These Are the Movies People Are Watching To Get Through Election Week

As people look to distract themselves from the stress of the 2024 presidential election, movies, as always, are a popular form of escapism. And based on the most popular movies on Letterboxd this week, cinephiles are really escaping, and doing so with some interesting choices – perhaps unsurprisingly, horror is the dominant genre.

The 2024 U.S. presidential election has come and gone. Donald Trump will return to the White House in January. The vibe, as they say, is in shambles. We all have our ways of coping, and if you’re reading this, chances are pretty good that your way of coping involves watching a good movie or two or 12. Whatever it takes to endure The Horrors.

Streaming services make it easy to see the most-watched shows and movies on their platforms – for the past week and a half, Trap has been the most popular movie on Max, for instance. But I was curious about the movies that my fellow nerdy cinephiles on Letterboxd are watching this week, likely in an effort to escape from election stress. Letterboxd tracks the most popular movies – i.e., the ones users are logging most frequently – each week, and based on the data from this week, people are watching a lot of horror movies right now. That makes a certain amount of sense; there are a lot of great new horror movies out this year, sure, but the genre also offers something you can’t really get anywhere else – catharsis.

In other words, these are the movies that people are watching to blow off steam and get a sense of relief (and release) that rom-coms and westerns don’t provide.

The Most Popular Movies During the 2024 Election

For the sake of simplicity, we’ll focus on the top 10 most popular movies on Letterboxd this week. While Letterboxd doesn’t officially let users log TV shows, some limited series and documentary series end up on the platform through a bit of a loophole. That said, even though Agatha All Along is in the top 10, I’m not including it because it’s not a movie (obviously). And because I am a benevolent and friendly editor, I will include where you can watch the titles below – if you’re still in need of a little cinematic distraction, and I assume you are.

You might immediately clock a few patterns: six of the top 10 titles this week are horror movies. Eight of the top 10 feature female leads (nine, if you count The Wild Robot, whose protagonist is voiced by Lupita Nyong’o). Six are currently playing in theaters, and it’s just nice to know that people are finding time to go to the movies, even when things are so, well, you know.

Mostly, I love that the top two movies this week feel culturally relevant. The Substance is about how women internalize unrealistic and misogynistic beauty standards and how those ideals incite violence from within. Anora is about a sex worker who allows herself to get swept up in an improbable fairy-tale romance with a wealthy Russian nepo baby. One film speaks to the specificity of being a woman in an oppressive, misogynistic society; the other is a humorous exploration of class and economic disparities that includes an apparently necessary reminder that billionaires and oligarchs won’t save you.

Just something to think about.