When it comes to Best Of lists, they’re never very difficult to research and write when centered around the horror genre. Any time I hear people bemoaning the lack of quality present in modern-day horror, I end up more confused than anything else. Ignoring the bevy of quality mainstream horror releases this year, the horror genre has been gifted with a slew of consistently fun and memorable films from every corner of the radar.
From the mainstream to shoestring-budget YouTube movies, 2024 has continued the creative hot streak horror has been on for the better part of the last decade. Supporting said creative endeavors in the hugely profitable and popular genre is an esteemed group of horror mainstays, A-list stars, and aspiring newcomers working to make the stories as memorable as they can while cementing their individual legacies into the world of cinema.
The diversity of the horror genre has never been more apparent than the output seen in 2024. This year, we’ve seen a devious and bloody concoction of body horror, psychological torment, evil crime stories, and the return of everyone’s favorite clown and that isn’t even the tip of the iceberg. Despite the variety, the common thread binding these subgenres is killer performances from a talented cast of actors elevating their respective films to higher degrees.
Which of these performances are the most notable? Read on to find out!
15. David Dastmalchian – Late Night with the Devil
Character actors are the unsung heroes of movies and TV shows, serving as one of the workhorses of the industry for their willingness to showcase their talents in a versatile set of roles. David Dastmalchian is among the most notable character actors of the modern era, carving out his legacy in Hollywood through small, yet memorable roles in films such as The Dark Knight, Ant-Man, Oppenheimer, and Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners, Blade Runner 2049, and Dune: Part One. A consistent supporter while rarely leading the cast, one of the few deviations of this pattern being films that he’s written like 2014’s Animals and 2018’s All Creatures Here Below.
The other deviation is this year’s indie horror breakout Late Night with the Devil, a horror film that was partially sold on the concept of Dastmalchian leading a movie again. A great selling point that was backed up by Dastmalchian’s strong work as film protagonist and fading talk show host Jack Delroy. Tasked with adding tragic humanity to a clout-hungry TV host with some seriously grim secrets, Dastmalchian plays Delroy with a curious and melancholic charisma that simultaneously gives him a classic 70s TV actor charm while highlighting the fact that something is definitely…off about the guy.
While Delroy is ultimately not the main antagonist of the film, the ripple effects of his actions are a driving force for the story and Dastmalchian’s compelling performance turns an already-fun and kooky supernatural horror into a darkly comedic character study. In a film populated with a talented lineup of supporting performances, Dastmalchian’s lead work is disarming in the man’s lowkey charm that morphs into a morbid window into entertainment politics.
14. Justice Smith – I Saw the TV Glow
After the success of Jane Schoenbrun’s breakout horror hit We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, it set forth the expectations that their next project would serve as a bigger and better creative endeavor. What followed was a similar descent into horror through the glow of a bright screen, this time in the form of nostalgic 90s children’s sitcoms in I Saw the TV Glow. Switching up from YouTube challenges to immersive lore dives into old shows, Schoenbrun’s own experience with discovering their identity bleeds heavily into I Saw the TV Glow and is personified through the work of one Justice Smith.
Smith plays a character who, through the exposure of a fantastical children’s show, begins to question the reality of his identity and who he truly is. A potentially upsetting situation in the real world, the horror that Schoenbrun adds to an internal crisis is propelled by Smith’s devastating performance. Playing the isolated Owen with a dash of charm and innocence, Smith makes his eventual decay as heartbreaking as it is horrifying.
Much of the film’s horror comes from Owen’s confusion clashing with the cold reality of a world indifferent to his entire being. Smith’s performance is shy, quiet, physically tiring, and passive to Owen’s detriment, only bursting when he can’t hold it in anymore. It’s a testament to Smith’s ability to take his timid presence as an actor and frame it through Schoenbrun’s identity horror with stellar results. I Saw the TV Glow is simply made better and legitimately scarier thanks to Smith and the rest of the cast.
13. David Howard Thornton – Terrifier 3
Words alone cannot express how genuinely cool it is to finally have a new slasher icon after what feels like an eternity of the classic slasher fading into obscurity. Horror trends change all the time and the move away from old-school slasher mayhem invading the mainstream was simply a casualty to changing times. So it’s refreshing and badass to see David Howard Thornton’s Art the Clown sidestep the trends of modern horror whilst embracing the current social environment that many people argue is the type of environment that’s designed to see Art the Clown’s penchant of bloody ultraviolence disappear.
The reality is that everyone has that secret hankering of seeing balls-to-the-wall slasher violence and the success of Terrifier 3 is proof. Thornton’s now-iconic turn as the macabre madman in clown makeup drove hordes into theaters and became a box office sensation in the process. And all of that success hinges not just on the wacky and wildly over-the-top violence that Art the Clown revels in, but Art himself. Despite two other movies also having Thornton appear as Art, it wasn’t until 3 where Thornton’s silent comedy stylings finally meshed with the playfully deranged clown.
David Howard Thornton’s Chaplin-esque performance is at its strongest in the third installment, being free to interact with a varied and far more memorable cast of supporting characters that occasionally match his manic energy. Hell, the bar scene on its own is a true window into the series’s massive improvement in matching the tone of the film with Art himself. Art the Clown is just as fun to watch goofing around as he is maiming people beyond recognition and David Howard Thornton’s hilarious, charismatic, and genuinely terrifying performance as Art goes to show the hidden versatility of the world’s most dangerous clown.
12. Jung Yu-mi – Sleep
Imagine being married to and carrying the unborn baby of a sleepwalker who not only walks in the middle of the night, but displays the kind of behavior that may or may not be endangering you in the process. It’s this pitch that director Jason Yu ran with all the way to the completion of his feature length debut film, the South Korean dark comedy horror-thriller Sleep. Yu’s story of a woman and new mother dealing with both her infant baby and her husband’s mysterious nocturnal behavior quietly released digitally in the States to minor fanfare and on the back of the film’s central performance, it’s a damn shame this isn’t being discussed enough.
Jung Yu-mi’s captivating performance as our lead Soojin hits the ground running with dramatic and surprisingly hilarious results. Soojin’s plight with her husband (played by the late Lee Sun-kyun of Parasite fame) begins to physically and mentally burden her, leading her down a path of madness that Yu-mi always manages to make both horrific and entertaining. Watching Soojin “husband-proof” their apartment is a morbid delight that blends seamlessly with the reality of watching a woman fall apart at the seams and Yu-mi’s endlessly entertaining screen presence is a joy to watch even at the mental expense of Soojin.
Though it isn’t until the third act where Yu-mi’s blend of horror and comedic timing comes to a boiling point. I won’t spoil exactly what happens, but Yu-mi’s portrayal of Soojin’s worsening mental state goes into some genuinely unexpected places that are a blast to watch. A curiously placed PowerPoint presentation that is somehow crucial to the plot’s progression sounds like a true “jumping the shark” moment, but Yu-mi’s deliberately confusing performance manages to make it work in spades. It’s something I can say about Sleep as a whole, as it is a solid horror-thriller elevated to another level on the strength of Jung Yu-mi’s work.
11. Margaret Qualley – The Substance
When reviews came pouring in for Coralie Fargeat’s latest project, just about all of them raved and glazed The Substance as one of the year’s craziest movies. It was a sentiment proven right by concept alone, using the cyclical nature of an actor’s shelf life in Hollywood to conjure up grade-A body horror insanity. An exceptional showcase of Fargeat’s brand of feminist horror mixed with a directorial flare inspired by the likes of Cronenberg and Carpenter, The Substance is a cracking slice of cinema on her talents alone.
As important as she is to the success of the film though, it’s the commitment of its cast that puts it over the top. Enter one Margaret Qualley. Playing the artificially created younger copy of Demi Moore’s Elisabeth Sparkle, Qualley is tasked with heightening the arrogant and selfish side of Sparkle’s personality while differentiating herself enough from the original base. A pretty TV persona built on bubbliness quickly morphs into a spoiled brat at home and Qualley excels at the balance, ironically enough.
Qualley’s energy builds and builds to a performance that is equal parts fearless and frenzied, completely giving herself to the film’s disgusting body horror in the third act. Anyone willing to go through the makeup process for these films should be applauded and Qualley’s transformation into the abomination known as Monstro Elisasue is no different. A magnetic performance that awards circuits slotted under the Supporting category, but Margaret Qualley is as much a lead as Demi Moore and is an essential aspect of one of the year’s most acclaimed horror films.
10: David Jonsson – Alien: Romulus
Much has been said about the decision to deepfake the late Ian Holm into the latest xenomorph nightmare in space and I certainly don’t believe it to be a necessary addition to the otherwise solid Romulus. But spending my time bemoaning the inclusion of an uncanny digital face reminiscent of a realistic SpongeBob closeup does nothing but besmirch and taint the great work provided by the living actors in Alien: Romulus. In particular, nobody should be sleeping on David Jonsson.
Joining the ranks of Holm, Lance Henriksen, and Michael Fassbender as one of the androids living in the Alien universe, Jonsson’s work as Andy, adopted brother of protagonist Rain, borrows from the best of the android performances while adding in his own unique touches to the universe. A closed-off being with intense loyalty to his sister, Jonsson squeezes sympathy from the audience right from the get-go, despite the memories of Fassbender’s David still fresh in everyone’s minds.
Jonsson’s fantastic work doesn’t stop with his likability either. Effectively switching gears as his programming alters, Jonsson’s performance becomes a complicated combination of emotionless soldier and loyal ally that he sells with ease. And as much as nostalgia bait makes me cringe, his recreation of Ripley’s most iconic line was a gargantuan task that he pulls off with fiery gusto. Whatever the future holds for the Alien franchise, I hope there’s room for David Jonsson in it.
9: Laurie Pavy – MadS
The one-shot in films and shows has occasionally felt like too much of a gimmick in the modern era. Coordinating seamless and sweeping camera movement and blocking are sound technical achievements, but if they don’t serve the story or vice versa, then what’s the point? Director David Moreau avoids this pitfall with his single-take zombie film MadS, depicting a trio of paranoid and toxic friends experiencing a bad trip with a growing zombie outbreak. Seeing just how fast shit hits the fan is the kind of visceral terror you only see in films like Train to Busan and 28 Days Later.
While the main trio of the film are wonderful across-the-board, MadS kicks into high gear with the shift to Anais’s point of view. Anais, the girlfriend of leading man Romain, is played by Laurie Pavy and is one of the three perspectives we’re shown throughout the film. While Romain’s journey is a paranoid drug trip gone horribly wrong, Anais is a far more tragic tale of a woman stuck in a hopeless situation and Pavy’s hypnotic performance as the loopy and eventually feral woman is a sight to behold.
The one-take allure of MadS is practically one-and-one with Pavy undergoing a zombie transformation in real time. We often only get glimpses of a person’s decay into a flesh-muncher, but Anais withering away in front of our eyes is made all the more gut-wrenching by her seemingly denying the reality of her situation. Even when mostly gone, shades of her former self peek out thanks to Pavy’s expertly crafted acting, constantly switching between scared woman and twitchy zombie-in-progress. If there’s any one reason to watch MadS, it’s the frightening work Laurie Pavy puts into her craft.
8: Curry Barker – Milk & Serial
When exactly is the breaking point of content brain? How long can you keep the bit going before it starts to bleed over into reality? Filmmaker and YouTuber Curry Barker attempts to answer such a post-YouTube question with his 3-figure budget found footage horror-comedy Milk & Serial. Starring Barker himself, the unlikely YouTube hit puts content brain and shameless prank videos under a grainy microscope when a couple of prank YouTubers end up going too far during a series of prank-offs between the two.
It’s a short, but impactful trip through one man’s mind and the deterioration accelerated by a combination of YouTube brain rot and an abundance of skeletons in his closet. Said man is played by the filmmaker himself as Curry Barker is front and center of the film and the marketing. The writing, directing, producing and perhaps most strikingly, the unnerving cover star that is but a taste of Barker’s unhinged performance that showcases so much in a mere hour.
Barker’s unsettling work bleeds through in every facet of his acting. The disturbing smile he flashes the camera while talking to the audience, the slimy way he manipulates his friends, the way he can barely hide who he truly is to them and us watching. Barker feels like the personification of the uncanny valley every second he’s onscreen and when he’s playing a heightened version of your average content farm YouTuber, it’s concerningly appropriate and fitting. Easily one of the ickiest performances of the year, horror and beyond.
7: Nell Tiger Free – The First Omen
I feel as though horror audiences (including myself) were genuinely sideswiped by the surprisingly high critical reception to The First Omen. A horror prequel that seemingly nobody asked for was surely a recipe for disaster. What more can you squeeze out of a franchise and through the shameless formula of needless origin story nonsense. Yet here we are at the end of the year glazing The First Omen as an effective possession horror and a spectacular vehicle for Nell Tiger Free.
Serving as a novice nun in the same orphanage where infamous demon child Damien’s mother resides, Free’s Margaret starts off as a promising and kindhearted nun struggling to adapt to a new setting, Needing a push just to let loose and party for a night, Free portrays Margaret as a sheltered soul walking headfirst into a turmoil she can’t even begin to understand as things get progressively worse. And boy do we feel every crushing instance of Margaret’s physical and mental crisis thanks to Nell Tiger Free’s completely hopeless and fearless performance.
Even before the bonkers final act, seeing Free devolve further into fear for both herself and the girl she vows to protect is more frightening than the usual possession tropes present in the film. She sells the hopelessness of fighting an uphill battle against an entire organization and that is before the third act sees her and her physical body become entwined into the demonic conspiracy. Of course, most people will point to the car crash scene as Tiger Free’s acting reel moment (which it definitely is), but her work in the film as a whole is a magnificent exercise in misery and paranoia.
6: Hugh Grant – Heretic
It’s baffling to me that anyone who is only familiar with Hugh Grant’s work post-2012 may not truly realize how insane it is for him to be front and center of an outright horror-thriller. He has worked in the genre before, but anybody who grew up on films in the 2000s likely remembers Grant as the go-to charming comedy actor relying on his wit and good looks to engage audiences. It wasn’t until the 2010s and onward when Grant gradually shifted towards more character actor roles and his starring role in Scott Beck and Bryan Woods’s religious horror film Heretic is only the latest example of his versatility
Playing a seemingly polite Englishman set out to test the faith of two Mormon missionaries through conversation, debate, and a pair of mysterious doors, we see Hugh Grant using his latent charm and warm attitude to disarm the girls in a further instance of the man shedding his previous reputation. The Bridget Jones alum uses the same familiar cadence in his voice and line delivery as he casually tells the girls that they’re locked in his labyrinth-like home to terrifying effect. What’s worse than a callous sociopath that feels at peace with himself even in the face of scared girls begging to be let go? Hugh Grant utilizes everyone’s perception of him in-universe and reality to get his way and he steals the entire show as a result.
Much of his strongest work in the film is him slowly unveiling his intentions to the girls while rigidly, but calmly forcing them to confront their beliefs and the religion they’re attached to. A debate he often starts with innocuous questions related to fast food and board games too. Grant is a blast to watch as he constantly flips the switch on the girls and even as the film becomes more overtly horror over the runtime, he never once feels out of place in a film that simply wouldn’t be the same without his charmingly sardonic performance.
5: Alisha Weir – Abigail
Radio Silence’s follow-up to their hit horror-comedy Ready or Not and Scream 5 and 6 is something that plays to the strengths of a film collective that knows a thing or two about delivering laughs with the blood and guts. Abigail follows closely in the footsteps of Ready or Not by sticking our main cast of characters in a lavish mansion serving as their potential tomb. While Ready or Not’s central performance was Samara Weaving’s badass heroine in a bride’s dress, Abigail flips it around with the central performance of Alisha Weir’s villainous ballerina vampire.
It’s truly unfortunate just how hard the marketing went on Weir’s transformation from would-be kidnapping victim to bloodthirsty vampire cutting rugs and biting necks. Part of the fun is watching Weir play the part of scared little girl in an effort to throw off her captors/lunch menu and even then, it’s obvious there’s something fishy afoot. Abigail’s mocking apology to Melissa Barrera’s Joey for what’s going to happen to them is just sinister enough to cast suspicion on her without revealing outright what that actually means.
Then the vampire shenanigans begin and Alisha Weir is fully unleashed, both in her dropping the facade and amping up her wild and feral side. Learning ballet for the role, the young musical theater actress incorporates the grace of a ballerina to clash with the various instances of her biting, jumping, and stabbing her poor victims to sadistic glee. To go from the lead role in a Matilda adaptation to the lead in a horror film where she dances a nice waltz with a headless body is crazy whiplash on its own, but something that Alisha Weir somehow makes look easy.
“What color are MY eyes, Frank?”
4: Maika Monroe – Longlegs
When the promotion for Osgood Perkins’s newest horror film Longlegs officially began, audiences were immediately captivated by the cryptic marketing and downright evil atmosphere that permeated from every teaser. Depicting Nicolas Cage as a frizzy-haired killer who always sounds like he’s on the verge of either crying or yelling is an immensely smart use of his sensibilities as an actor and it’s fair to say that the marketing is wholly made by him, combined with a great performance in the final product as well.
But I think we’re all kidding ourselves if we can’t see that Maika Monroe is the real star of Longlegs. In-between the Fincher-esque atmosphere and the crazed Cage performance, our lead is reserved and possibly clairvoyant FBI agent Lee Harker. A stark contrast to Cage’s far more bombastic performance, Monroe also plays to her own strengths and delivers a similarly subtle and meticulous masterclass in acting not unlike her performance in the 2022 horror-thriller Watcher. The power in Monroe’s performance is in the subtleties of her facial expressions and body language.
Always looking off as if staring at something we can never see, Monroe displays the kind of reserved cynicism one typically needs to handle a high-stress job like Harker’s. But she always reminds us of her hidden humanity in her interactions with kids and her co-workers and it’s the kind of weathered quirkiness that makes her such an engaging presence to watch in a film where Cage chews the scenery any chance he gets. It’s equally fun watching her attempt to talk to a child as it is watching her decipher a criminal’s location just by sensing it Dragonball Z-style.
Maika Monroe may not get the showy performance recognition that Cage is receiving, but her silence in Longlegs makes her role her most expressive performance to date and the best from the film itself.
3: Hunter Schafer – Cuckoo
Horror can be as physically demanding of a genre as action and thrillers, thanks in large to the wide variety of films and shows under the horror umbrella. Actors need to sell like they’ve just made a narrow escape from a seemingly inescapable hellworld and that’s exactly how Hunter Schafer looked at the end of Cuckoo. A pulpy thrill ride from the director of Luz, Cuckoo borrows from the well of Eurocentric horror, complete with a story set in a small resort town located in the Bavarian Alps.
In that town is melancholic rocker Gretchen, played by Schafer, becoming entangled in an unusual family conspiracy that may or may not involve a strange humanoid woman. And that’s all we need for set-up before we bear witness to almost 2 hours of Schafer getting chased, run off the road, beaten up, you name it. Just about everything and everyone is against her in some way, all the while the mental toll of her mother’s death is weighing heavy on her mind and increasingly bandaged head.
It’s an honest joy seeing the Euphoria actress embrace her inner John McClane in such a maddening horror film, regularly having to get out of situations through clever thinking, luck, and inhuman endurance. Some may not find that believable with a teenage girl like Gretchen, but Schafer communicates the rush of adrenaline one can feel in a life-or-death situation to a tee while understanding the weird vibes of the film. Even when the film begins to flirt with creature feature tropes, Hunter Schafer grounds the story through her determination to live, her ability to absorb insane levels of pain and punishment, and a realistic teenager sass towards the unusual adults in the town. Schafer’s performance is frantic, scrappy, lived in and an undeniable highlight in this year of indescribable horrors.
“That’s a fucking weird way to put it!”
2: Juliette Gariépy – Red Rooms
Each time I’ve done this year-end list for horror performances, I always have an internal debate on what exactly qualifies as something under the horror umbrella. The genre’s sheer expansive library and hybrids with other genres can stir up discourse on what is considered horror or thriller. It’s a surprisingly touchy subject, but I believe the answer is in examining how a film or show tackles transgressive topics and what the filmmaker intends the audience to feel. It’s why I ultimately feel confident in Juliette Gariépy’s unhinged beauty of a performance in Red Rooms fitting this list like a glove.
Telling the story of a woman dangerously obsessed with an alleged serial killer on trial for the murders of young girls, Red Rooms feels procedural on the surface with many scenes set in cold and static courtrooms and a lavish apartment. But Juliette’s level of obsession morphs this morbid psychological thriller into an outright evil and disturbed film right out of your worst nightmares. Gariépy’s Kelly-Anne camps outside of the courthouse just to see him while her gambling habit leads her into a section of the dark web that further fulfills her desire to see the forbidden snuff films he’s made of his victims in the “Red Room.”
Kelly-Anne goes beyond mere fangirling and fully relies on the sensation of the trials just to feel something in her life. It’s this surgical method of looking at a case of a possible child murderer where Gariépy’s alien and inhumane performance truly stands out. She is as calm as an undisturbed pond when reading the gruesome details behind the case, with one scene in particular of her watching a teenage girl brutally slaughtered as though she’s watching an NFL replay displaying the lack of humanity or empathy she feels towards anything at all.
It feels like a genuine nightmare watching the otherwise beautiful face of Gariépy’s Kelly-Anne (a successful model in-universe) coated in the red glare of her computer screen while watching a child’s life end. All the more frightening by her lack of reaction. Yet that doesn’t even compare to the lows she’s willing to go towards in a scene in the courtroom involving fake braces and if you watch this scene and not think that Juliette Gariépy’s performance is arguably the scariest of the entire year, I don’t know what to tell you. It is a brilliant, deeply uncomfortable, and downright freaky performance that can and will be talked about in best-of conversations over the years.
1: Demi Moore – The Substance
Margaret Qualley is one-half of the equation that makes The Substance work as well as it does. But it’s the original that pulls everything together. For all the heightened satire present in Fargeat’s horror-comedy, the peak of the film lies within the deliberately less campy core of its leading star. Elisabeth Sparkle’s career as an Oscar-winning actress-turned fitness TV star pairs a little too well with Demi Moore, an extremely successful actress of the 90s making her monster comeback (literally!) in a film about an industry she knows far too well.
Beyond the meta aspect of casting Moore in this role, it’s rare to see an actress of her caliber give herself so completely into an unhinged horror vision that is only a mere misstep away from turning into a laughable farce. A woman creating a younger copy of herself that leads to a dynamic of one of them literally feeding off the other? It’s a balls-to-the-wall concept and yet Moore’s Sparkle tumbling down the path of obscurity and desirability is an appropriate and realistic fear for a woman in an industry so laser-focused on age and beauty.
Yet when she takes the substance and lives it up as Qualley’s Sue during her week of activity, Moore channels the very real sensation of feeling worthless in your body in the midst of a midlife crisis. Like nothing you do truly matters, so might as well let yourself go. Much of the first half of the film is watching Moore trapped in her bubble of self-hatred and every second of it feels like an eternity in the best way. She’s melancholic, isolated, and too tired to even put up a fake smile in public most of the time, demonstrating Moore’s ability to portray a woman silently suffering.
However, her steep decline as Sue feeds off of her body is where Moore’s performance enters the point of no return. Morphing from sadness to jealousy and anger, her work is suddenly completely in-tune with the world Fargeat has created and it is marvelous. A delightfully unhinged Demi Moore is the stuff dreams are made of and combined with the insane makeup work she goes under, it makes for a wonderful disaster of epic proportions. Demi Moore’s performance is bonkers, hilarious, tragic, and completely deserving of its recognition as one of the best horror performances of the decade, period.
“I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”
What were your favorite horror performances of 2024? Sound off below!