{Overlook Film Festival} Top Horror Movies in 2024

The Overlook Film Festival has come and gone and just in the opening weekend I managed to catch 11 films. Part of why The Overlook continues to be a top tier genre festival is their commitment to showing popular movies multiple times in multiple theatres. It enables critics and fans alike to find time to screen the movies they are most excited about. 2024 was no different. Here are the top horror movies of 2024 coming out of the festival and where and when you can screen them.

NEW LIFE (2023) Streaming and Theatrical Release May 3rd

I was not entirely excited about another virus movie. All that will probably feel like it is too soon for the rest of my life. What director John Rosman has put together with New Life is so much more than just a virus movie. It is a movie about finding a community and belonging. It is also a movie about growing old and learning to let go. Its a horror movie where people are mostly nice to each other. In many ways New Life is proof that you can still be nice and be scary. You can still be kind and create feelings of dread. In fact those very things make New Life the special film that it is.

THINGS WILL BE DIFFERENT Waiting on distribution. Sales Agent: XYZ

Lo-Fi Sci-Fi is rapidly becoming my favorite subgenre. Nobody does it better than Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson and their fingerprints are all over this latest time machine thriller that they have produced. Director Michael Felker deserves all the credit in crafting a taunt story that manages to create an easy to follow narrative while focusing on the relationship of the two leads. Its a brother and sister movie whose message seems universal and timeless even if the farmhouse it takes place in seems to function entirely out of the timeline. Give me more movies about sibling responsibility and rivalry please.

ODDITY Release on Shudder Summer 2024

A rare movie where the hype almost underplays how fun the film is. The entire movie plays out like a lost episode of Tales From the Crypt if we also combined it with some of the subtle weirdness of Friday the 13th The Series. The central monster is great and supplies a bulk of the laughs and scares. It also hung out with us for most of the festival in the lobby of the Prytania. Carol Bracken steals the show as the blind, clairvoyant, twin sister of the opening victim. Her shop of oddities is just begging for its own series. While the bulk of the movie takes place in a gorgeously dressed old Irish house I found myself wanting to revisit her shop when the action died down. If you liked Damian Mc Carthy‘s first film Caveat you will fall in love with this film. A morality tale turned old school ghost story makes Oddity a must watch.

I SAW THE TV GLOW Theatrical Release May 3rd

There is so much to like about I Saw the TV Glow. It looks gorgeous. From our first introduction to the Pink Opaque to the final David Lynchian reveal Jane Schoenbrun demonstrates that auteur theory is live and well. If you like existential dread than following the life of Owen (Justice Smith) will be your thing. High School is hard. Being a queer high schooler is even harder. Being a queer high school kid who may or may not be trapped in a mid 90’s television show is the absolute worst. That is not entirely what the movie is about, but gives you a little glimpse into why this film is so special to so many people. It weaponizes nostalgia to remind us that sometimes we use pop culture as an armor. That armor always has its limitations.

INFESTED Release on Shudder April 26th

By far the scariest film I have seen this year. Infested manages to scare the living shit out of us all while pushing the action at break neck speed. Between the scares (there are SO MANY) and the pacing of the film I left the screening out of breath and it took me an hour or two to settle down. There are spiders galore and a cast that seems to be having a blast. It is a rare foreign film where the subtitles barely matter. You can follow the action without understanding a single line and that is part of the reason this movie remains so sharp. The plot is nothing new. Kaleb the hero of our apartment block brings in a rare spider that breeds and grows quicker than expected leading to the entire buildings quarantine as the situation goes from bad to to creepy crawly worse. An absolutely banger of a spider film. I am still brushing imagined spiders off my legs.

CUCKOO Wide Theatrical Release August 9th

Easily the movie most people will be able to access Cuckoo from director Tilman Singer offers us an incredible monster and a standout performance from Hunter Shafer as Gretchen the lonely teenager who was forced to move in with her father and his new family. Its a Twin Peaks Disney film at its absolute best. Couple that with a subtext regarding body autonomy and we have all of the ingredients necessary to make a bonkers film that aims to say a lot. Its a tight movie that manages to be both weird and mainstream. While its runtime is a bit long it never feels like it drags as Shafer propels us from one strange vignette to another, always asking her parents and the audience “Are you seeing this shit, its just not normal”. You are right Hunter it isn’t and that is part of the reason why the opening film of the fest might just be my favorite.

New Orleans in the spring is absolutely beautiful. Here is hoping The Overlook Film Festival and this date are here to stay. If so it will remain a necessity for horror lovers everywhere. I am already looking forward to next year.