The History of Metal and Horror (2022)
Horror and Heavy Metal Documentary
A documentary that explores the intersection between heavy metal music and horror and the frequently intertwined relationship of the two
Films of 2022
Hocus Pocus 2 (2022)
Revived Witches/Disney Film
As part of their attempt to sell everything including the family silver, Disney make a sequel to their witch comedy, bringing back the three original actresses who are now looking a lot longer in the tooth
Hotel Transylvania: Transformania (2022)
Animation/Famous Monsters Comedy
Minus Adam Sandler this time, the Hotel Transylvania series trots out a fourth entry. Here, in some search for novelty on what has gone before, the monsters are turned back into humans
Hounded (2022)
Human Hunting
Another variant on The Most Dangerous Game scenario. This has the amusing idea that the British aristocracy, having had fox hunts cancelled on them, have taken up hunting the working class and immigrants
The House (2022)
Stop-Motion Animation Anthology
An anthology of stop-motion animated shorts set around the same house. Each episode is quite different but all three stories strike an admirably dark and absurdist tone and are beautifully made
House of Darkness (2022)
Man and Woman Go Home from a Bar Amid Sinister Happenings
Neil LaBute conducts a vampire movie take on the war of the sexes that comes with a satisfying bite. Justin Long gets more than he bargained for when he accompanies the girl he picks up in a bar home
House Red (2022)
Sinister Vineyard
Intriguing and well made film where two tourists seeking to patch up a troubled relationship volunteer at am Italian vineyard – only to find sinister things going on
Hundreds of Beavers (2022)
Gonzo Comedy
A completely madcap gonzo comedy that all takes place without dialogue, the live-action equivalent of a Looney Tunes cartoon. One of the most unique and creative films I have seen in some time
Hunt Club (2022)
Men Hunt Women
A variation on The Most Dangerous Game that comes with a nasty feminist agenda where women are hunted by men who feel a disappearing sense of entitlement
Hunting Ava Bravo (2022)
Woman Pursued by a Hunter
A decent variant on The Most Dangerous Game with a woman forced to survive with her bare hands while pursued by a hunter, this places emphasis on the psychological interplay between hunter and hunted
The Hyperions (2022)
Superhero Film
The rarity of an original screen superhero film, this takes place in a Retro 1970s setting as former superheroes conduct a heist to get their badges of power back
Hypersleep (2022)
Cryogenic Prison
A film of reality bending conceptual twists about a psychiatrist tending cryogenically frozen prisoners who then wakes to find that he has become one of the prisoners
I Came By (2022)
House Breakers Encounter a Psycho
Form the fine and underrated Babak Anvari, a tight thriller about a duo of graffiti artists who get more than they planned for when they break into the home of a psycho Hugh Bonneville
In Search of Tomorrow: A Journey Through ’80s Sci-Fi Cinema (2022)
Documentary About 1980s SF Films
A documentary that comes with great affection for the SF films of the 1980s and covers these, along with interviews with key people, although leaves quite a number of blank spots in works it does not cover
Incantation (2022)
Found Footage/Aftermath of a Paranormal Investigation
The most successful Taiwanese horror film of all time, a Found Footage film about paranormal investigators who witness a ritual and are afterwards haunted by it
Incredible But True (2022)
Gonzo Comedy/Time Portal in the Basement
Another of Quentin Dupieux’s gonzo, surreal comedies where a married couple buy a house and find it has a portal that takes them twelve hours into the future, while making them younger
Influencer (2022)
Social Media Psycho
A standout thriller full of sharp whiplash twists that features Cassandra Naud as a murderous psycho who targets social media influencers and then steals their identities
The Invitation (2022)
Sinister Family Secrets/Vampire Film
A woman discovers she is related to an aristocratic family but sinister secrets lurk. The film hangs on a big twist that is extremely obvious to anyone who has seen enough horror films
Jeepers Creepers Reborn (2022)
Monster Movie
The Jeepers Creepers films created a highly original boogeyman with some creepy effect. Mired in controversy, the fourth entry in franchise emerges from Finnish director Timo Vuorensola
Jurassic World: Dominion (2022)
Genetically-Engineered Dinosaurs Amok
This was the sixth film in the Jurassic Park/World franchise and offers very much a return to the familiar. It at least also shakes several familiar things up
Kids vs Aliens (2022)
Aliens Invade a Party
The director of Hobo with a Shotgun returns with a film about a group of kids caught up in the midst as aliens invade a party put on while their parents are away
The Kingdom: Exodus (2022)
Haunted Hospital/Black Comedy
Lars von Trier returns to finish off his haunted hospital saga The Kingdom after a 25 years absence, despite the death of several principals, and again milks the same darkly hilarious vein
The Lair (2022)
Unearthed Soviet Monsters
Neil Marshall was a highly promising genre name a few years ago on the basis of The Descent. Here he returns with a film about soldiers facing alien hybrid monsters in Afghanistan
The Ledge (2022)
Woman Faces Killers on a Mountainside
A thriller that sells itself to you with its premise where a woman who witnesses a murder and then must face the killers while trapped on a tiny ledge on a mountainside
Lightyear (2022)
Pixar Animation/Space Opera
A spinoff from Pixar’s Toy Story films that gives Buzz Lightyear a film all of his own. A likeable if fairly routine space adventure but aargh the rewrites to series continuity
Living With Chucky (2022)
Documentary About the Child’s Play/Chucky Films
A documentary about the making of the Child’s Play/Chucky films, this becomes an oddly touching work about family connections. Made by the daughter of series makeup effects artist Tony Gardner.
The Long Night (2022)
Sinister Cultists/Folk Horror
A Folk Horror film where Scout Taylor-Compton visits the South in search of the parents she never knew only for cultists in black robes and animal masks to surround the house
Loveland (2022)
Cyberpunk Future
Modest and interesting Cyberpunk film that works as a melancholy future-set romance with Ryan Kwanten as a hitman. Minimalist but with some striking conceptual twists
Luck (2022)
Animation/The Land of Luck
Disgraced former Pixar head John Lasseter makes a returns to animation for Skydance in an incredibly lightweight effort about adventures in the land of luck
M3gan (2022)
Artificially Intelligent Doll Amok
A horror film about an artificially intelligent children’s doll that resembles one of the Big Eyes paintings, which then proceeds to go full-on Terminator
Mad Heidi (2022)
Gonzo Swiss Exploitation Film
The famous Swiss children’s character gets a sarcastic puncturing in this amusingly gonzo OTT exploitation take where she becomes an armed revolutionary against a cruel dictator
Margaux (2022)
Smarthome Amok
Group of young people get away to a smarthome for the weekend, which then tries to kill them. The most ridiculous amongst a mini-spate of films about smarthome A.I.’s
Matriarch (2022)
Folk Horror
A wonderfully creepy Folk Horror film in which Jemima Rooper returns to her home town after many years and finds very strange things happening
Meet Cute (2022)
Time Travel Romantic Comedy
An extremely clever romantic comedy where Kaley Cuoco repeatedly returns back through time to replay her one perfect day, a date with Pete Davidson
Men (2022)
Folk Entity
Alex Garland has become a must watch name since Ex Machina and Devs. Here he ventures into an intriguing mix of folk horror and gender politics
The Menu (2022)
Fine Dining and Horror
Hilariously black horror comedy that works as a sublime satire of fine dining – with a nasty sting underneath
The Midnight Club (2022)
Teenagers Tell Horror Stories
Mike Flanagan horror mini-series adapted from Christopher Pike’s book, this is set around a group of patients in a hospice who form a group to tell each other horror stories
The Midwich Cuckoos (2022)
Telepathic Alien Children
The third screen adaptation of John Wyndham’s book, previously filmed as Village of the Damned, this gives the story an update in some interesting ways
Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022)
Animation/Super-Villain and Cute Mischievous Creatures
The cutely nonsensical Minions have become a pop culture phenomenon. Here we get more of them, although this is more as a Gru origin story
The Mistress (2022)
Haunted House/Reality Bender
This starts out seeming like another haunted house film before developing some conceptual reversal twists of the first M. Night Shyamalan-esque order
Moloch (2022)
Folk Horror
Folk Horror about the discovery of a witch’s body in a bog, this is a slow burn film that falls together with great subtlety
Monolith (2022)
Mysterious Objects
The title monolith is a cheat, this is however a creepy Australian film about a series of ultra-mysterious objects
Monstrous (2022)
Lake Monster
Film in which Christina Ricci fears her son is being drawn to a monster in the lake, this hangs around a very contrived twist ending
Moon Crash (2022)
Disaster Movie
The Asylum offer up a mockbuster copy of Roland Emmerich’s Moonfall that is far more entertaining than the original
Moon Man (2022)
Last Man Alive Abandoned on the Moon Comedy
Comedy from China about a man abandoned on the Moon, the last person left alive in the aftermath of the destruction of the Earth
Moonfall (2022)
Disaster Movie/The Moon on a Collision Course With the Earth
Roland Emmerich returns to mass destruction with a film about The Moon on a collision course with Earth, which heads in some conceptually challenging directions
Moonshot (2022)
Stowaway to Mars
From Arrowverse producer Greg Berlanti, a film about a nerd who stows away on a voyage to Mars
Morbius (2022)
Marvel Comics Vampire
Sony’s attempts to wring everything possible from the Spider-Man copyright in order to compete with the MCU continue with this film devoted to the Spider-Man vampire villain
Mortal Kombat Legends: Snow Blind (2022)
Animation/Interdimensional Combat/Videogame Adaptation
The third of the Mortal Kombat animated films. This abandons inter-dimensional kombat and takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, focused around the blind swordsman Kenshi
The Most Dangerous Game (2022)
Sportsman Hunts Human Game
A new version about the classic human bloodsports film where a group of shipwreckees are hunted across an island by a mad aristocrat
Mr. Harrigan’s Phone (2022)
Text Messages from Beyond the Grave/Stephen King Adaptation
A nicely made Stephen King adaptation about a teen who starts to receive text message from beyond the grave. From Ryan Murphy, the producer behind tv’s Glee and American Horror Story
The Munsters (2022)
Family of Monsters/TV Series Remake
Rob Zombie conducts a big-screen remake of The Munsters and surprisingly enough makes his best film yet
Mutant Ghost Wargirl (2022)
Chinese Cyberpunk/Mutant Superpowers
A very different to the current SF boom in Chinese cinema at the moment, this is a Cyberpunk film about the construction of mutant fighters
My Best Friend’s Exorcism (2022)
Possession Film
Possession film that is quite a bit more than the light fluffy Young Adult film the title makes it seem, boosted by a great performance from Amiah Miller
Night’s End (2022)
Haunted Apartment
A film shot during Covid lockdown that creates a great sense of isolation with a man locked inside a possibly haunted apartment
Nix (2022)
Lake Monster
From the director of the Sharknado films. This concerns a family dealing with tragedy caused by a lake monster. Unlike Sharknado, this a work that is taking itself seriously
Nocebo (2022)
Mysterious Nanny/Folk Horror
Film that develops a Folk Horror vibe as Eva Green hires a nanny with mysterious healing powers. The horror version of Mary Poppins
Nope (2022)
UFO Film
Jordan Peele seems to have arrived at the same position that M. Night Shyamalan was in in the early 2000s. In his third film as director, he makes a film about UFOs that becomes a baffling scratch of the head
The Northman (2022)
Viking Film
Robert Eggers, the director who made The Witch and The Lighthouse, makes a violent, primal Viking film steeped in Norse mythology
The OctoGames (2022)
Deadly Elimination Games
The South Korean tv series Squid Games with people forced to play deadly versions of children’s games was a surprise international hit on Netflix. This is the low-budget horror copycat
The Offering (2022)
Sinister Happenings at a Jewish Funeral Home
Undeniably reminiscent of the standout The Vigil, a horror film set around an Orthodox Jewish funeral home that creates great uncanny mood
Old Man (2022)
Tensions Between Two Men in a Cabin in the Woods
Lucky McKee, director of May and The Woman, makes a film about two men meeting at a cabin in the woods where secrets emerge amid psychological tensions between the two
Old People (2022)
Aged Attack the Young
German film in which the elderly abruptly turn and begin attacking the young en masse
Orphan: First Kill (2022)
Evil Child
I was fairly ho-hum about the first Orphan but this is a sequel that entirely surprises you
Ouija Shark 2 (2022)
Gonzo Killer Shark Film
A sequel to the Gonzo Killer Shark film Ouija Shark, this goes even crazier
Out of Darkness (2022)
Prehistory
A film that follows a group of cavepeople who set out on a journey to find a new land to only to be hunted by mysterious unknown, possibly supernatural threat
The Outwaters (2022)
Found Footage/Mysterious Happenings in the Desert
An ultra cryptic Found Footage film about mysterious happenings in the desert
The Pale Blue Eye (2022)
Edgar Allan Poe in an Occult Murder Mystery
Superlatively moody and well written film that winds a young Edgar Allan Poe into an occult murder mystery
Pearl (2022)
Southern Gothic
Ti West made the extraordinary X earlier in the year. Here he and the greatly underrated Mia Goth return to make a prequel
Pig Killer (2022)
True-Life Serial Killer
A film based on true-life Canadian serial killer Robert Pickton who fed his victim’s bodies to his pigs
Piggy (2022)
Plus-Size Teen and Her Tormentors
Raw and undeniable brutal film in which a plus-size teenage girl forms a relationship with a serial killer after he abducts her tormentors
Pinocchio (2022)
Living Puppet Boy/Disney Remake
The first of two Pinocchio adaptations of 2022, Here Back to the Future director Robert Zemeckis delivers a live-action remake of the Disney animated film
Play Dead (2022)
Sinister Happenings at the Morgue
Bailee Madison takes a drug that fakes death and wakes up at the morgue – only to discover that coroner Jerry O’Connell is running an organ harvesting operation
Prey (2022)
Native Americans Hunted by Alien Sportsman
The seventh film in the Predator franchise. This received some of the best reviews of any film in the series and comes with the unique idea of pitting Native Americans up against a Predator
Prey for the Devil (2022)
Possession and Exorcism
Daniel Stamm, the director who made the standout
The Price We Pay (2022)
Getaway Thriller/Mad Surgeon
This has the flavour of From Dusk Till Dawn, a getaway thriller that does a mid-film morph into full horror territory as a gang of fleeing petty criminals stray into the lair of mad surgeon
Project Gemini (2022)
Space Expedition Gets Lost
A Russian SF film about an expedition through a wormhole that then gets lost, this bites off an ambitious conceptual reach only for it to fall apart in a shaggy dog ending
Project Wolf Hunting (2022)
Monster Amok Aboard a Prison Ship
The most violent, brutal, blood-drenched films one has seen in recent memory, a South Korean entry about a monster loose aboard a prison ship
Raven’s Hollow (2022)
Edgar Allan Poe Fights Supernatural
Film that features a young Edgar Allan Poe fighting a supernatural menace known as The Raven
Re/Member (2022)
Timeloop Horror Film
A Japanese-made variant on the oft-used Groundhog Day timeloop theme. This pushes well into horror movie territory with a group of teenagers trapped in a typical school day and facing a monster figure pursuing them
The Reef: Stalked (2022)
Survival in Shark-Infested Waters
Andrew Traucki, the director of the standout killer crocodile film Black Water, makes a sequel to his earlier grippingly intense work about people trapped in shark-infested waters
The Requin (2022)
Stranded in a Sea of Sharks
Survival horror film where Alicia Silverstone and husband are stranded in shark-infested waters when a freak storm washes their beachside cabin out to sea
Resurrection (2022)
Disturbed Psychology/Mysterious Man from the Past
Rebecca Hall gives an extraordinary performance of disturbed psychology as a woman dealing with a man from her past who may have eaten her child
Revealer (2022)
Stripper and Fundamentalist Trapped Together During the Apocalypse
This sells you with its concept – a stripper and a religious fundamentalist are trapped together in a peepshow as the apocalypse occurs – and works surprisingly well
R.I.P.D. 2: Rise of the Damned (2022)
Afterlife Police Force
A sequel to R.I.P.D. that tells an origin story of how the sheriff character played by Jeff Bridges in the original became an afterlife enforcement officer
The Rise of the Beast (2022)
Giant Ape Amok
Low-budget British film about environmental protestors pursued by a genetically engineered giant ape
Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie (2022)
Animation/Comic-Book Superheroes
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are resurrected in a new animated film that feels like a watered-down fix designed for Ritalin-deprived youth
Rubikon (2022)
Space Station Crew Survive the End of the World
Austrian film where three people aboard a space station survive a toxic cloud that obliterates all life on Earth below
Samaritan (2022)
Retired Superhero
Sylvester Stallone is surprisingly well cast an aging superhero forced to come out of retirement
Scream (2022)
Slasher Sequel Parody/Deconstruction
Following the recent reboot of the Halloween franchise, many of the original cast and a new directorial team resurrect Wes Craven’s Scream franchise in some undeniably appealing ways
Secret Headquarters (2022)
Kids Discover Superhero Lair
A kid makes the discovery that his father is a superhero and he and his friends amuse themselves with the cool gadgetry in his secret headquarters, before being required to defend it against a villain
Shark Bait (2022)
Stranded in Shark Infested Waters
Another horror film about survival in shark-infested waters where a group of partying teens on Spring Break are left clinging to a damaged jet ski as sharks circle and pick them off
Shark Side of the Moon (2022)
Gonzo Killer Shark Film
Another gonzo killer shark film from The Asylum, makers of Sharknado films, this features the entertaining absurdity of evolved humanoid Soviet sharks living on the Moon
Sharkula (2022)
Vampire Shark
Z-budget filmmaker Mark Polonia makes another of his entries into the gonzo killer shark film. This is a companion piece to his Sharkenstein – yes, a work about a vampire shark!
Shin Ultraman (2022)
Japanese Superhero Reboot
Reboot of the old Japanese superhero series, conducted with the epic scale, mass destruction and dazzling effects of the more recent Godzilla films
Shut In (2022)
Woman Imprisoned in a Pantry by Her Ex
An imprisonment thriller where a woman is nailed into a pantry by her abusive ex
Significant Other (2022)
Alien Body Snatchers
An alien body snatchers film conducted with a series of smart whiplash twists and turns – even surprisingly a sense of humour
Skinamarink (2022)
Mysterious Happenings in a House
A considerable word of mouth hit, this generates a very spooky atmosphere with highly unusual shooting techniques
Slayers (2022)
Social Media Influencers vs Vampires
A group of social media influencers fall prey to a vampire and are required to call on the help of grizzled vampire hunter Thomas Jane
Slumberland (2022)
Adventures in Dreams
Live-action adaptation of the one of the great early comic-strips Little Nemo in Slumberland, a work that was ground-breaking for its experimental innovation