by Emily Maesar, Associate Editor, TVJawn

There’s a specific kind of film that almost always works for me, when made with pure joy of the thing, and that’s the “weird and sad girls” genre. In 2024, it was shockingly pervasive, dipping into coming-of-age comedies, straight dramas, romantic horror comedies, and just plain horror comedies. There were lots and lots of weird and sad girls to go around this year—whatever your specific vibe is.

However, none of them were films that were blasted out into the mainstream, no matter how much Film Twitter (or FilmSky) was, or wasn’t, talking about them. Just because some of them have a good number of ratings on Letterboxd doesn’t mean your mom knows what you’re talking about when you mention Frankenstein (“No, not quite that one.”), Dracula (“Well, actually, it’s his daughter!”) or “the Aubrey Plaza movie” (“You know, the girl from Parks and Rec?”). So, surprising no one, I wanted to talk about my five favorite weird, sad girl movies from this year—they’re just the best.

Abigail (dirs. Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett)

Abigail is a film about a group of people who kidnap and ransom the daughter of a wealthy businessman, however they find that the job is not quite what they’d been told. It stars Melissa Barrera (we’ll see her again later on this list), Dan Stevens (everybody’s favorite hot weirdo), and Kathryn Newton (we’ll also see her again later) as the three main kidnappers. They all have different reasons for getting involved, but once the vampire reveal happens, they attempt to band together—which goes… about as well as can be expected.

While the marketing of this film spoiled the vampire angle, I’m actually not particularly mad about it. The film does take a while to get to the reveal, as is usually the case in these kinds of stories, but the time that gives us with Melissa Barrera’s Joey is supreme. She’s a former drug addict who wants to get the money from this job to start a new life with her son. Her current state, of wanting to be there for her son, gets transferred onto Abigail (Alisha Weir) when she realizes why the girl is the way she is, and she attempts to use that knowledge to help herself survive. Being whip smart and sympathetic, Joey ends the film as the Final Girl—surviving the final confrontation by being scrappy and as a request from Abigail to her father. 

Also, there’s something to be said for Kathryn Newton’s Sammy. She’s… so incredibly funny and wonderfully weird. A rich girl whose thrill seeking gets her turned into a scary monster that plays with her food? Love that! The makeup and costuming really work for me here and allow the different kinds of weirdness at play to be fully on display for all three girls (including Abigail).

I Used to Be Funny (dir. Ally Pankiw)

What if something so horrible happened to you and then aftermath of that thing only added to your pain? That’s what happened to Sam (Rachel Sennott), a former comedian and nanny. In a story told wildly out of chronological order, Sam tries to find Brooke (Olga Petsa), a teenager she used to nanny for, when she goes missing. Intercut with how they got to this point, I Used to Be Funny is a heartbreaking film about the emotional weight of sexual assault (and the trial of an assault actually tried by the court). Sam is fighting with the truth of what happened to her, how it has changed her mind set, and how it has changed her relationship with Brooke—since it was Brooke’s father who assaulted Sam in the first place.

The film does a really nice job of living in Sam’s mind—you might not understand at first what happened or why she’s now living the way she is, pushing friends away and unable to do comedy anymore, but by the time she finds Brooke and they have their conversation, there’s a sad clarity. Sennott is hilarious (though the film is very much a drama) and deeply emotional, much like her performance in Shiva Baby. She’s great at being a weird, sad fuck up—off putting, but relatable in so many ways. It’s a small film that really spends a lot of time in the quiet of its events and allows Sennott to shine.

My Old Ass (dir. Megan Park)

There’s nothing quite like a coming-of-age story, especially about a queer teen. For Elliott (Maisy Stella), turning 18 means getting high on mushrooms with her two best friends on a tiny island off the coast where they live. While blasted out of her mind, she meets someone…herself. Older Elliott is played by Aubrey Plaza, and she attempts to play the game of telling her younger self just enough to prove they’re the same person, but not totally change the course of their lives. With one notable exception: Stay away from guys named Chad. Easier said than done when Percy Hynes White’s Chad shows up to work at her family’s cranberry farm. What results is a charming, heartwarming film about a girl who reconnects with her family before going to college, falls in love with someone, and gets the tragic news from the future about that relationship. But the power of My Old Ass is that Elliott, armed with the terrible news, decides to love anyway. 

Also, I fear we will have this argument forever, but as a bisexual woman I feel like it’s important to have stories about monosexual people who realize they’re polysexual—this one just happens to come from the queer side of monosexuality, instead of the straight side. Which is a good thing, in my estimation! I think if people didn’t think they had to be locked into monosexual sexualities, then lots of people wouldn’t feel weird if they started to experience polysexuality. But I digress. Obviously, there are lots of bad and terrible versions of this, but My Old Ass is a film that feels like an authentic experience, and I really loved to see Elliott and Chad’s relationship develop into this sweet, loving, wonderful thing. 

Lisa Frankenstein (dir. Zelda Williams)

Among all the 1980s nostalgia media we’ve gotten in the last decade, Lisa Frankenstein actually feels like one of the most authentic pieces. Largely, I think, because it feels like something that would have been made in the 1980s, not just something about the 1980s. It’s about a girl (Lisa, played by Kathryn Newton) whose mother died, her husband remarried, and she now has to exist in a world she hates and that seems to hate her back. Classic weird and sad girl stuff, honestly! When she decides to take things into her own hands and bring back a sexy dead guy (played by Cole Sprouse) from the graveyard she frequents, she finds a lot of success in her future endeavors, murderous though they may be.

Written by Diablo Cody, Lisa Frankenstein is beyond charming and delightful. Definitely a film made for the girlies who like the mythology of Mary Shelley just a little too much—if you know what I mean. I feel a strong connection with all five of the movies on this list, but this and the final one are the two I feel most connected to and it’s largely because the main characters so perfectly fit into a framework I find charming and interesting, plus their love interests are supremely good. Honestly, Cole Sprouse was made to play a Victorian dead guy learning to be a person in the 1980s and Kathryn Newton is so utterly on her game in this film that it feels like a revelation. I’ve been a fan of hers since Blockers, and it’s incredibly wonderful to see her step into a perfect role like this. 

Your Monster (dir. Caroline Lindy)

Speaking of perfect roles, Melissa Barrera absolutely kills it (pun intended) in Your Monster. It plays to all of her talents and skills, allowing her to be the musical star she started as and the scream queen she currently is. The film is about a girl, Laura, who survives cancer, only to have her boyfriend break up with her in the middle of treatment. She moves back into her childhood home while her mother is gallivanting around Europe and her best friend is… certainly a person, who exists. After a while alone, allowing herself to melt into her deep depression at the situation, something from her childhood comes back—or someone. 

Monster (Tommy Dewey) tries to get her to leave the apartment, since he’s had it all to himself for so long, but she just can’t—she has nowhere to go. As time moves on, Laura and Monster find themselves in a budding friendship. They watch movies together, read each other Shakespeare, and Monster even encourages Laura to audition for the musical her ex is putting up on Broadway, since he wrote the lead role for her. It’s a charming, romantic, and violent little musical movie for the weirdest among us who ache to be seen in a deep and profound way.