Robert Hamer
Sorry for the delay, folks. I’ve been traveling around another continent for the last several months and I didn’t want to put out this list without seeing all the major horror releases of 2024. Now that I have, I’m ready to share my top five favorite performances from what I was finally able to catch up with. Unfortunately, this year was a bit of a mixed bag in my eyes, at least for cinematic horror. I’ve already written about my ambivalence towards Longlegs and I mentioned my disgust with a particular creative choice made regarding Alien: Romulus in the past, but I was also very disappointed in MaXXXine, Immaculate, Don’t Move, and Nosferatu, while The Deliverance might be the single worst movie of the year.
But there were quite a few humdingers as well! I admired the directorial verve and messiness of The Substance, Strange Darling was a wild trip, and I Saw the TV Glow was one of the most uncannily profound moviegoing experiences I had before I traveled out of the country. And, luckily, there was not a shortage of great acting in horror movies last year, though, interestingly, this year’s top five represents a first for this series; I’ll let you guess what that might be.
But first, the honorable mentions:
• Mia Goth and Kevin Bacon in MaXXXine
• Josh Hartnett and Alison Pill in Trap
• David Jonsson in Alien: Romulus
• Lily Rose-Depp in Nosferatu
• Sydney Sweeney in Immaculate
5) Nell Tiger Free in The First Omen
The First Omen was a potentially all-time-classic satanic horror movie… hobbled by its attachment to an old IP. All of its best scenes are when Arkasha Stevenson (who I’d love to see write and direct another project soon) is allowed to just go wild on her love of Italian horror and old-school nastiness. Every time she’s obligated to shoot a “just so you know, this is setting up The Omen” prequelizing, you can feel the filmmaking go slack. I can’t fault her for her lack of engagement in tedious franchise table-setting – I too would have half-assed that epilogue – but that makes Nell Tiger Free’s unreserved commitment to even the most unsalvageable scenes all the more laudatory.
4) Willa Fitzgerald in Strange Darling
For those of you who could not get past the… shall we say, problematic implications of Strange Darling, I hear you. However, if we were to write off every horror movie with deeply troubling thematic content, that would expel some of the greatest horror movies ever produced. It would also be unfair to dismiss all the things this movie gets right with its bold structural gambits, tight suspense, clever narrative reversals, formal chops, and critical central performance from Willa Fitzgerald. Without her expert emotional withholding and wiry intensity throughout the shuffled chronology, the Big Reveal would have either come off as cheap or easy-to-predict. A cat-and-mouse thriller requiring her to play both cat and mouse is a tall order for any actress, and she nailed both.
3) Alicia Witt in Longlegs
This should not come as a surprise to anyone who read my own thoughts about Longlegs, and I stand by every word of my praise for her uncanny, mousey, quietly unnerving take on Agent Harker’s mother:
To the degree the over-literal and over-explained climax works at all, it works almost entirely due to the film reorienting its dramatic point of focus around Alicia Witt, who I would argue is the only member of the cast entirely succeeding in balancing the movie’s gonzo tonal impulses with its headier ambitions to explore spiritual paranoia and the progressively destructive myopia of modern parenting. I don’t know if that outright saves the movie in my eyes, but if this film does keep up its longevity past the hype cycle, I will contend she’ll deserve most of the credit for that.
2) Margaret Qualley in The Substance
Though Demi Moore has, understandably, received the lion’s share of accolades for her performance (more on her later), Margaret Qualley’s seductive, sinister performance is just as integral to making the deranged energy of director Coralie Fargeat’s vision work as well as it does. Eschewing nuance, Qualley’s characterization is downright vicious and single-minded in portraying Sue’s desire to undermine her aging doppelgänger, not only injecting a sense of mounting danger, but also serves as a crucial foil to Moore’s nuanced and humane approach to Elisabeth. I strongly disagree with Joey’s insistence that she plays a “supporting” role in The Substance – Moore and Qualley share roughly the same amount of screen time and the central conflict is a clear two-hander – but I do sympathize with his desire to recognize her somewhere for, arguably, the best performance of her career so far.
1) Demi Moore in The Substance
What can I say? Sometimes the Academy gets it right. Not only is this the most impressive demonstration of her acting talents – by a fairly substantial margin – but the more I think about it, the more I believe Moore’s performance was the key to the success of The Substance as a whole. The satire doesn’t always land, its sense of time and place is often muddled, and Elisabeth doesn’t have a lot of interiority as written in the script. But, through Moore’s sympathetic portrayal of a woman reduced to her looks and marginalized because of her age (much like Moore in real life), she elevates the movie to an emotionally involving experience. She communicates so much pain and humiliation in just her eyes when she’s tossed aside, making her more explosive emotional outbursts feel earned when they happen. She successfully sells the notion that Elisabeth has nothing else to work towards besides vicariously enjoying her heyday through Sue, and is remarkable at continuing to be so expressive through the increasing amounts of old age and gore makeup as her disintegration progresses. I don’t know if that’s enough to carry her to an Oscar tonight, but I believe she would make a fine winner on the merits of her achievement in this film.
What were your favorite horror performances from last year? Do you believe Demi Moore will go home with an Oscar tonight? Sound off in the comments.
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