5 Most Overrated A24 Movies

A24 is, at this point, regarded as a paragon of cinematic excellence. Ever since it was founded in 2012 (by film production veterans Daniel Katz, David Fenkel, and John Hodges), A24 has championed independent filmmaking from promising talents and visionaries like Robert Eggers, Ari Aster, Alex Garland, Greta Gerwig, Benny and Josh Safdie, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, Celine Song, Barry Jenkins, and Brady Corbet, just to name a few. With an armload of Oscars on the shelf at A24 headquarters — including best picture awards for "Moonlight" and "Everything Everywhere All At Once" — the studio has cemented itself as a major industry player, especially with its 2026 homegrown horror hit "Backrooms."

So which A24 movies are ... overrated? There were, admittedly, plenty of choices available to me as I assembled this list — because not every studio has a flawless track record, no matter how many incredible directors and writers they bring into the fold. Some of these picks are going to tick people off. Some of these picks ticked my own editors off. That's how the game is played, though! In terms of overrated A24 films, I went with ones that got a ton of attention — during awards season, from audiences, or a combination of the two — that I don't think fully delivered. Let's get on with it, shall we?

I know this is an unpopular opinion, but it's a hill upon which I am ready and willing to die. "Marty Supreme," the first solo venture from Josh Safdie after he and his brother Benny apparently parted professional ways, is not really a cohesive or well-done movie. "Marty Supreme," a movie about the arrogant, constantly odious aspiring ping-pong world champion Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet), is a showcase for Chalamet, and little else.

The thesis statement for "Marty Supreme," as it appears to me — what if there was a guy who sucked?! — is pretty flimsy, and while this film is at least decently enjoyable to watch thanks to Chalamet's central performance, it's also an infuriating experience most of the time. As the erratic, selfish, and abjectly awful Marty steamrolls every single person he's ever met in his quest for international greatness, including his pregnant girlfriend Rachel Mizler (Odessa A'Zion), fading movie star Kay Stone (a very good Gwyneth Paltrow), and his own mother Rebecca Mauser (Fran Drescher), the film itself gets repetitive, tiring, and irksome. (More than once, I thought to myself during "Marty Supreme" that I wanted to kill Chalamet's character with a brick. I guess that means he's giving a good performance?) 

People ride hard for "Marty Supreme," and that's their business. As it stands, this isn't a "great" movie; it's a two-and-a-half-hour showcase for one actor as he plays one of the worst guys anyone's ever met. Sorry, Safdie. Like your protagonist, your film fell short of greatness.

Mockumentaries are tough. When done correctly — like by Christopher Guest, or even The Lonely Island with their deeply underrated 2016 masterpiece "Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping" — they're amazing. When they're not? You get something like "The Moment." Directed by Aidan Zamiri and written by he and Bertie Brandes — and based on a concept by pop star Charli XCX, "The Moment" casts the singer as a heightened and fictionalized version of herself who hates being forced to do promotional stunts for her album "Brat" (an extremely real album that got its own summer in 2024), struggles against the creative vision of a "visionary" named Johannes Godwin (Alexander Skarsgård), and even experiences a rift with her best friend Celeste (Hailey Benton Gates). The whole thing is ... far from cohesive, and it's so navel-gazing that it's genuinely exhausting to experience.

Let me get ahead of some stuff. I've enjoyed Charli XCX's music for years, even though I am, quite publicly, a fan of her perceived opponent Taylor Swift. ("I Love It" with Icona Pop introduced me to her work, and I've never looked back — thanks in large part to the wild "Girls" episode it famously soundtracked.) What I am growing weary of is her "I don't really care, do you?" schtick; she clearly wants to perform well on the charts, earn good reviews as an actor, and meet the general metrics of success despite her constant insistence that none of that matters. To turn that feigned nonchalance into an entire movie just ... doesn't work. Put it this way: if Kylie Jenner is out-acting you in your own film, you've got a big problem.

Kristoffer Borgli's 2026 film "The Drama" is so sensational and so fun that I almost can't believe he's the same guy who made the 2023 snoozefest "Dream Scenario." To be completely fair, Borgli's second feature film, which stars Nicolas Cage, Julianne Nicholson, and Michael Cera, has one of the most promising premises in recent cinematic memory. When Paul Matthews (a neurotic, well-deployed Cage) starts hearing from friends and acquaintances that he appeared in their dreams, he learns that people all over the world are seeing him appear in their dreams, even people that he's never met; as for what he's specifically doing within the context of these dreams, it runs the gamut from "nothing" to "performing daring rescues in oversized suits like David Byrne." (There's also weird sex stuff. Obviously.)

"Dream Scenario" uses an incredible framework, to Borgli's credit — but it's an understatement to say it sticks the landing, as the film really loses its way in the third and final act. While much of the film is a genuinely interesting exploration of Paul's psyche as he imbues himself with enormous importance through his dream cameos, the conclusion is lacking, and a movie that could have been one of A24's greats came up short.

On some level, it's painful that "The Whale" even got made. Adapted from a 2012 play by Samuel D. Hunter — who took on the screenplay — and directed by Darren Aronofsky, 2022's "The Whale" stars Brendan Fraser as Charlie, an English teacher who conducts all of his classes from home and refuses to turn his camera on because he's fat (at roughly 600 pounds). Hiding from everyone in his cluttered, claustrophobic house, Charlie also cuts himself off from his daughter Ellie (Sadie Sink), partly because of his physical state and partly because he left her mother for a man years prior. When Ellie comes back into Charlie's life, it unlocks shameful secrets he's been keeping for years, all of which spill out.

"The Whale" is, honestly, a travesty — in the way that it handles sensitive issues like emotional binge eating, coming to terms with your queer identity, and mental health struggles is absolutely insulting to so many people. Putting Fraser in prosthetics that wouldn't look out of place in an "Austin Powers" film definitely doesn't help, and when all is said and done, this film just gawks at Charlie instead of asking the audience to understand or empathize with him; it treats him like a zoo animal instead of a person in an enormous amount of pain.

My colleague BJ Colangelo here at /Film wrote a brilliant piece about "The Whale" in the spring of 2023 after it earned Fraser his first-ever major industry accolade in the form of an Oscar, and she's right: Brendan Fraser deserves great things and "The Whale" deserves outright derision. This film isn't just overrated — it's harmful.

"Mid90s" bravely asks a vital question, albeit a different one from "Marty Supreme." The question: "What if somebody made a version of Bo Burnham's 'Eighth Grade' that's not nearly as good?" Written and directed by Jonah Hill, 2018's "Mid90s" centers around a young boy named Stevie (Sunny Suljic) who struggles at home thanks to his abusive older brother Ian (Lucas Hedges, playing pretty drastically against type) — something that unfortunately goes overlooked because their single mom Dabney (Katherine Waterston) is so overlooked. Looking for comfort and company, Stevie starts hanging out with a group of local skateboarders, especially bonding with Ray (Na-Kel Smith), and through them, he even gets into his first romantic entanglement with a young girl named Estee (Alexa Demie, best known otherwise for "Euphoria").

"Mid90s" is a pretty unrelentingly bleak movie, and while it feels unfair to compare it to a different A24 movie about trying to survive as a pre-teen, it does, again, pale in comparison to "Eighth Grade." This is partly because Burnham is just a better writer than Hill, but "Eighth Grade" also feels hopeful and optimistic by the end ... whereas "Mid90s" is sort of just an exercise in misery. With all due respect to Hill, just because you can make a movie doesn't mean you always should.