Oof, that was a bumpy one. 2024 was the year when, frankly, I often couldn’t summon the energy to drag myself to the cinema, hence some omissions on this list that could be described as “glaring”.

Nope, you won’t find Furiosa, Wicked, Gladiator II, Civil War, Anora or Inside Out 2 ranked here, while several of the year’s other awards frontrunners are also absent.

The question is, does that make me a bad person?

You decide, as we recount the films I did make time to watch this year, including those lucky enough to win my ever-coveted Cool Stuff Awards, which are a lot like the Oscars, except not so easily bought.

That’s right, I’m feeling extra provocative this year. I’ve even slipped in a couple of films that weren’t even released in the UK in 2024. Do you know why? Because I make the fucking rules! AND I WILL NEVER DIE!

Anyway, let’s crack on with this year’s countdown.

^{Ranked Worst to Best: 2023 Movies
Ranked Worst to Best: 2022 Movies
Ranked Worst to Best: 2021 Movies
Ranked Worst to Best: 2019 Movies
Ranked Worst to Best: 2018 Movies
Top Ten Movies of 2017}

The Worst

27. Hellboy: The Crooked Man

Worst Picture
Worst Lead Performance: Jack Kesy
Worst Supporting Performance: Leah McNamara
Worst Screenplay: Christopher Golden, Mike Mignola and Brian Taylor

I was so ready to like this movie. You may recall that 2019’s Hellboy, starring David Harbour, actually won the Valerian Prize for Most Underrated Film that year, despite being a considerable downgrade on Guillermo del Toro’s preceding duology. Clearly, I don’t mind a bit of silly genre fun.

Alas, Hellboy: The Crooked Man is one of the most joyless and inept films that I have ever seen. I don’t particularly mind that it was clearly made on the cheap – a big budget hardly guarantees success – but the poor acting, dull setting and laughable script is what kills this one for me.

Hellboy (2019) may have lacked del Toro’s elegance, but at least it had some eccentric performances from Harbour, Milla Jovovich and Ian McShane. In contrast, star Jack Kesy is dreadfully dull, with no one around him capable of picking up the slack.

Hailing from Ireland and England respectively, Leah McNamara and Hannah Margetson deliver two of the most offensively bad West Virginia accents ever put to screen. It’s a wonder that Kesy and Jefferson White, the only Americans in the main cast, got through this with a straight face.

To be fair, they’re shackled to some awful dialogue, some of which came from Hellboy creator Mike Mignola himself. Having taken a behind-the-scenes role in this monstrosity, he has certainly lost any right to complain about either of the earlier adaptations, as he is wont to do.

26. Immaculate

Worst Director: Michael Mohan
Worst Producer: Sydney Sweeney

Anyone who has grown overly cynical about the ‘elevated horror’ trend championed by A24 need only look at Immaculate for proof that it’s genuinely difficult to do well.

Sydney Sweeney earned some kudos as a producer after her mediocre romcom Anyone But You snowballed into a major box office success, but the one-two punch of Madame Web and Immaculate raises serious questions about her alleged business savvy.

I can’t speak for the supposedly dreadful Spider-Man spin-off, but in the latter case, we have a surprisingly dull convent horror built around a flat lead performance and a bland occult conspiracy (those three words should never belong in the same sentence).

Sweeney was clearly looking for the kind of acclaim that Toni Collette, Florence Pugh and Sophie Wilde have received in their own dabbles with atmospheric horror, but alas, Immaculate elicited little more than repeated eye rolls from myself – and many others.

Director Michael Mohan is just as reliant on pale imitation as his producer and star.

25. Longlegs

Most Overrated Film

I’m old enough to remember the first time that Maika Monroe’s career seemed on the cusp of taking off. After acclaimed turns in genre flicks The Guest and It Follows, both released in 2014, I was a vocal fan who couldn’t wait to see her make the leap to mainstream blockbusters.

Then she did just that, and it seemed to kill her career for a minute there (thanks, Independence Day: Resurgence). So, while I’m glad to see Monroe finally getting some attention once again, I can’t deny that I found Longlegs to be a disappointing slog.

So much has been said about this film’s creepy aura, but what is it really in service to? The story is daft and poorly devised, lead character Lee Harker (Monroe) is dull as dishwater and Nicolas Cage’s titular serial killer is frustratingly underbaked.

I hope you’re hungry for nothing, because that’s what you’re getting here.

24. Love Lies Bleeding

Here’s another one that I expected to like a lot more than I did. Love Lies Bleeding falls down primarily due to its central romance, which wears out its welcome about halfway through the film.

I’m quite happy for a crime thriller to follow flawed or morally questionable characters, but in this case, some degree of sympathy for Lou (Kristen Stewart) and Jackie (Katy O’Brian) should have been protected to keep their love story afloat.

In the end, I didn’t really care what happened to them or anyone else in this profoundly miserable story, which also fails to earn its surreal climactic sequence.

The scene with the bodybuilding competition was cool, though, in a nightmarish fever dream sort of way. And Ed Harris ate a bug, which gave the internet something to talk about for a few minutes.

23. Abigail

Writing this list I realise that I spent a large portion of 2024 feeling disappointed – and movies can account for at least 30 percent of that.

Given that it reunites the team behind Scream (2022) and its sequel, I had thought that Abigail might at least be some dumb fun in the same vein as Cocaine Bear.

Instead, here we have a schlocky horror B-movie that even I struggled to squeeze much enjoyment out of – and that really is saying something (I gave Saw IV a higher Letterboxd rating than Past Lives).

Most striking of all is how Abigail wastes a genuinely exciting ensemble cast (featuring Melissa Barrera, Dan Stevens, Giancarlo Esposito and the late Angus Cloud), while somehow rendering an insanely gory vampire hunt so plainly boring.

After my similarly deflated reaction to M3gan last year, I can only conclude that unhinged dancing killer girls are just not my jam, which is probably a good thing to be honest.

Passing Grades

22. The Fall Guy

I don’t know why I thought this was going to be good.

C-

21. Poor Things

Didn’t hit for me, but I’m glad you all enjoyed yourselves.

C

20. Nosferatu

He’s a demonic property tycoon and sex pest? Now here’s your Trump biopic!

C

19. Monkey Man

Best Stunt Work

This would also win Best Use of Dev Patel’s Teeth, if such a category existed.
(If you know, you know.)

C

18. Will & Harper

Nice idea.

C+

17. Deadpool & Wolverine

Will age like milk, but it was pretty fun on the first go around.

C+

16. The Apprentice

This was kind of like a very, very, very classy SNL sketch.

C+

15. Late Night with the Devil

Cool little movie, comical number of logos at the start.

B

14. The Zone of Interest

With huge respect to Jonathan Glazer.

B+

13. American Fiction

The ending kinda sucks, but there’s a lot to like here.

B+

12. A Real Pain

I think I’m bored of what Kieran Culkin does.

B+

11. Alien: Romulus

Sequel needs more Prometheus connections and less ghoulish deepfakes.

B+

The Good

10. Kneecap

That Irish-language hip hop group Kneecap actually pulled off starring in their own biopic, before they’d even become particularly mainstream to boot, is an extraordinary achievement. Of course, it probably helps that this story plays fast and loose with the facts, allowing events to get even more chaotic and debauched than boring reality would probably allow.

Despite not being a strictly “true story”, Kneecap (the film) does feel like a brilliantly honest summation of the rebellious ethos and outrageous attitude of Kneecap (the band). Real-life members Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, Naoise Ó Caireallain and J.J. Ó Dochartaigh carry the film effortlessly, despite never acting for the screen before, making this debut all the more impressive.

9. Smile 2

Unsung Hero: Naomi Scott

Although I enjoyed the first Smile – it placed 12th out of 25 on my 2022 round-up list – my expectations were relatively low for this sequel. Unfortunately, even as a horror fan, I have to admit that most ongoing franchises in the genre have a tendency to suffer from diminishing returns.

It was truly delightful, then, that Smile 2 managed to dodge this fate entirely, bringing us another chilling tale of an unfortunate individual locked in nightmarish psychological warfare with a demonic entity. Naomi Scott brings great pathos to the role of Skye Riley, a pop star with a troubled past, who is just trying to get her life and career back on track when the curse latches onto her soul.

Writer-director Parker Finn utilises jump scares as one element of his toolkit, but importantly, they aren’t the only trick up his sleeve. Across a variety of chilling sequences, he leaves the viewer as disoriented as his tortured protagonist. Here’s hoping the rumoured third entry can keep to this trajectory.

8. Hit Man

I’m not entirely sure why Glen Powell has had so little recognition at this year’s awards season as comedy-thriller Hit Man brought us easily one of the most entertaining male lead performances of the year. Alas, he narrowly lost out on a Cool Stuff Award due to another underrated flick that I wanted to give some flowers, but rest assured he was at least in contention.

Anyway, I watched Hit Man on a plane – for context, a place where I usually feel at my most restless, grumpy and uncomfortable – and it really made those two hours of my journey fly by (no pun intended). This is just such a joyful and charming little story, with Powell giving his all and generating great chemistry with his co-star, Andor’s Adria Arjona.

If you’re looking for a nice time, a hug in a mug even, this really should be on your watch list.

7. Dìdi (弟弟)

Recency bias may be a factor in this and the next entry, both of which I caught up on over Christmas, but at this present moment I feel they are thoroughly deserving of their high rankings on this list.

In the case of Dìdi (弟弟), this coming-of-age story follows 13-year-old Chris Wang (played by Izaac Wang) through the summer of 2008, as he seeks acceptance among his peers by, first, flirting with a classmate and, later, by befriending some older skaters he believes might bring some social capital.

Certainly, aspects of this story are specific to the Taiwanese-American experience – not least, the casual racism that chips away at Chris, causing him to act out against his loving mother, Chungsing (played by Twin Peaks star Joan Chen) – but others will be painfully familiar to any child of the era.

It’s an exciting feature debut for writer-director Sean Wang, boasting knockout performances from both Chen and his promising young star. As a child of the noughties, I also appreciated how Dìdi (弟弟) authentically resurrected the now-archaic social media of the decade in a nostalgic-yet-anxiety-inducing way.

6. Thelma

Best Lead Actress: June Squibb

Another underrated indie flick deserving of your attention is Thelma.

This comedy-drama stars 95-year-old Academy Award nominee June Squibb in the title role, playing a grandmother conned by a telephone scam that tricks her into parting with a sizeable chunk of her life savings. The devastating fraud causes her family to worry about whether she’s still capable of living independently, which makes her all the more determined to prove them wrong.

Thelma teams up with her old friend, Ben (Richard Roundtree), for an odyssey to reclaim what was stolen from her, which doesn’t avoid emotionally charged conversations about ageing, cognitive and physical decline, loneliness and mortality. Like it or not, these are essential inclusions to ensure the story is grounded in the world we know, as opposed to being a work of rose-tinted fantasy.

What Thelma is not, however, is an excessively bleak portrayal of what awaits those of us lucky enough to reach old age. You’ll find plenty of laughs in this heartwarming feature, that champions living later life to the fullest one possibly can; a mantra exemplified in star Squibb (Best Lead Actress), who gives one of her finest performances here alongside on-screen grandson Fred Hechinger.

The Best

5. Dune: Part Two

Having been slightly underwhelmed by Denis Villeneuve’s first Dune flick, which sped through hundreds of pages worth of material at a breakneck pace, I didn’t know what to expect from this follow-up. Fortunately, with the heaviest world-building out of the way and a shorter section of the novel to adapt, Dune: Part Two has a lot more time to chew on the dense themes in Frank Herbert’s sci-fi saga.

I’ve often said that Timothée Chalamet doesn’t have much range, playing tortured posh boys in almost every film he’s in – and yes, Paul Atreides certainly fell into that category in the first Dune. But by the end of this sequel, I truly felt that the character was evolving into something more unique and exciting, with Chalamet powerfully conveying his fraudulent and disquieting messiah complex.

Villeneuve does another bang up job capturing the majesty and scale of the story. I’m lucky enough to have seen both Dune and Dune: Part Two in IMAX – and both were a lovely evening out to the pictures. Still, I decided to save my Best Director award for another worthy winner (don’t worry, Villeneuve already took one home in 2021).

4. Femme

Valerian Prize for Most Underrated Film
Best Lead Actor: Nathan Stewart-Jarrett

Femme technically represents a minor breach of Cool Stuff Awards rules, as it actually released in UK cinemas in December 2023. However, given that it was a limited release (52 cinemas) that few people attended (on average, making less than £250 per weekend per venue), I’m going to accept February’s Netflix drop as the film’s “general release”.

Really, I just want an excuse to sing its praises because this one had me shook.

Trigger warning: Femme begins by depicting a violent homophobic attack on a drag queen by a group of thuggish men. It’s tough to watch. However, it feels earned in the context of what comes next, which is an uncomfortable, disturbing yet utterly exhilarating revenge plot, where victim Jules (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) infiltrates the life of one of his attackers, Preston (George MacKay).

The two of them cross paths once more at a gay sauna, but Preston fails to recognise Jules out of his elaborate drag attire. It isn’t long before they become tangled in a twisted relationship, which takes several surprising turns on the way to an absolutely devastating crescendo. Put simply, Femme is a movie which made my nerves stand on edge.

Props to writer-directors Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping, plus stars Stewart-Jarrett (Best Lead Actor) and MacKay for their impeccable work bringing the erotic thriller back from the dead, with a gripping contemporary twist.

3. Challengers

Best Supporting Actor: Josh O’Connor
Best Score: Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross

Next up, an erotic thriller of a different kind, but still arguably deserving of the label. Luca Guadagnino is no beau of mine (I hated Call Me By Your Name long before Armie Hammer got cancelled), but he really served up a winner with Challengers – is that a good play on words? I know nothing about tennis.

But I suppose that’s the point: knowledge of the sport is strictly optional when it comes to enjoying this layered relationship drama. After all, Challengers is really just about the messy, complex and storied dynamic between its core trio of horny athletes: Tashi (Zendaya), Art (Mike Faist) and Patrick (Josh O’Connor) – to the extent that there are essentially no other characters in the film!

The sexual politics of Challengers are truly fascinating to watch play out, but they are undeniably heightened by the irresistibly slick style that just oozes out of the frame. Guadagnino and his regular cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom work magic to capture every telling glance and micro expression of the stellar cast, while also springing to action in the climactic sequence.

But it’s the *banging* soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross that ties the whole thing together in a beautiful package, living in my head for much of the past year – and I suspect, for many more to come.

2. The Substance

Best Director: Coralie Fargeat
Best Supporting Actress: Margaret Qualley
Best Motion Capture/Voice/Prosthetic Performance: Demi Moore & Margaret Qualley

A couple of years ago, I watched David Cronenberg’s The Fly for the first time and found myself fascinated by its sad, disturbing and outrageously gross form of body horror. Alas, I hadn’t come across many other titles in the subgenre that particularly interested me – until The Substance came out and more or less broke my brain for the final few months of 2024.

I saw this movie in the cinema twice (a rarity for me in this day and age) and both times I was awestruck by just how unabashedly deranged it gets. The story of Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) is truly a fable for our times, targeting themes including ageism, addiction and mortality with an admittedly broad brush.

But I don’t mind if a film isn’t subtle in its messaging, as long as that’s an intentional choice (as it clearly is here). That’s why I gave Don’t Look Up my Best Picture prize in 2021, and it’s why I loved The Substance even more. Understated has its place, but sometimes a sledgehammer is the best tool for the job!

Such was the case with writer-director Coralie Fargeat’s triumphant feature, which delivered on jaw-dropping set pieces and brought us the best of two sensational leading ladies in Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley. Besides her stellar work on the film itself, Fargeat is also deserving of her Best Director win for believing in The Substance enough to resist demands by the studio to scale back her vision.

I feel I should address giving Qualley one of the main four acting awards, but not Moore – a move I fear could be interpreted as mirroring the plot of the film. Ultimately, I was too charmed by June Squibb’s turn in Thelma not to give her Lead Actress; hopefully my awarding of the prize to a 95-year-old is evidence enough that Moore’s age wasn’t what lost her the role.

In another act of reconciliation, I’ve tweaked the existing Voice & Motion Capture category to also include prosthetic-dependent performances – recognising Moore’s work as a deteriorating Elisabeth and Qualley’s unrecognisable role in the film’s closing section. It has to be seen to be believed.

1. All of Us Strangers

Best Picture
Best Screenplay: Andrew Haigh

I’m not sure if a film has ever had such a devastating effect on me as All of Us Strangers. While it didn’t make me sob quite as much as my first viewing of The Shape of Water (2018’s Best Picture), it essentially knocked me out in the immediate aftermath and stayed with me for several days.

This incredibly moving story of two men in a quiet London tower block, who find solace and belonging in each other after periods of great isolation, is something that I truly believe could break anyone. I would hope we’re at a point in history where the fact that it’s about a gay romance wouldn’t put anyone off watching it, but I suspect that isn’t the case.

That’s their mistake to make, though, and a foolish one too. While elements of this story are specific to the LGBTQ+ experience, it will also prove profound to anyone who has experienced loss, loneliness, self-doubt and, of course, love. It’s just so powerfully human, depicting the euphoric highs and crushing lows that life inevitably brings with an astounding elegance.

Andrew Haigh’s writing and directing is to be applauded, as are the performances from Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Claire Foy and Jamie Bell, any of which would be Cool Stuff Award-worthy in a less competitive year. I guess they’ll just have to settle for their stinky BAFTA, BIFA and Golden Globe nominations instead. Poor things.