi’s score sounds like it’s coming from inside your bones. This is A24 at its most experimental and uncompromising.

17. The Lighthouse (2019)

Robert Eggers trapped Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson on a rock in the middle of the ocean and let them go insane. Shot in black and white, in a claustrophobic 1.19:1 aspect ratio, this two-hander is a descent into madness fueled by isolation, alcohol, and seagulls. Dafoe’s monologue cursing Pattinson’s character is Shakespearean in its fury. Pattinson matches him beat for beat. The mermaid, the tentacle, the beans. Nothing about this movie should work, and all of it does.

18. Past Lives (2023)

Celine Song’s debut is a quiet devastation. Two childhood friends from Seoul reconnect decades later in New York, and the film sits with the ache of paths not taken. Greta Lee and Teo Yoo generate an entire history through glances and silences. The final scene on the street, where they part ways and the camera just holds, is one of the most emotionally precise endings in recent memory. A24 gave a first-time director the space to make something this restrained, and it paid off beautifully.

19. Thoroughbreds (2018)

Two wealthy Connecticut teenagers, one who feels nothing and one who feels too much, decide to murder a stepfather. Olivia Cooke and Anya Taylor-Joy have razor-sharp chemistry, and the late Anton Yelchin is heartbreaking in one of his final roles. Cory Finley’s debut is lean, mean, and darkly funny. The sound design alone is worth the price of admission, those treadmill footsteps building dread out of nothing. This is the kind of small, vicious film A24 does better than anyone.

20. Beau Is Afraid (2023)

Look, this movie is a mess. A glorious, three-hour, anxiety-fueled mess. Ari Aster followed up Hereditary and Midsommar with a surreal odyssey about a man trying to get home after learning of his mother’s death. It’s not for everyone. Whole sections don’t work. But when it clicks, like the animated sequence or Nathan Lane’s entire suburban nightmare performance, it’s unlike anything else. A24 at its most indulgent, for better and worse. They let Aster spend $35 million on a Joaquin Phoenix anxiety spiral. That’s trust.

The Ones That Deserve More Attention

21. You Were Never Really Here (2017)

Lynne Ramsay stripped the vigilante thriller down to its bones. Joaquin Phoenix barely speaks, but every frame radiates trauma and violence. The hammer scenes are brutal, and Ramsay’s refusal to show the actual violence makes it worse. Your imagination fills in the gaps. It’s only 89 minutes and it haunts you for days. A24 gave Ramsay the freedom to make an anti-action movie, and she delivered something that exposes how hollow most revenge films really are.

22. TÁR (2022)

Todd Field’s return to filmmaking after a sixteen-year absence gave Cate Blanchett the role of her career. Lydia Tár is a world-renowned conductor whose carefully constructed life begins collapsing around her. Blanchett makes Tár fascinating and repellent in equal measure. The rehearsal scenes feel lived-in and authentic, and Field’s refusal to spell out exactly what happened lets the audience become complicit in the judgment. Metacritic’s highest-rated film of 2022 for a reason.

23. The Spectacular Now (2013)

James Ponsoldt’s high school romance doesn’t play like a typical teen movie. Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley have natural, unforced chemistry, and the film doesn’t flinch from Teller’s character’s alcoholism. The prom scene sidesteps every cliché you expect. It’s one of A24’s earliest releases and it set the template for the kind of grounded, character-driven storytelling the studio would become known for.

24. A Ghost Story (2017)

David Lowery put Casey Affleck under a bedsheet and made one of the most profound films about time and grief I’ve ever seen. The pie-eating scene goes on forever, and that’s the point. Rooney Mara consuming an entire pie while processing loss is unbearable and completely earned. The film spans centuries in 92 minutes and makes you feel every one of them. A24 released a movie where the lead actor is literally a sheet with eyeholes. Only they would.

25. The Lobster (2015)

Yorgos Lanthimos’ dystopian romance imagines a world where single people are sent to a hotel and given 45 days to find a partner or be turned into an animal. Colin Farrell plays a man who chooses a lobster as his potential transformation, and the deadpan absurdity never lets up. The violence is sudden and the humor is bone-dry. Lanthimos went on to make The Favourite and Poor Things with A24 connections, but this is the one that introduced American audiences to his particular brand of discomfort.

26. 20th Century Women (2016)

Mike Mills’ semi-autobiographical film about a single mother raising her teenage son in 1979 Santa Barbara is warm without being sentimental. Annette Bening is phenomenal as Dorothea, a woman trying to understand a generation she didn’t grow up in. Greta Gerwig and Elle Fanning play the younger women enlisted to help raise the boy, and the film’s use of real documentary footage and direct-to-camera addresses gives it a texture most period pieces lack.

27. The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)

Yorgos Lanthimos again, this time making a film that plays like a Greek tragedy transplanted to suburban Cincinnati. Colin Farrell is a surgeon whose family starts getting mysteriously sick after he befriends a teenage boy. The flat delivery and sterile cinematography create a mood of inescapable dread. Nicole Kidman’s audition scene is one of the most disturbing things Lanthimos has ever staged, and that’s saying something.

28. Swiss Army Man (2016)

The Daniels’ feature debut, before Everything Everywhere All at Once, is the movie where Daniel Radcliffe plays a flatulent corpse. Paul Dano is a stranded man who uses Radcliffe’s body as a multitool. It sounds like a joke, and for the first twenty minutes it basically is. Then it sneaks up on you with genuine emotion about loneliness, shame, and what it means to be alive. A24 distributed a movie about a farting dead body that made people cry. That’s the studio’s entire mission statement.

29. The Disaster Artist (2017)

James Franco directed and starred as Tommy Wiseau in this making-of story about The Room, widely considered one of the worst movies ever made. Franco’s Wiseau impression is uncanny, and the film finds real pathos in Wiseau’s desperate need to be taken seriously as an artist. Dave Franco plays Greg Sestero, and the brothers’ chemistry anchors the comedy with something genuinely moving. A24 released a film celebrating failure as its own form of artistic expression.

30. Good Time (2017)

The Safdie Brothers’ frantic thriller follows Robert Pattinson’s Connie as he spirals through one catastrophic night in New York trying to bail his brother out of jail. Every decision Connie makes is worse than the last, and Pattinson plays him with a desperate, sweaty charisma that’s impossible to look away from. The neon-soaked cinematography and Oneohtrix Point Never’s synth score turn Queens into a fever dream. This was the film that made people realize Pattinson was a serious actor, years before The Batman. A24 and the Safdies proved that independent cinema could be as visceral and propulsive as any studio action film.

A24’s catalog runs deep enough that leaving films off this list was genuinely painful. The Florida Project’s influence on how we tell stories about poverty, Moonlight’s quiet revolution in representation, Everything Everywhere’s proof that a mid-budget original film can dominate the Oscars. These aren’t accidents. They’re the result of a studio that consistently bets on filmmakers with singular visions and then gets out of the way.

If you want to keep exploring, start with the Ari Aster trilogy: Hereditary, Midsommar, and Beau Is Afraid. Go through the Eggers run with The Witch and The Lighthouse. Check out the Safdie Brothers’ one-two punch of Good Time and Uncut Gems. And if you somehow still haven’t seen Everything Everywhere All at Once yet, fix that tonight. For more great picks from the A24 world and beyond, browse You Were Never Really Here or Thoroughbreds on our site, and check out our full collection to find your next watch.