I’ll be honest: I’ve been on something of a horror vacation for the last two years. Part of it was just wanting to try some new stuff: Between 2017 and 2020, virtually everything I watched and read was horror-related, to the point of exclusion. Film festivals, screeners, company events, friends’ movies, friends-of-friends’ movies; if I was sitting down in a movie theater or in front of a TV in that time frame, odds were it was horror, and, to be honest, not all of it was good. Between being genre savvy myself and too many filmmakers’ tendency to lean heavily on tropes, it’d gotten to the point where watching horror movies was no longer the life-giving joy it’d once been; it was a chore, an obligation. Mid-quarantine, between narrative and existential burnout, I made the conscious decision to start watching all the movies I’d missed in that three-year period. It was a much-needed recharge. Like my journalistic hero Bill Landis, my cinematic diet had once been a healthy mixture of multiple genres, weaving horror in with indy film, European arthouse, action adventure, comedy, and prestige drama. Once upon a time, I was as likely to be watching THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE or GOODBYE, GEMINI as I was Bigas Luna’s JAMON JAMON, Peter Greenaway’s A ZED AND TWO NOUGHTS, or THE QUIET EARTH. What had I become?
So it was that between 2020 and 2022, I watched virtually no horror—my big vacation kicking off after I finished judging the socially-distanced Grimmfest (which premiered one of my favorite horror flicks of the last decade, the really amazing RENT-A-PAL, which you really need to check out for a wonderful villain turn from Wil Wheaton). It was a wonderful reminder of the diversity and joy of cinema, and, especially via my wife’s Criterion subscription, an opportunity to fall back in love with movies.
Something really amazing happened this year, though, that drew me back into horror: the genre got exciting again. After what seemed to be a years-long slump in which seemingly only Jordan Peele and Ari Aster could be relied upon to consistently do entirely new, unexpected things, established pros rediscovered their creative spirit and new masters arrived on the scene to breathe unexpected life back into the genre. Years from now, we’ll be looking back on 2022 as one of the greatest years in horror history; and while not all of the releases were legendary, asking every film to be perfect would just be greedy. So it was that I ended up seeing nine new releases in the theaters and plus two really stellar streaming premiers. Here’s my rankings; not all of them are the stuff of legend, but, in a year that’s been so high quality, I’m not going to get greedy.
HONORABLE MENTION: SMILE—The least original film in a year where originality reigned at the box office, SMILE is probably the year’s most quietly divisive movie. Viewers either found it to be a derivative, poorly-constructed rehash of THE RING by way of IT FOLLOWS or a fun popcorn flick with great sound design and a healthy heaping of jump scares. While credit is due to the sound design and a few of the jumps (why did you put the falling head in the trailer!?), I fall more into the first camp; I really wanted to give this one a chance and was hoping for an enjoyable TRUTH OR DARE-style Friday night slumber-party style experience, but the influence of Verbinski’s RING was too omnipresent and kept reminding me of how much I enjoyed that movie instead of being able to lose myself in this one. Coupled with an entire sequence that could’ve (and should’ve) been snipped out and an ending that tries to be twisty but instead just ends up confusing, it was one of the year’s few almost-let downs. The experienced was salvaged by the fact that I was the oldest person to see it in an auditorium full of UTA students that absolutely reeked of weed, and between the contact high and their excellent MST3K riffs, it made for a fun afternoon.
10. NOPE—Unlike many filmmakers, Jordan Peele avoided a sophomore slump when he made US, still my favorite movie of his and a certified modern horror classic. Instead, he finally made the inevitable whiff with NOPE, a film that starts out incredibly strong but shows signs of having been a different creature at some point in its evolution (if it underwent heavy rewrites during quarantine I wouldn’t be surprised). There’s a lot of amazing ideas here that’re never teased out to their full potential: Jupiter is a gift of a character worthy of an entire film, and a lot of the air goes out after he leaves the picture (albeit in one of the most genuinely disturbing sequences in recent memory; to give credit where it’s due, Jean Jacket and Gordy make for two of the most unsettling creatures of the year, and when they’re in attack mode the movie really shines). Keke Palmer and Daniel Kaluuya thrive when the script lets them, but their parts feel underwritten at the expense of the spectacle that starts to take over in the last third of the movie; and unlike the allegorical elegance of GET OUT and US, it’s never quite clear what exactly the movie is trying to say, other than something about the roles of creator and spectator and the nature of entertainment. Is NOPE a bad film? Not at all; it’d be very hard for someone of Peele’s talent to turn out something that genuinely sucked. It’s just a little too long and unpolished. Here’s to the next one.
9. BARBARIAN—We got a real cinematic gift this year in that a studio straight up produced a high-dollar, slickly made, 1970s-style exploitation film and then quietly released it to theaters. BARBARIAN has all the spiritual nastiness and narrative sleaze of an old-school 42nd street flick, wrapped up in the glossy direction of Zach Cregger (in his solo directorial debut no less) and buttressed by the talents of breakout star Georgina Campbell (formerly of British TV fame), Bill Skarsgård, and a delightfully wicked Justin Long, whose casual evil is matched only by his breathtaking stupidity. With a subtly unnerving cameo from the ever reliable Richard Brake and an understatedly groovy monster design, BARBARIAN is exploitation cinema done right and a lesson to every filmmaker who wants to do grindhouse right.
8. SCREAM (5)—While it may not be my favorite franchise, SCREAM is the slasher series with the most consistently high quality, and the fifth entry reminded audiences precisely why that is with a movie that achieves a beautiful tightrope walking act between being a reboot of the franchise, remake of the first film, and fond farewell to the story of Sidney Prescott two movies after SCREAM 3 already gave us what would’ve been a satisfying ending. Jenna Ortega, Jasmin Savoy Brown, and Mason Gooding all turn in fantastic performances establishing them as the new heroes of the franchise, while David Arquette reminds audiences that, given the right material, he can really act, with an epic sunset role for Dewey, who gets one of the saddest yet simultaneously most uplifting ends in the franchise (in a series where characters regularly die meaninglessly and cruelly, how many go down saving multiple lives?). The script from James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick reminds us that the series functions well being both funny and scary, with the opening guessing game having a gut-punch final question that explains why I’ll never own a smart home. In an era where franchises regularly wear out their welcomes, SCREAM still knows how to keep things fresh.
7. HELLRAISER—I’ve been saying for years that Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski are two of the best writers currently working in the business, and they demonstrate exactly why that is with an excellent take on the HELLRAISER mythos that finally brings things back around to the series’ roots after years of languishing in DTV, “let’s shoehorn Pinhead into this” Hell. While it never quite achieves the icky blending of sex and violence that were the Cenobites’ original stock in trade, and they’re still slightly more in firmly villainous territory rather than the amoral sense freaks of the original novella, they’re at least closer to their source than they have been for decades and in fine form in the process, with some excellent SFX and creature design. At the same time, Collins and Piotrowski have made some really excellent additions to the Cenobite mythology, and it’s cool to see them back in Mephistopholean mode in the final act. Major points go to Jamie Clayton stepping into the Doug Bradley/Pinhead/Priest role, both reinventing the character and reminding audiences why we fell in love with it in the first place. If this is any indication where the franchise is headed from here, I’m very optimistic that it’s finally gotten back on the rails, and hope that Collins and Piotrowski stick around to keep righting the ship.
6. HALLOWEEN ENDS—I didn’t say anything negative about HALLOWEEN ’18, but you’ll notice I didn’t quite say anything kind either; the reasons why have as much to do with contracts as they do with not wanting to rain on anyone’s parade, but I feel safe in saying now that the latest effort to reboot the franchise was a too-on-the-nose, over-the-top carnival of bad choices, all of them made by people who knew better. None of that matters in the face of HALLOWEEN ENDS, though, the movie that both ’18 and KILLS should’ve been. An excellent meditation on grief that doesn’t get lost in Catholic-style “sanctity in suffering” trauma porn, ENDS looks at the real-world implications of a Micael Meyers-style slasher on a small town, and how those same small towns will look for scapegoats to vent their rage if the real target of their ire isn’t readily available. Jamie Lee Curtis is in top form as a Laurie Strode that’s much more human, vulnerable, relatable, and loveable than the last two flicks, and reminds us why generations of viewers have embraced her as the final girl. The CHRISTINE-style subplot about an angry young man giving in to his worst impulses is one of the best explorations of young male radicalization in recent memory, and all the more interesting and emotionally honest in that it doesn’t make Corey inherently evil. Though the Roman Triumph climax is more than a bit over the top, and ventures into too-too-too much territory, the epic showdown between Laurie and Michael that proceeds it more than makes up for it, as does one of the most subtly beautiful final sequences in horror memory.
5. CRIMES OF THE FUTURE—David Cronenberg is back, y’all, and he’s here to remind you that he fucks. After some weird forays into crime cinema with the enjoyable but ultimately unmemorable A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE and EASTERN PROMISES, Cronenberg returned to the body horror world that he defined even as it defined him with this twisted tale of a future in which mutations and surgery have become the new trends. Simultaneously a cautionary tale about the potential intersections of technology and humanity as well as a low-key environmental thriller and VIDEODROME-style espionage tale (it’s not hard to imagine this as taking place in a future where Bianca O’Blivion won out over Spectacular Optical and unleashed her father’s invention onto the world), CRIMES is Cronenberg back in his finest form. Special mention goes to Kristen Stewart, who—free from the confines of her TWILIGHT image—continues to impress as a uniquely idosyncratic indy actress; though incomparable to her awesome portrayal of Princess Di in the criminally underloved SPENCER (the best film of the 2020s so far in this humble author’s opinion) her turn here as a deeply neurotic, deeply horny investigator is still a standout bit in a movie full of standout bits. Even if Cronenberg weren’t already hard at work on another flick, this would be a fine capstone to the master’s career and a wonderful apotheosis of the subgenre that he put on the map.
4. X—Though I’ve never been a huge Ti West fan, you can’t deny that the man doesn’t have a unique sensibility, and I’m always willing to give his next work a shot to see if it sticks to the wall. In this case, it doesn’t just stick, it goes through the fucking wall into the next room: what begins as a saucy retread of THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE segues into a thoughtful exploration of aging, desire, and the human need for love and acceptance, explored through multiple forms from fame to sexual desirability to simple intellectual and emotional connection. Utilizing a bevvy of late 60s/early 70s cinematic techniques from split-screens to EASY RIDER’s quick-crosscutting, West brings New Hollywood-era horror back to life, with a fantastic recreation of the aesthetics and atmosphere of East Texas to boot (as a Houston native, even though this thing was shot in New Zealand, I’d believe parts of this were filmed out around Pasadena; that early shot of the refineries as the van pulls away? Beautiful). Everyone here is in fine form, from Jenna Ortega and Owen Campbell’s slimy, back-biting couple-from-hell to Brittany Snow in a marvelous turn as an enlightened sexpot to Martin Henderson’s fantastic Wayne, a very recognizable archetype of seedy Texas good ol’ boys he abso-fucking-lutely nails. The real MVP of the hour, though, is Mia Goth in her dual role as Maxxine and Pearl, a pair of wannabes who are perhaps a little more alike than either would care to admit. From Maxxine’s headstrong resourcefulness and stubborn refusal to let anything get in her way to Pearl’s desperate, Golden Years last-ditch effort at filling the gaping void inside her soul, Goth nails myriad subtle nuances and aspects of each woman, serving to elevate what could’ve easily been a fun but forgettable 70s ode into something smarter, more heartfelt, and more emotionally satisfying.
3. THE MENU—The horror comedy is an incredibly difficult beast to pull off. Walking the line between genuinely funny and genuinely scary is something too many directors think looks easy on paper, only for the end results to either be, in most cases, super gory comedies, or, on occasion, anemic horror flicks with vague aspirations to humor. That’s the beauty in THE MENU—it’s the rare beast that can be edge-of-your-seat terrifying one moment, laugh-out-loud hilarious the next, with neither element ever infringing on the other’s territory. It’s a master-class balancing act pulled off with aplomb by everyone involved, with particular kudos to Seth Reiss and Will Tracy’s brilliantly acerbic script, which keeps the audience on their toes for a fine portion of the running time. That script is buttressed by a fine cast of performers, most notably Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Fiennes, and Nicholas Hoult, who in the best moments of the first act turn the film into a weird shell game of sympathies: for anyone who’s had to deal with the “remember I’m better than you, my favorite band is someone you’ve never heard of” head-up-the-ass hipster crowd, Margot’s introduction as a condescending, insufferable I’m SOOOOO cool type grates on the last nerve, while Hoult’s admittedly over-eager but nonetheless pure-seeming love of haute cuisine sets him up as someone with a real capacity for the kind of genuine wonder Margot will probably never experience. A single, brief, expertly-written, amazingly-delivered exchange between the two quickly flips the script, though, and immediately wins Margot the audience’s sympathies while redefining Hoult’s character; and through it all, Fiennes has an absolute ball playing a man who seems to have completely and utterly lost his mind in the must unexpected, fun, frightening, and cracked of ways—his late-in-the-film assertion that “love is the most important ingredient” (after he’s killed and tortured multiple people) is both hilarious and frightening at the same time, encapsulating everything right about this film. Combined with an ingeniously insane final girl gambit that appeals to Fiennes’ own warped logic, it’s a horror comedy to define horror comedy.
2. WE’RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD’S FAIR—You know how I mentioned reliance on the tropes and genre exhaustion above? FAIR is the complete opposite of that, and, as the first horror movie I watched in 2022, the flick that got me excited about the genre again. A wholly original blending of found footage, screenlife, mockumentary, coming-of-age, and traditional horror narrative, Jane Schoenbrun’s ode to creepypasta, internet lore, and life lived online is a movie unlike any other that’s come before, a simultaneously heartfelt and harrowing look at what happens when reality is mediated through the web. As someone who spent a significant portion of his own formative years primarily interacting with other people via chatrooms and message boards rather than face to face, the movie struck a real chord with me, and captured exactly what it feels like to realize the promise of VIDEODROME when the internet is reality and reality is less than the internet. Anna Cobb explodes onto the horror scene in her feature film debut as a young woman who’s made her own deep-dive into the furthest realms of the net, losing sight of the line between fantasy and the loosely-structured titular game, a sort of LARPing experience built around a semi-fictional (?) old-school computer game and the supposed malign (or revelatory?) encounters it can grant those who dedicate themselves to it. She gives herself wholly over to the role, embodying all of the angst, insecurity, and simultaneous feeling of freedom and imprisonment that comes with being young and online. The webcam, fly-on-the-wall style of much of the film helps to take viewers off guard with scares where they’re least expected, particularly in a gleeful dance sequence that abruptly turns terrifying. Perhaps an even more wholly realized cinematic version of the darkest corners of the net than Channel Zero, WE’RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD’S FAIR is a provocative, startling, touching, frightening debut feature, and I’m ecstatic to see what Schoenbrun does next.
1. PEARL—Not just the best horror film of 2022, but, in this writer’s not at all humble opinion, the best film of the year, period, and a bona fide cinematic classic that deserves Criterion status ASAP. Where X walked, PEARL soars, in a film that stands alongside PERSONA and THE 400 BLOWS in its exploration of the human condition and the people not so much left behind or ignored by society but those who just don’t make it. While X was a provocative enough exploration of the nature of human desire and the need for love—both the emotional and physical sort—PEARL expands on the psychology of its title character, largely thanks to the contributions to the script made by Mia Goth, who really needs to consider a career in screenwriting. Here, Pearl isn’t just a lonely woman in need of a human touch, but rather someone who strives for something more—the stereotypical dreamer of oh-so-many “just give it your best!” rags-to-riches movies of the stripe our antiheroine loses herself in at the local cinema. In real life, though, just because we want success and adoration doesn’t mean we get them, and, more often than not, the world’s dreamers don’t end up on the silver screen or the cover of Newsweek, but leading average, quiet lives and looking back on those fleeting moments when they brushed up against something greater than themselves. That, in and of itself, would make for a fantastic subject for cinematic exploration, but PEARL doubles down on not just making our girl a Thornton Wilder everywoman but instead a bona fide sociopath with a predilection for killing small animals (and those who displease her). In other folks’ hands, Pearl would be reduced to a selfish, animalistic killer. As written by Goth and Ti West, she becomes achingly human at the same time she’s profoundly evil, and the show-stopping, powerhouse monologue that serves as the film’s centerpiece/climax demonstrates that there’s still something vulnerable and identifiable and wounded underneath the striving and conniving that still makes you want to reach out to her. A horror movie with a heart, a character study with a wicked streak, a master class in cinema—PEARL is a demonstration of all the glorious possibilities of cinema, and a film worthy of going down in history as one of the all time greats.
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