This year has been frightfully good for horror. As the box office recovers, 2022 continued to make it clear that the thing audiences are guaranteed to show up for, outside of Marvel movies, is horror movies. Some of the year’s biggest success stories, hottest new directors, and studio overhauls emerged from the horror business. From revitalized franchises (Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Scream and Hellraiser), originals (Men, Deadstream and The Menu), adaptations (The Black Phone, Bones and All) new takes on classic monsters (The Cursed, The Invitation) contemporary culture commentaries from more emerging voices in the genre (Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, Nanny, Umma and Watcher) and star-led vehicles like Beast and Day Shift, there was truly something for every horror fan. And even Marvel got in the game with Werewolf by Night.
Related Stories
Trends included the continued re-emergence of slasher movies, a renewed focused on romance in horror films, perhaps making up for the decrease in interest in rom-coms and romance dramas, and horror-comedies finding their footing. Women and people of color also pushed the genre forward as either leads or from behind the camera, allowing for new stories and perspectives to emerge. And even a number of white male horror filmmakers upped their game becoming more inclusive with their casting and storytelling decisions, recognizing the diversity of their audiences and that women and BIPOC viewers have also been some of the biggest proponents of horror historically.
James Wan and Jason Blum announced a future merger of their respective studios Atomic Monster and Blumhouse, making the two titans of horror an even bigger force in the genre, meaning more movies for all of us. Paramount, the studio darling of the year, also reemphasized its commitment to horror with a new subdivision headed by former DC Films boss Walter Hamada.
The conversation over whether a theatrical or streaming release best benefits the movie and the audience continues, but it’s clear that the risks taken on theatrical releases paid off with the films Barbarian and Smile, whereas the streaming-only and hybrid releases of Prey and Halloween Ends feel like money left on the table. There’s also the continued issue of a lack of physical releases for streaming films, a problem clearly outlined by HBO Max’s continued removal of content from its service. Horror fans in particular will gladly shell out for pristine collector’s editions of their favorite horror movies, yet studios still decided not to loot the room and turn away from an obvious revenue stream.
But where streaming decisions triumphed is on Shudder. The beloved horror streaming service provided near weekly releases of new horror, both American and international, from long valued directors to newcomers, to audiences who are fully aware there’s no truth in the popular social media claim that horror is all remakes and reboots. And Shudder just so happens to also give physical media releases to all of its films. The streaming service has recently undergone some changes and layoffs, a result of parent company AMC, and I’d like to highlight their invaluable service to the genre through their personally curated collections, commitment to diversifying the genre, and giving us all the nightmares we could ever ask for.
Horror has long been the lifeblood of the industry and whether we’re looking at the studio system and theatrical releases or independent distributers and streaming releases, there’s a lot to celebrate. So, let’s get into it, the best horror major releases and best under-the-radar releases of 2022.
Best of the Major Releases
10. Barbarian
When Tess’ (Georgina Campbell) Airbnb is double-booked, she finds herself in the company of a charming stranger, Keith (Bill Skarsgard). But nothing is entirely what it seems. Zach Cregger’s Barbarian seemingly came out of nowhere and ended up becoming one of the sleeper hits of the fall. Cregger, best known as a comedian and one of the founding members of the sketch comedy troupe The Whitest Kids U’ Know, deftly blends horror with humor as the film shifts perspectives midway and finds the property owner, AJ (Justin Long) arriving at the residence. The less audiences know going in, the better.
9. Orphan: First Kill
The 2009 film, Orphan, is, in my opinion, one of the best horror films of its era. Because of its shocking twist that no one saw coming, and Isabelle Fuhrman’s committed performance it has remained a cult favorite over the past decade. William Brent Bell’s prequel sees Fuhrman return to the role 13 years later through the magic of camera trickery and costume design. What initially seems like a fun rehash of the original as Esther poses as a girl who’s been missing since 2003 turns into a camp commentary on class and American exceptionalism after the film makes a wild reveal. Fuhrman and Julia Stiles are standouts in this twisted game of presumed identities.
8. Halloween Ends
The controversial conclusion to David Gordon Green’s already controversial Halloween trilogy may not have given audiences what they expected, or even wanted but after 12 entries, but there’s a lot to admire in the big swings it takes. Picking up three years after the conclusion of Halloween Kills, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) have seemingly moved on from the trauma caused by Michael Myers, who has disappeared in the years since his escape. But a young man, Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell) who has become Haddonfield’s new boogeyman after a tragic accident sets events in motion that find Michael Myers returning to kill again, all leading to a final clash with Laurie. Introspective and exhibiting Green’s filmic sense of empathy, Ends explores what fear does to a community after staring into the abyss for far too long.
7. Scream
Following the success of Ready or Not (2019), the directing and filmmaking team known as Radio Silence resurrected Wes Craven’s beloved Scream franchise. Featuring the return of beloved characters Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox), and Dewey Riley (David Arquette), along with a new group of teenagers, Sam (Melissa Barrera), Tara (Jenna Ortega), Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown), Chad (Mason Gooding), Wes (Dylan Minnette), Liv (Sonia Ammar), Amber (Mikey Madison) and Richie (Jack Quaid), the latest installment tackled legacy sequels, and fan expectations run amok. As both a tribute to Wes Craven and a way to pass the torch forward, Scream made a convincing argument that the franchise still has plenty of blood left in it.
6. Smile
Parker Finn’s feature debut, Smile, became one of the year’s biggest success stories and the most profitable film of the year for its budget. Fascinatingly, Finn’s psychological fright fest was originally planned for a streaming release on Paramount+ but shifted to theatrical in a last-minute change. That decision, which many studios could do well to learn from, was followed by Paramount creating a new division specifically catered to horror topped by Walter Hamada, who led The Conjuring franchise to great heights at New Line. But beyond its Hollywood success story, Smile is a damn scary exploration into mental health. When Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) begins seeing frightening images linked to her past her life, reality begins to crumble around her, culminating in a bone-chilling and shocking third act.
5. The Menu
Mark Mylod’s The Menu isn’t just a great social horror movie, it also happens to be one of the funniest films of the year. In The Menu, Chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) takes a stab at the culinary appetites of the rich and famous during an exclusive presentation of his new menu. The guests are in for more than a few surprises, but the night takes a turn for foodie, Tyler (Nicholas Hoult) and his date, Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy), as their pallets for Slowik’s menu, and their company, are tested. Like a number of films on this list, the less you know that better. But gripping performances and strong supporting turns by John Leguizamo and Hong Chau make for a meal of subverted genre conventions.
4. X
Ti West’s return to horror films arrived in the form of a slasher movie throwback to the ’70s that delivered on what it promised and then some. While the film certainly uses sex and blood to entice horror fans, X is Ti West’s ode to filmmaking — the fact that the filmmakers happen to be making p*rn is ancillary. Mia Goth, Jenna Ortega, Brittany Snow, Kid Cudi, Owen Campbell and Martin Henderson star as a film crew looking for fame, pleasure and rebellion in an increasingly conservative America. They just so happen to find it at a farm house in rural Texas, but their hosts aren’t quite as traditional as they originally believe. As an empathetic portrait of aging and belonging, X is only topped by what came next, or rather before.
3. Pearl
Ti West surprised audiences at the end of X with the promise of Pearl, a prequel exploring the bloody origin story of X’s villainess. In Pearl, Goth delivers one of the best performances of the year as an isolated young farm girl whose dreams of stardom clash with her declining mental stability in 1918. While West took inspiration from Tobe Hooper and exploitation films of the ’70s for X, in Pearl he draws from classic Hollywood musicals, creating a sweeping romantic portrait with chipping paint that reveals the dark underbelly of a life lived for others and the barely contained rage of a nobody desperately wanting to be somebody. Lucky for audiences, West will complete the trilogy with Maxxxine, which will see Goth return as her character in X and is expected to arrive in 2023.
2. Bones and All
Luca Guadagnino certainly isn’t a filmmaker many would call a horror director but the director behind Call Me By Your Name already proved adept in the genre with his ambitious reimagining on Suspiria in 2018. In his adaptation of Bones and All, he explores the relationship between two young lovers, Mare (Taylor Russell) and Lee (Timothée Chalamet) who just so happen to have an insatiable need to consume human flesh. While “cannibal love story” may not inspire much confidence as a logline, Guadagnino, approaches the narrative as a road movie steeped in Americana. It’s Terrence Malick’s Badlands meets the novel Stephen King never wrote, with a splash of blood across Norman Rockwell’s paintings. For all of the horror, of which there is plenty, Bones and All is ultimately about the human need for love and life, and whether anyone can truly remain a good person if they fully commit themselves to either.
1. Nope
Jordan Peele’s sci-fi opus is as imaginative as it is horrific. When siblings OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald Haywood (Keke Palmer) see a strange object in the sky on their father’s horse ranch they commit to capturing it on film, drawing in a local tech advisor, Angel Torres (Brandon Perea), an acclaimed cinematographer, Antlers Holst (Michael Wincott), and former child star turned theme park host, Jupe Park (Steven Yeun) into an escalating game of consequence that dares them to look away. Offering brilliant commentary on our consumer culture, tokenism, and voyeuristic habits, Nope is the kind of original horror film that pushes the genre forward and inspires the biggest nightmares filmmakers can dream up.
Honorable Mentions: Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, The Black Phone, Men
Best of the Streaming and Independent Releases
10. Hatching
In this Finnish body horror film from Hanna Bergholm, a young gymnast, Tinja (Siiri Solalinna) suffers from the abusive pressures of her perfectionist and social media-consumed mother (Sophia Heikkila). But everything changes when Tinja discovers a mysterious egg outside her of house, an egg that hatches to reveal a monstrous bird-like creature that, over the course of the film, evolves into a doppelganger with a lust for blood. Hatching feels like a modern Grimm’s fairy tale with Cronenbergian practical effects and a core message about the internalized anger of children.
9. Who Invited Them
Duncan Birmingham’s feature debut navigates the thin line between horror and comedy. In Who Invited Them, Adam (Ryan Hansen) and Margo’s (Melissa Tang) housewarming party takes a turn for the worse when two mysterious and flirty neighbors, Tom (Timothy Granaderos) and Sasha (Perry Mattfeld), make themselves overly comfortable and familiar with the couple after the party has ended. The problem is, neither Adam or Margo invited them. Under the veil good-natured fun, Tom and Sasha play games, both physical and psychological, that expose Adam and Margo’s insecurities and threaten to tear the couple apart. Who Invited Them is a revealing portrait of pretense and L.A. narcissism that’s absurdity and shock are pushed far enough to feel all too plausible under the compulsion of fitting in.
8. Sissy
What happens when the glitzy, manufactured world of influencer culture is peeled back to reveal just how hard control is to come by? Directors Hannah Barlow and Kane Senes deliver a new take on the classic slasher revenge plot when Cecelia (Aisha Dee), a popular Instagram influencer, is invited to her former best friend Emma’s (Hannah Barlow) bachelorette party after a chance meeting for the first time in ten years. When Cecelia’s childhood bully, Alex (Emily De Margherti) also happens to in attendance at the party, old wounds are reopened and audience sympathies shift as the final girl is subverted in a battle of real blood and fake tears, all filtered through Cecelia’s Instagram-addled mind.
7. Hellraiser
The history of Hellraiser sequels is … legendary for their decreasing quality. Finally, after decades of straight to DVD entries, David Bruckner, hot off The Night House, reimagines Clive Barker’s classic tale in a way that both honors the source material and finds new layers in the lore which to explore. When Riley (Odessa A’zion), and addict who has run out of favors, steals a mysterious puzzle box, she unleashes the demonic cenobites who, led by their Hellpreistess, Pinhead (Jamie Clayton), seek to bridge the gap between pleasure and pain with their demand for sacrifices. Hellraiser tells a compelling story about the cost of addiction, and Clayton’s committed performance along with the new angles added to the Lament Configuration, give hope that future Hellraiser installments will go through such pains.
6. Crimes of the Future
When you walk into a David Cronenberg film, you know you’re walking into something weird by modest terms, and something perception-changing if you’re willing to give yourself over to it. In Crimes of the Future, Cronenberg returns to horror. Reteaming with frequent collaborator Viggo Mortensen, who stars as Saul Tenser, a man capable of growing extraneous organs, Cronenberg once again pierces the veil separating bodily mutilation and sexual acts. Saul along with his partner Caprice (Lea Seydoux) engage in avant-garde performance art in a decaying society where trans-humanism threatens to destabilize the very meaning of humanity. Kristen Stewart and Scott Speedman also star in this stomach-churning meditation on evolution.
5. Speak No Evil
It doesn’t get much bleaker than this as far as 2022 films go. Director Christian Tafdruf takes the concept of a “comedy of manners” and turn it on its head, creating a horror of manners. In Speak No Evil, from the Netherlands and Denmark, A Danish couple, Bjorn (Morten Burian) and Louise (Sidsel Siem Koch), and their young daughter, Agnes (Liva Forsberg), are invited to stay with a Dutch family, Patrick (Fedja van Huet) and Karin (Karina Smulders), and their young, mute son, Abel (Marius Damslev) after meeting on vacation. From the moment Bjorn and his family arrive, it’s clear something isn’t right but in the effort of politeness he looks past the oddities and annoyances of their hosts, while asking his wife and daughter to do the same. But as Patrick and Karin begin to push things further and further and insult becomes injury, Bjorn and his family find themselves caught in an impossible situation where no amount of graciousness can save them from what’s waiting.
4. Mad God
Phil Tippett, the famed visual effects supervisor, creature designer, and stop-motion animator best known for his work on Star Wars, Robocop and Jurassic Park delivers a nightmarish vision of the underworld, 30 years in the making. Through incredibly detailed stop-motion animation, Mad God follows a figure known only as The Assassin as he travels through the deepest depths of the underworld, and through monsters and demons beyond your wildest imagination to plant a bomb that will destroy the hellish landscape once and for all. More of an experience than a narrative-driven story, Mad God comments on the cyclical nature of our call to violence and the futility of any attempt to hold back hell, and, perhaps surprisingly, manages to be a good time while doing so.
3. Prey
Dan Trachtenberg, best known for 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016), revitalizes the Predator franchise with Prey. This prequel to the 1987 film takes the franchise back to basics with a tense sci-fi horror entry that’s smaller scale allows for greater suspense. Set in 1719, Prey follows Naru (Amber Midthunder), a young Comanche warrior seeking to break the gender traditions of her tribe and become a hunter. When an unseen adversary from the sky threatens to endanger her home, Naru puts her skills to the test. Prey is not only notable for providing the option to watch in Comanche, it places characters and a culture we don’t often see in horror or sci-fi films are the forefront, creating a richer lore for a series most associated with muscle-bound white men. And as strong as the action sequences and gore is, much of the film’s success and nail-biting tension comes from the strong performances from Midthunder and newcomer, Dakota Beavers, who make the Predator something to fear once again.
2. A Wounded Fawn
Travis Stevens’ A Wounded Fawn explores a serial killer’s perverse habits through the lens of Greek mythology in this surreal act of cinematic alchemy that feels both modern and ancient. Bruce Ernst (Josh Ruben) gets a whole lot more than he bargained for when he chooses Meredith Tanning (Sarah Lind) as his next victim, bringing her to his cabin under the pretense of a weekend getaway. Shot in gorgeous 16mm, A Wounded Fawn feels like a past and present commentary on our romanticized obsession with serial killers with Ruben’s charming and disarming performance becoming a subtly shifting psychological examination of horrific choices that become all the more pathetic when stripped of their mystique and fantastic excuses. Rather than rely on the tried-and-true formula of a woman driven to the end of her rope on one horrific night, Stevens shifts perspectives and turns the tables, forcing the serial killer to contend with terror so consuming it becomes impossible to separate from folklore. The victims are given the legendary status and nightmarish powers we’ve seen granted to so many onscreen men who’ve used that power to become monsters.
1. Watcher
Chloe Okuno’s first feature Watcher will follow you longer after the credits roll. When asked for horror recommendations that people may not have seen this year, my go to answer has been Watcher. When Julia (Maika Monroe) moves to Bucharest for her husband Francis’ (Karl Klusman) new job, she struggles to adjust to her new and unfamiliar surroundings. But it’s more than discomfort she feels. When she sees a man (Burn Gorman) watching her from the apartment across the street in the midst of news that a serial killer is beheading local women, it becomes a matter of life and death as her feelings and suspicions are routinely suggested to be mania and mental illness by the men around her. Certain to draw comparisons to elements found in the giallo, Hitchco*ck, and Polanski, Okuno adds her own stamp to horror’s long tradition of voyeurism and paranoia, and cements herself as one of horrors most exciting new filmmakers.
Honorable mentions: The Cursed, Fresh, Glorious, V/H/S/99
Looking ahead to next year, horror films on the radar include: M3GAN, Skinamarink, Infinity Pool, Knock at the Cabin, There’s Something Wrong with the Children, Salem’s Lot, Scream VI, Renfield, 65, Evil Dead Rise, Insidious: Fear the Dark, The Nun 2, The Boogeyman, Cuckoo, The Last Voyage of the Demeter, Maxxxine, The Exorcist, Saw X and many more yet to be revealed. See you then and stay scared!
