In 2024, cult films found their audiences in real time

Something that The A.V. Club noted in our breakdown of the best films of 2024 is that, as the industry becomes more polarized between massive too-big-to-fail franchise films and all-but-ignored indies, seeking out good movies is more and more becoming the audience’s responsibility. In a corporate landscape where intellectual property’s reign as god-emperor shows no signs of relenting, it’s up to small groups of cinephiles to find each other and the new cult classics that they’ll rally around. Sometimes that just means taking a chance on something odd at the theater, but more often it’s about keeping an eye on what’s going on in the indie world and either advocating for it yourself or giving yourself over to someone else’s proselytizing. From the perennial horror breakouts to the truly DIY underdog stories, with film topics ranging from snuff streams to trans Jokers to oodles of beavers, 2024 proved that the future of film will be more dependent than ever upon reaching these engaged, specific communities.

It seems like a simple enough idea: if a filmmaking team can get their good movie in front of people who appreciate good movies, those people will help spread the word like clerks at a digital video store. But streaming is an increasingly overflowing landfill. Theatrical windows are tightening, and those that do exist are monopolized by studio juggernauts—at one point this year, Deadpool & Wolverine and Inside Out 2 (aka Disney) held more than half the theater screens in America hostage. In response, little films need to be crafty, and those that want more than blockbusters need to pay attention.

Indiewire touched a bit on this idea back in October, focusing on microbudget comedies like Free Time, which “found holes in art houses’ schedules” to make its big-screen debut, and my favorite film of the year, Hundreds Of Beavers. Shot for just $150,000, the slapstick wonder has been making the roadshow rounds all year, zipping around festivals and smaller theaters like Chicago’s Music Box. Rather than hand Hundreds Of Beavers over to a distributor that might damn it to the streaming graveyard, those behind the film kept things in-house, relying on a scrappy social media presence and a premise so ridiculous that recommending the film to a friend was almost as fun as watching the film in the first place.

“We released this film in a no-holds-barred, get-in-the-shit-and-see-what-sticks sort of way,” Hundreds Of Beavers producer Kurt Ravenwood tells The A.V. Club. “We believed that once people watched the film, they would become advocates. So we just had to do our part to get people over their up-front reluctance to watch a dialogue-free black-and-white movie with no stars. We did this with stunts, both digital and physical, in what amounted to ‘chaos marketing.’ Paired with great publicity, great reviews, and fantastic support from the art house community, we achieved our goals.”

Assisting with this “chaos marketing,” which included riffs on other films’ posters and endless variations on the furry mascot costume at the movie’s core, was publicist Justin Cook. “I could never have predicted the response to Hundreds Of Beavers,” says Cook. “One of the things that was most impactful for my approach was the enthusiastic response from the cinephile community, both professional critics and ‘civilians.’ As a film lover, I saw [Mike Cheslik and Ryland Brickson Cole Tews]’ vision being embraced by that very vocal section of the internet (Thanks Letterboxd!) and I leaned into it hard.”

Speaking of, Hundreds Of Beavers was the second-highest rated film on Letterboxd as of the service’s mid-2024 accounting, speaking not only to the quality of the film but the grassroots effort that quality inspired. Letterboxd being used for marketing is certainly not new; the service is on every red carpet conducting interviews, and posting about new mega-releases like Wicked. Legendary filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Michael Mann, and Francis Ford Coppola have “joined” the platform in order to post recommendation lists as part of their promotional tours. But it’s not like Letterboxd was responsible for driving folks to Wicked. Rather, the more creative use of the service highlights how franchise-averse auteurs like Scorsese are turning to the same avenues as indie up-and-comers in order to find the people who still place value on something other than IP.

That app, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, TikTok, and, eventually, Bluesky not only allowed Beavers to find the folks it was made for, but provided the platforms for those communities to spread the word. And there were tangible results beyond the box office: Hundreds Of Beavers’ Blu-ray “sold out its initial stock within 12 hours,” according to Cook.

Another buzzy film that found itself embraced by the modern bastions of film appreciation was the Québécois techno-thriller Red Rooms. An unsettling, harrowing watch that critiques yet dabbles in the lurid appeals of true-crime, the most common comment floating around about Red Rooms was “Why aren’t more people talking about how fucked up Red Rooms is?” This was its distributor’s intention all along.

“Utopia’s always prided itself in providing cinematic ‘balm,’ but not just for older ‘worn out cinephiles’ but young cinephiles as well, focusing on discovery—debut and upcoming directors—alongside new or bold visions and genre-bending,” Utopia’s head of acquisitions Kyle Greenberg tells The A.V. Club.

Noting past releases including We’re All Going To The World’s Fair, Shiva Baby, and The Sweet East—narrative debuts on the bleeding edge of the American indie scene—Greenberg explains that Utopia’s approach was more about Red Rooms being snapped up by a team that understood that there was an audience intersection between the arthouse, the international, and the extremely online. Red Rooms hit the sweet spot for all three. And, because the Canadian film had a longer stretch between its initial premiere and its wider release, it followed a similar touring strategy to Hundreds Of Beavers. 

“We felt it was essential to create a long-tail for the U.S. release by building out the festival tour to create conversation city-to-city and continue to find more champions for the film—generally, we feel this approach for real independent film is integral given our budgetary restrictions in comparison to major studios/mini-majors who operate in the arthouse space and mask themselves as ‘independent’ despite having corporate backing and release their films on thousands of screens,” Greenberg explains. This meant bringing the film to festivals, lots of festivals—and not just genre fests. By hitting more mainstream fests and soliciting more coverage from local critics, who by and large all loved Red Rooms, the team was able to continue building steam for a film aimed at younger cinephiles who pay attention to reviews, Letterboxd ratings, and the ever-evolving frontier of what used to be known as “Film Twitter.” Like other films mentioned here, Red Rooms’ box office take and home viewing earnings reflect this. These movies are finding their audiences, and the audiences are finding the movies. With effort from both sides, small films like these can succeed.

“Red Rooms is an important reminder…that quality and originality are not just important,” Greenberg says, “but desired from audiences who are tired of seeing the same things over and over again.”

Some films owed their entire distribution to stirring that desire in their respective communities. The People’s Joker, for example, overcame a long and legally arduous journey from its 2022 Toronto International Film Festival premiere to its 2024 theatrical release. After filmmaker Vera Drew pulled her absurd, crowdfunded, mixed-media Joker parody from festivals under duress, word of mouth around the movie reached a feverish pitch—being told you’re not allowed to see something only makes people more curious. And because the subject matter includes, yes, multiple trans Jokers and Saturday Night Live overlord Lorne Michaels slipping on a banana peel and dying, it’s a film that, as Drew told The A.V. Club earlier this year would “simultaneously get people so excited and then get a handful of other people, like, pretty up in arms and weird about it.”

But “up in arms” is still good press. Distributor Altered Innocence stepped up to #FreeThePeoplesJoker where others wouldn’t, and released the film to its personally invested audience. “The success of The People’s Joker owes itself to many factors including being a generally fantastic film to start with, a crack-team of publicists who got the word out there to critics (who were great supporters of the film as well), but above all it could not have happened without the incredible support we had from the transgender community,” Altered Innocence founder Frank Jaffe tells The A.V. Club.

“After every popular screening we heard through Twitter and other social media spaces that these screenings were akin to a gala for the community,” Jaffe says. “A place to dress up, to see old friends and lovers, and to make new connections. We were lucky there were so many people in this community contacting their theater and asking them to play it. Altered Innocence has always strived to show films that feature marginalized communities and sexualities and will continue to do so.”

With audiences turning up in their finest clown regalia, and a filmmaker happy to post, meme, and stir the pot about her film on social media, The People’s Joker knew its niche and hit it hard. Drew became an extremely accessible figurehead for her film, as well as a bit of a symbol that those angry at Warner Bros.’ increasingly boneheaded and miserly decision-making under David Zaslav could rally behind. This, and Drew’s defiant film being one of the most evocative, hilarious, touching, and inventive trans narratives to hit the big screen, won the hearts of those mostly left behind by the studios.

That alienation is a theme another of the year’s big clown-based hits has a history of leaning into. The Terrifier franchise has always played to its studio-agnostic base of hardcore horror freaks, who have long found their niche homes on genre-specific websites. Dread Central was affiliated with the first film in the series, but once Bloody Disgusting and its corporate owner Cineverse got involved, Art The Clown was off to the races. Horror is always the safe bet for a return on your investment, but Terrifier films have long been tearing the competition apart limb by limb—partially through old-school appeal (being an “unrated” horror is a selling point for the sickos) and partially through investing everything in reaching the audiences that were most likely to go see this bloodbath.

“By listening to existing and new fans alike and leaning into parasocial relationships by speaking in Art The Clown’s ‘voice’ we were able to leverage stunts and a social media campaign to extend their experience beyond the screen,” Cineverse’s Chief Content Officer Yolanda Macias tells The A.V. Club. Parasocial online relationships, either with brands or influencers, are perhaps more prevalent than ever. Understanding that, and approaching the niche that’s happened to glom onto your films, is essential for smaller fare. “We didn’t spend a dime in national media,” Cineverse CEO Chris McGurk said. “It’s a waste of time. If you have the tools to hyper-identify the fan bases you’re going after, then it’s basically just throw the whole rulebook out.”

This hyper-identification meant traditional demographic work—like seeing that “women and Latino moviegoers were driving the box office beyond the core fandom”—and analysis that required those marketing the film to actually think like people going to see a movie, like how Cineverse found that Terrifier 3 had become something friend groups were attending as a splattery, dare-like event.

Now on its way back into theaters for a limited run on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, Terrifier 3 looks to add to its haul as the highest-grossing unrated movie of all time. It’s not like Terrifier 3 is a masterpiece or a feat of unprecedented marketing genius. It’s simply a solid film that played to its crowd, backed by people who still believe in the power of the movie theater. In a year where Warner Bros. pulled what could be Clint Eastwood’s final film after just a week in theaters, that still means something.

Also rallying behind the novel idea of “allowing your movie to play in a movie theater,” artsier horror like The Substance made a huge splash—especially for a Palme d’Or competitor—based off its buzzy premise, admitted star power, and gross-out bonafides, while Longlegs worked overtime to milk the mystery from its upsetting (often disguised) imagery. These films had more established companies behind them, Mubi and Neon respectively, but both still broke out beyond what anyone ever expected. Mubi went all-out for its first theatrical distribution, picking up what Universal dropped and showing that they knew what to do with it. Neon, which has long defied expectations as a smaller distribution house with killer taste, pushed Longlegs with one of the year’s most compelling campaigns.

“Film marketing has become increasingly distanced from the people that matter most: the audience,” Neon’s Chief Marketing Officer Christian Parkes tells The A.V. Club. “In response, the entire Longlegs campaign was built out of respect for the horror audience and a desire to build something that they could be a part of. Thematically inspired by William Castle and Alfred Hitchcock, we methodically gave them every piece of the puzzle over the course of six months without ever pandering or failing to put them first. The success of the film belongs to them.”

Through promotional material mainly released in code and adamant about hiding Nicolas Cage’s getup for the off-putting title role—treating him more like a monster from a creature feature than Hannibal Lecter. Add in some nasty, oddball tics from that central performance and an unforgettable make-up job that turned Cage’s performance into a walking nightmare, and you’ve got a film with long, long legs. This was, of course, a gamble. Banking on an audience being compelled rather than repelled by a gimmick speaks to the same kind of respect shown by the films mentioned here with far fewer dollars to spend. Yet, the goal is still the same: Remind audiences that it’s not all just slop out there. Whether that means grabbing their attention with an inventive series of ads, or simply worming your way into their consciousness by meeting them where they’re at, the little films that scored big in 2024 found their communities.

Most of these films aren’t changing the industry, or enriching those who made them. They’re films that, through their inventive routes to success, made enough of a dent to steal a gasp of oxygen from the gluttons hogging the air at the box office. In 2024, there’s not really time to wait around and hope to be reclaimed as a cult classic. The cults are still there, just necessarily forming in real time. Finding them requires specificity, individuality, and passion. As Hundreds Of Beavers producer Ravenwood says, “there’s no silver bullet, and what worked for Beavers (unhinged chaos) may not work for future projects.” But, as that film’s publicist concludes, there’s also a sunny side to this evolving relationship between audiences, filmmakers, critics, and promoters: “Creativity is far from dead, it just needs to be championed.”