The Rise of A24 - Spring Breakers (2013) and Kids (1995)

The season finale of our Rise of A24 series starts at the beginning, Harmony Korine's neon maximalist Spring Breakers (2013) as well as his first big break as the writer of Kids (1995).Problematic doesn't begin to describe the mid 1990s molotov cocktail of Kids. Harmony Korine was a skateboard kid in New York City when the nearly 50 year old Larry Clark discovered him. However improbable, a partnership sparked and they were able to pull off this cinéma véritésque screed. Bracketing out the more improprietous and probably illegal aspects of the partnership between Korine and Clark, the film depicts a dystopian kaleidoscope of violence, sex, and teenage anarchy. Most of this piercing honesty came from Korine, but Clark definitely helped to make sure that dogmatic authenticity was captured on celluloid, for better or worse. It is hard to imagine the chic iconoclasts of A24 even considering distribution for Kids. It is much too raw, even for them. Thus we got Spring Breakers in 2013 from Korine as a director. Style over substance is a badge of honor for Harmony. The vibe here is vibz. The four young ladies at the center of the story are mere playthings for Korine's blissed out polemic against some mirage of Americanism. This is perhaps the paradigm of A24 films: stylemaxxing with ponderous writing, an infinity pool of depth. While A24 has distributed and produced great films, their reputation was solidified early on with Spring Breakers, a provocative and vaccous montage. As A24 is now attempting to become a mid-major studio, it is startling to look back at their beginnings. For at least half a decade in the mid 2010s, it seemed as those A24 was forging a new path in filmmaking: the high commerce of high art. Alas they could not contain themselves as their creative courage begat commercial victory. Nowadays, they seem a bit like the trust fund kid who went to Sarah Lawrence, a bit eccentric, but bourgeoise all the same.

The penultimate episode in our Rise of A24 season features two psychological free falls, Denis Villeneuve's Enemy (2014) and the infamous Roman Polanski's The Tenant (1976)Special Guest: Hollywood Insider and great friend of the show, RyanSlipping identity is one of the better themes for existential horror, but its narrative power can easily list the story until it capsizes. There is perhaps nothing scarier than losing one's self. It is a fear so extreme and palpable, it is not spoke of often, which reflects on how on edge we have become in the age of social media. Our self identities have never been more slippery than right now, as our self image has become a kaleidoscope of algorithms, vibes, propaganda, and postmodern chicanery. Denis Villeneuve's Enemy (2014) seems almost out of time despite being written and shot during the hyper acceleration of social media. The movie starts with a quote "Chaos is order yet undeciphered." Yet, the entire film works to obfuscate the actual connection between the doppelgangers at the center of it story. The ending is notoriously opaque as well. All of this adds up to a classic A24 style film. A film that offers a lot of vibes and questions, but doesn't dare write a thesis statement that is decipreable. Roman Polanski's The Tenant (1976) comes from a different world than our own. Pre-internet and personal computer, The Tenant harkens back to Kafkaesque institutional paranoia and identity dissolution more commonly seen in Scandinavian film. Here the maleficent forces are clear and all around us. Small acts of coercion via social compliance begin to rewrite Trelkovsky's self-identity until he himself finally erases the last mark of his former self. It is easy to see how The Tenant has had a large influence beyond its limited social cachet. While uneven and unkempt, Polanski confidently and courageously explores his own sense of faltering self.

In our seventh episode of The Rise of A24 series, we revisit the pitch black thriller Green Room (2016) and its even even darker precedent Straw Dogs (1971).Special Guests: David, comedian and musician from Chicago, check out his band HumdrumGreen Room is perhaps the most divisive film that splits apart your Film Trace cohosts. Chris loves this punk rock thriller, and Dan resolutely despises the film. For nearly a decade now, the two have squared off over this A24 stalwart from Jeremy Saulnier. What starts out as a sort of fun punk rock road movie quickly turns into a nazi funhouse of horrors. Grotesque violence mixes with fascist gang machinations as main characters get wiped out one by one. The film's tone is akin to a street paella: messy with lots of competing tastes and probably some deep and long lasting indigestion. Chris has always been a glutton for punishment. Straw Dogs is somehow even more disturbing and unnerving than Green Room. Dustin Hoffman plays a little runt creative who has to contend with the rural anti-intellectualism of the English countryside. While the setup seems quite put on and rote, the final results are anything but. The tension rises throughout the film until its insane and hyper violent ending. Problematic is the starting point for this film. Where it ends up is entirely up to you as the viewer to determine.

In our sixth episode of The Rise of A24 series, we plunge into the cold dark heart of humanity with It Comes at Night (2017) and The Crazies (1973)Special Guests: Bridget D. Brave, horror writer and horror film aficionado I will admit. These are a couple of tough films. It Comes at Night is bleak. The Crazies is messy. They both share a common Hobbesian DNA. That is, human beings can be pretty awful to each other. A24's marketing misfire struck down It Comes at Night at the box office, and the film has not recovered from that diminished status despite being extraordinary work of cynicism by Trey Edward Shults. The film reminds me very much of the height of 1970s American horror, a collective realization that maybe we are the baddies.George Romero's The Crazies has a totally different tone, but I think a very similar message. Romero shot this on 16mm and edited it like a 16 year-old YouTuber. It is a complete mess. But within that mess is a lot of pointed and poignant political satire that is easy to miss. The Crazies came out when the USA was still murdering women and children in Vietnam, because some WASPs felt anxious in DC. It was the height of American Immorality, and Romero saw that very clearly. The Crazies is his valiant but ultimately failed attempt to speak truth to power.While both films are brutal in their own way, our wonderful conversation with Bridget D. Brave is quite the opposite. Three horror film nerds try to make sense of these unflinching attempts to capture the darkness, perhaps, at the core of humanity.

In our fifth episode of The Rise of A24 series, we go to church with Paul Schrader’s First Reformed (2018) and Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Ordet (1955).Special Guests: Jen and Sarah of the great podcasts - Movies & Us and TV & UsPaul Schrader has spent a lifetime wrestling with the question of transcendence. From Taxi Driver to Master Gardener, his protagonists are often solitary men seeking clarity and redemption in an indifferent world. In First Reformed, Schrader distilled decades of his own Calvinist guilt and expansive cinematic theory into a stark, haunting meditation on faith. The film follows Ethan Hawke's Reverend Toller as he spirals into despondency. He is unable to cope with the violence, sin, apathy, and immorality that swirls around his life. With A24's strong backing, Schrader achieved critical redemption with First Reformed. The film earned widespread acclaim and Schrader received long-overdue recognition as one of America's last great morality filmmakers.Schrader was deeply inspired by the 1955 Danish film Ordet. This austere masterpiece delves into the inner workings of a farming family grappling with the outer edges of religious despair and madness. It is slow, serious, and pure cinema. The molasses pace proves worthwhile as the film explodes into religious ecstasy in its final act. While long considered one of the most important films in world cinema, its stature has diminished in recent years as we have loosened our grip of organized religion. Still, this work of art proclaimed a spiritual boldness that has rarely been matched in the genre.

In our fourth episode of The Rise of A24 series, we are covering the newly minted cult classic Under the Silver Lake (2019) and the art cinema bonanza of L'Avventura (1960)Special Guest - James Adamson, the host of the great Double Reel Podcast, a monthly magazine podcast for the discerning film nerd.A24 had a cult following well before it broke into the mainstream in the 2020s. Their surprise win at the 2017 Oscars for Best Picture with Moonlight put them in the spotlight, but they remained resolutely an arthouse company pre-Covid. That’s why their behavior surrounding the marketing and distribution of Under the Silver Lake (2019) is so profoundly bizarre. David Robert Mitchell was coming off his 2015 horror masterpiece It Follows with this twisting absurdist L.A. noir starring Andrew Garfield. The whole affair seemed right in A24’s sweet spot. So much so that A24 pre-bought the distribution rights before a single shot was filmed. Then, after the movie played to a muted response at Cannes in 2018, they essentially abandoned it: moving the release date multiple times before finally dumping it onto just two screens in April 2019. What exactly was so unnerving that made A24 bury the film?L’Avventura (1960) had a similarly consequential Cannes premiere in 1960. At its first screening, the audience jeered and booed so loudly that director Michelangelo Antonioni left the theater in tears. Yet later that same week, a group of prominent film critic, led by figures from Cahiers du Cinéma, drafted and signed an open letter defending the film as a bold step forward for cinema. That act of critical solidarity transformed L’Avventura from a public embarrassment into a landmark of cinematic modernism. What began in jeers was quickly reframed as a radical new vision of film art, and its stature has only grown since. Today it stands as one of the undisputed masterpieces of 20th-century cinema, a fixture on “greatest films” lists and a touchstone for generations of directors. Under the Silver Lake, by contrast, never received that critical reprieve, its initial dismissal has lingered, but that has allowed a small, but vocal supporting group to form around the film as it becomes one of the first cult classics of the 2010s.

In our third episode of The Rise of A24 series, we are covering Kogonada's quiet meditation on familial AI, After Yang (2022) alongside the wondrous Late Spring (1949) by Yasujiro Ozu. Special Guest - Lillian Crawford is a freelance writer covering film and culture for publications including Sight & Sound, BBC Culture, The Guardian, Times Literary Supplement. In addition to her writing, Lillian is a prolific programmer and curator, including for the BFI, the Barbican, the Garden Cinema, and the Edinburgh International Film Festival. Dan is unable to hide his adoration Kogonada's debut film Columbus (2017). It currently ranks 7th on his best films of the 21st Century (so far) List. His follow-up, After Yang, is a more murkier affair. Set in a future where robots have become immediate family members, Kogonada attempts to humanize and ground sci-fi in a hazy emotional uncanny valley. Are we supposed to feel for the AI as we would a human or are we just mirroring our own subjective experiences onto an avatar? Rather than providing answers, the film drifts between aching grief, transcendent love, and non-dystopic visions of the future.Yasujiro Ozu is clearly a massive influence on Kogonada, and it is easy to see why with his film Late Spring (1949), a gorgeous melodrama about a daughter growing apart from her father. The film probably shares more with Kogonada's Columbus in its interplay between emotion and the natural world. Ozu is able to conjure the most hidden and profound emotions from his actors and the story. At the same time, he crafts a meticulous narrative that continues to propel forward even as the external drama remains subtle. A true masterpiece of filmmaking.

“If Blumhouse is in a slump, I’d like to tell that story. I don’t want other people to tell that story.”Jason Blum, The Town, July 2025In a baffling moment of industry transparency, Jason Blum called into The Town podcast on the morning after M3GAN 2.0’s disastrous opening weekend in late June to discuss what went wrong. Jason is the founder and leader of the highly successful Blumhouse Productions, a movie studio that quickly rose to success in the 2010s by producing low-budget horror films. Jason is notorious for being open about the normally clandestine aspects of the moviemaking business, but The Town episode was extraordinarily illuminating and revealing. At the same time, Jason Blum was there to spin like any typical Hollywood mogul.M3GAN 2.0 opened to only 10 million dollars on its premiere weekend in late June 2025, which was under a third of what the original film opened to in 2023. The sequel will end up with a total of 39 million dollars at the box office versus the 181 million dollars of the original. Adding insult to injury, the production budget on the sequel was 25 million vs the original’s 15 million, and the marketing budget for part two was certainly much higher as well. In short, M3GAN 2.0 is a huge bomb.Full Article: https://film-trace.beehiiv.com/p/the-end-of-the-blum-supremacyListen for more...

In our second episode of The Rise of A24 series, we are covering the gonzo horror of the Philippou brothers in Talk to Me (2023) and the roots of elevated horror in Andrzej Żuławski's Possession (1981)Special Guest - Returning to the podcast, Writer and Horror Film Aficionado, Andrea GomezA24 has built a reputation for edgy horror films. They helped to popularize the concept of elevated horror in the 2010s: The Witch, It Comes at Night, Hereditary. They have continued to nurture new voices in horror in 2020s with their patronage of the Philippou brothers. Talk to Me was produced without any A24 input or support. They stepped in when the film was screened to much shock and applause at Sundance in 2023. Before A24 became big producers, this is exactly how they built the brand and company. Find really interesting and exciting new films and take over the distribution. Talk to Me was a glam slam for A24, who acquired it for only single digit millions as it when on to make 92 million dollars at the box office.Possession was not a huge success upon its released in 1981. The outlandishly wonderful horror film popped off at Cannes winning the Special Jury Prize along with Isabelle Adjani winning Best Actress. But outside the artistic bubble of Europe, the film was met with extreme skepticism and outright hatred. The USA release was shambolic with the original 124 minute run time being cut down to measly 81 minutes. The UK outright banned the film in the 1980s. But time has a way of mellowing reactions and opening minds. Possession slowly became a cult film thanks to boutique home video releases. With the rise of elevated horror in the 2010s, Possession reached its vaulted status as a horror classic.

We are back with a new season of Film Trace. In this season, we will survey the short but illustrious history of film studio upstart A24. We will analyze how they have made such a massive impact on filmmaking in such a small amount of time.In this premiere episode, we are covering two new releases from A24: Sorry, Baby and Eddington. These two films act as bookends to the house style of A24. On one side - soft, highbrow, and cerebral. On the other - daring, outlandish, and transgressive. We pair the flighty rom com of The Holiday (2006) with Sorry, Baby and the conspiracy gumbo of JFK (1991) with Eddington.In dissecting these four films, the defining traits of A24’s style come sharply into focus. Major studios wouldn't touch either Sorry, Baby or Eddington. Eva Victor's Sorry, Baby is too quiet and too honest about sexual violence and its aftereffects. It also tells its story in a very non-linear fashion. Only an art-house imprint of a major studio would even consider releasing it. Eddington is resolutely an A24 film. Ari Aster is a devout auteur who chooses to tackle the origins of the Covid world where we all still very much reside. The film is diffuse, difficult, and without a clear protagonist or antagonist. It is an anti-studio film, perfect for A24.