5 Underrated A24 Movies You Probably Missed

A24 has built a reputation as the home of visionary directors and boundary-pushing cinema. When the studio’s name appears on a poster, audiences pay attention. Films like “Moonlight,” “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” and “Midsommar” have become cultural touchstones. But for every A24 film that dominates the conversation, there are several that quietly arrive, get decent reviews, and then vanish from public memory.

The studio’s catalog is vast enough that some genuinely excellent films have fallen through the cracks. These are not the ones you have already seen recommendations for. These are the ones that made a small splash, earned loyal followings, and then got buried under the next wave of A24 releases. Here are five that deserve your time.

Obvious Child (2014)

Gillian Robespierre’s directorial debut is one of A24’s most overlooked films, and it is a shame more people have not seen it. Jenny Slate plays Donna Stern, a Brooklyn comedian whose life unravels after she gets dumped, has a one-night stand, and discovers she is pregnant. The film follows her through the decision-making process with a warmth and humor that refuses to treat the subject as heavy-handed drama.

What makes “Obvious Child” work is its refusal to be preachy. The film trusts Slate’s performance and Robespierre’s writing to carry the emotional weight without manufactured speeches or moral lessons. Jake Lacy shows up as the one-night stand, Max, and manages to be charming without being reduced to a plot device. The comedy club sequences feel lived-in, the Brooklyn setting is specific rather than generic, and the ending avoids the neat resolution that would have undercut everything that came before.

The film landed in 2014, a year before abortion became a dominant political issue in American cinema. That timing worked against it in one sense, the conversation had not yet caught up to the film’s casual honesty, but it also means the movie does not feel like a polemic. It feels like a story about a person navigating a difficult situation, told with intelligence and genuine affection for its characters.

The Iron Claw (2023)

Sean Durkin’s film about the Von Erich wrestling family should have been a bigger deal. Zac Efron delivers what might be the best performance of his career as Kevin Von Erich, the last surviving son of a Texas wrestling dynasty plagued by a string of tragedies. The film covers decades of the family’s life, from their rise in the wrestling world to the losses that nearly destroyed them.

The wrestling sequences are staged with real physicality, but the film’s strength is in the quiet moments between matches. The brothers’ relationships with their domineering father Fritz, played by Holt McCallany, carry genuine menace without resorting to villain caricature. Jeremy Allen White as Kerry Von Erich brings a damaged intensity that balances Efron’s more grounded performance. Harris Dickinson as the youngest brother David delivers the film’s most heartbreaking arc.

Durkin shoots the family’s ranch with a desolate beauty that mirrors their emotional isolation. The film does not sensationalize the tragedies, it presents them as the inevitable consequence of a family that defined itself through physical dominance and emotional suppression. When the losses pile up, they feel earned rather than exploitative. The final scene, with Kevin alone on the ranch, is one of the most quietly devastating endings in recent cinema.

You Hurt My Feelings (2023)

Nicole Holofcener has been making sharp, perceptive films about relationships for decades, and “You Hurt My Feelings” is one of her best. Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays Beth, a writer whose marriage to Adam (Tobias Menzies) seems solid until she overhears him admit that he does not actually like her new book. What follows is a meticulous dissection of how a single moment of honesty can unravel years of carefully maintained politeness.

The film understands that the real damage is not the criticism itself, it is the realization that the person you trust most has been performing approval. Beth spirals through anger, self-doubt, and eventually a confrontation that is both painful and darkly funny. Louis-Dreyfus and Menzies play off each other with the ease of a couple who have been doing this for years, which makes the rupture feel real.

Holofcener populates the film with a supporting cast that mirrors the central conflict. Beth’s sister Sarah (Michaela Watkins) and her husband Tom (Arian Moayed) have their own version of the same dynamic, with Tom’s honesty about Sarah’s acting career becoming a running tension. The New York setting is specific without being showy, and the film’s 93-minute runtime keeps it focused. This is a movie about the lies couples tell each other to keep things running, and the cost of finally telling the truth.

Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022)

Halina Reijn’s slasher comedy arrived with decent reviews but got lost in a crowded 2022 release calendar. The setup is familiar: a group of wealthy twenty-somethings gather at a remote mansion during a hurricane for a game of Bodies Bodies Bodies, a murder-mystery party game. When real bodies start showing up, paranoia takes over and the group turns on each other.

The film works because it understands its characters without condescending to them. Amandla Stenberg, Maria Bakalova, Rachel Sennott, and Chase Sui Wonders play rich kids whose privilege has insulated them from consequences, and the game becomes a pressure cooker that forces them to confront who they actually are. Pete Davidson shows up as the group’s lovable loser, and his improvisational energy gives the film a chaotic pulse.

What elevates the material is Reijn’s direction, which keeps the tone balanced between genuine scares and savage comedy. The film skewers social media culture, performative wokeness, and the way privileged people romanticize danger without ever becoming a lecture. The ending, which reveals the killer’s identity in a way that recontextualizes everything, is both surprising and thematically consistent. It is a film that understands that the real horror is not the bodies, it is the people who made them.

We Live in Time (2024)

John Crowley’s film stars Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield as a couple navigating a cancer diagnosis with the kind of messy, contradictory emotions that real life produces. Almut (Pugh) is a chef who discovers she has ovarian cancer, and the film follows her and Tobias (Garfield) through treatment, denial, anger, and the kind of dark humor that people use to survive impossible situations.

The film structure jumps between timelines, showing the couple’s early relationship alongside the cancer narrative. This could have been gimmicky, but Crowley uses the structure to show how the present changes the past. Moments that seemed ordinary at the time take on new weight when you know what is coming. Pugh and Garfield have genuine chemistry, and the film trusts them to carry the emotional beats without over-explaining.

What makes “We Live in Time” stand out from other cancer dramas is its refusal to be inspirational. Almut is not brave in a way that would make a good poster quote. She is angry, scared, and sometimes mean. The film does not ask you to admire her suffering, it asks you to sit with it. Garfield’s Tobias is equally complex, trying to be supportive while managing his own grief. The ending avoids both sentimentality and nihilism, landing on something that feels honest about what love looks like when time is running out.

The film also benefits from its attention to the small details of illness. The hospital waiting rooms, the awkward conversations with friends who do not know what to say, the way treatment schedules dominate every aspect of life. Crowley shoots these moments with a documentary-like precision that grounds the emotional drama in physical reality. Pugh’s performance is career-best work, finding humor and rage in equal measure without ever letting either emotion overwhelm the other.

Why These Films Matter

A24’s success has created a paradox: the studio’s brand is so strong that its lesser-known films get lost in the shadow of its bigger hits. Audiences assume that if they have not heard of an A24 film, it must not be worth watching. But the studio’s catalog is deep enough that some genuinely excellent work has been overlooked.

These five films share a common thread: they are all character-driven stories that trust their actors and their audiences. None of them rely on spectacle or franchise appeal. They succeed because they understand that the most compelling drama happens between people, not between explosions. If you have exhausted A24’s greatest hits, these are the ones to discover next.

The pattern across these films is clear. A24 does not just produce the kind of prestige cinema that dominates awards season. The studio also funds smaller, quieter films that explore specific human experiences with unusual honesty. “Obvious Child” treats abortion as a personal decision rather than a political statement. “The Iron Claw” examines how toxic masculinity destroys families from the inside. “You Hurt My Feelings” dissects the small lies that hold relationships together. “Bodies Bodies Bodies” uses genre conventions to expose class dynamics. “We Live in Time” refuses to sentimentalize illness.

What these films have in common is a refusal to tell audiences what to feel. They present complicated situations and trust viewers to form their own conclusions. That approach does not always generate the kind of buzz that drives streaming algorithms, but it produces films that stay with you long after the credits roll.

The streaming era has made this kind of discovery both easier and harder. On one hand, these films are available at the click of a button. On the other, the algorithms that surface content tend to favor the already-popular, creating a feedback loop where A24’s biggest hits get more visibility while the smaller films languish in the catalog. Breaking out of that loop requires active searching, which is exactly what lists like this are for.

If you watch one film from this list, make it “Obvious Child.” It is the most purely enjoyable of the five, and it is the one most likely to make you seek out Gillian Robespierre’s other work. If you want something heavier, “The Iron Claw” will leave you devastated. If you want something that feels like a conversation with a close friend, “You Hurt My Feelings” is the one. And if you want a horror film that actually has something to say, “Bodies Bodies Bodies” delivers.