This Was the Year of Elevated Trash

You don’t hear the term elevated horror so often these days, and for that, we can be grateful. Ever since it was skewered in 2022’s Scream — literally: Jenna Ortega’s character is stabbed repeatedly after revealing her preference for movies like The Babadook — the vague designation has all but disappeared from reviews and online discourse. Horror fans and critics have spent years pushing back on elevated horror as a concept, arguing that it’s simply a way of denigrating mainstream genre films, many of which are just as thematically rich and visually stimulating as movies attached to the specialized label. There’s also the fact that it’s hard to define and based almost entirely on vibes. Elevated horror can be interchangeable with “A24 horror” (The Witch and Midsommar), or a catchall for horror without jump-scares. It’s horror with something deeper on its mind, but any genre devotee can tell you that’s often true for even the grimiest of slashers.

Several movies of this kind — call them elevated or art-house — fit the bill this year. Longlegs blends a Silence of the Lambs procedural with a heavily stylized take on satanic panic. In a Violent Nature deconstructs the slasher for a Friday the 13th riff with shades of Terrence Malick. And then there’s The Substance, Coralie Fargeat’s darkly funny body-horror dissection of female beauty standards in Hollywood and societal expectations for women. It’s certainly heightened: broad in its scope and its aims, stunning to look at, filled to the brim with references to filmmakers like David Cronenberg and Stanley Kubrick. But more is at play in The Substance, which is also tasteless, silly, and — even at its grossest — easy to digest. There’s a certain low-budget vulgarity, though the film is not low budget; there’s a sense that its offbeat humor and graphic violence should make it a cult object, though it has found wide appeal and critical acclaim. Forget about elevated horror: The Substance can be called elevated trash.

Trash, elevated or otherwise, need not be a pejorative. Generally speaking, when we talk about trash, we’re referring to films that are cheap, dirty, and often very fun, the kind of movies you might call “guilty pleasures” if that’s a concept you subscribe to. In her 1969 essay “Trash, Art, and the Movies,” critic Pauline Kael wrote of trash that “in its blatant and sometimes funny way of delivering action serves to remind us that one of the great appeals of movies is that we don’t have to take them too seriously.” She refers to films that are “crudely made” and “crummy-looking.” Think early John Waters movies, made on the cheap and dripping in bad taste. Trash also encompasses exploitation and B-movies: sleazy twist-driven thrillers like 1998’s Wild Things or any number of churned-out action flicks from the Steven Seagal oeuvre.

Elevated trash, then, is a more polished version of the same idea — less cheap and dirty, still just as fun. The concept may not be new, but this year has given us enough textbook examples to point to a significant reemergence that makes it worth labeling. There is more craft: higher-caliber acting, sharper cinematography, a directorial vision that extends beyond either shocking the audience or making a quick buck (or, ideally, both). And there’s also more nuance, which in this case means movies that you can analyze for their themes, along with an unspoken understanding that it’s really not that deep. Elevated trash movies use their budgets and the talent involved as prestige wrapping, earning invites to the top festivals and Oscar buzz. Even if they don’t have much to say — and in most cases, that’s not a mark against them — they have the look of something more profound.

Unlike elevated horror, elevated trash is not genre-specific, and ultimately, The Substance falls into both categories. Demi Moore stars as Elisabeth Sparkle, a has-been Hollywood star who makes the reckless decision to take an experimental drug that creates a second version of herself: the younger, tauter Sue (Margaret Qualley). The film’s taste in body horror recalls the work of Brian Yuzna, particularly the satirical and very squelchy Society, which also climaxes in a revolting finale that features a barely human mass of flesh. The Substance is certainly a glossier version of that — but it’s also elevated hagsploitation, a classic trash genre dominated by the “psycho-biddy,” as Sue’s abuse of the substance turns Elisabeth into a desperate and violent crone. While there is, of course, deeper meaning at play, the movie doesn’t really have anything groundbreaking to say about aging, insecurity, or sexism. And what it does say is delivered with sledgehammer subtlety — repeated moments of Dennis Quaid’s unctuous producer Harvey telling women to smile — making the real selling point of The Substance not its thematic resonance but its portrait of rapid human decay.

None of this is to say that The Substance is a bad movie (far from it!) or that there aren’t moments of real emotional honesty. (The scene where Elisabeth tries to get ready for a date is one of the film’s most harrowing, a more grounded and all-too-familiar body-dysmorphia nightmare.) There’s no shame in being a little trashy. Fargeat uses high-brow references and a sleek visual style not so much to disguise the film’s trashiness as to broaden its appeal to a wider, more discerning audience. That The Substance looks refined and intentional makes it palatable despite all the stomach-turning grotesqueries. Its 141-minute run time is deliberate excess that’s also a classic prestige trapping — it’s not guaranteed to earn the film a Best Picture nod at the Oscars, but the most recent crop of nominees did have an average running time of 138 minutes, so make of that what you will.

To be clear, if Demi Moore or the movie itself is nominated, it will be richly deserved. At the same time, we can acknowledge that it’s far more likely for elevated trash like The Substance to find its way onto voters’ ballots than pure, unvarnished exploitation films. The same can be said for Halina Reijn’s Babygirl, which is earning star Nicole Kidman ample awards attention. She stars as Romy, a powerful CEO who craves domination from Samuel (Harris Dickinson), the decades-younger intern she’s having an affair with. Kidman delivers a layered and admirably vulnerable performance, and the film does have something to say with its thorny gender and sexual politics — but it can just as easily be enjoyed for its cheap thrills, like the sight of Romy eating a hard candy out of Samuel’s hand while on all fours or lapping up a saucer of milk on their hotel-room floor.

Babygirl is a significant step above the latest crop of cross-generational Netflix romances, like Lonely Planet (Laura Dern smooches Liam Hemsworth) or A Family Affair (Kidman again, paired up with Zac Efron). Its appeal, however, is largely the same. In some ways, it’s a gender-flipped (and power-flipped) take on Fifty Shades of Grey, a film most people would have no problem calling trashy. It feels a little unfair to put these movies next to Babygirl, which is artfully constructed, beautifully acted, and salacious without being crass. But these comparisons are at the heart of what makes elevated trash so appealing: It gives highbrow audiences (including awards voters) permission to embrace genres they might otherwise overlook.

Of course, trash isn’t just about sex and violence — you can find it in the unlikeliest of places. At first glance, Conclave may not seem like it fits the bill, but it’s actually a prime example. Edward Berger’s film, based on the novel by Robert Harris, follows Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) as he leads the College of Cardinals in the selection of a new pope. That this is ostensibly serious business does not change the fact that Conclave is more concerned with having a good time than a meaningful one. It may feint at larger theological debates, but it’s ultimately defined by its trashier elements: gossip, backstabbing, and a surprise twist ending. As writer Tyler McCall put it in a post on X, “What if an episode of Gossip Girl took place entirely at the Vatican?”

Conclave is a very silly movie that looks like a Best Picture nominee because it’s dressed up as one, a credit to Berger’s direction and the top-tier cast he has assembled. That may well be enough to make it a serious contender for the top prize, and there’s no rule that an Oscar winner needs to have something profound to say. In fact, “message movies” — Green Book and Crash, to cite two egregious examples — are often far more regrettable Best Picture winners than the purely entertaining ones. That’s to say nothing of Conclave’s performances, art direction, costuming, and cinematography, all of which are worthy of commendation. And while elevated trash is certainly having a moment, there’s plenty of historical precedent for these kinds of films becoming award winners — not to mention big hits with audiences and critics alike.

You can look back to Kael’s 1969 essay, in which she wrote about movies that are “no more than trash in the latest, up-to-the-minute guises, using ‘artistic techniques’ to give trash the look of art.” You can also look back to the Academy Awards themselves. At the 1988 ceremony, Fatal Attraction was nominated for six Oscars, including Best Picture. To cite another Michael Douglas–led example, 1992’s Basic Instinct earned two noms, for its score and editing. These films were massively successful — the second- and fourth-highest grossing movies of their respective years — and undeniably trashy, oozing with sex, violence, and soapy plot contrivances. But directors Adrian Lyne and Paul Verhoeven gave them prestige polish that distinguished them from cheaper fare like the similarly seedy softcore movies on Cinemax.

Still, the return of elevated trash in 2024 feels notable. It’s arguably part of the larger trend of audiences craving the escapism of simpler, safer pleasures — and studios feeding them accordingly. The ten top-grossing films of the year are all sequels (or, in the case of Wicked, a known property), and largely more brain-numbing than thought-provoking. You can see similar trends in TV, where viewers are flocking to familiar network procedurals like Matlock and High Potential, presumably because these shows offer the same kind of comfort and familiarity as Deadpool & Wolverine or Twisters (albeit with sharper writing). This climate gives elevated trash the perfect opportunity to find a foothold as a happy medium between mindless garbage and more challenging, cerebral fare.

These films don’t necessarily challenge audiences, but they’re also perfectly acceptable picks for your personal top-ten movies of the year. Amid the increasing instability of the world, they’re also a welcome reprieve. Regardless of the future awards success of The Substance, Babygirl, Conclave, and any number of edge cases — though sword-and-sandals is its own category, the CGI sharks in Gladiator II are pure trash — let’s hope this subgenre’s revival period is here to stay. May an explosion of these films lead to a resurgence of the erotic drama, the domestic thriller, and all variety of dumb-fun movies that are too competent to be ignored. All of the pleasure. None of the guilt.