Stopmotion and 4 Other Criminally Overlooked Horror Movies of 2024 You Missed
A frightening anthology, a South African trash horror and a French one-take.
2024 was such a prolific year for horror films that some movies simply got lost in the shuffle: failed to draw enough theatrical audiences, or were eclipsed by bigger premieres.
1. V/H/S/Beyond, 2024
V/H/S/Beyond is the seventh movie in the franchise, and the authors' grip is not loosening at all. This time, the collection of video horror has gone completely into the realm of science fiction, focusing on the UFO phenomenon.
The short stories are varied and include a zombie shooter, a nightmare on the set of an Indian movie, an encounter with taxidermist maniacs, and two episodes about an alien invasion.
2. Lovely, Dark, and Deep, 2024
Lovely, Dark, and Deep offers no innovations – this is a story about the mysteries of forests and missing people, but Teresa Sutherland's film has its own charm. There are picturesque vistas, and the motif of overcoming childhood traumas.
In the role of a ranger investigating the mystical disappearance of people, Georgina Campbell, whom many remember from the sensational horror Barbarian. Teresa Sutherland's film confidently comments on one of the basic motives of horror – man's fear of the unknown in a Lovecraftian style.
3. Street Trash, 2024
South Africans have made a crazy horror movie about homeless people who hatch a plan to take revenge on the criminal elite. After all, the local authorities want to deal with the poor population of Cape Town by pumping them with a deadly serum.
Street Trash is both a remake and a sequel to the 1987 horror film of the same name, a cult classic in certain circles and familiar to hardcore fans of the genre.
Against the backdrop of the film's general recklessness, the authors let their hair down: people's bodies are pumped full of deadly chemicals, covered in creepy blisters, and burst.
4. Stopmotion, 2024
Stopmotion tells the story of an animator's ordeal as she creates the puppet movie of her dreams. The process is accompanied by the unstable behavior of her artist mother, surreal visions, and the eerie fusion of fiction and truth.
The director of the film, Robert Morgan, is a master of animation who brings ingenuity to his feature-length films, instilling horror. The film shows all the complexities of the creative process that the animator knows firsthand.
5. MadS, 2024
Romain's day doesn't go as planned. A bandaged woman jumps into the car, infects him with blood and turns him into a living dead man. Romain feels the first symptoms at a party.
His friends, including his girlfriend Anais, are in danger. Armed liquidators drive around the area, trying to contain the spread of the virus and declare a hunt for the infected.
MadS is a wild horror experiment, shot entirely in one take. It's surprising that David Moreau's movie didn't get much attention – it's almost Climax by Gaspar Noe: here, young people go crazy, and the apocalypse rhymes with a destructive love triangle.