By February is the new January (said no one ever). Yes, we are little late in getting the list of the best death related media from 2024 out, but we hope it is worth the wait!
Not every title listed here necessarily treats death positively, or demonstrates a healthy engagement with mortality. But these TV shows, albums, video games, and books all engage with death and grief through themes of ecological disaster, resilience, horror, loneliness, power, introspection, wonder, and much more.
The Best TV, Music, Video Games, and Books from 2024 that Explore Death and Grief
Television
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Adapted from Gabriel García Márquez’s 1967 novel of the same name, One Hundred Years of Solitude follows seven generations of the Buendía family. After founding the fictional town of Macondo-a utopia-the show’s patriarch experiences a series of trials, which all revolve around themes of grief, love, and inevitability.
How to Die Alone
How to Die Alone Season 1 is a classic tale of how the knowledge of your mortality can push you to live life to the fullest. After a near-death experience, Mel (Natasha Rothwell), a witty but socially anxious woman, decides to break free from her self-imposed isolation and start truly living—on her own terms.
True Detective: Night Country
True Detective: Night Country is considered by some fans to be the best of the True Detective series. The series takes place in Tsalal, an Arctic research base outside the town of Ennis, Alaska and is loosely based on the Dyatlov Pass incident. An entire research team disappears during 24 days of darkness, and the detectives on the case have the struggle with their own trauma and histories when they discover connections to the murder of a local Iñupiat activist. Themes of eco-grief are also present.
Music
Godspeed You! Black Emperor –“NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD”
Composed in the aftermath of Oct 7th, and the subsequent destruction of Gaza, Godspeed You! Black Emperor released “NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD.” This might be the best release in years from the Montreal-based, and largely Jewish, post-rock band.
Aly & AJ – Sirens
Another day in AmericaWe wait around for the change that never comes
Coming out with a new single this year for the first time since 2020, the duo wrote this song to transform their trauma from surviving a mass shooting in 2022.
Ka – The Thief Next to Jesus
I hope it’s borrowed time when my time come
‘Cause all my time was a con, son
Rapper, Ka, released The Thief Next to Jesus two months before his death at the age of 52. Thief tackles the role of Christianity in the lives of Black Americans, and how religion, trauma, and oppression are lived out every day. Pitchfork named it one of the best albums of 2024.
The Cure – Songs of A Lost World
Something wicked this way comesFrom out the cruel and treacherous night
Songs of A Lost World is the fourteenth studio album by English rock band the Cure. The song I Can Never Say Goodbye was written after Smith’s brother’s death.
Movies
La Chimera
Taking place in the 1980s, La Chimera follows Arthur, a former British archaeologist who returns to Italy after being convicted in the country for stealing ancient artifacts. Arthur soon falls back in with his gang of grave-robbers as he searches for a mythical ‘chimera’–a search that takes them to the afterlife. The film has been described as magical and surreal.
Exhuma
“After suffering from serial paranormal events, a wealthy family living in LA summons a young rising shaman duo Hwa Rim and Bong Gil to save the newborn of the family.”
Morticians, shamans, supernatural illnesses, geomancers. What else could you possibly need in a film? This Korean movie was a hit at the box office and is worth the watch.
No Other Land
No Other Land is a documentary made by a Palestinian-Israeli collective. Taking place in the West Bank town of Masafer Yatta, it tells the story of an unlikely alliance between Palestinian activist Basel and Israeli journalist Yuval. The documentary shows that justice and a better world are possible in Israeli/Palestine. The film was nominated at the 97th Academy Awards for the Best Documentary Feature Film.
Mother’s Instinct
Following a tragic accident, the perfect lives of two suburban mom’s are shattered. A dark movie without clear redemption, its themes deal with death, grief, and family dynamics.
Video Games
Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden
Banishers is a ghost hunting, story-driven Action-RPG available on PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S. You play as a pair of ghost hunters in 1695 who are investigating the haunted town of New Eden.
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is a fairy tale journey available for pretty much every gaming and phone platform. Already dealing with the recent death of their mother, brothers Naiee and Naia find out that their father is ill. In what seems like an ode to the Epic of Gilgamesh, the brothers embark on a journey to collect water from the Tree of Life and save what remains of their family.
Mouthwashing
“The five crew members of the Tulpar are stranded in the empty reaches of space, shrouded in perpetual sunset. God is not watching.”
Taking place aboard a stranded space ship, the Captain tries to kill his crew and then himself. However, he failed and maimed himself in the process. In this horror game, you follow the lives of the crew as they deal with extreme isolation, grief, and despair. Fun!
Books, Fiction
Billy-Ray Belcourt – Coexistence
“The characters in Coexistence are searching for connection. They’re learning to live with and understand one another, to see beauty and terror side by side, and to accept that the past, present, and future can inhabit a single moment.”
Billy-Ray Belcourt’s novel is a collection of intersecting stories of Indigenous characters from across Canada. In the stories, characters are haunted by grief, by the past, and by newfound freedom. A powerful and emotional novel.
Olga Tokarczuk – The Empusium
“September 1913. A young Pole suffering from tuberculosis arrives at Wilhelm Opitz’s Guesthouse for Gentlemen in the village of Görbersdorf, a health resort in the Silesian mountains.”
In Olga Tokarczuk‘s novel, the patients in the TB ward spend their evenings discussing philosophy, psychology, death, women, and life’s mysteries. But something dark lurks beneath the surface, or perhaps in the surrounding hills. The novel was originally published in 2022, but was translated into english in 2024.
M.L. Rio – Graveyard Shift
“One dark October evening in the defunct churchyard, they find a hole that wasn’t there before. A fresh, open grave where no grave should be. But who dug it, and for whom?”
The story of random encounters in a defunct college cemetery that leads five characters to a strange mystery. Graveyard Shift is a compelling modern Gothic tale.
Kaveh Akbar – Martyr!
Cyrus Shams’ life is full of violence and loss. His mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of Tehran, his father killed chickens in a Midwest American slaughterhouse, and Shams-a drunk and addict-is obsessed with Islamic martyrs. This obsession leads him to examine the mysteries of his past in this compelling novel.
Rivers Solomon – Model Home
Model Home is a novel-as in new-type of horror story. It tells the story of a Black American family who move into a gated community that does not want them there. When supernatural and traumatic things start happening in the home, the family refuses to move. When the children get older and move out of the house, they are forced to return when their parents die.
This is a horror story that directly confronts race and class, family, trauma, and grief.
Tommy Orange – Wandering Stars
Wandering Stars is a story of inter-generational trauma, grief, and healing told over 150 years. The story starts in 1864, when Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre is captured and brought to a prison, where he is forced to learn English. His ‘tutor’, Richard Henry Pratt, would go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. The story follows Star’s family through 150 years and mixes historical facts with fiction. This novel is a great example of Indigenous speculative fiction, weaving the past and the future together to tell a story of grief and rage.
Books, Non-Fiction
Alua Arthur – Briefly, Perfectly Human
Friend, and one of America’s leading death doulas, Alua Arthur‘s new book is worth picking up. Alua’s message is simple: start thinking about your death to start living your best life. This New York Times best seller, is a transformative memoir that covers Alua’s traumatic past as well as her important work of giving space to the dying-work she has done thousands of times.
Minakshi Dewan – The Final Farewell: Understanding the Last Rites and Rituals of India’s Major Faiths
This rich book explores the many ways in which some of the country’s major faiths treat the dead: this includes avoidance of human remains, believed by some to be spiritual pollutants; the worship of bodies at the pyre; professional mourners hired to wail loudly for the dead; musicians devoted to celebrating life at funerals; and how final rites and rituals reveal the misogyny and caste-based discrimination.
Read our interview with Minakshi here.
Sloane Crosley – Grief Is for People
“After the pain and confusion of losing her closest friend to suicide, Crosley looks for answers in friends, philosophy, and art, hoping for a framework more useful than the unavoidable stages of grief.”
Sloane Crosley is an American writer based in New York City. The book is about how we live life when the people we love die. Crosley was inspired to write this book after the death of a close friend. She is well-known for her wit and humor, two qualities on full display in this award-winning book.
Naomi Westerman – Happy Death Club: Essays on Death, Grief, and Bereavement Across Cultures
“Naomi Westerman was an anthropologist studying death rituals in other cultures, then her entire family died. Death moved from being academic to deeply personal.”
Westerman’s book is part memoir and part meditation on human mortality. She encourages people to think and talk more openly about death, especially in a culture that can treat the subject as a taboo. Happy Death Club explores how death is everywhere in our culture, even though grief often isn’t.
Evelyn Berry – Grief Slut
“Evelyn Berry’s debut poetry collection, Grief Slut, is an examination of the queer lineage of pleasure, grief, and resilience in the American South.”
Grief Slut explores Evelyn Berry’s life as a trans woman. While dealing with themes of death and grief, the collection is also celebratory and tender. Grief is shown in a variety of ways, including the grief of self-discovery, the grief that comes with death, and the many little griefs that come with living as a trans woman in America.
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