LISTMAS—5 Favorite Horror Movies Released In 2022
1. X
A24 has become a mainstay for horror fans and Ti West gave us an early win with X. Not only did they pack this movie with stars including modern horror queen Jenna Ortega, but the mirroring themes of aging out of lust and desire versus youth requiring those same passions to give life meaning gets hauntingly portrayed in mirroring roles that Mia Goth played to perfection in this movie. The ingenuity of releasing X and its prequel, PEARL, in the same year will be one that filmmakers will attempt to replicate one year soon and depending on the story, may not be able to pull off.
2. WATCHER
If Alfred Hitchcock were born in 1986 and labeled himself a feminist in a non-ironic sense, I still don’t think he’d be able to match what Chloe Okuno did with WATCHER. Hitchcock’s influence is all thorough this REAR WINDOW-esque movie, but the care with which Maika Monroe’s character Julia is written and played in a world where either nobody understands her (due to a language barrier) or believes her is a tour-de-force. Not only did I feel everything her character felt, but you know how the movie will end early in the movie and yet it still manages to shock you on the way.
3. SCREAM (2022)
Give Radio Silence their flowers. In a packed year for horror movies, they released the latest installment of the Scream franchise two weeks into January and it still replays in my mind as ahead of the entries before it. This movie took the recent string of requels and toxic fandom and reminded everyone that not only was this franchise the crux of horror comedies but wrote the rules for horror satire as well. This movie is packed with stars including as of now, the last turn of Neve Campbell as Sidney Prescott, star of the first five SCREAM movies. Honorable mention for Jenna Ortega playing in this, kicking off an insane year for her including this movie, the aforementioned X, STUDIO 666, AND Wednesday.
4. PREY
Hulu had a fantastic year with this and HELLRAISER and while I could easily put either in this spot, this PREDATOR prequel blew my socks off in two different versions (the Comanche version is the way to go, trust me). Hands down my favorite of the franchise, I say this movie means we can now throw a Predator anywhere at any time in history and it would work–England during the Industrial Revolution, Japan during the Age of the Samurai, etc. Whoever first pitched a young Comanche woman whooping a Predator’s butt in the midst of also dealing with misogyny within her tribe and French fur traders impeding on her land deserves all the awards. The only reason this is lower on my list is no fault of its own, but it’ll always be a shame that we didn’t get to see this one in a theater due to the pandemic.
5. VIOLENT NIGHT
I had to ponder on this last slot for quite some time. 2022 will go down as the 1984 of the 21st century for horror movie fans with the sheer number of movies that came out. ORPHAN: FIRST KILL, NOPE, BODIES BODIES BODIES, the list goes on, but I’m choosing this David Harbour-fronted movie because it was not only perfectly released around Christmastime and gave us the new Christmas horror movie we’ve been wanting but due to it being unexpectedly three-dimensional. This movie had humor, gory kills, and action, but it also gave a warm tale of family and greed that would probably make some disagree with it being labeled a horror movie. One thing I didn’t expect coming out of this movie was a HOME ALONE movie that embraces the injuries inflicted on home intruders while still maintaining the innocence of the child inflicting said injuries (unlike the blatant psychopathy of the child in BETTER WATCH OUT). VIOLENT NIGHT also featured an older Beverly D’Angelo returning to holiday movies with a bang and I do hope we see her having a sort of Barbara Crampton in JAKOB’S WIFE role soon.
