The 10 most controversial movie moments of 2024
Every year, movie studios, writers, actors, and directors love to test the maxim, ‘There is no such thing as bad publicity” You can be guaranteed that no cinematic year will pass without a boatload of controversies, ranging from outrage over ridiculous things to legitimate concerns about the content or implications of a particular film.
2024 was no different from any other year in that regard, as the fires of controversy were regularly stoked throughout. For some contentious films, the buzz surrounding their contentious moments did seem to prove that negative press isn’t always a bad thing, whereas others collapsed under the weight of outrage.
This list has attempted to narrow the vitriol, disgust, and disappointment felt by audiences and critics to ten scenes that best represent the year in controversy. It runs the gamut from major Hollywood blockbuster releases to low-budget indie efforts and covers nearly every filmmaking genre, proving that controversy comes in all shapes and sizes.
From films that pushed the boundaries of good taste with excessive gore and body horror to a big-budget sequel many viewers believed was explicitly created to troll them via a couple of films that asked genuinely uncomfortable political, sexual, and social questions, 2024 had it all.
2024’s most controversial movie moments:
10. The ‘Offspring’ eats its own mother (Alien: Romulus, Fede Alvarez)
Alien: Romulus was many things all at once. It was simultaneously a callow legacy sequel that mined the nostalgia audiences have for the Alien franchise and a thrilling, crowd-pleasing sci-fi horror extravaganza. It played it safe regarding its story in many ways, taking an “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” tack to the material, yet it also featured two wildly controversial storytelling decisions. The first, which saw the filmmakers digitally resurrect Ian Holm’s likeness, was queasy and brought up uncomfortable questions about the use of AI in Hollywood. The second, though, was the insane scene introducing the ‘Offspring’ to the series.
As portrayed by seven-foot and seven-inch actor Robert Bobroczkyi, the Offspring was a hybrid of xenomorph DNA and the biological matter of the mysterious Engineers, introduced to the series by Ridley Scott in Prometheus. In some ways, its inclusion in the film felt like Alvarez getting a do-over for the lamentable ‘Newborn’ from Alien: Resurrection.
The ‘Offspring’ was born in a disgusting mix of standard xenomorph chest-burster scene and human birth before quickly growing to full size and setting its sights on its ‘mother’ Kay, played by Isabela Merced. This controversial scene pushed the body horror of the Alien franchise to all new heights when it got up close and personal with its terrified human mum – and proceeded to devour her. An eight-foot-tall baby eating its own mother is probably not what most people expected when they sat down for the new Alien film.
9. The portrayal of Donald Trump (The Apprentice, Ali Abbasi)
Shortly before Donald Trump was elected President of the United States for the second time, The Apprentice, directed by Ali Abbasi, was released in theatres. How was a biopic about one of the world’s most notorious men allowed to be made? Would the movie portray him with enough disgust and condemnation as we were hoping?
These were the questions circling ahead of The Apprentice’s release, and with Sebastian Stan playing Trump, people hoped that he would accurately portray him as the heinous man that he is. So, did he succeed?
While Stan’s performance was praised, many believed that Abbasi didn’t go far enough with the narrative, leaving us wishing that the movie had gone deeper and truly exposed every facet of Trump’s hideousness. It was always going to be a controversial film, and with Trump winning the election shortly after the movie’s release, The Apprentice appeared to fail in packing the punch it could’ve done. It feels like people will forget the film within a few years’ time, although they might remember a tanned, pursed-lipped Stan, whose impression of Trump was a little too good.
8. The demon hand birth (The First Omen, Arkasha Stevenson)
The First Omen was much better than most horror fans anticipated, not least because it went much further than most major studio horrors would ever dare. The legacy sequel dared to be dangerous and depict the harrowing things several female characters’ bodies are put through in stark, uncompromising detail. Of course, given that it’s about a woman being impregnated with the spawn of a literal demon, childbirth was a big part of its story – and director Arkasha Stevenson wasn’t going to let her audience off easily here, either.
In the film’s most controversial moment, a dream sequence shows a terrified woman giving birth, but instead of a baby, she is birthing a large demon hand. It’s a truly arresting image that stops an audience dead in its tracks. However, her original cut was slightly different. Stevenson revealed that she started the scene with a shot of the woman’s vagina before showing the demon hand, arguing, “It was really important to us to not fetishise or sexualise this body horror, and to really humanise female anatomy.”
However, the MPAA baulked. A disheartened Stevenson explained, “The compromise was to only go to the frontal image once you started to see this supernatural element infiltrating the image.” This absurd choice told Stevenson that it wasn’t the demon hand that offended the censors – it was the vagina, a normal part of the female body, that they felt people shouldn’t see.
7. The interactive element (Megalopolis, Francis Ford Coppola)
When Megalopolis was released after many years of anticipation, the internet went wild. Francis Ford Coppola had been working on the project for decades, but when the movie finally arrived, people didn’t hesitate to call the movie a massive flop.
Social media accounts quickly shared videos of the scene in which Adam Driver’s character says, “Go back to the cluuuub,” noting how artificial and forced the whole thing felt. It appeared that many years – and lots of money – couldn’t save Megalopolis from being the overambitious nightmare it turned out to be.
Yet perhaps most controversial of all was the interactive scene, in which an actor within the movie theatre was required to come up to the screen and deliver a line in response to Driver’s character. The gimmick was only used in theatres attended by the press or in bigger cities near the start of the movie’s release, and Megalopolis still works without this interactive element. Regardless, it’s a strange concept and one that we can’t say will catch on.
6. Arthur Fleck dies (Joker: Folie a Deux, Todd Phillips)
In many ways, it seems like Joker: Folie à Deux’s entire raison d’être was stoking controversy. The sequel to Todd Phillips’ billion-dollar supervillain origin story received a much brighter spotlight after the first film’s unexpected success. Phillips was clearly given carte blanche to do whatever he wanted with the sequel, and he decided to make a grim musical that systematically tore down everything people liked about the first movie.
In fact, what Phillips seemed to be saying with Joker 2 was, ‘You people didn’t understand Joker, so I’m going to show you how stupid you were.’ Naturally, this would always be a dicey proposition, but we think Phillips got the reaction he wanted. Most fans and critics hated the movie and were particularly outraged by its ending.
To the horror of many audiences, the final sequence saw Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck completely reject his ‘Joker’ personality and then wind up bleeding out on the grimy floor of Arkham Asylum after being shivved by a fellow inmate. As Fleck dies in the foreground, we see the inmate carve a smile into his face in the background, hinting that this may be the ‘true’ Joker and that Fleck was never the real ‘Clown Prince of Crime’ at all.
5. The sex scene (Miller’s Girl, Jade Halley Bartlett)
The controversy surrounding Miller’s Girl, an erotic thriller starring Jenna Ortega and Martin Freeman, was big news in the leadup to the film’s release in January. When Wednesday fans discovered that Ortega was starring as an 18-year-old college student who seduces her creative writer tutor—played by 53-year-old Freeman—they were aghast. There was much handwringing about whether the film promoted the queasy power dynamics at work in such a relationship, but the main thing that disgusted people was the fact that the two stars engaged in a sex scene.
Here’s the thing, though: the filmmakers and stars argued that the point was never to champion the relationship. It was supposed to be a story that asked uncomfortable questions about sexual politics, social dynamics, and age-gap romances. Ortega said, “It’s not supposed to be a comfortable movie. It’s supposed to be awful at times. Art isn’t always meant to be pleasant or happy, and everyone skips off into the sunset at the end.”
Considering Ortega is an adult and not a teenager like her character, some observers believed the furore was a storm in a teacup. The upset parties were also accused of infantilising the actor because of her previous roles. Notably, the movie’s most controversial scene didn’t commit to the characters having relations for real; instead, the ‘sex scene’ is presented as a fantasy sequence from a story Ortega’s character wrote. So, maybe it was all much ado about nothing.
4. The glass scene (Terrifier 3, Damian Leone)
Damian Leone’s Terrifier movies exemplify how successful independent films can be if the right audience is harnessed. These macabre tales of a serial killing clown named Art could never be confused for high-brow fare, but for gore-loving horror fans everywhere, they’re manna from heaven. Unfortunately, if you don’t have the strong stomach of a seasoned gorehound, the series may just seem like excessively violent exercises in sadism.
The opening home invasion scene of Terrifier 3 was so bloody, so harrowing, and so downright upsetting that it prompted mass walkouts and reports of cinemagoers barfing in the aisles. Amazingly, that’s not even the moment that stoked the most controversy.
Instead, that honour belongs to the scene in which Victoria, the final girl from the first film, returned as a demonically possessed puppet of Art. When the disfigured, undead hero of the original movie picked up a shard of glass and started to pleasure herself with it, we’d be shocked if even the most hardened horror fan didn’t avert their eyes. Gross.
3. Eating ashes (Hoard, Luna Carmoon)
When Saltburn was released last year, many viewers were revolted by certain sequences, from the “I’m a vampire” period sex to the consumption of bath water infused with a certain bodily fluid. However, it all felt like it had been manufactured for pure shock rather than carrying much substance, leaving the movie feeling hollow. Alternatively, Luna Carmoon’s 2024 debut Hoard, an electrifying and moving take on grief, mental health struggles, and the transition between adolescence and adulthood, used shocking imagery completely differently.
You can’t even compare the starkly opposite films, but Carmoon proves that certain controversial artistic choices can have real meaning and necessity within a film’s narrative rather than simply trying to grab the audience’s attention and get people talking.
In Hoard, many scenes might make the viewer uncomfortable, like when Maria gets Michael to burn her with an iron and lick popping candy from her wound, but the most shocking is arguably when the pair eat the ashes of Maria’s mother. This moment demonstrates the strength of their trauma bond, Maria’s mental instability, and her need to be close to her late mother, making it both distressing and tragic.
2. The ending (The Substance, Coralie Fargeat)
Everyone was talking about The Substance this year, a body horror directed by Coralie Fargeat about the terror of female beauty standards and patriarchy. With Hollywood star Demi Moore baring all as the ageing celebrity Elisabeth Sparkle – no longer wanted to promote a fitness programme – the film quickly caused controversy due to its heavy use of full frontal nudity and intense gore. In one intense sequence, we even witness a nude Margaret Qualley emerging from a bloody gash in Elisabeth’s back.
The movie didn’t hold back in showing the most gruesome elements of Elisabeth’s desire to become younger and more desirable, resulting in her transformation into a horrendous monster, with skin peeling off and bones breaking. However, the ending sequence, in which she becomes Monstro Elisasue and stands in front of a horrified audience, is unforgettable.
Her face manages to slide off the rest of her body and travel to her Hollywood Walk of Fame star before exploding into goo, leaving us feeling a little sick to our stomach. It’s one of the more memorable endings in cinema this year and certainly one of the more controversial.
1. A terrible depiction of domestic abuse (It Ends With Us, Justin Baldoni)
Social media was awash with videos of Blake Lively promoting her haircare line and being rude to journalists during the promotion of It Ends With Us – a movie about domestic abuse – which had internet users quick to criticise her.
Considering that the Colleen Hoover-penned book that the film is based on has stirred up plenty of controversy for being badly written, there weren’t high hopes for the end result. Unfortunately, the movie failed to advertise itself accurately as a movie about abuse, shocking many viewers. With poor performances and what many people believed to be a romanticisation of the issues at hand, the whole film was a mess.
Cliched and poorly scripted, it certainly isn’t one of the most memorable of the year in terms of its cinematic qualities. Instead, It Ends With Us garnered controversy for all the wrong reasons, with tone-deaf marketing, a major feud between Lively and director/star Justin Baldoni, and a glossy, artificial approach to a complex theme that required much more attention.
