The 15 Best Movie Posters of 2024

Some posters are just there to sell the movie. Others have ambitions beyond that task.

A good movie poster creates awareness. A really good movie poster creates intrigue. And a great movie poster becomes a complementary work of art. 2024 saw plenty of serviceable-to-forgettable movie posters. (Big tornado? Add an “S” to the original title using the same font. You’ve got yourself a Twisters poster!) But some posters went beyond the what-worked-beforewill-work-again formulas. Below are some of 2024’s best, in no particular order. (These and more can be found at IMP Awards. Credits included where available.)

Pictures of Ghosts
When Scott and I worked at The Dissolve, we were fortunate enough to be able to turn to graphic designer Sam Smith for his thoughts on movie posters, and the occasional graphic for the site. Sam has remained a favorite designer, one who’s able to capture the essence of a film. That’s evident in this poster for Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho’s documentary about moviegoing and the vanished spaces that first fired his passion for film, which takes the form of an old movie ad and draws from memories of how movies were once sold and what brought us to them.

Anora
Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or-winning sort-of love story has inspired a slew of memorable designs. The official one-sheet is eye-catching, but so is this striking alternate poster, which creates tension by literally putting stars in the eyes of Mikey Madison’s heroine without fully obscuring her knowing expression. (Most of Anora’s posters were created by GrandSon Creative, but the source of this one isn’t clear.)

Janet Planet
Sometimes the best posters focus on a single image from a film. In Annie Baker’s feature debut, a daughter tries to make sense of who her mother is but no angle provides a clear answer. The 90º turn emphasizes the confusion. (Design by P+A.)

Nickel Boys
Similarly, the moment captured here comes directly from Ramell Ross’s Colson Whitehead adaptation. It’s eye-catching on its own but also true to Ross’s largely first-person approach, which locks viewers into its protagonists’ points of views and the boundaries the world creates around them. (Design by Gravillis Inc.)

I Saw the TV Glow
With a face haloed by a screen broadcasting static, this poster for Jane Schoenbrun’s melancholy horror fantasy captures the essence of the movie, a dark fantasy about how the culture we love and the way we look at ourselves can become intertwined. (Design by GrandSon Creative.)

Hundreds of Beavers
What does a poster for a movie called Hundreds of Beavers need? Hundreds of beavers! (Or at least enough to suggest the possibility of hundreds of beavers.) To capture the feeling of the Mike Cheslik-directed slapstick comedy, Kyle Hilton draws on the kinetic chaos of classic Jack Davis posters for inspiration.

Longlegs
Each poster for Osgood Perkins’ disturbing apocalyptic serial killer film is its own kind of nightmare, but this stark, unsettling image is a particular standout. Like the film, it’s filled with a sense of dread and the suggestion that something awful is about to happen, even if it’s unclear exactly what. (Design by GrandSon Creative.)

Watchers
Last year’s poster round-up included an extremely cool poster for M. Night Shyamalan’s only-OK Knock at the Cabin. History repeats itself this year with another strange-things-happening-in-the-middle-of-nowhere movie directed by a different Shyamalan, M. Night’s daughter Ishana Night Shyamalan. The film gets off to a good start that it can’t sustain. But we’ll always have this poster to suggest the creepier, more effective movie that might have been. (Design by Gravillis Inc.)

The Brutalist
There’s nothing subtle about this image from Brady Corbet’s forthcoming epic, just as there’s nothing subtle about the moment it appears in the film. But there’s no forgetting it either, and the typeface points to both the tone and the subject of the movie. The alternate poster is pretty great, too.

The First Omen
Arkasha Stevenson’s seemingly unnecessary prequel to The Omen was one of the most pleasantly surprising horror movies of the year (if the word “pleasant” makes any sense given, well, everything that happens in the movie). What’s more, it inspired a bunch of creative posters, including this stark, foreboding, monochrome image. (Design by Lindeman & Associates.)

Moana 2
Good movie? Not really. Good poster? Yes. (Design by Leroy & Rose.)

Back to Black
Good movie? Definitely not. But the marketing campaign for this Amy Winehouse biopic included a bunch of spare throwback posters. This one, reminiscent of old Blue Note album covers, is my favorite. (Design by Empire Design.)

Anxiety Club
I don’t believe this documentary exploring the intersection of anxiety and stand-up comedy has yet to play beyond festivals, but when it does reach theaters, it already has a poster that cleverly captures what it’s about. (Design by The Robot Eye.)

Sasquatch Sunset / Sasqua: The Lost Bigfoot Film of Massachusetts
One’s a David- and Nathan Zellner-directed absurdist comedy in which Jesse Eisenberg, Riley Keough, and others play Bigfoots. The other is a documentary about an apparently lost ‘70s horror movie filmed in New England. Both have such terrific, pleasingly colorful posters it’s impossible to pick one over the other as the year’s best cryptid-themed effort. So here’s both. (Sasquatch Sunset by Brandon Schaefer of Jumpcut Creative / Sasqua: The Lost Bigfoot film of Massachussetts by Adam Perocchi)