What makes a good horror-comedy movie in 2024?

Horror-comedies are the type of movies that tick several boxes in one box office (or streaming) experience: thrills, screams, and laughs, with ghosts, vampires, and aliens – all in 90 minutes or a couple of hours. But what makes a good horror-comedy movie in 2024?

What is Horror-Comedy?

Horror-comedy thrives on the very juxtaposition evident in its name. Horror and comedy are two genres that seem to be at odds. But that is what makes it work. Scary situations are still there – haunted houses, zombies, extra-dimensional monsters – but they have parodic, silly elements that bring through an element of comedy. One subverts the other. Successful films have been Shaun of the Dead, Evil Dead II, and What We Do in the Shadows. But other media have made it work too, namely video games.

Dead Island, the Borderland games, and Dead Rising franchise are all successful and good horror-comedy games. It’s not just limited to console games, though – with horror-comedy being the theme of choice for iGaming and mobile games too.

But Beetlejuice – the Tim Burton film – is a classic of the genre across all mediums. Let’s understand it more.

Did Tim Burton deliver?

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the sequel to Tim Burton’s classic 1998 film, is likely to be the biggest horror-comedy movie in 2024. But here at Love Horror, the movie received a 3/5-star review, hardly matching the acclaim received by its prequel. Tom Atkinson’s review praised the “quirky visual effects” and the “unmistakable score” courtesy of Danny Elfman, who also scored the original Beetlejuice, as well as Michael Keaton’s performance, but bemoaned the “overabundance of subplots and characters that ultimately dilute the core narrative.”

Critics and viewers elsewhere had similarly lukewarm reactions. The movie currently holds a 62 Metascore on IMDB and the same on Metacritic, based on 61 critics’ reviews. Movie fans have similarly scored it 6.5 on average.

Some reviews have been unabashedly positive: The Hollywood Reporter felt the film had “zippy pacing, buoyant energy and [a] steady stream of laugh-out-loud moments”. Fans have praised Burton for understanding “what the Beetlejuice-loving audience wants (Keaton stirring up supernatural chaos, Winona Ryder glowering in goth-girl chic, jump scares with eyeballs popping out of heads)” and every character having “something to add”.

Mostly, though, the reception has been less enthusiastic. LarsenOnFilm said, “The screenplay, by the team of Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, is at once overstuffed—in this it resembles Burton’s Dark Shadows—and full of missed opportunities.” ScreenCrush wrote, “It takes way too long — nearly an hour of a 105-minute movie — for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’s actual story to emerge”.

So if Beetlejuice Beetlejuice didn’t quite meet expectations… What did?

Early this year, Lisa Frankenstein pleased fans, if not every critic. Rotten Tomatoes’ Popcornmeter (its audience score) has the movie enjoying an 81% rating. Their “Audience Says” summary reads, “Lisa Frankenstein is an overall entertaining horror rom-com whose silly sense of humour and heavy ’80s vibes help make up for an emphasis on style over substance.” Perhaps the movie isn’t the kind to delight all the critics; Tomatoes’ “Critics Consensus” calls it an “affectionate callback to classic horror comedies of the ’80s”. It may be a throwback, but it’s “fun in its own right despite not quite measuring up to the movies it imitates.”

Horror-comedies are often enjoyed more by fans than critics – one example being last year’s As We Know It, which was about a writer’s breakup before a zombie apocalypse. The genre is sometimes criticised for following tropes; one critic’s review of that movie noted the “expected beats of a zombie comedy”.

Going another year back, 2022’s The Blackening was a horror-comedy that was a smash with both critics and the public. Boston Movie News praised the film’s self-awareness and “rapid-fire one-liners”. The consensus was that it was more funny than scary. Here in the UK, The Observer summed things up by saying, “Horror purists might find the picture lacking in genuine scares, but go into it expecting a hang-out comedy with a few jumps rather than a horror movie with a few jokes, and it’s unlikely to disappoint.”

Other movies this year didn’t hit the spot with either critics or fans. Films like Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 were generally considered disappointments.

Horrors in 2024

It’s probably fair to say that 2024’s been a better year for straight horrors and psychological dramas than horror-comedies. Longlegs, starring Maika Monroe, Nicolas Cage, and Blair Underwood, received praise for its tension, “unsettling narrative” (We Got This Covered), and “unexpected elegance” (The Observer). MaXXXine, a pretty straight horror, was particularly enjoyed. Collider said, “Sure, the story isn’t groundbreaking, but it makes up for it in its tribute to why we love cinema, specifically horror, so much.”