Read update
- The latest A24 film directed by Ari Aster, Beau Is Afraid, is set to hit theaters on April 21. Fans looking forward to the studio's latest offering still have time to binge-watch some of the best A24 movies streaming right now on Prime Video.
A24’s first film, A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III, was released in February 2013; just a month later, they made waves with their surprise hit, Spring Breakers. By 2016, A24 had seven nominations at the Oscars, including wins for best documentary (Amy), best visual effects (Ex Machina), and best actress (Brie Larson, Room). That year it also became a production studio, financing its first feature film, Moonlight, which of course went on to rack up eight Oscar nominations and three wins itself, including best picture.
Studio A24 is known for what fans call ‘A24 vibes,’ a unique style that’s easy to identify but hard to define. Though their filmography is quite diverse, their films tend to be nervy and bold; A24 nourishes young, ambitious directors and nurtures the next generation of auteurs. Amazon Prime Video is home to many of their best films, all of which are worth checking out.
Updated on April 13, 2023, by Hannah Saab:
The latest A24 film directed by Ari Aster, Beau Is Afraid, is set to hit theaters on April 21. Fans looking forward to the studio's latest offering still have time to binge-watch some of the best A24 movies streaming right now on Prime Video.
10 'Mississippi Grind' (2015)
Gerry (Ben Mendelsohn) is a down and desperate gambler when he meets Curtis (played by Ryan Reynolds), a charismatic poker player. Gerry’s loan shark is getting rather insistent, so Gerry decides Curtis is his new good luck charm and convinces him to team up on an epic road trip through the South to win back everything owed and more.
A24 loves gritty realism and anyone who’d seen Half Nelson knew its writers – Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck – would deliver. As directors, they zero in on a rambling, genre-defying character study and manage to include funny, even joyful moments in a film about addiction. The A24 credit is a major level up for most young directors; their next film would be Captain Marvel.
9 'A Ghost Story' (2017)
Husband C (Casey Affleck) and wife M (Rooney Mara) argue about moving out of their house. When C dies in an accident, his ghost rises from his body, clad in a white sheet. He returns to the home he shared with M and watches her grieve for weeks and months. But it’s when she moves out and time unspools that things really get interesting.
David Lowery’s ghost story isn’t meant to spook or scare. Moody and aching with loss, it’s a largely silent meditation on endurance. Its unconventional structure begs to be deciphered. Beautiful and baffling, A Ghost Story boldly defies expectations, becoming philosophical as it stoically witnesses the enormity of love and life.
8 'Swiss Army Man' (2016)
Stranded on a deserted island, Hank (Paul Dano) is desperate and lonely enough to befriend a bloated corpse who washes ashore. “Manny” (Daniel Radcliffe) is rapidly decomposing but has some good qualities, too: he can talk, and he has some surprising abilities that may help Hank get back home.
Visionary directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert secured Dano based on a single sentence: “The first fart makes you laugh, and the last fart makes you cry.” They made good on their promise and gave the world something truly unforgettable, incomparable, and inimitable. Swiss Army Man is a life-affirming movie about death that's a must-see for any serious film fan.
7 'Green Room' (2015)
Starring Anton Yelchin, Imogen Poots, Alia Shawkat, Macon Blair, and Patrick Stewart, Green Room gets hairy awfully quick when a punk band plays a dodgy gig and gets stuck fighting for survival after witnessing a murder at what turns out to be a neo-Nazi skinhead bar.
Writer-director Jeremy Saulnier guarantees the film’s proceedings are visceral and gruesome. A24 has revitalized the horror genre with standouts like Hereditary, Midsommar, and The Witch. As different as those movies are from each other, Green Room manages to be even stranger. With the adrenaline of a tornado, Saulnier’s go-for-broke style makes for a great and gory survival thriller, leaving audiences shaky and stunned.
6 'The Spectacular Now' (2013)
Sutter (Miles Teller) is a hard-partying high school senior. He lives in the now, getting by on charm, making a little cash, living party to party, always sipping from his whiskey-laced big gulp. Then he meets Aimee (Shailene Woodley), who’s a nice, studious girl who mostly keeps to herself. Aimee dreams of the future while Sutter’s attached to his idea of the spectacular now. Yet somehow, they’re like magnets.
The Spectacular Now is an early title for A24, but still exhibits the hallmarks of its vibe. It touted young director and Sundance darling James Ponsoldt. Ponsoldt made a teen movie that felt mature beyond its years. It’s restrained, grounded, and heartbreaking in an unexpected way.
5 'The Lobster' (2015)
In the near future, single people of a certain age are dealt with by being rounded up and deposited in a hotel where they have 45 days to find a partner or end up turned into a beast and dispatched to the woods.
Director Yorgos Lanthimos has cornered the market on quirk. The Lobster, starring Colin Ferrell, Rachel Weisz, and Olivia Colman, is the strangest romantic comedy in the history of cinema, but manages to be vivacious, thought-provoking, and shockingly funny.
4 'Oasis: Supersonic' (2016)
Noel and Liam Gallagher, two talented brothers from Manchester, put together a band that would define an era and haunt karaoke bars for generations. Oasis was wildly popular in the 90s but plagued by sibling rivalry both behind the scenes and in the tabloids.
Oasis: Supersonic is made for the fans, by a fan; director Mat Whitecross has a clear appreciation for the band and his documentary reflects it with plenty of never-before-seen concert footage and juicy secrets spilled in candid interviews. Viewers get a front-row seat and a backstage pass to relive Oasis’ glory days. The doc isn’t particularly probing or critical or even balanced, but it has all the sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll a fan could want.
3 'Amy' (2015)
As a musical biopic and documentary, Amy paints the tragic but seemingly inevitable tale of Amy Winehouse’s dreams fulfilled as death lurks just around the corner. With toxic men prioritizing money over health (over everything, really), the Winehouse narrative of talent, trauma, and abuse seem to predict doom and when it arrives, no one does anything much to stop it.
Director Asif Kapadia could have made a straightforward documentary about a skilled singer gone too soon, but instead uses her death as a framework to explore the dangerous machinations of the celebrity-industrial complex. Amy serves as both an act of mourning and a takedown.
2 'Ex Machina' (2014)
A young programmer (Domhnall Gleeson) is chosen by his billionaire CEO boss (Oscar Isaac) to conduct the ultimate Turing test, evaluating an incredibly advanced humanoid A.I. (Alicia Vikander) to assess her ability to pass as a human.
A24 is no stronger to high-concept science fiction like Ex Machina, and it encourages its filmmakers to take big swings. Writer-director Alex Garland is intelligent and inventive; his film is tense and clever. It unearths a universal truth that is also a fatal flaw: men who are brilliant enough to invent artificial intelligence indistinguishable from humans yet dumb enough to fall for her.
1 'Everything Everywhere All at Once' (2022)
Arguably A24's most popular movie to date, the Daniels' Everything Everywhere All at Once took home a whopping seven Oscars, including Best Picture. The genre-bending absurdist comedy-drama movie tells the mind-blowing story of Evelyn Wang (masterfully played by Michelle Yeoh), who is struggling to balance her failing marriage, messy business, and complicated relationship with her daughter. When an alternate version of her husband arrives from a parallel reality to tell her she needs to save the world, things get weird.
With dizzyingly stunning visuals, an out-of-this-world plot, and surprising emotional depth to go along with its philosophical themes, EEAAO has won hearts and minds around the globe. It should be considered essential viewing for any fan of the studio or existentialism in general.