Top 10 Most Surprising 2024 Movies

Top 10 Most Surprising 2024 Movies

2024 is almost over, which means it’s time to look back at 2024 movies. So today I’m going to be sharing my picks for the 10 most surprising movies of the year. Let’s get started!

10. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice: As a point of reference I hadn’t seen the original movie until three weeks before this movie came out. The trailers for the movie were fine, I didn’t think much of them. But I was curious to see what this movie was going to be. We’ve gotten a lot of legacy sequels over the last several years. Some of them have been very good, some of them haven’t been good. I wasn’t sure how a legacy sequel to Beetlejuice would work 36 years later. The early buzz for the movie coming out of the Venice film festival was very good. I was curious to check it out and see if Tim Burton still had that magic inside of him. I watched the movie with a packed crowd and I dug the movie. It’s a solid legacy sequel. Burton was able to capture the magic of what made the original work so well. In an era where studios are going for CGI. And figuring out how they can use CGI to make things feel bigger. Burton goes back to the practical style and I think it works. Michael Keaton hasn’t skipped a beat; he still captures the right energy and charisma that Beetlejuice needs. Despite this movie coming out 36 years later, it doesn’t feel like 36 years have passed when you look at this performance. Jenna Ortega fits this franchise really well with her energy. She’s been described as a modern day Winona Ryder. Catherine O’Hara is giving a scene stealing performance. This isn't one of my favorite movies of the year. I think it has some problems with the storytelling. But overall, I thought this was a solid movie that was better than the marketing. 

9. Twisters: Summer 2024 was clearly the summer of Glen Powell. He had two hit movies come out this year. The better of the two for me was Twisters. This is one that I thought the trailers looked fun. But I haven’t seen the original movie and disaster movies aren’t a genre that I gravitate towards. I went to see this movie out of curiosity. 2024 was the summer of Glen Powell so I am just curious to see if he’s truly a modern day movie star. I left the theater really enjoying the movie and it was a lot better overall then I thought it was going to be. I expected a fun time at the movies but not a movie that was super memorable to me. I thought it would be a film that I would forget about two weeks later or whatever. It’s been six months since it came out and I still think it’s a really good movie. It feels like a classic blockbuster that doesn’t have the weight of trying to be bigger than other blockbusters. Since we don’t have a lot of disaster movies coming out it feels like a very different type of blockbuster that I thought worked. They created characters that you care about and you know what they’re doing. They give depth to the characters. Especially Glen Powell’s character, who’s presented as one type of character at the beginning. As the movie goes along we see more of him. It’s a very entertaining movie with fun characters, humor, and plenty of disaster carnage that you want. Overall, this was a great time at the movies that really did surprise me.

8. Sing Sing: Moving in a very direction. Twisters is a classic blockbuster. Sing Sing is your typical Oscar bait movie. This was a cool experience. Regal does something called Movie Mystery Monday. You got the movies not knowing what you’re about to see. It’s an upcoming release, normally a smaller release film not a big blockbuster film. I went back in July and this was the movie that I watched. I heard all of the great film festival buzz this movie got. It played at South by Southwest, and a lot of the reactions coming out of that movie were calling it an early front runner for Best Picture. I didn’t realize that the title “Sing Sing” was referring to a prison. I went into this movie expecting a musical and that’s not what this movie is. But it’s still a great movie that won me over pretty instantly. It’s a movie about a prison that’s based on a true story. It is a prison movie, but it doesn’t feel like your typical prison movie. It’s focused on this one group of people that bond over theater and productions. It’s a movie that makes you feel a lot. This movie can have you crying, it can have you laughing. All of the characters are very layered and complex. Where they all have positives, they all have weaknesses. This was just a fantastic movie that is absolutely deserving of an Oscar nomination for Best Picture and Best Actor for Colman Domingo. 

7. Civil War: One of A24’s many movies to release in 2024. This is one that I was very curious about. It’s about a civil war breaking out in the United States. It’s dealing with the political side of that. It came out in an election year. A lot of people were concerned that it would be trying to make a side look back and lecture the audience about politics. I was very pleasantly surprised that it didn’t do any of that. In fact, maybe the biggest fault of the movie is that it doesn’t go far enough with that kind of stuff. It became this very polarizing film because of that. I thought it had the right amount of politics to be in there and make things interesting. But it never went too far that it became too much. I know certain people love A24 as one of the best film studios out there. That’s not a studio that I’ve been super invested in. In general, I wasn’t too sure what to expect from this movie. Even going into it, I knew this was one of the more polarizing movies of the year. I thought this was a great movie that’s one of the most interesting movies of the year. I like the fact that the movie doesn’t feel the need to answer everything. There’s several questions in this movie that go unanswered and I like that. It’s also a movie that puts you on the edge of your seat from beginning to end. So many sequences are thrilling, the stand out would be the one with Jesse Plemmons. I believe this is A24’s most expensive movie costing about $50 million. So many of the shots look great. They can be both shocking and beautiful. It’s one of the best looking movies of the year. 

6. Heretic: This is my favorite horror movie of the year. I’ve seen a lot of great horror movies this year. Heretic would rank as my #1. I heard good things about this movie but I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I’m not somebody of faith so I wasn’t too sure what to expect from a religious horror movie. The fact that it stars Hugh Grant made me so curious. I really like Hugh Grant as an actor. But he’s known for his romantic comedies like Notting Hill and Love Actually, not his horror movies. I was curious about this movie but I wasn’t full of excitement for it. The trailers were decent, they weren’t bad but they weren’t anything special. I just thought this movie was absolutely fantastic. This is such a smartly written movie where it’s a great psychological thriller talking about religion and deconstructing it. It’s a horror movie in the way that The Silence of the Lambs is a horror movie. Where it’s not visually scary but it gets in your head and that’s what makes it scary. The situations that Hugh Grant’s character puts them in really do make you think. Despite not being a person of faith. I was even questioning some of what Grant was doing in this movie. I know some people didn’t really like the ending of the movie. I don’t think it was the best ending out there. But it didn’t hurt my overall enjoyment of the movie. I loved what this movie did and I want to see Hugh Grant do more horror movies. 

5. Transformers One: Transformers is of course a world that I’m familiar with. But it’s not this beloved universe the way it is for so many people. When they said they were doing an animated Transformers origin story, I really wasn’t sure what to make of that. The trailers look good enough but they didn’t fully sell me on the movie. I think pretty easily I would say that this is my favorite Transformers movie. I just loved how they gave us the backstory for Optimus Prime and Megatron. They sort of do Revenge of the Sith in the Transformers world. That’s interesting and I think it makes sense with these two characters. I think this movie does a better job of that than the prequel trilogy did. You see both of the world views on the matter and how their world views could put them in contrast with one another. I also appreciate that with it being an animated movie, it’s able to get away with a lot more in terms of action. The action here is a bit crazier than you might expect. It’s also a very funny movie that constantly has jokes that make you laugh. I think it’s unfortunate that this bombed because I don’t know if we’ll be getting a sequel. I think there’s room for a sequel. 

4. Longlegs: One of the surprise hit films of the year. All of the early buzz and excitement for this movie started just about a week before it came out. They did such a simple yet effective marketing campaign that so much chatter drew from this movie. I hadn’t seen a trailer, I didn’t know much about the plot. I went in just out of curiosity as to what this movie was going to be. Pretty instantly this movie captured my attention as being something that’s right up my alley. It’s a serial killer thriller film that feels like The Silence of the Lambs and Se7en. This movie isn’t as good as those movies. But it feels like that  type of movie and I thought it was interesting. I haven’t seen the director, Oz Perkins’ previous movies. But after watching this movie, I’m very curious to see what he does next. Our two lead performances with Maika Monroe and Nicolas Cage were fantastic. I hope Monroe gets more work, she was very good and compelling in this movie. Cage is giving a full on Nicolas Cage performance but as a serial killer which is so fun to see somebody like him just go for it with such a creepy performance. After the success of this movie and Terrifer 3. I hope we get more independent horror movies being more front and center and getting the attention they deserve. 

3. The Wild Robot: I don’t wanna spoil my ranking of 2024 movies too much. But you can count on this movie being very high up on that list. This movie wasn’t really on my radar all that much. This was a movie that my sisters were actually very excited about. They read the book in school and it was released on their birthday. I hadn’t read the books. I just saw the trailers and it looked like a solid enough Dreamworks animated movie. I left the theater just absolutely mind blown by what I just watched. Just how much this movie left a mark on me really surprised me. The trailer for this movie played in front of Despicable Me 4. I thought it gave everything away. While the trailers did walk you through the entire movie. The one thing they didn’t fully market was the emotional residents this movie had. It’s a movie about parenting. I’m not a parent but I can imagine parents really connecting with these themes. I don’t really cry in movies. I’m just not somebody that naturally cries in a movie. The Wild Robot had the water works going. It’s a movie that makes you feel a full spectrum of emotions. This can make you laugh with surprisingly dark humor. It can make you cry with this relationship between the robot and the bird. You can also feel this sense of victory by the end of it. I loved the animation style, it’s so beautiful and looks like a painting brought to life. The trailers for this movie were good. I was expecting a good movie out of this. But the fact that I loved it as much as I do says a lot. 

2. Strange Darling: This is a movie that I went into knowing absolutely nothing about it. I kind of heard good things about it. But nothing about the plot or the genre. This is absolutely a movie that if you watch it, go in knowing absolutely nothing about it. Even when discussing it, it’s hard to talk about it without giving anything away. What really surprised me about the movie is the talent involved with the movie. The director is JT Mollner. I’m not familiar with his past movies. I looked at his IMDB page and hadn’t heard of any of his past movies. After watching this movie, I want him to get more work and become this great indie thriller director. As I was watching it, one thing really stuck me with its look. The look of the movie with the cinematography was fantastic. When the credits rolled I was waiting to see who the cinematographer was. The name Giovanni Ribisi showed up. Yes, the guy from Friends, Saving Private Ryan, and Avatar was the cinematographer for this movie. I was absolutely shocked by how good he was. I think he’s a fun actor but I think he’s an even better cinematographer and I want him to get more jobs doing that. From there, the movie is told out of order. The movie starts off and you’re in the middle of the action then it goes back to show you what happened. It’s constantly putting you on the edge of your seat. This is one of the more underappreciated movies of the year. I had a very limited release and I’m so glad that I watched it because it’s great. I hope in the coming years more people discover this movie. 

1. Wicked: If you guys were paying attention to my blog prior to this film’s release, you know that I was not excited for this movie. I didn’t think the trailers were that good. The color grading for the movie looked off. I told my English professor that I was not excited about it and how I didn’t even plan on seeing it. I went to see the movie and I loved it. This is one of the best movies of the year. I was floored with how much I loved this movie. It’s so good at transporting you into this world. From the opening shots you feel you’ve been transported to this world. I’ve heard some people compare that feeling to the first time we got transported into Harry Potter. I think there’s some truth to that. When you’re in this world, there’s so much detail in every single shot of the movie. When there’s all of these small details here the world feels so big in scale. Speaking of big scale, the musical numbers here are fantastic. Jon M. Chu has a long history working in musicals. In “Dancing Through Life” it takes place in a library. That‘s my favorite number in the movie. You watch the sequence and there’s so many extras with these spinning bookshelves. Everything in the sequence is in the frame. You can see everything that’s going on. Once again, with the musical numbers being so dynamic you feel like you’re in this world with these characters. The thing that surprised me the most was the amount of heart in the movie. It explores how different people would be treated due to how they look. It really fleshes out the dynamic between Elphaba and Glinda that feels so real. If they put some of those elements in the trailer and showed the emotion of the movie. Then I think they would have worked better. I did not expect to love Wicked. It’s one of my favorite movies of the year.