The 20 Most Woke Movies of 2024, Ranked by VirtueVigil

STRONGLY WOKE (Margin -20 and Below)

#1 (Most Woke): The Acolyte (2024)

Woke Score: 62.2 • Traditional Score: 1.4 • Verdict: STRONGLY WOKE • Margin: -60.8 WOKE

Genre: Science Fiction / Mystery / Drama | Platform: Disney+ | Showrunner: Leslye Headland | Rating: TV-14

Cast: Amandla Stenberg, Lee Jung-jae, Charlie Barnett, Dafne Keen

The most expensive Star Wars series ever made -- $230 million -- is also the most ideologically one-sided thing to carry the brand. Showrunner Leslye Headland built a High Republic murder mystery around twin sisters (both played by Amandla Stenberg) whose story functions as a sustained argument that the Jedi Order is corrupt, that institutional authority cannot be trusted, and that the dark side is a reasonable response to systemic oppression. The show's defenders called it bold. The 18% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes called it something else. Disney cancelled it 33 days after the finale aired. At 62.2 woke to 1.4 traditional, The Acolyte is not just the most woke entry of 2024 -- it is one of the most ideologically lopsided pieces of entertainment in our entire database. Parents who let their kids watch Star Wars should know this one was never really for kids.

Read the full VirtueVigil review of The Acolyte

WOKE (Margin -10.0 to -38.6)

#2: Conclave (2024)

Woke Score: 42.6 • Traditional Score: 3.9 • Verdict: WOKE • Margin: -38.7 WOKE

Genre: Thriller | Platform: Streaming

Edward Berger's papal election thriller is the most dangerous kind of progressive film: one that is genuinely excellent. Ralph Fiennes delivers a career performance. The cinematography is austere and magnificent. The ritual and ceremony of the papal election is rendered with reverential care that makes you believe the filmmakers respect what they are filming. They do not. The plot reveals that the progressive candidate was planted in the Vatican by a previous liberal pope, and the film treats this as a heroic twist rather than what it actually is: institutional subversion dressed as divine intervention. The conservative candidate is framed as a bigot whose bigotry is the only thing disqualifying him. The moderate candidate is weak. Only the progressive -- the one installed by stealth -- is worthy of the papacy. At 42.6 woke to 3.9 traditional, the gap is a chasm. The craft makes the argument persuasive. That is the trap.

Read the full VirtueVigil review of Conclave

#3: Heretic (2024)

Woke Score: 41.2 • Traditional Score: 13.7 • Verdict: WOKE • Margin: -27.5 WOKE

Genre: Horror | Platform: Streaming

Hugh Grant gives his most charming, murderous performance as a man who traps two Mormon missionaries in his house and spends the next two hours dismantling their faith. Heretic is not a horror film that happens to touch on religion. It is a theological assault on Christianity -- and on all monotheistic faith -- dressed in genre clothing. The two missionaries are not complex characters. They are props, foils for the film's real hero: a sadistic atheist who argues that religion is a con, an evolutionary iteration of ancient control systems. The film stacks the deck completely. Grant's character is witty, intelligent, and prepared. The missionaries are naive, sheltered, and wrong. At 41.2 woke to 13.7 traditional, the 13.7 traditional score reflects some genuinely thoughtful moments -- but those moments exist only to be demolished. For parents with teens who may encounter this through streaming, the horror elements are the least dangerous thing in the film.

Read the full VirtueVigil review of Heretic

#4: Anora (2024)

Woke Score: 35.8 • Traditional Score: 9.9 • Verdict: WOKE • Margin: -25.9 WOKE

Genre: Drama | Platform: Streaming

Best Picture at the 97th Academy Awards. Sean Baker dedicated his Oscar to "all sex workers everywhere." The film follows Ani (Mikey Madison), an exotic dancer who impulsively marries the failson of a Russian oligarch, and watches the marriage disintegrate in real time over a chaotic 48 hours in Brighton Beach. The craft is extraordinary -- Madison gives one of the year's best performances, and the film's shaggy, live-wire energy is genuinely exciting. But the film's moral architecture is clear: Ani is the hero not despite her profession but because of it, and every institution (marriage, family, money) is revealed as hollow or predatory. At 35.8 woke to 9.9 traditional, Anora earned its Oscars on merit and its score on ideology. Both things are true. Parents should know this one exists -- and that its Best Picture win means your teenagers have probably heard about it.

Read the full VirtueVigil review of Anora

#5: Emilia Perez (2024)

Woke Score: 30.4 • Traditional Score: 5.0 • Verdict: WOKE • Margin: -25.4 WOKE

Genre: Musical / Crime / Drama | Platform: Netflix

Thirteen Oscar nominations -- the most ever for a non-English-language film -- and the rare achievement of offending nearly everyone. Jacques Audiard's transgender cartel musical follows a Mexican drug lord who fakes his death, transitions to female, and seeks redemption by helping the families of people she murdered. Zoe Saldana won Best Supporting Actress. The film won Best Original Song. And yet both transgender advocates and Mexican audiences rejected it -- the former for casting a cisgender actress as a trans woman, the latter for a French director's outsider portrayal of cartel violence. At 30.4 woke to 5.0 traditional, the ideological commitment is total. The redemption arc depends entirely on accepting that gender transition is the character's moral salvation. For parents: this is an adults-only film with serious narcoviolence, but its awards-season visibility means the premise travels further than the R rating suggests.

Read the full VirtueVigil review of Emilia Perez

#6: The Substance (2024)

Woke Score: 37.3 • Traditional Score: 13.2 • Verdict: WOKE • Margin: -24.1 WOKE

Genre: Horror | Platform: Streaming

Coralie Fargeat used 21,000 liters of fake blood to make a point about how Hollywood discards women over 40. The Substance follows Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), an aging actress who injects a mysterious compound that births a younger version of herself (Margaret Qualley) -- with the rule that they must trade consciousness every seven days. The body horror is extreme, the satire is unsubtle, and the film's feminist argument about beauty standards and the male gaze operates at full volume from the first frame to the last. Moore's performance is fearless. The craft is undeniable. The film also frames the entire entertainment industry as a patriarchal apparatus designed to consume and discard women. At 37.3 woke to 13.2 traditional, it is one of the year's most ideologically coherent films, and its horror-genre wrapper makes its arguments feel like spectacle rather than sermon -- which is exactly why they land.

Read the full VirtueVigil review of The Substance

#7: Immaculate (2024)

Woke Score: 25.4 • Traditional Score: 3.5 • Verdict: WOKE • Margin: -21.9 WOKE

Genre: Horror | Platform: Theatrical / Hulu

Sydney Sweeney spent years developing Immaculate as a vehicle to carry a message she clearly believed in. The film -- structured as Rosemary's Baby filtered through contemporary reproductive politics -- follows a young American nun who discovers she is pregnant despite being a virgin. The convent treats this as a miracle. The film treats it as a prison. The third act reveals that the pregnancy was orchestrated by the Church to breed a new savior, and the final shot is Sweeney's character smashing a rock onto the newborn's head while screaming. For devout Catholic viewers, Immaculate is one of the most precisely targeted woke traps of the past several years. The horror framing masks the ideological payload. The Catholic iconography gives the film a religious audience that a secular version of the same story would never attract. At 25.4 woke to 3.5 traditional, the gap is deliberate. Immaculate knows exactly who it is talking to -- and what it wants them to feel by the end.

Read the full VirtueVigil review of Immaculate

#8: True Detective: Night Country (2024)

Woke Score: 22.4 • Traditional Score: 5.9 • Verdict: WOKE • Margin: -16.5 WOKE

Genre: Crime Drama / Mystery / Thriller | Platform: HBO

Nineteen Emmy nominations. Jodie Foster's first major television role. The highest viewership in the True Detective anthology's history. And also the most ideologically freighted season of the franchise. Issa Lopez replaced the philosophical brooding of the first three seasons with a checklist of 2024 identity politics: indigenous women murdered at epidemic rates, white male scientists as literal villains, the mining company as extractive colonial evil, the supernatural mythology reframed as Indigenous justice. The mystery is compelling. The Alaskan setting is haunting. Foster is commanding. But the show's moral framework -- in which every institutional form of authority is corrupt and the only justice comes from outside the system -- is as total as the Arctic night the characters inhabit. At 22.4 woke to 5.9 traditional, Night Country is prestige television that does not so much explore ideas as prosecute them.

Read the full VirtueVigil review of True Detective: Night Country

#9: The Boys - Season 4 (2024)

Woke Score: 19.7 • Traditional Score: 8.1 • Verdict: WOKE • Margin: -11.7 WOKE

Genre: Superhero Satire / Action Drama | Platform: Amazon Prime Video | Rating: TV-MA

Cast: Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Antony Starr, Erin Moriarty

The Boys has always been political. Season 4 drops whatever pretense remained. The villains now map almost perfectly onto American conservatism: Homelander is MAGA fascism with a cape, Sister Sage is the cold technocratic left, and the show's relentless violence and cynicism are deployed in service of an argument that power is inherently corrupt and anyone who claims moral authority is lying. The satire that once targeted both sides has narrowed to one. Antony Starr remains terrifyingly good as Homelander, and the show's technical craft is undeniable. But at 19.7 woke to 8.1 traditional, Season 4 is no longer a satire of power. It is a prosecution of a specific political tribe, wrapped in the aesthetic of a show that used to be cleverer than that. For parents: this is adults-only content with extreme gore, sexual violence, and language. The ideological content is the least graphic thing in it. That does not mean it is harmless.

Read the full VirtueVigil review of The Boys - Season 4

WOKE LEAN (Margin -9.2 to -18.2)

#10: Blitz (2024)

Woke Score: 33.0 • Traditional Score: 14.7 • Verdict: WOKE LEAN • Margin: -18.3 WOKE

Genre: Drama | Platform: Apple TV+

Steve McQueen's World War II drama arrives dressed in the clothing of a wartime survival story, the kind of tale that should celebrate British resilience, familial devotion, and the quiet heroism of ordinary people. Those elements genuinely exist here. Saoirse Ronan delivers a deeply committed performance as a mother searching for her evacuated son. Young Elliott Heffernan carries real emotional weight. But the film cannot help inserting its politics: the Blitz is rendered as a multicultural morality play where the real threat is not German bombs but British racism. A Nigerian air raid warden lectures white Londoners about prejudice while saving their lives. The point is not wrong -- racism existed in wartime Britain -- but the film's instinct to foreground it at the expense of the actual war flattens the story into allegory. At 33.0 woke to 14.7 traditional, Blitz has too much craft to dismiss. It also has too much ideology to trust.

Read the full VirtueVigil review of Blitz

#11: MaXXXine (2024)

Woke Score: 31.5 • Traditional Score: 13.6 • Verdict: WOKE LEAN • Margin: -17.9 WOKE

Genre: Horror / Crime | Platform: Theatrical

Ti West's X trilogy ends with Mia Goth's Maxine Minx in 1985 Los Angeles, clawing her way from porn to Hollywood legitimacy while the Night Stalker terrorizes the city and the Moral Majority screams from every television. The film is a love letter to 80s genre cinema -- De Palma split-screens, giallo lighting, synth-drenched tension -- and a sustained argument that the real monster is not the serial killer but the conservative moral panic that would deny a woman the right to use her body however she wants. At 31.5 woke to 13.6 traditional, MaXXXine has considerably more craft and conviction than most entries on this list. Its traditional score reflects the genuine affection for genre filmmaking and the character's honest ambition. Its woke score reflects a film that treats the Religious Right as the true antagonist and pornography as liberation. For parents: this is an R-rated crime horror. But the argument inside it is aimed at the audience that grows up to watch R-rated crime horror.

Read the full VirtueVigil review of MaXXXine

#12: A Different Man (2024)

Woke Score: 17.6 • Traditional Score: 0.0 • Verdict: WOKE LEAN • Margin: -17.6 WOKE

Genre: Thriller / Drama / Sci-Fi | Platform: Theatrical

Zero. That is the traditional score. Not a rounding error -- zero traditional values registered during our scoring process. A Different Man follows Edward, a severely disfigured actor who undergoes an experimental procedure that gives him a conventionally attractive face, then watches as a man with the same disfigurement he used to have -- who has not had the procedure -- lives a happier, more socially successful life. The film is about male entitlement, romantic rejection, and identity politics disguised as an indie character study. At 17.6 woke and 0.0 traditional, A Different Man is not the most ideologically intense film on this list. It is the most ideologically pure -- there is literally nothing on the other side of the ledger. For anyone who believes that art should contain more than one idea, this film is an instructive example of what happens when it does not.

Read the full VirtueVigil review of A Different Man

#13: Lisa Frankenstein (2024)

Woke Score: 21.0 • Traditional Score: 4.2 • Verdict: WOKE LEAN • Margin: -16.8 WOKE

Genre: Horror | Platform: Theatrical (Focus Features)

Diablo Cody's Jennifer's Body was dismissed on release and later reclaimed as a feminist cult classic. Lisa Frankenstein follows the same template: misfit female protagonist, supernatural acquisition of power, male targets consumed or dispatched, cathartic empowerment as the film's central thesis. Set in 1989 and styled like a John Hughes film if John Hughes had been possessed by a demon, the story follows Lisa, an unpopular teenager who accidentally reanimates a Victorian corpse and discovers that killing people together is a great way to bond. The aesthetic is pastel goth, the tone is arch, and the messaging -- that female rage is righteous and the men who disappoint deserve what they get -- is the film's entire engine. At 21.0 woke to 4.2 traditional, it is Diablo Cody doing what Diablo Cody does. Parents of teens who loved Jennifer's Body should expect the same worldview, just with better production design.

Read the full VirtueVigil review of Lisa Frankenstein

#14: Blink Twice (2024)

Woke Score: 22.2 • Traditional Score: 5.9 • Verdict: WOKE LEAN • Margin: -16.4 WOKE

Genre: Psychological Thriller / Mystery | Platform: Theatrical / Amazon Prime Video | Director: Zoe Kravitz | Rating: R

Zoe Kravitz made a #MeToo thriller about what it is like to be a woman in proximity to the kind of wealth and power that makes crimes disappear. The island. The perfume that wipes memories. The men who treat systematic violation as a perk of success. Kravitz was not subtle about her intentions before, during, or after production. If you are looking for a film that takes a different view, this is not it. Naomi Ackie is extraordinary in the lead role, and Kravitz's directorial eye is sharper than a first feature has any right to be. At 22.2 woke to 5.9 traditional, Blink Twice is a film that knows exactly what it is arguing and makes that argument with genuine skill. Parents should know: if your teenager wants to watch this, she is also going to absorb its argument about what men with power do to women without power. That argument may be accurate in some cases. It is also the only argument the film allows.

Read the full VirtueVigil review of Blink Twice

#15: Babygirl (2024)

Woke Score: 19.2 • Traditional Score: 4.4 • Verdict: WOKE LEAN • Margin: -14.8 WOKE

Genre: Erotic Thriller / Drama | Platform: Theatrical / A24

Nicole Kidman gives a committed, deeply vulnerable performance as Romy, a CEO who risks her company, her marriage to Antonio Banderas, and her reputation for a dominant-submissive affair with a 25-year-old intern. The film is beautifully shot, expertly performed, and built around an argument most traditional viewers will find deeply objectionable: that monogamy is a prison, that sexual submission is authentic self-expression, and that the woman's desire is always righteous no matter what it destroys. The intern is not a predator. He is framed as the only person who sees Romy for who she really is. Everyone else -- including the husband who genuinely loves her -- is an obstacle to her actualization. At 19.2 woke to 4.4 traditional, Babygirl is a film to understand before dismissing. Kidman's performance is too good to ignore. The argument it makes is too complete to leave unexamined.

Read the full VirtueVigil review of Babygirl

BALANCED WOKE (Margin -9.1 to -14.3)

#16: The Apprentice (2024)

Woke Score: 21.0 • Traditional Score: 6.6 • Verdict: BALANCED WOKE • Margin: -14.4 WOKE

Genre: Biographical Drama | Platform: Theatrical (Briarcliff Entertainment)

There is something fascinating about The Apprentice, and it is not what its makers intended. Ali Abbasi and Gabriel Sherman set out to make a Trump origin story that explains the 45th and 47th president as a creation of Roy Cohn, the ruthless attorney who once served as Joseph McCarthy's attack dog. The thesis is that everything Trump became -- the relentless aggression, the refusal to admit weakness, the attack-attack-attack posture -- was downloaded from Cohn in 1970s and 1980s Manhattan. But Sebastian Stan's performance is so committed, and the film's portrait is so detailed, that it accidentally humanizes Trump in ways the filmmakers did not intend. At 21.0 woke to 6.6 traditional, the BALANCED WOKE verdict reflects a film whose ideological intentions are clear but whose execution undermines them. For anyone on either side of the aisle, it is a more interesting film than the marketing suggests.

Read the full VirtueVigil review of The Apprentice

#17: Queer (2024)

Woke Score: 17.5 • Traditional Score: 4.2 • Verdict: BALANCED WOKE • Margin: -13.3 WOKE

Genre: Romantic Drama | Platform: Theatrical (A24)

Daniel Craig gives the best performance of his career in Luca Guadagnino's adaptation of William S. Burroughs' autobiographical novella about his time in 1950s Mexico City, where he lived as an American expatriate, drank heavily, used heroin, and fell obsessively in love with a young GI who did not love him back the same way. The film is about addiction, loneliness, and the specific pain of wanting someone who cannot want you. Craig is extraordinary -- stripped of the Bond armor, raw and needy and magnetic. At 17.5 woke to 4.2 traditional, the BALANCED WOKE verdict reflects a film whose queer content is authentic and lived-in rather than performative, and whose artistic merit earns it a serious viewing even from audiences who may disagree with its moral framework. This is an adults-only film, but it is also a genuinely adult film -- as in, it treats its characters and its audience with respect.

Read the full VirtueVigil review of Queer

#18: Nickel Boys (2024)

Woke Score: 21.8 • Traditional Score: 8.7 • Verdict: BALANCED WOKE • Margin: -13.1 WOKE

Genre: Drama | Platform: Theatrical (Orion Pictures / Amazon MGM Studios) | Director: RaMell Ross | Rating: PG-13

RaMell Ross has made a film that does not want you to watch it -- it wants you to live inside it. Nickel Boys adapts Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about Elwood Curtis, an idealistic Black teenager in 1960s Tallahassee who is wrongfully sent to Nickel Academy, a fictional reform school based on the real Dozier School for Boys where more than 50 boys were buried in unmarked graves. The film is shot entirely in first-person perspective -- the camera is the character's eyes. The effect is immersive and sometimes overwhelming. At 21.8 woke to 8.7 traditional, BALANCED WOKE is the correct verdict: the film's subject matter is inherently political, but Ross's visual approach treats it as a human story rather than a polemic. The PG-13 rating means this could be shown in schools. Parents should know: the film is honest about injustice without being manipulative about it. That honesty does not mean the worldview is neutral. It means the craft earns the argument it makes.

Read the full VirtueVigil review of Nickel Boys

#19: Megalopolis (2024)

Woke Score: 20.8 • Traditional Score: 9.0 • Verdict: BALANCED WOKE • Margin: -11.8 WOKE

Genre: Epic / Science Fiction / Political Drama | Platform: Theatrical / VOD

Francis Ford Coppola spent 40 years and $120 million of his own money making a film that argues, without ambiguity or subtlety, that the future belongs to progressive utopianism. Adam Driver plays Cesar Catalina, an architect who can stop time and dreams of building Megalopolis -- a utopian city where everyone is an artist, no one works, and the old order of politics and power dissolves into creative anarchy. The production design is extraordinary. The ambition is staggering. The coherence is... not. At 20.8 woke to 9.0 traditional, Megalopolis is not a dangerous film. It is a fascinating one: a legendary director's final argument, delivered with the sincerity of someone who no longer cares what anyone thinks. Parents do not need to worry about this one. The culture has already forgotten it. But as an artifact of 2024's ideological moment -- a Cannes-premiered epic that argues the future is progressive by definition -- it belongs on this list.

Read the full VirtueVigil review of Megalopolis

#20: Wicked (2024)

Woke Score: 28.4 • Traditional Score: 17.4 • Verdict: BALANCED WOKE • Margin: -11.0 WOKE

Genre: Musical | Platform: Theatrical / Peacock

Somewhere between the 400 brand partnerships, the pink-and-green Stanley cups, and the church-group holiday matinees, something got lost in translation. Universal sold Wicked as the feel-good movie event of 2024. A splashy, joyful, family-safe musical spectacle perfect for Thanksgiving weekend. What the marketing did not mention is that this particular story has functioned as a progressive anthem for two decades: the green-skinned witch is not evil, she is misunderstood -- a victim of a smear campaign by a corrupt authoritarian who uses propaganda to turn the public against her. The allegory could not be clearer in 2024. Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande are both magnificent. The production values are staggering. But at 28.4 woke to 17.4 traditional, Wicked earns its BALANCED WOKE verdict honestly -- the traditional score is the highest on this list, reflecting genuine moments of friendship, sacrifice, and moral courage that transcend the allegory. For parents who took their kids to see it thinking it was just a fun musical: the songs are great. The message is not neutral. Both things are true. And Part 2 arrives in 2025.

Read the full VirtueVigil review of Wicked