We’ve come to the end of the summer season, making now a good time to look back and see what movies critics were loving – and what they were hating – via Rotten Tomatoes score.
The two biggest and most talked about movies of summer 2023 were also critical darlings, with Barbie and Oppenheimer receiving positive reviews pretty much across the board.
But Barbenheimer was something of an outlier, as the sequels, prequels, remakes, and reboots of summer are frequently panned, and rarely in the conversation when it comes to end-of-year lists.
To see how recent blockbusters fared at the box office, you can check out our list of 2024’s most successful movies. While the following is what critics thought using the Tomatometer.
The best and worst movies of summer 2024
Below is a list of summer 2024’s biggest movies in descending order, via the ‘critical consensus’ score on Rotten Tomatoes.
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We’ve also added some of the season’s horror releases, as several delivered blockbuster returns (Longlegs even became Neon’s biggest film ever). Which is why we recently asked if horror movies are the new summer blockbusters.
- Strange Darling (95%)
- Inside Out 2 (91%)
- Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (90%)
- A Quiet Place: Day One (86%)
- Longlegs (86%)
- I Saw the TV Glow (84%)
- The Fall Guy (82%)
- Alien Romulus (80%)
- Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (80%)
- Deadpool & Wolverine (78%)
- Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (77%)
- Twisters (75%)
- Blink Twice 73%
- MaXXXine (72%)
- Bad Boys: Ride or Die (65%)
- Fly Me to the Moon (65%)
- It Ends With Us (57%)
- Trap (57%)
- Despicable Me 4 (56%)
- Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 (49%)
- IF (49%)
- The Garfield Movie (36%)
- Harold and the Purple Crayon (26%)
- The Crow (22%)
- The Strangers: Chapter 1 (21%)
- Borderlands (9%)
So horror movie Strange Darling takes the top spot, the twisty-turny slasher being pretty much universally adored.
While not only is Inside Out 2 the second best reviewed movie of Summer 2004, but it’s now one of the highest-grossing movies of all time.
For more list action, here’s the biggest new movies releasing this month, as well as Dexerto’s best reviewed films of 2024.
