horror movie review 2022

The Best Horror Movies of 2022

It’s been a great year for horror fans, and these are the best horror films of 2022, according to the reviews published on this site throughout the year. Every great horror film on this list received at least three stars from the assigned critic. Click through each review and find details on where to watch the best horror films of 2022 on streaming services and VOD.

A Wounded Fawn

Bodies Bodies Bodies

Bones and All

Crimes of the Future

Flux Gourmet

Hocus Pocus 2

House of Darkness

Resurrection

Soft & Quiet

Something in the Dirt

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Best Horror Movies 2022

A singular film in so many ways, Ti West’s X , the first of the promised Pearl trilogy, very well may be the pinnacle of what the series could offer, and it tops our Best Horror category. That is saying something, considering Pearl , the second installment, also made our list. We know a film that offers Brittney Snow, Kid Cudi, Mia Goth, and Jenna Ortega is hard to pass up, but be sure to check out our other entries. We would be doing a disservice if we didn’t mention a couple of our indie shout-outs, like Sissy and Barbarian , the latter of which was a success on social media and the internet.

The order reflects Tomatometer scores (as of December 31, 2022) after adjustment from our ranking formula, which compensates for variation in the number of reviews when comparing movies or TV shows.

X (2022) 94%

Barbarian (2022) 92%

Hellbender (2021) 97%

Sissy (2022) 96%

You Won't Be Alone (2022) 93%

Saloum (2021) 96%

Pearl (2022) 93%

Hatching (2022) 93%

A Wounded Fawn (2022) 96%

We're All Going to the World's Fair (2021) 90%

More golden tomato awards 2022.

Golden Year Award 2023

Best Movies 2022

Best Wide Release Movies 2022

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The 10 best horror movies of 2022

Here are the films that slashed their way into our hearts this year.

Senior Writer

In lots of ways, 2022 was a terrifying 12 months for the film industry (would audiences come back? should they?), but horror proved once again to be a bloody good genre, both commercially and creatively. The reasons for that may be somewhat obvious, but simply put, this is a genre that values fresh surprises, executed on the cheap. From killer aliens to homicidal Santas, here are the 10 best terror tales of the year. Bonus: Only one of these titles derives from existing IP.

Starring Sosie Bacon as a psychiatrist tormented by a supernatural force after she suffers the death of a patient, Smile put a you-know-what on the faces of both horror fans and theaters owners as writer-director Parker Finn's film earned north of $200 million around the globe. Less happy? The pour souls tasked with clearing up the mountains of popcorn left on theater floors as the result of the movie's many effective jump scares.

9. Speak No Evil

Ahead of his film's release, Speak No Evil director Christian Tafdrup told EW that he had set out to make "the most disturbing film in Danish history." Mission accomplished! Morten Burian and Sidsel Siem Koch play a husband and wife who visit a family they met on vacation, and then make the error of staying out of politeness, even though their hosts are a little weird. Hilarity ensues, then ends, and then things get very bleak indeed.

Long-running horror franchises can turn into something of a shambles once the original creative team departs. The challenge faced by filmmakers Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, collaborating with writers James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick, was the high quality maintained by the late Wes Craven, who directed all four previous films in the series. Wisely, the new team set about convincing the core legacy cast (Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette) to return with the promise of honoring Craven's memory while introducing new characters who really do seem capable of carrying the terror torch into more entries. The result makes one hopeful for both Scream 6 (out March 10) and the reportedly forthcoming reboot of the Escape from New York franchise from Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett's Radio Silence filmmaking collective.

7. The Black Phone

The folks who brought us 2012's chilling Sinister (actor Ethan Hawke, director Scott Derrickson, and screenwriter C. Robert Cargill) regrouped for this similarly unsettling tale of a child murderer. Based on a short story by Joe Hill, The Black Phone found Hawke instantly achieving horror-icon status as the Grabber, whose terrifying mask was designed by legendary makeup artist Tom Savini (veteran of the original Dawn of the Dead and Friday the 13th ). "Tom just came back with something that was head and shoulders above everyone else," Derrickson told EW. "I thought we would get something more unique from someone younger. I was wrong."

6. Christmas Bloody Christmas

"What if Richard Linklater remade The Terminator ?" isn't a question that would occur to many filmmakers, but writer-director Joe Begos' answer to that query is one of the year's most entertainingly mayhem-filled releases. Riley Dandy plays a horny small-town record store owner whose night out with Sam Delich's employee is violently interrupted after a robot Santa Claus goes berserk.

5. X / Pearl

Is it a cheat to include both of these movies as a single entry? Maybe. But director Ti West's two 2022 releases are so entangled it would seem strange to separate them. Starring an excellent Mia Goth in dual roles, X is a fun, '70s-set, bloodbath about a porn shoot on which the cast and crew are menaced by a pair of oldsters. The prequel, Pearl , which takes place in 1918, is the more interesting, serious, and better-by-a-smidge movie, with Goth once again fabulous as the younger version of her killer from X .

If Jordan Peele's third film after 2017's Get Out and 2019's Us seemed less cohesive than its predecessors, the director still delivered 2022 horror's greatest big-screen spectacle — and two of this year's best performances regardless of genre — with his story of siblings (Keke Palmer and Daniel Kaluuya) attempting to secure footage of a UFO. The flashback sequences involving the child-actor version of Steven Yeun's character are flat-out terrifying, though oddly semi-detached from the central narrative.

3. Bodies Bodies Bodies

Amandla Stenberg, Maria Bakalova, Pete Davidson, and a hilarious Rachel Sennott, among others, play zoomers whose weekend away at a remote mansion goes awry in spectacularly blood-drenched fashion. Dutch actress-turned-director Halina Reijn oversees matters in a manner which brilliantly accentuates the movie's comedic aspects while still somehow making you worry for her collection of fairly unlikeable characters.

2. Barbarian

In a world where trailers routinely spoil plot points that occur deep into a film's duration, Disney and 20th Century created a box office hit out of Barbarian by telling potential audiences next to nothing when it came to the movie's second and third acts. And how very grateful we should be for that. Among the cinematic treats of the year was watching this sleeper hit from the Whitest Kids U' Know sketch troupe member Zach Cregger with almost no idea what was going to happen. In the same spirit, we won't elaborate further, except to say that Justin Long is always welcome in any horror movie he chooses.

1. The Menu

Our favorite title of the year details an evening of increasingly nightmarish dining for wealthy guests at a remote tony restaurant overseen by Ralph Fiennes' celebrity chef. Directed by Mark Mylod ( Succession ) and co-starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicholas Hoult, John Leguizamo and Hong Chau, the movie skillfully mines comedy and tension from its set-up while simultaneously offering some one-percenter food for thought (though not enough to give anyone indigestion). But is it really a horror film or a horror-adjacent satirical thriller? On this matter we defer to Black Phone screenwriter and all-around fear fiend C. Robert Cargill who tweeted about this exact question, writing that The Menu "is a f---ing horror movie, full stop. I'm tired of folks trying to take the best horror away from the genre because they are embarrassed by it." So there.

Plus more we loved: Glorious, Watcher , Fresh , Prey , Orphan: First Kill , The Innocents , Mad God , Something in the Dirt , The Sadness , You Are Not My Mother , Bones and All , Resurrection , V/H/S 99 , Master , A Banquet

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Related content:

• How A24's Bodies Bodies Bodies became the summer's must-see horror-comedy
• Barbarian star Justin Long has the worst meal ever in utterly disgusting NSFW deleted scene
• John Leguizamo says he based on his character in The Menu on Steven Seagal

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The best horror movies of 2022.

The Hollywood Reporter columnist Richard Newby selects the ten best major releases, as well as 10 under-the-radar indie and streaming picks.

By Richard Newby

Richard Newby

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How to watch the 'halloween' movies in order, 'knock at the cabin' scribes tackling horror thriller 'wilderness reform' for paramount (exclusive).

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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, Hitchcock, 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!

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The best horror movies of the year, ranked by scariness

2022 wasn’t the scariest year for horror movies, but it was still a pretty great one

by Austen Goslin , Pete Volk , Zosha Millman , and Polygon Staff

It’s been a banner year for horror movies . While 2022 was full of good movies , it also saw the biggest IPs in the world contract for the first time in almost a decade (with neither a Star Wars or a Marvel movie topping the box office this year ) but amid all that theater-going turmoil, horror once again proved itself the most reliable genre in town.

Breakout smaller budget hits like Smile and Barbarian became genuine word of mouth sensations, smashing ticket sale expectations and reminding movie goers there are some scares worth experiencing in a theater — if you’re able to. Even micro-budget splatter-house joyride Terrifier 2 managed to scare up a shocking profit.

But box office success was far from the only place horror movies thrived this year. Some of the best directors in the world, including Jordan Peele , Luca Guadagnino , and David Cronenberg , branched out from the kind of horror they’ve worked on in the past and fused it with new genres, giving us blockbusters about aliens, love stories about cannibals, and a whole new kind of crime.

And, as it’s been for the past several years, theaters weren’t the only place to find great horror this year. Premium streaming services like HBO Max, Paramount Plus, Netflix, and the rest all got into the horror game to varying degrees of success. But the true standout of 2022 was Shudder.

The streaming service with the best pound-for-pound original programming, Shudder once again flew its horror-flag high, putting out exciting, and often great, movies like A Wounded Fawn , Resurrection , Hellbender , Saloum , The Last Thing Mary Saw , Deadstream , Dark Glasses , Sissy , Flux Gourmet , and the truly wild stop-motion marvel Mad God . This year, you could have only limited yourself to Shudder originals and still marveled at the fact that it was one of the best horror years in recent memory.

To celebrate the greatness in horror movies from theaters to streaming and everywhere else, we’ve put together a list of the best horror movies of 2022. Because everyone deserves the exact fright they want, we’ve ordered them based on scariness. Scariness isn’t an easy thing to define, so we’ve divided the topic up into two categories: Terror, which could be anything from creepiness to something genuinely frightful, and Gore, which is just about how bloody a movie ends up getting. Each category gets a rating out of five, then we add the two numbers to reach a, more or less, scientific scariness score.

Of course, like any year and any list, there are always movies that find themselves on the wrong side of genre lines. These tight lines kept otherwise great movies like Saloum or Prey , which both felt a little more action than they did horror, just off this particular list. But with the caveats in mind, here are 2022’s best horror movies, ranked by just how scary we think they really are:

Run time: 1h 26m Director: John Adams, Zelda Adams, Toby Poser Cast : Zelda Adams, Toby Poser, Lulu Adams

A sweet (and a little bit sick) coming-of-age movie about a girl living in the woods with her mother and learning that they come from a long line of witches. Hellbender isn’t terribly scary or gory, but it’s a ton of fun and looks excellent, with small splatters of blood that feel more like an addition to the color palette than something gross. — Austen Goslin

• Total scariness score: 2

Hellbender is available to stream on Shudder.

Run time: 1h 27m Director: Mark Mylod Cast : Ralph Fiennes, Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicholas Hoult

Violence, gore, and mayhem are all served up as part of The Menu , but it earns its spot on this list by never being too terribly graphic. So while it’s possible (and encouraged) to be at least mildly disturbed by the increasing horror at this restaurant, it’s relatively easy to sit back and enjoy the feast of laughs and skewering of fine dining. — Zosha Millman

• Total scariness score: 3

The Menu will be available to stream on HBO Max on Jan. 3.

Run time: 2h 10m Director: Jordan Peele Cast: Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Steven Yeun

Nope follows two siblings (played excellently by Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer) as they try to capture real-life, undeniable proof of a UFO. This is Jordan Peele’s least scary movie so far, but it’s also arguably his most entertaining, which is pretty high praise for the director of Get Out and Us. — AG

• Total scariness score: 4

Nope is available to stream on Peacock.

Crimes of the Future

Run time: 1h 47, Director: David Cronenberg Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Léa Seydoux, Kristen Stewart

Surgery is the new sex, and while Crimes of the Future isn’t very scary, it revels in the vivid depictions of its surgery scenes, which ups the goriness factor significantly. It’s a great sci-fi movie with efficient worldbuilding and excellent production design from the master of body horror himself. — Pete Volk

• Total scariness score: 5

Crimes of the Future is available to stream on Hulu.

We’re All Going to the World’s Fair

Run time: 1h 26m Director: Jane Schoenbrun Cast: Anna Cobb, Michael J Rogers

Writer-director Jane Schoenbrun’s unnerving horror thriller is at once a coming-of-age story with strong trans themes, and also an ode to the stranger corners of the internet. The movie is light on horror scares (although there is plenty of tension and uncertainty), but there are sequences from real internet creators that lean into body horror, with some gore. — PV

We’re All Going to the World’s Fair is available to stream on HBO Max.

Orphan: First Kill

Run time: 1h 39m Director: William Brent Bell Cast: Isabelle Fuhrman, Julia Stiles, Rossif Sutherland

The decade-late prequel to Orphan brings back Isabelle Fuhrman, now 25, to once again play a 9-year old, and the result is a hilarious horror movie played perfectly straight. Though Esther certainly takes out her fair share of people in this movie, it isn’t particularly gory and has a nice balance of fun and scary. — AG

Orphan: First Kill is available to stream on Paramount Plus.

Adult Swim Yule Log (aka The Fireplace)

Run time: 1h 31m Director: Casper Kelly Cast : Megan Hayes, Tordy Clark, Brendan Patrick Connor

Too Many Cooks director Casper Kelly did it again — it being “hiding a horrific work of surrealism behind mundane late-night Adult Swim filler content.” But with Adult Swim Yule Log aka The Fireplace , he’s out done himself. What starts with a locked-off shot of a yule log explodes into a giddy horror exercise warped by weirdo dream logic that puts the filmmaker in a camp with David Lynch and Sam Raimi. The secret feature film stars Andrea Laing and Justin Miles as a couple at a crossroads, hoping a romantic getaway might nudge them in the right direction. A group of stoners rolling into the overbooked Georgia cabin on the same night immediately kills the vibe. A bunch of maniac hillbillies kill the people. That’s the tip of the iceberg, as alternate dimensions, extraterrestrials, and ghosts of Georgia’s racist past all find their way into Kelly’s puzzle box. Fans of Too Many Cooks and the director’s Cheddar Goblin work on Mandy will immediately understand the clash of cartoon nightmare and violent realism that sloshes around in The Fireplace . For everyone else… uh, get on board! — Matt Patches

• Total scariness score: 6

Yule Log (akaThe Fireplace) is available to stream on HBO Max.

A Wounded Fawn

Run time: 1h 31m Director: Travis Stevens Cast: Sarah Lind, Josh Ruben

One of the stronger under-the-radar horror entries of the year, A Wounded Fawn is about a serial killer who brings his latest victim to a cabin in the woods. The serial killer element already ratchets up the scariness (and goriness) of the movie, and the back half is one of the most delirious (complimentary) sequences of the year. Get ready for spooky iconographic and some bloody kills. — PV

A Wounded Fawn is available to stream on Shudder.

Bones and All

Run time: 2h 11m Director: Luca Guadagnino Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Taylor Russell, Mark Rylance

A road trip romance may not seem like the obvious choice for a top three slot on a horror movie ranking, but when it’s a Luca Guadagnino cannibal love story with this much gore, and a Mark Rylance performance this disturbing, the spot starts explain itself. Aside from all the blood and guts, Bones and All ’s central love story between characters played by Timothée Chalamet and Taylor Russell is so good and well grounded that it makes Bones and All one of the sweetest movies of the year, along with one of the most gruesome and creepy. — AG

• Total scariness score: 7

Bones and All is available for rental from YouTube, Apple TV, and other services.

Resurrection

Run time: 1h 43m Director: Andrew Semans Cast : Rebecca Hall, Tim Roth, Grace Kaufman

Resurrection is relatively light on gore for a movie so high up on this list. Instead it rests its laurels on the scare factor, with a general sense of unease and tension constantly permeating this taut thriller. Rebecca Hall’s performance is more than enough to sell the deep, persistent mounting dread of the movie, but with Tim Roth doing his best unhinged menace, Resurrection really takes it to the next level — and that’s all before the grim (and bloody) final act. — ZM

• Total scariness score: 8

Resurrection is available to stream on Shudder.

Run time: 1h 42m Director: Zach Cregger Cast: Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgård, Justlin Long

Barbarian is absolutely one for the freaks; perhaps the most divisive horror movie of 2022, thanks to some wild shifts in tone and story. It’s not everybody’s cup of tea, but for those who jibe with it, Barbarian ’s wild thrills — which are best left unspoiled, if at all possible — are well worth maxing out the scariness scale here. For those who don’t (or would like to be warned) there’s a couple brutal on-screen deaths that rank high for gore, which are mostly telegraphed. Either way, you should probably watch it. — ZM

• Total scariness score: 9

Barbarian is available to stream on HBO Max.

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Bloody Disgusting’s Top 15 Best Horror Movies of 2022!

This year brought the return of Ghostface, Predator, Pinhead, Michael Myers, and Leatherface. Beyond the franchises, 2022 unleashed an onslaught of new releases that introduced new voices and horror icons to the genre. The indie scene continued to thrive, but horror surprised audiences at the box office more than once.

In other words, horror continues to dominate while it stretches its boundaries and flexes its creative muscles. The best horror movies of 2022 induced thrills, chills, delightfully gory kills, and even a few tears. If there’s one thing this past year made clear, it’s that horror-loving audiences are ready for a return to crowd-pleasing, fun horror that doesn’t skimp on scares.

Because it was such a strong year for horror, here are the top 15 best horror movies of 2022.

15. Hellraiser

The arbiters of pain and suffering are back in the Hellraiser franchise’s eleventh feature, this time with a reimagining by The Night House  director David Bruckner and screenwriters Luke Piotrowski and Ben Collins. A cold open introduces debauched billionaire Roland Voight (Goran Visnjic) and his experimentation with the iconic puzzle box. Six months later, recovering addict Riley (Odessa A’zion) laments to her lover Trevor (Drew Starkey) that she’s strapped for cash after the latest blowout fight with her brother Matt (Brandon Flynn). Matt’s skepticism about Trevor and his concerns that Riley will relapse seem accurate when Trevor offers Riley a get-rich gig that entails breaking into Voight’s mansion. It’s there that Riley finds the mysterious puzzle box, unwittingly summoning sadistic supernatural beings from another dimension.

Piotrowski and Collins opt for straightforward simplicity here that lets Bruckner’s imagery do the heavy lifting. There’s a deep well of mythology without any handholding. Jamie Clayton ’s inspired performance as the Hell Priest, the Cenobite leader, impresses most of all.

14. The House

Netflix’s stop-motion animated anthology weaves together three creepy tales tethered to one house. The segments span time and tone, telling of a low-income family, an anxious developer, and a fed-up landlady who all become tied to the same mysterious house. Daughter Mabel (Mia Goth) navigates a mounting house of horrors as her parents lose themselves to newly acquired luxury in the first story. The second sees unwanted pests swarming and waylaying a developer’s plans, while the third segment closes the darkly comedic and unsettling anthology on an uplifting note amid an isolated dystopia.  The House occasionally unnerves but always taps into deep-seated dread. The animation is breathtaking, and the symbolism bears repeat viewings.

Directed by Emma de Swaef, Marc James Roels, Niki Lindroth von Bahr, and Paloma Baeza, The House  features voice acting by Mia Goth, Claudie Blakley, Matthew Goode, Mark Heap, Miranda Richardson, and Helena Bonham Carter.

Kill List ‘s Neil Maskell stars as the eponymous Bull, a gang enforcer that adores his son Aiden (Henri Charles). But Bull mysteriously went silent for a decade, gone without a trace. Now, he’s back and searching for his old gang, who are surprised to see him. It quickly becomes apparent that Bull is on a rage-fueled mission for payback against an egregious double-cross. At the top of his hit list are father-in-law and local crime boss Norm (David Hayman) and Bull’s drug-addicted wife Gemma (Lois Brabin-Platt), who happens to be Norm’s daughter. More than carving his path through personal justice, Bull wants to find his son.

The latest by Paul Andrew Williams ( The Cottage ,  Cherry Tree Lane ) reads like a classic, gritty crime thriller turned vengeance quest but plays like a horror movie in many ways. The bloody kills, the creatively staged deaths, and an unrestrained killer marries a crime revenge-thriller with a slasher.

Writer/Director Nikyatu Jusu establishes herself as a rising voice in horror straightaway with her feature debut, Nanny . Anna Diop stars as Aisha, a woman who recently emigrated from Senegal and currently works as the nanny for the daughter of a wealthy couple (Michelle Monaghan and Morgan Spector) living in New York City. Aisha’s trying to save enough money to bring her son overseas but struggles with remorse over leaving him behind and her employers’ increasingly volatile home life. It coincides with a haunting presence that invades her dreams and waking life, threatening to shatter the American dream she’s working so hard to achieve.

Nikyatu Jusu blends magical realism with horror and drama, creating a distinct fable that slowly works its way under your skin and culminates in heart-shattering devastation.

11. Bones and All

Leave it to  Suspiria  director Luca Guadagnino and writer David Kajganich to spin an achingly tender and thoughtful coming-of-age romance between a pair of cannibals with an insatiable need to devour flesh.  Bones and All , an adaptation of Camille DeAngelis‘s novel, uses the road trip format set in Reagan-era America as a provocative and macabre means of exploring the monstrous need for survival and human connection. The cannibalism is grisly; Guadagnino never shies away from flesh-ripping acts of feeding. And the filmmaker doesn’t ease viewers into it; it’s a headfirst plunge meant to shock. It’s a clever, macabre means of isolating its lead characters in their Otherness, slowly succumbing to their human desire for connection and understanding.

But beneath the viscera and grue is a tender and affecting tale of first love and discovery. It’s as elegant as carnal and carnivorous, and it’ll take a bite out of your heart if you let it.

Writer/Director Ti West nestled his ode to independent, exploitation filmmaking into the ‘70s set slasher  X . For its prequel, West rewinds the clock much further to pay tribute to the Golden Age of Hollywood. Mia Goth reprises her role as the repressed killer Pearl, this time exploring a much different, younger side.  Pearl makes for a vastly different viewing experience thanks to its drastic shifts in style, tone, and cinematic influences, but with enough connective tissue to enrich its predecessor. West and Goth play by their rules here, stylistically and narratively. West uses his cinematic influences to create something unique and audacious, and Goth cuts loose with an unrestrained performance.

This prequel is less about the body count – though there are plenty of bloody, violent deaths – and more about a slow unraveling of a mind that was broken from the start. 

Prey  takes its cues from 1987’s  Predator  in terms of simplicity and bloody action-horror. Its cultural specificity and period setting lend a sweeping period epic feel and introduce emotional stakes through its memorable characters. Set in the Great Plains in 1719,  Prey introduces Naru (Amber Midthunder), a young Comanche woman uninterested in fulfilling the domestic role her tribe expects of her. Naru wants to hunt, like her brother and respected hunter Taabe (Dakota Beavers). She sets out to test her mettle and protect her tribe when an unknown threat emerges across the ridge.

Prey may take place three centuries before Predator,  but it’s not a prequel so much as it is a film in conversation with the original. It’s a return to the simplicity that made the original so thrilling, led by an outstanding heroine in Naru and director Dan Trachtenber g ’s talent for injecting fresh ideas into beloved sci-fi horror franchises.

 8. Scream 

Ghostface and Jenna Ortega in Paramount Pictures and Spyglass Media Group’s “Scream.”

James Vanderbilt   and Guy Busick’s screenplay evolves the franchise in clever and poignant ways. Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett dedicate  Scream to Wes Craven, and the horror master’s imprint looms large over their film. As intrinsic to the movie as Craven’s memory is, the filmmakers make one of the best horror movies of 2022 their own. 

7. The Sadness

The premise, which sees a viral mutation cause the infected to become sadistically violent, reads like a familiar setup in outbreak horror. It quickly becomes apparent that  The Sadness  refuses to adhere to the average viral horror movie. Director Rob Jabbaz keeps a death grip on the pulse of the current climate, delivering a rage-filled manifesto that aims to tick off every cinematic taboo possible and tests your gag reflex in the process. It’s transgressive horror of the highest, most aggressive order.

Heed all of the trigger warnings and then some. The filmmaker delivers his message with blunt force trauma, breaking all the rules along the way. The Sadness is a vicious anthem that keeps you in its grip, forces you to stare into the abyss, and dares you to look away.

6. Deadstream

Joseph Winter as Shawn Ruddy – Deadstream – Photo Credit: Shudder

The feature directorial debut from husband-and-wife filmmaking couple Vanessa and Joseph Winter   follows a disgraced internet personality who attempts to win back his followers by livestreaming one night alone in a haunted house. It spirals into a gonzo horror-comedy full of bodily fluids, gore, and ghostly creatures that would make Sam Raimi proud. Every bit of the humor lands, too, making for a triumphant crowd-pleaser that hooks you from start to finish.

Deadstream  is a DIY labor of love, and the filmmakers somehow make wearing so many hats seem effortless. The small-scaled story feels larger than life through its characters, human and otherwise. The story beats may not always surprise, but the clever progression, balance of physical horror and comedy, and the go-for-broke gags ensure that it doesn’t matter. 

American Julia (Maika Monroe) uproots her life to accompany her half-Romanian husband Francis (Karl Glusman) to Bucharest for his high-pressure job. She’s left almost entirely on her own to adjust to a new country and culture, and it’s made even harder by the language barrier. Alone all day and increasingly at night, Julia stares out the window and notices an eerie face staring back. That feeling of being watched transforms into full-blown paranoia with the discovery that a killer named Spider has been stalking and decapitating women in the area. But is someone following Julia, or is it a byproduct of loneliness and culture shock?

Chloe Okuno’s ability to create eerie unease from an uncomplicated premise impresses. It’s a measured, moody psychodrama that allows Okuno to wear her influences on her sleeves, making them her own, until one bloody and satisfying finale that seals the deal on  Watcher being one of the very best horror movies of 2022.

OJ Haywood (Daniel Kaluuya) struggles to keep his recently passed father’s horse ranch afloat. The arrival of OJ’s lively sister Emerald (Keke Palmer) adds to his stress as he tries to maintain faithful responsibility toward the family ranch. But then, an eerie phenomenon begins swooping over their valley; the siblings become determined to capture it on camera. On the surface,  Nope is an accessible, straightforward sci-fi horror movie that nails its humor as much as it elicits gasps. Below is a darker examination of media and those it devoured and left behind.

Jordan Peele effectively captures the scope and spectacle of a summer blockbuster, packing it with chill-inducing moments, gasp-worthy thrills, and endless endearing characters. The filmmaker also continues his streak of layering scathing critiques within a horror crowd-pleaser that keeps you guessing.

3. The Innocents

The Innocents is a provocative look at the fine razor line between good and evil and the darker side of innocence. Four compelling performances ground the disturbing horror, adding complex emotions and morality to fuel the tension. Writer/Director Eskil Vogt crafts a stunning portrayal of childhood morality with a tale of four children discovering supernatural abilities over a summer. Vogt twists the knife further by setting it under the bright Nordic sun; the terror these kids commit happens right under the adults’ noses, often in plain sight, with no one the wiser.

The emotional authenticity found in The Innocents heightens the horror, creating one of the most viscerally disturbing depictions of childhood in recent memory.

Set in 1979, Texas, a group of aspiring adult filmmakers load up in a van and drive from Houston to the boonies to shoot. Producer Wayne ( The Ring ‘s Martin Henderson) enlists his girlfriend Maxine (Mia Goth), along with Bobby-Lynne (Brittany Snow) and Jackson (Scott Mescudi) to star. Then he rents a boarding house on the cheap from the reclusive elder Howard (Stephen Ure), who warns them to stay out of his wife’s sight. The porn production quickly devolves into a fucked up horror picture when things spiral out of control.

The lean, straightforward narrative gets straight to the goods and never wastes time on heavy exposition. It’s all in the little details and the talented cast making these characters feel lived-in with a shared history. X demonstrates why Ti West should be given full reign to go full throttle on deranged, savage, and intense horror comedies more often. 

After all, West directed not one but TWO of the best horror movies of 2022.

1. Barbarian

Writer/Director Zach Cregger (“The Whitest Kids U’ Know”) eschews conventions in  Barbarian to keep audiences on edge, making for one of the most delightfully unhinged viewing experiences in recent memory and the year’s biggest horror surprise. A simple rental nightmare sets up an intense pressure cooker scenario with no limits to the midnight madness. At its core,  Barbarian presents two sides of the same coin reacting to one hellish scenario. From it, it unleashes one sadistic and gruesome horror thriller unafraid to be as biting with its pitch-black humor as its horror.

All rules get tossed out the window in Barbarian , including its unconventional narrative structure, resulting in a confrontational and chilling feature that leaves you breathless. 

Horror journalist, RT Top Critic, and Critics Choice Association member. Co-Host of the Bloody Disgusting Podcast. Has appeared on PBS series' Monstrum, served on the SXSW Midnighter shorts jury, and moderated horror panels for WonderCon and SeriesFest.

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Terror on tape: 6 excellent found footage episodes of television.

I’ve always found it strange how Found Footage appears more frequently in film than in television. If you think about it, most of the recovered footage that we see in real life comes from True Crime TV and investigative journalism rather than movies – or at least it used to before the internet turned the whole world into one giant Found Footage horror flick streaming live until the end of time.

Despite this, there were actually quite a few big-name TV shows that recognized the storytelling potential of the Found Footage format and decided to experiment with POV filmmaking during their run. And in honor of these small screen pioneers, today we’d like to highlight six excellent Found Footage episodes of non-Found-Footage TV shows.

For the purposes of this list, we’ll be focusing on traditionally shot (or animated) programs that only temporarily fooled around with Found Footage – so no fully POV shows like Siberia, The River or The Lost Tapes .

With that out of the way, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite examples of televised Found Footage if you think we missed a particularly fun one.

Now, onto the list…

6. “S.C.A.L.E .” – Godzilla: The Series

Tristar’s 1998 Godzilla remake may be remembered as one of the worst entries in the King of the Monsters’ extensive filmography, but even the film’s harshest critics have to admit that its animated spin-off series (produced by the same team behind the equally badass Men in Black show) was one hell of an effective homage to the Kaiju classics of old.

Godzilla: The Series even experimented with presenting a Kaiju attack through diegetic cameras nearly a decade before Cloverfield , though I’d argue that the shorter runtime and added monster battles make Season 2’s S.C.A.L.E. a much more entertaining experience.

That being said, it’s a damned shame that this remains the only official Found Footage take on Godzilla , as I’d love to see this premise fleshed out into something a bit more theatrical in the monster’s future.

5. “ Bitten ” – Supernatural

One-off episodes focusing on new characters instead of the beloved regulars can be a huge risk on TV (especially on a show as actor-centric as CW’s Supernatural ), but 2012’s Bitten actually contains one of the better stories from the program’s later years. And much like the best episodes from back in SPN’s heyday, this stand-alone tale is heavily inspired by popular genre cinema – more specifically, Found Footage movies!

Telling a refreshingly low-stakes werewolf yarn as we follow an aspiring filmmaker dealing with the aftermath of a Werewolf encounter, Bitten is so well made that it actually makes me wish that the Supernatural writers invested in the anthology format instead of losing themselves in the show’s extended mythology.

And if you like this one, don’t forget to check out the show’s ghost-hunting episode, Season 3’s iconic Ghostfacers .

4. “ Television Terror ” – Tales From the Crypt

A rare example of televised Found Footage that predates the success of The Blair Witch Project , Tales from the Crypt’s season 2 episode Television Terror was surprisingly ahead of its time. Presenting itself as a live recording of a sleazy journalist reporting on a haunted house in Los Angeles, this silly news report soon devolves into a legitimately frightening depiction of ghost-hunting gone wrong.

Featuring plenty of classic haunted house tropes (as well as a plethora of Found Footage clichés that technically hadn’t been invented yet), I’d recommend Television Terror to fans of films like Late Night with the Devil , WNUF Halloween Special , and BBC’s controversial classic Ghostwatch .

3. “ Sleep No More ” – Doctor Who

Despite the silly premise of a two-hearted alien who travels through time and space from inside a magical blue box, BBC’s long-running Doctor Who is no stranger to genre frights. In fact, many of the show’s best episodes work like stand-alone horror movies – and 2015’s Sleep No More is no exception.

Starring Reece Shearsmith as a scientist onboard a futuristic space station orbiting Neptune, this peculiar episode sees the researcher compiling and narrating a collection of in-universe footage explaining how a horde of “Sandmen” have taken over the station. Not only is this an entertaining sci-fi yarn that explores The Doctor’s relationship with his then-companion Clara from a unique perspective, but it also features an appropriately meta twist that will likely appeal to die-hard Found Footage fans.

2. “ Cops ” – The X-Files

I’m not alone in feeling that something of value was lost when The X-Files shifted production from Vancouver to Hollywood after their big screen debut, but the latter half of the show still contains quite a few bangers. Case in point: Cops , a satirical crossover with the reality TV show of the same name.

Following Mulder and Scully as they attempt to track down a shape-shifting monster while being followed by a reality TV crew, this memorable episode features some of the all-time best banter between our charismatic leads. It’s also even more entertaining when you remember that at least some viewers must have missed the iconic intro and watched the whole thing thinking it was real .

1. “ The Scooby-Doo Project ” – Scooby-Doo

It’s hard to overstate the impact that The Blair Witch Project had on popular culture. From online forums to comedy sketches, everyone was obsessed with this strange little horror flick, though I think the best example of the film’s popularity can be found in a late addition to the iconic animated series Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!

Produced by three passionate Cartoon Network animators who thought that the Scooby gang was especially well suited for a Blair Witch spoof, The Scooby-Doo Projec t evolved from a mere promotional bumper to a full standalone episode combining live action recordings with retro animation.

While I could rave about this legendary Halloween special for hours, I think it’s best if you do yourself a favor and simply watch the whole thing immediately.

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Wow. Everyone knew 2022 was a great year for horror films, but you don't truly realize how great a year it was until you start to line them all up for a "Best of" list. After many hours, many buckets of blood, and me promising the boys that there would be no monsters under the bed or ghosts in the closet, we have finally compiled our Best Horror Films of 2022. This list made us realize that no matter how many horror movies we watched this year... it wasn't enough. Check out our list, listed alphabetically out of fairness, match it against your own, and fill in the blanks before 2023 arrives. ( M3GAN supremacy in the new year!)

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Barbarian is one of those films that everyone says is best to go in with no prior knowledge of. I don't know if that is necessarily true - the story is bonkers no matter what. What starts out as an Airbnb mix-up gone astray goes deeply, deeply off the rails, and strays so far from that premise that it's barely what the film is about at all. There are moments of hilarity, moments of horror, and moments of "what the fuck?" which make for a great horror film, as far as I'm concerned. Oh, and also: there is a scene where a guy has his arm ripped off, then is beaten with it. That is always cinematic gold to me. – Alyse Wax

Bodies Bodies Bodies

Who wants to play Bodies Bodies Bodies ? As you’ll discover in this chaotic horror romp, no one would want to with this cast of characters. The story centers on a group of friends who all gather at a swanky mansion for a party. Shortly after they all arrive, a storm sweeps through and traps them all there. What better time could there be to then play a game centered around murder? The only problem is that this might no longer be playing around as bodies begin to actually stack up and result in all the characters turning on each other. Misdirects and chaos abound as nothing is what it seems in this story. However, the less that you know the better as it builds to a killer final punchline that makes it all the more joyous. — Chase Hutchinson

Bones and All

Director Luca Guadagnino has a unique sensibility when it comes to romance, so it’s no wonder that Bones and All is, at its heart, a love story. The movie follows Taylor Russell and Timothée Chalamet as two starstruck lovers who build a life together while traveling across America. While this would be the perfect premise for a drama movie, Bones and All feels at home in horror became Russel and Chalamet play cannibals, people who urge for the flesh of the living and cannot control their unnatural hunger. Bones and All might not be everyone’s cup of tea since so much of its runtime is spent building the characters and letting them figure out who they want to be. However, Guadagnino doesn’t hold anything back when it comes to depicting the gruesome acts of cannibalism to underline how Bones and All is most definitely a horror movie. Besides that, we feel the movie deserves praise for dealing with a controversial theme with such a delicate and human gaze. – Marco Vito Oddo

Crimes of the Future

A film that provides yet more proof that David Cronenberg is the absolute King of body horror, Crimes of the Future shares a name with one of his earliest works though is a beast all its own from its heartbreaking start to its intriguing conclusion . It features the dynamic duo of Viggo Mortensen and Léa Seydoux as two performance artists who find themselves swept up in a conspiracy surrounding people who claim to be able to consume plastic. As they are collaborators who care deeply about the body as a location of exploration and creation, this potential revelation piques their interest. The film then explores their passion for performance amidst the chaos of destruction and rebirth, creating a dynamic reflection on what it means to be an artist. For those who had been missing Cronenberg, this film makes it worth the wait as it is one of his most self-reflective worlds that cuts deeper the longer you sit with it. — Chase Hutchinson

Coming from writers and directors Joseph and Vanessa Winter , Deadstream is by far the best feature directorial debut of 2022. Holding its Creepshow and Evil Dead influences close to the chest, Deadstream presents a story that will make you laugh while still being frightened. Besides that, the Winters’ knack for practical effects gives Deadstream a level of polish that’s frequently missing from many big-budgeted productions. Finally, Deadstream does something unique with the found-footage subgenre by making the whole story fit into a single live stream. With clever camera angles and dedicated attention to continuity , the Winters keep the illusion everything in the movie happens in real-time, turning Deadstream into a filmmaking achievement that every horror fan should check out. – Marco Vito Oddo

Mimi Cave ’s directorial debut is a delicious story about a cannibal and the victims he keeps in his basement. Fresh starts just like a romantic comedy, and those unaware of what they are watching might be surprised when the movie turns into a full-blown horror movie filled with people-eating scenes that will challenge your stomach. That’s just one of the reasons Fresh is so enticing, as Cave already shows a rare domain over genre and style that elevates a movie that otherwise could crumble under the trope of the girl in the basement. Besides telling a disturbing story, Fresh is also a movie about modern dating, women's objectification, and the social power structure that allows men to get away with the horrific things they do. While Fresh mostly balances subtext and story, the third act gets a little clumsy as the movie tries to ensure people will understand its message. Even so, Fresh remains a tasty entry for horror-hungry people looking for a movie that subverts expectations. – Marco Vito Oddo

Glorious , directed by Dr. Rebekah McKendry, has one of the most curious concepts of the year. What if you found a Lovecraftian Elder God in the most unlikely place? Let’s say, a glory hole in the bathroom of a rest stop by the side of the road? Glorious is well aware of the absurd situation it presents, and that self-consciousness is what allows it to be as funny as it is. There are real stakes in Glorious , as a random man discovers he might be the key to saving the universe from total obliteration. But Glorious is ready to laugh about the idea of finding purpose in the most disgusting place in the world. And while the movie is mainly a horror-infused comedy, Glorious understands perfectly well what makes Lovecraftian creatures so scary by hiding enough information so we can fill it with our most terrible nightmares. On top of everything, J.K. Simmons voicing an Eldritch monster is almost too good to be true. – Marco Vito Oddo

Infused in body horror, the Finish horror movie Hatching reuses the old doppelgänger trope to deal with repressed emotions, family expectations, and the pressure to look perfect on social media. The story follows Tinja ( Siiri Solalinna ), a young girl who wants nothing more than to impress her rigid mother, who, in turn, is determined to build the perfect family she wants to show the world through her social media accounts. Things turn dark when the girl finds an egg, decides to hide it in her bedroom, and inadvertently hatches a gruesome creature that looks more like her each day. Hatching is not trying to be subtle, and it reveals quickly how the creature manifests all the anger and sorrow Tinja keeps locked inside while trying to please her mother. That doesn’t prevent Hatching from being a highly-effective cautionary tale about the dangers of raising a child to fit the internet’s twisted idea of perfection. Lastly, Hatching is an ode to the lasting horror of practical effects, shining even more in an era where digital creatures are shoehorned in most movies. – Marco Vito Oddo

Hellbender does a beautiful job of updating witchcraft mythology by introducing the new titular creature. A mix between a witch and a demon, a Hellbender's power comes both from innate abilities and precise rituals. That choice allows directors John Adams , Zelda Adams , and Toby Poser to freely explore well-recognized occult symbols and new images unique to their movie, with a result that’s nothing less than stunning. Besides presenting a new creature in a genre where repetition is the rule, Hellbender tells a soul-crushing coming-of-age story as mother and daughter struggle to define their identity as powerful and dangerous creatures. Finally, Hellbender is also infused with metal energy, as the film’s title is also a reference to a fictional band created for the feature, whose original songs result in one of the year's best soundtracks. – Marco Vito Oddo

Mad God is an experimental stop-motion animated horror movie that’s more concerned with form than substance. In other words, Mad God is a challenging movie that will leave more viewers confused than satisfied. Those looking for a linear story and explicit references will be disappointed with Phil Tippett ’s stop-motion horror. Still, the feature is a technical wonder that deserves all the praise it gets. With Mad God , Tippett pushes the limit of what someone can do with stop-motion, creating a nightmarish landscape where hundreds of individual pieces are moving to the will of animators, frame by frame. It’s a unique spectacle that can enthrall those who let their minds give up the need to make sense of each frame and accept they are being bombarded with hellish flashes of holy terrors. Mad God can be too demanding for some people, and that’s absolutely fine. But for lovers of the weird, Tippett’s is an achievement like no other. – Marco Vito Oddo

Mariama Diallo ’s Master , another Sundance film, is a balancing act of horror that grounds itself in both history and modern academia. At the core of this is the riveting Regina Hall as Gail who has managed to work her way up to be the "first Black woman to be the Master" at the fictional Ancaster College, an elite Northeastern university. At the same time, there is a new student named Jasmine ( Zoe Renee ) who finds herself struggling to navigate the school as one of only a few Black students in a sea of white. In many ways, it plays as a ghost story in terms of what begins to haunt the two characters and the world that they inhabit. The less that is known the better, but it provides yet more proof that Hall is an outstanding performer with the range to elevate any film she is in. In particular, one closing scene that she has is flooring where she speaks volumes with only a few lines. — Chase Hutchinson

Anita Rocha da Silveira 's Medusa follows a gang of religious women in Brazil who go after sinners in the night, beating them up and forcing them to declare their love for God. There’s a lot to unpack with this premise, as it deals with how orthodox religion frequently feeds violence and how women are the primary target of the more hostile side of organized faith. However, the movie also doubles down as a grim portrait of current Brazilian problems, where some evangelical churches have been literally training people as soldiers for a war against evil that often turns into persecution of everyone that doesn’t fit the conservative model of family. Finally, Medusa is also a clever possession movie where coming in touch with an evil spirit wakes women up instead of cursing them. While Medusa slipped through the cracks, it definitely deserves its place as one of the best horror movies released in 2022. – Marco Vito Oddo

With Men , Alex Garland explores misogyny and how women can feel threatened in a world ruled by men. Not surprisingly, Men cannot entirely escape the male gaze while telling its anti-sexism story, which can be somewhat problematic. Even so, Men is a weird and chaotic cinematic experiment that conjures some of the strangest and most disturbing images you’ve ever seen. The feature is also brutally honest, as Garland raises more questions about sexism than it can answer, bringing his own doubts to the screen. Men is not as clean and straightforward as Ex-Machina or Annihilation . But even when its story doesn't hold, it’s still a fascinating movie overflowing with style. The ending sequence, in particular, will leave a mark on anyone willing to give Men the opportunity to scar their brains with maddening imagery. – Marco Vito Oddo

With The Menu , Mark Mylod cooked a balanced meal that's highly entertaining while also cleverly discussing the meaning of art and the exploration of the working class. The Menu takes place one evening in the restaurant of Chef Slowski ( Ralph Fiennes ), a renowned cook that invited a group of select guests to taste his ultimate menu. The menu, however, is a series of political statements delivered through food, which become weirder and bloodier at each course. Soon, it becomes clear that Slowski’s guests are actually ingredients in his masterpiece, a menu that will send the world a message about the art market's brutality. There’s a lot to unpack in The Menu , as the movie has much to say beneath a simple plot cover . That’s another win for Chef Slowski, as The Menu holds strong through multiple viewings. – Marco Vito Oddo

Yet another film that premiered at Sundance, Nikyatu Jusu ’s Nanny defies easy categorization in how it blends multiple genres. While it is still very much a horror film, both in terms of its haunting visuals and the devastating truth that lies underneath them, it also is a focused drama of life in America. Specifically, it looks at the experience of Anna Diop 's Aisha who has come from Senegal to work in New York City. She hopes to make enough money to bring her son there with her, but faces down a whole host of barriers to this dream. Centrally, in working as a nanny, her employers treat her with casual cruelty and frequently skimp on paying her. She must then navigate this increasingly fraught working environment so that she can get what she is owed. At the same time, she must try to maintain a connection to her son that threatens to slip away from her when supernatural forces begin to crash into her reality. This all builds to one of the most tragic endings of the year that, while painful, couldn’t have concluded any other way. — Chase Hutchinson

Few directors can claim to be as successful as Jordan Peele . With his third movie, NOPE , Peele solidifies his position as one of the leading voices in horror, delivering another theatrical spectacle loaded with social commentary. After exploring structural racism with Get Out and political extremism with Us , Peele is now concerned with discussing how Hollywood is a predatory industry that devours innocent lives to stay alive. And that discussion becomes very literal once an eye-shaped alien starts to torment the small town of Agua Dulce, California. NOPE is all about people doing everything they can for fame and finding a bloody fate instead. But even without all the subtext, NOPE is still one heck of a crowd-pleaser, featuring a fantastic creature that has already carved its name in the history of most iconic monsters in cinema. NOPE is just as weird as it’s impressive, and it is impossible not to be mesmerized by Peele’s most ambitious film yet. – Marco Vito Oddo

Orphan: First Kill

Orphan has such a lasting effect on horror culture because of the surprise at its end and the brilliant performance of Isabelle Fuhrman . A prequel, then, sounds like a cash-grab when we are all aware of Esther’s secret, and there’s nothing else that could shock us. Fortunately, Orphan: First Kill proved us all wrong by delivering another thrilling serial killer movie with a big twist that takes the story in a whole new direction. As a prequel, Orphan: First Kill helps to flesh out Esther, played again to perfection by Fuhrman. However, the movie stands as its own self-contained tale of psychopaths doing whatever they need to get what they want. While it starts as a classic prequel, Orphan: First Kill takes Esther on a rollercoaster ride as the story twists and turns unexpectedly. In itself, that’s already a feat deserving praise, but the fact that Orphan: First Kill is so entertaining allows Esther to remain a relevant horror icon. – Marco Vito Oddo

" X is the most impressive feature [Ti West] has ever released." Says the man who has yet to see Pearl . Pearl , though a prequel to X , and shot even more secretively than X , is less a horror movie and more an ode to classic cinema itself . Set in 1918, we follow Pearl, the antagonist of X , as a young woman, left alone with her overbearing mother and her handicapped father when her husband goes to war. Pearl dreams of becoming a star, running off to become an actress or a dancer - anything to get her out of her small-time farm life. The film itself is shot like it is in Technicolor, with vivid colors permeating every inch of the screen in an almost surreal fashion. Mia Goth 's performance is truly outstanding, with some amazing long takes that would guarantee her an Oscar were this not considered a horror film. – Alyse Wax

Carlota Pereda 's Piggy is yet another indie movie that didn’t get the attention it deserves. Based on Pereda’s short film of the same name, the movie follows Sara ( Laura Galán ), a teenager who suffers daily attacks from bullies. The bullies think Sara’s weight is enough to turn her into a target for cruel pranks that become more violent as time passes. While Piggy draws from a classic revenge horror movie, it also brings something new to the table by putting Sara into a weird romantic relationship with a serial killer who kidnaps her bullies. So, the girl must decide if she wants to save the people who constantly attack her or protect a vicious killer who’s the only person to show her affection. Piggy is also elevated by gritty cinematography, brilliant performances, and perfectly executed practical effects. – Marco Vito Oddo

Returning to the basics, Prey finally explains why the Predator franchise is so often disappointing. The first Predator remains one of the best action-horror movies of all time, following the deadly game of cat and mouse between an alien carrying wondrous technology and a man fueled only by his wits and rage. Further sequels try to amp up the action by giving the Predator’s new victims more resources to work with. But while every Predator sequel is more explosive than the original, none is so gripping. Prey , however, does the opposite, taking us back to 1719. By uniting the Predator franchise with a period piece, director Dan Trachtenberg recreates everything that made the original story so enticing. Amber Midthunder shines as a young Comanche warrior, using all her knowledge to get whatever vantage she can get to beat an adversary that’s obviously more skilled and better equipped. At the same time, Prey features the scariest version of the iconic monster, making the Predator less human and more feral than previous iterations. Thanks to Prey , we can now be excited about new Predator movies instead of wondering why they are developing another entry of a quasi-dead franchise. – Marco Vito Oddo

Den of Geek

Best Horror Movies of 2022

Horror cinema had a banner year in 2022, and we've assembled all the most gruesome gems you might have missed!

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Horror cinema is thriving. It feels important to note that after a year like 2022. While the past 12 months saw industry trades choked with grim or despairing reports on the box office of original movies and new ideas, the news surrounding chillers has been strangely sunny and full of cheer. From the year beginning with a robust relaunch of the Scream franchise to its ending, where the horror-comedy-satire amalgamation of The Menu won audiences over twice, once in theaters and again on streaming, we’ve seen repeated testimonials to the fact audiences like being scared—and they don’t necessarily care if the movie has a colon, numeral, or hyphen in the title.

Along the way, we’ve seen some genuinely nervy and daring attempts to push the boundaries of cinematic dread, be it in the art house, a la Speak No Evil , or the multiplex, courtesy of Smile . We’ve also been thrilled by high-concept shocks like the twisty Barbarian . Which is all to say that it has been a superb year for horror movies.

Below are the ones we suspect are the best.

What better place to begin this list than with what many of us consider to be the most ferocious surprise of the year—it’s certainly one of the most entertaining. Barbarian was originally marketed around a quirk of modern living (AirBnBs and other forms of home-sharing). Our newfound “sharing economy” turns into nightmare scenario though when a young woman named Tess (Georgina Campbell) arrives in the dead of night to a house she’s rented, only to find a man (Bill Skarsgård) already there. He too claims to have rented the home, and given that it’s storming outside… he invites her in.

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To say anymore of the plot would be to rob the uninitiated of the movie’s truly sinister twists and narrative switchbacks. But suffice it to say that writer-director Zach Creggar has made the most original and unpredictable chiller in years, relying as much on his background as a comedy writer and actor as his previously unknown talent to unsettle. There is a warm, deceptively free-wheeling energy to a narrative that, like a good comedy set, takes you on a journey with detours, asides, and thematic repetitions that illuminate something about human nature. However, the nature Barbarian hopes to illuminate is on the nasty, toxic side of life. So instead of laughing, it mostly leaves you holding your breath in pure, dreadful anticipation. – David Crow

A brand new masked slasher killer movie is reason enough for celebration. But Bitch Ass touts its titular villain as “the first Black serial killer ever to wear a mask,” even as it pays tribute to Black horror movies of decades past. Citing films like The People Under the Stairs , Tales From the Hood , and Candyman (whose legendary star Tony Todd serves as this movie’s “horror host,” Titus Darq) as touchstones, first time director Bill Posley serves up a Halloween candy bucket worth of B-movie fun.

Bitch Ass is the tale of a group of low-level criminals who break into the wrong home and find themselves at the mercy of a board game obsessed murderer in a mask. Packed both with creative kills (including at least one that left the audience screaming in sympathy) and knowing winks to the audience about the genre, it’s the exact opposite of the often ponderous “elevated horror” subgenre. Pull up a beanbag chair and settle in for a VHS-style throwback on a chilly October night. – Mike Cecchini

The Black Phone

The Black Phone reunites director/writer Scott Derrickson with his Sinister co-screenwriter, C. Robert Cargill, as well as that film’s star, Ethan Hawke , in a sharply focused thriller based on a story by Joe Hill. The film takes place in 1978 in a Denver suburb held in the grip of the Grabber (a twisted Hawke), who has abducted and murdered five young boys in the area. When 13-year-old Finney (Mason Thames in an outstanding film debut) becomes his next kidnapping victim, it’s only a matter of time before he meets the same fate—until a disconnected rotary phone on the wall of the Grabber’s basement begins to ring with calls from his previous victims.

Like Sinister , The Black Phone is a slow burn at first that escalates the tension once Finney is in the hands of Hawke’s genuinely unsettling Grabber. The build-up of period details, the unpredictable narrative, and, most importantly, the development of the endearing relationship between Finney and his 11-year-old sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) make this an effective, frequently terrifying, and eventually poignant horror outing. – Don Kaye

Bodies Bodies Bodies

It is debatable whether Halina Reijn’s brutally mean-spirited satire of Gen-Z life is actually a horror movie. This easily could be better described as a very modern variation on the type of whodunit murder mysteries that buttered bread for Agatha Christie (or, these days, Rian Johnson). However, A24 calls it horror, and we have to admit its core characters are pretty terrifying even before the bodies start piling up.

To get an idea of the side of youth culture that Bodies Bodies Bodies aims to butcher, the film’s central protagonists are five recently graduated college friends, plus two significant others who made a big mistake. And collectively, they’ve decided to get together on the night of a hurricane to play mind games with a side of booze and drugs. But when their faux murder mystery game, “Bodies Bodies Bodies,” concludes with a real corpse, these kids realize the bacchanal is just getting started. It’s like Lord of the Flies with a TikTok account. – DC 

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Bones and All

Even with the divisive remake of Suspiria under his belt, we certainly didn’t expect Luca Guadagnino ( Call Me By Your Name ) to bring us a movie about flesh-eating ghouls in late 2022. Perhaps the fact that it’s also a romantic coming-of-age tale and road trip movie might disqualify it as a “horror movie” in the purest sense of the word for some folks. But independent of its cannibalistic subject matter (and yes, there are subtle supernatural elements at play with that as well, it’s not a matter of taste or choice for our screen cannibals), there are plenty of other elements that put Bones and All over the top as one of the best horror offerings to come out of 2022.

Chief among those is atmosphere. Bones and All positively drips with unsettling menace, especially whenever our two young “heroes” (Timothée Chalamet and Taylor Ross) find themselves encountering others of their kind. There’s a natural seediness to their nomadic lifestyle, but it’s when they sniff out (or get sniffed out by) fellow flesh-eaters, particularly Mark Rylance’s beyond creepy Sully, that you may find yourself wanting to run for them. And of course there are still gruesome scenes of people devouring other people to contend with, so you’ll get your gore fix to go along with all those bad vibes. Top notch use of Joy Division’s “Atmosphere” too. – Mike Cecchini

Rob Savage’s follow-up to his pandemic Zoom movie, Host , is another found footage film. This one is based around an obnoxious live-streamer, played by Annie Hardy, who picks up a strange old woman while broadcasting her show from a car she stole from her friend. If you can put up with the company of Hardy’s character espousing right-wing nonsense and annoying people with anti-mask rhetoric, there are some excellent scares to be enjoyed here.

Savage plays with the uncanny and throws us into a situation viewers don’t understand any more than his characters—it’s an immersive film which keeps you on edge right until the end, throwing weird and uncomfortable images at us from the dark. Dashcam also rewards a second viewing, too, for the comments that are coming in during the broadcasts which pick apart the narrative with help from the internet. An intense short sharp shock of a film for those who can stomach an intentionaly repellent protagonist. – Rosie Fletcher

One of the nicest genre surprises to come out of the SXSW Film Festival is Joseph and Vanessa Winter’s Dreadstream . Even last spring it seemed ready to become a rare Shudder gem, so it’s gratifying to know that destiny is now fulfilled on the ghoulish streaming service. Unapologetically attempting to be Evil Dead (or perhaps more accurately Evil Dead II ) for the Twitch era, Deadstream follows an absolutely despicable YouTube personality who is in for the worst night of his life… and possibly the last.

See, Shawn Ruddy (played by writer-director Joseph) fancies himself to be something of an internet provocateur but really he’s just a shady individual who’s a hair’s breadth away from being cancelled when he agrees to spend the night in a haunted house, live-streaming his adventures. At first it’s all smartass remarks and snark, but eventually there will come the shrieking and screaming as his at-home audience (who we view the experience as) realizes before Ruddy that there are more than just bumps going on this night. And you know what? It’s so much more entertaining if we don’t tell him and instead watch the suffering together. – DC

If I’m being completely honest, it’s really hard these days to keep watching horror movies (or dramas) about women and children getting locked in basements. One suspects that writer Lauryn Kahn and director Mimi Cave would agree. Nonetheless, they’ve made one of the more fiendishly pointed riffs on the hellish concept with this feature-length debut for Cave. Because—spoiler-alert—when introverted Noa (Daisy Edgar-Jones) thinks she’s met a man who’s too good to be true (and who’s played with disarming charm by Sebastian Stan)… she has.

After an intentionally idyllic indie rom-com meet-cute, it isn’t long before Stan’s Steve has drugged Noa at his cabin in the woods and reveals that he intends to harvest her body, like many women before her, for a clientele with an unusual taste for exotic meats. But that doesn’t mean they can’t have some fun before she expires, right?! The horror of Fresh is that Steve really thinks this is a reasonable itinerary for a long holiday, and the appeal of the movie is that Cave and Kahn don’t disagree as storytellers: they wallow in a bleak but unexpectedly bemused humor that gives way to righteous fury. It also includes the best revenge sequence of the year. – DC

Despite being a horror movie about a rest stop glory hole, Rebekah McKendry’s Glorious manages to avoid most of the pitfalls you might associate with such a setup. This is a curious, twisty movie about primordial gods and the monsters among us, with True Blood star Ryan Kwanten at the center of things as a heartbroken man called Wes, who is struggling to cope with the end of a relationship. 

Pulling off the highway into a rest stop after leaving his girlfriend, Wes stumbles into the empty restroom to throw up, but that won’t be the end of the worst hangover of his life. It’s best not to know too much about Glorious going in, but you’ll never look at a rest stop bathroom the same way again, and if you see a single locked stall at the end of it? Weigh the mistakes you’ve made in this life and get the hell out of there… if you can. – Kirsten Howard

Created over 30 years, Phil Tippett’s stop-motion experimental horror film Mad God was one of the wildest animated projects not just in 2022, but in decades. Utilizing the craft he learned working on the original Star Wars trilogy, Jurassic Park , and RoboCop , Tippett has managed to weave an instant cult classic here, featuring an imaginative but subjective plot that follows an assassin traveling through a bleak, dystopian underworld filled with seemingly endless twisted characters and sets, forging along until your mind feels utterly poisoned by the savagery and cruelty of it all.

Yet, every frame of Mad God is compelling. The dreamlike quality of its horrifying atmosphere is intoxicating. It’s a nightmarish spectacle that is truly unforgettable, festering from an inhuman painting that has somehow come to life on screen. The abstract film will surely be what you make of it, but if there is a lesson to be learned from the traveller’s journey, it’s that we will always create the things we fear the most. – KH

Writer-director Alex Garland ( Annihilation ) ventures full-on into the horror genre with this unnerving, queasy mix of folk terror and social commentary . Jessie Buckley is outstanding as Harper, a woman trying to recover from the shocking death of her estranged husband. She retreats to a country estate for some alone time, only to discover that all the men in town are not just condescending to her but share some disturbing characteristics. Rory Kinnear (Bill Tanner in the last few James Bond films) gives a tour de force performance as nearly all the men in the movie, with the aid of prosthetics and CG, and as the realization sinks into the viewer that these are all the same actor, the implications grow more disturbing.

Garland flawlessly maintains an atmosphere of dread and claustrophobia all the way through the movie, even if he makes his point a little more heavy-handedly as the movie slouches toward the finish line. The climax itself turns the metaphorical into the physical with less than successful results, but Men nevertheless maintains Garland’s status as one of our prime genre explorers who’s got more than just shocks and scares on his mind. – DK

Is The Menu a comedy or horror? As it turns out, it’s something better: a tasty and daring mingling of both flavors that’s been served on a dry plate of satire. Directed by Succession ’s Mark Mylod, the film is an old-fashioned parable/fantasy about eating the rich. It’s not particularly subtle or original, but it’s satisfying every time Chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) explains with maximum condescension to his elite clientele that tonight they’re going to suffer… and by the end they might even thank him for it.

The film has an ostensible everywoman hero played by Anya Taylor-Joy, who gives audiences at least one person to root for as she attempts to talk, plead, and finally outwit her way from tasting the final course, but the truth is this is a meal best served cold, cynical, and scrumptious. – DC

Jordan Peele ’s third film as director is also his most ambitious. Gone is the reliance on familiar horror tropes that his first two movies relied on. There also is no longer an immediate need to entertain you with frequent jokes or non-sequiturs. This is not to say there isn’t also a gallows sense of humor in Nope (2022). But there is also a more patient desire and confidence to ruminate on darkness—both in the form of literal night skies and in the figurative. It is a film about, among other things, the traumas we hide away—or worse still attempt to exploit.

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The movie is still too recent to spoil here, but suffice to say Nope works as a grand and grisly allegory for the beast of an entertainment industry that Peele has fed his whole life. After decades in the business, Peele seems eager to consider what happens to people who give it everything, all in the name of catching a single fleeting moment of glory, or at least a high quality photograph of a UFO. – DC

It was a bit surreal when during the closing credits of Ti West ’s X , the genre auteur revealed he had filmed another horror movie in secret—and one that would be a direct prequel/spinoff of the grisly ‘70s slasher we had just watched. Aren’t post-credits teasers the province for slick studio products, as opposed to arthouse risks? Not anymore. By nearly every metric, Pearl is an even more daring excavation of horror ideas, as well as a vast improvement on X .

More old school Hollywood psycho-melodrama than ‘70s exploitation, Pearl is a character study about a ticking time bomb we know must go off, played again in her youth by Mia Goth, who here abandons the thick old age makeup she donned in X for something more disturbing. Set in 1920 after the end of World War I, the movie’s visual language is actually more in-line with MGM musicals of the 1930s, only now a grown-up Dorothy will bang the Scarecrow dreamboat of her fantasies. It’s a nasty piece of candy-colored work that is given uncomfortable life by a fearless performance from Goth. West and his muse have already confirmed they will be making a third film in their burgeoning anthology, but it’s hard to imagine topping this nightmare. – DC  

The fad of horror reboots keeping the title of the original movie, even while nevertheless being a sequel to what came before, is continued by what should be called Scream 5 . That trend is also mercilessly mocked by characters within the film as they discuss the quirks and banalities of the modern horror genre. This feels right. Despite being the first Scream movie made without the late, great Wes Craven’s involvement, 2022’s Ghostface revival is one of the series’ better sequels. It maintains the smug wiseacre qualities of the classic entries while also upping the slasher movie brutality and gore to levels we haven’t seen since poor Drew Barrymore called out to her mum and dad in 1996.

Scream ’22 is thus a worthy addition to its long-in-the-tooh franchise (unlike a few other slasher hanger-ons of recent weeks) that shows the writing/directing team of Radio Silence gets what makes this meta-textual franchise so much fun, including when it takes the piss out of its own fans . Bonus points, too, for unintentionally launching Jenna Ortega’s newfound status as a scream queen with her intense opening scene here acting as a starting bell for a year filled with three other horror-adjacent projects, including one further down on this list. – DC

Recent polls suggest that most American kids’ dream job is becoming a social media influencer. If that’s true, worried parents can just show younguns’ this. Written and directed by Hannah Barlow and Kane Senes, the Shudder horror reworks the Carrie archetype for the world of Instagram via Aisha Dee’s uncannily tranquil Cecilia (Sissy to her name to grade school enemies). It’s a subtle performance by Dee since for much of the first act, the audience is forced to struggle at figuring out what is going on beneath the surface of Cecilia’s calm waters… before realizing there is nothing behind that placid smile.

Still, there’s a lot of value in Zen, particularly on IG where Cecilia presents herself as a mental health advocate while glossing over the fact that she’s never apparently been to therapy and is certainly not a licensed psychologist. She meets one though, and many other judging eyes, when reluctantly agreeing to attend a bachelorette weekend with her childhood bestie Emma (Barlow). Her childhood bully is also there (a perhaps too cartoonishly cruel Emily De Margheriti). The movie admittedly has issues in the margins, but in the main it’s anxiety-inducing stuff, particularly with an ending where no one gets healed. – DC

The biggest hit of the Halloween season may not win points on originality due to a plot line that essentially throws The Ring , It Follows , and Drag Me to Hell in a blender, but you’re lying if you don’t admit Parker Finn’s supremely stylish Smile didn’t get under your skin. In a feature-length debut that adapts Finn’s own short film “Laura Hasn’t Slept,” complete by having Caitlin Stasey reprise her role as the troubled Laura, Smile is determined to traumatize the very act of grinning. Laura knows what’s up, as she rants incoherently about an evil presence invisible to everyone but herself—and how it’s just smirking at her. Her emergency psychiatrist Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) doesn’t believe it at first, but after her patient is also grinning like the devil while doing unspeakable things to her face, Rose begins to understand. Soon she’s seeing smiles everywhere too. And they’re not friendly.

As a narrative, Smile is mostly a construct for Finn to weaponize feelings of despair, oppression, imminent doom, and other hallmarks of mental illness. And while his screenplay is more than happy to unpack these knotty ideas, it’s at its most jovial and entrancing when slowly unveiling a sadistic mean streak that relies on audience familiarity with the genre. That makes it all the better to tease and torment you with its unblinking, mirthless cheshire grin. – DC

Speak No Evil

This psychological genre outing directed and co-written by Christian Tafdrup is the single most horrifying film this writer has watched this year. A Danish couple on vacation with their young daughter meet another family from Holland on the same trip, with the latter clan extending an invitation to come stay at their house. When the Danish family takes up the offer, it’s only a matter of time before a series of uncomfortable incidents eventually escalates into a nightmarish scenario.

Tafdrup gets great, realistic performances out of his cast as he slowly but inexorably tightens the screws: just about anyone watching can relate to the awkward, sometimes embarrassing moments that occur between people trying to get to know each other, and the way we will often bend over backwards to remain polite. But the narrative remains (mostly) plausible before turning terrifying as the film masterfully transitions into a darker, more hideous set of circumstances. Rich with commentary on everyday relationships and full of crushing dread, Speak No Evil will almost certainly make you think twice before accepting an invitation to stay at someone’s house again. – DK

Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters made a movie this year in which they were systematically possessed and butchered by demonic spirits. Honestly, that previous sentence could just be “Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters made a movie!” Yep, the ‘90s alt-rock favorites follow in the tradition of everyone from the Beatles to the Ramones by playing themselves onscreen, but there is an extra level of smirking, self-deprecating joy since their movie is a camp horror spectacle where Grohl grows fangs and dices a bandmate in half with a chainsaw, mid-sex scene!

The style and tone is visibly inspired by Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead flicks. Admittedly, director B.J. McDonnell’s directorial style lacks the same level of flair or inventiveness, but the gore is on point and the movie’s shaggy tone is genuinely amusing, if never quite exciting. The pic has an added poignancy, too, since it was one of the last projects drummer Taylor Hawkins worked on before his sudden death in March. His big screen end thus plays a little differently than intended. – DC  

Not to be confused with Netflix’s own recent television series The Watcher , Chloe Okuno’s Watcher made a small splash on the festival circuit earlier this year by crafting an atmospheric and painfully believable parable about how a woman’s dread can be too easily dismissed as paranoia. Starring It Follows ’ Maika Monroe as Julia, our heroine is a restless soul that’s followed her boyfriend (Karl Glusman) back to his native home in Bucharest. There she will learn how even a well-meaning beau can unintentionally gaslight when she says the man across the street (Burn Gorman) is just watching her through her window. Day and night.

Apparently the screenplay, written by Okuno from a story by Zack Ford, was not originally set in Bucharest, but the choice to pursue tax breaks in a foreign land turned out to be a sharp one since Julia’s inability to understand what the men around her are saying—and yet implicitly know—only heightens parallel feelings of alienation and maddening condescension, all while her apparent stalker ventures closer to her personal space. The narrative is not particularly surprising, and a third act reversal feels so heavy-handed that it borders on the contrived, but the tension Watcher builds cuts deep. So if you haven’t entered its gaze, definitely look it up on Shudder. – DC

It’s been nine long years since writer-director Ti West played in the horror genre on the big screen, and his return to the form proved to be one of the most controversial thrillers of 2022. An unsubtle reimagining of slasher movies for modern sensibilities, X returns to the grisly subgenre’s origins by setting its tale in the backwoods of Texas during the late 1970s. And while the film’s central characters—group of amateur pornography filmmakers—don’t run into a guy holding a chainsaw, perhaps they wished they had after coming across a not-so-harmless elderly couple named Howard (Stephen Ure) and Pearl (Mia Goth under nigh unrecognizable old age makeup).

Goth pulls double duty as both the unhappy Pearl and the unequally unsatisfied Maxine, an exotic dancer who has been deluded into thinking adult films are her way out of a deadend life. Some of the kills in the third act are spectacularly gruesome, however if we’re being honest, we think West has more success in the film’s first half, which is surprisingly melancholic while considering the ravages of time and mortality by way of smut movies. – DC

Looking for a scare? We run down the best horror movies of 2022 so far...

Don't be afraid to catch up on the best scary movies of 2022

The best horror movies of 2022 so far have been a truly terrifying treat. After a sluggish 2021, the genre has fittingly returned with a vengeance in 2022. 

The year kicked off with the brilliant return of Scream after an 11 year absence and things have only got better since then. We've had dark comedy horror, found footage nightmares, trips to the countryside that just don't go as planned,  and horror heavy hitter directors like Ti West and Scott Derrickson have come back to the genre with fresh meat. 

And it's not over yet, Jordan Peele's Nope is still to arrive in the UK  and a new Predator movie, Prey, hits Disney+ on August 5th. Don't worry though, you've still got time to catch up. Feeling brave? Here are the best horror movies of 2022 so far. You'll find them lurking on a streaming service near you.     

Scream 

Where to stream : VoD

Officially, this is Scream 5 but when it comes to meta-obsessed requels in 2022, who’s even counting anymore?  Numbers clearly aren't fashionable but regardless, this year’s Scream is a smart return to the referential delights of Ghostface outings of yore. This is all down to team Radio Silence, the collective talents of writer and directors Tyler Gillett, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Chad Villella who worked on Ready or Not together and understand exactly what made the originals work so well. 

A fresh cast of unwitting Gen X lambs to the slaughter combine perfectly with the old guard as Sidney, Gale, and Dewey return to Woodsboro to hunt down the masked killer. Tense, hilariously knowing, and surprisingly gory, Scream earns the sequel that’s coming in 2023.   

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X is House of the Devil and Innkeepers writer and director Ti West’s return to horror and was absolutely worth the wait. Sweatily Texas Chainsaw Massacre-influenced, X takes us into the rural wilderness with a group of young filmmakers who want to find somewhere quiet to shoot their porn movie. The response of the local elderly couple…? Well, it’s not altogether welcoming. 

With Mia Goth in a frankly astonishing double role and pointed themes around the relentless cruelty of age, X is much more than just mindless murder. There’s even a prequel coming soon that was shot at the same time.        

Where to stream : Disney+ (UK), Hulu (US)

To say too much about Fresh is to ruin the fun of this razor sharp dating satire but just know that one of the best horror movies of the year is sitting happily on Disney+ and Hulu. 

This definitely isn’t one to watch with dinner, or on a train where fellow passengers can rubberneck, but if you’re a fan of twisted and dark comedy, the trials and tribulations of Noa (Daisy Edgar-Jones) as she thinks she’s finally found the perfect man is a delicious treat. Plus, the assured confidence of Fresh means that debut director Mimi Cave is absolutely one to watch in the future.    

Texas Chainsaw Massacre 

Where to stream : Netflix

Go into this sequel knowing that it’s impossible for a film to be as excruciatingly terrifying as the original and you’ll have a perfectly good gory time. The youth journeying into the Texas wilderness premise has been updated with Gen X gentrification as a group of well-meaning individuals arrive in a ghost town to build a brunch utopia. 

It’s no surprise to say that their activities drag Leatherface out of retirement and original Final Girl Sally Hardesty rocks up to finally settle the books. There are plenty of nods and winks to the original with some knowing camera angles and references as well as a ludicrous body count and a particularly vindictive tone. A solid three star horror, perfect for a Friday night with friends.      

If you’ve checked out our best Shudder movies , you’ll probably be aware of Zoom-based horror Host. If you haven’t seen it - and you should change that - it’s officially considered the scariest film ever according to science and Dashcam is what the same filmmakers did next. 

You won’t find the same level of scares here but following a repellent online streamer on the worst night of her life amidst the Covid pandemic is an unhinged journey of relentless found footage horror. Ludicrous and darkly and gorily hilarious, this is a surreal nightmare from start to finish. Watch on a laptop for peak reality melting.   

Incantation 

And if you want to stay in the found footage genre, don’t miss this Taiwanese horror on Netflix . When a young woman is reunited with her daughter after years apart, she documents the beginning of their new life. 

It just so happens that the reason they were separated to begin with was a horrific curse…. Truthfully, Incantation is a little too long at one hour 50, but there’s some really good frights and tension in here and inventive use of handheld footage. Add in some creepy imagery and genuine heart in mouth moments and this is absolutely worth your time.  

The Black Phone 

Where to stream : Coming soon to VoD

If you took a look at the other entries in the science-based scare chart linked above, you might have noticed Sinister sitting at number two. This means that the expectations lurking around director Scott Derrickson’s latest horror, The Black Phone, were high. 

It doesn’t quite hit the monumental scares of Sinister but this adaptation of a Joe Hill short story is an atmospheric ‘70s period piece as the children of a neighbourhood fall prey to the masked Grabber. With great performances from the kids – especially Madeleine McGraw - and Ethan Hawke on scenery chewing psychopath duties, it’s an entertaining chiller with some fun scares. It might tie up a little too neatly for some but stands as a solid addition to the 2022 horror line-up.     

Where to stream : Shudder

Straight off, we can’t stress enough that Mad God is not a Friday night with friends horror movie. Go back to Texas Chainsaw. If you try this one, they might not be your friends by the end of this 85 minute sensory overload of grim. Stop motion superstar Phil Tippett has worked on effects for movies like Star Wars and Jurassic Park but this stop motion literal trip to hell is his own work and has a firm adults only rating. 

20 years in the making, this is a surreal but searing horror. As a man descends into the abyss, he meets creatures so diabolical that there are scenes in Mad God that almost defy description. Every frame burns with originality and vulgarity as a world of unimaginable horrors make themselves known. Mad God is a masterpiece. Just not as you know it…  

Hellbender 

Where to stream: Shudder

If you’re looking for something with a somewhat slower pace and more angsty teenage emotions, you don’t want to miss the latest movie from The Adams Family. No, not that one. Note the missing extra ‘d.’ In Hellbender IRL mother and daughter Zelda Adams and Toby Poser portray a significantly more supernatural version of their real life relationship.  

Even though these two witches in a remote woodland cabin have their own metal band, young Izzy (Poser) grows restless with their isolation and awakens a dark force that’s lurking in her body. This is a fascinating and unnerving horror that just oozes atmosphere.        

Louise Blain is a writer and presenter specialising in tech, games, and horror entertainment. Thanks to the latter, she needs to avoid nightmares and regularly reviews the latest sleep tech for BBC Scotland, TechRadar and T3. Her specialist subjects include mattresses, weighted blankets, and sleep aids.

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The 10 Best Horror Movies of 2022

2022 was a terrific year for scary cinema.

In regards to movies, 2022 will likely be remembered as a volatile year with a lot of big highs and a number of deep lows, but one source of consistency throughout the year was the horror genre. Great movies built to scare were released in every season in the last 12 months, and a great number of them will be remembered for a long time, if not as some of the best horror movies ever .

As such, it was extremely difficult to put together this year’s ranking of the best horror films. We had to make some hard decisions – like Ti West’s X and Pearl , Nikyatu Jusu’s Nanny and David Bruckner’s Hellraiser being labeled “honorable mentions” – but while we wait for these upcoming horror movies , here's what we consider to be the best of the best from the genre in 2022. 

10. Barbarian

Watching Zach Cregger’s Barbarian , it’s unclear what is going on for a surprisingly long time. It certainly triggers “stranger danger” instincts as Tess (Georgina Campbell) unwittingly finds herself sharing an Airbnb with a stranger (Bill Skarsgård), but it also wouldn’t take a whole lot of alterations to change the first act into a setup for a romantic comedy.

Then the horror arrives, and the movie then just becomes “what the fuck” moment after “what the fuck” moment.

The twists are wicked and freaky, and there is also some wonderful character makeup, production design, and special effects in play that deliver excellent scares.

You can stream Barbarian on HBO Max .

9. Bones & All

It’s not often that we see a heavy mesh of horror and romance, but that’s precisely what director Luca Guadagnino delivers with his tale of teen love and cannibalism. The filmmaker previously proved to be an adept storyteller in the genre with his brilliant 2018 remake of Suspiria , and while this movie has a wholly different vibe, it’s likewise engrossing, hypnotic, and intense.

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Based on the novel of the same name by Camille DeAngelis, it’s first and foremost an emotional coming-of-age story about a young woman (Taylor Russell) abandoned by her father (André Holland) who forges a bond with a young man (Timothée Chalamet) she meets while searching for the mother she never knew – but it gets quite horrific when it digs into the fact that the protagonist is an “eater” with an insatiable desire for human flesh. Russell and Chalamet are excellent together, though Mark Rylance is a tremendous scene-stealer.

You can rent Bones & All on Amazon Prime Video .

The excellence of Chloe Okuno’s Watcher can be recognized in its execution of atmosphere and perspective. Julia (Maika Monroe) is a young woman living in a city she doesn’t know where strangers speak a language she doesn’t speak, and with wide shots and limited subtitles the audience is immersed in her isolation and perfectly understands her loneliness. The setting, cinematography, and editing alone successfully raise the anxiety of the movie-goer… and then it throws in the idea of the protagonist being watched by a person who may or may not be a psychotic serial killer.

It’s another tremendous genre credential for Maika Monroe, whose excellent resume also includes Adam Wingard ’s The Guest and David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows , and the movie is both plays the “Is she really just paranoid?” game and delivers a satisfying conclusion. Okuno previously showed off her skills with her segment of anthology V/H/S/94 (ranked #9 on CinemaBlend’s list of the Best Horror Movies of 2021 ), and whatever movie she makes next will earn instant anticipation.

You can stream Watcher on Shudder .

7. The Harbinger

You might think that Freddy Kruger has a monopoly when it comes to monsters that can attack you through your dreams, but Andy Mitton’s The Harbinger is a wonderful retort to that argument. The film invents a whole new kind of nightmare creature, and it motivates a scary story set during a scary time.

The Harbinger is set during the height of the pandemic in 2020, and it follows a young woman (Gabby Beans) as she travels to check on a friend (Emily Davis) who has been getting trapped in sleep. It’s clever and executes fantastic world-building to go along with engaging characters and some top-notch surreal dream sequences.

You can rent/buy The Harbinger on Amazon Prime Video .

6. The Black Phone

Taking a detour into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Scott Derrickson spent eight years away from the horror genre, but he broke that streak in 2022 with The Black Phone , and it’s his best movie to date. Based on the short story of the same name by author Joe Hill, the film is an unsettling tale of child abduction with some fantastic and spooky original ideas, and it features one of the standout villain performances of the year.

Ethan Hawke has spent just about his entire career playing good guys, but he is unleashed here as the child killer known only as The Grabber, and he does spectacular work. It speaks to the power of his performance that he wears a mask for almost all of his screen time, as he is able to deliver high levels of terror just with his eyes, gestures, and voice.

You can rent/buy The Black Phone on Amazon Prime Video .

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett had all the pressure in the world on their shoulders in the making of Scream . Wes Craven is a filmmaker recognized as a god in the horror genre, so one would think it would be impossible for anyone to properly continue the legacy of the beloved series that Craven directed every chapter of himself. And yet that’s exactly what Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett were able to do – kicking off 2022 with a terrific dose of slasher horror back in January.

Like the best among its series predecessors, Scream succeeds by not only delivering amazing scares and kill sequences, but by operating as a meta commentary on franchise filmmaking with an examination of both the growing trend of legacyquels and toxic fandoms. In addition to being a fun, self-contained entry in the series, it also sets up a wonderful new generation of lead characters that audiences can look forward to seeing again in 2023’s Scream VI .

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4. The Menu

Sticking with satire, Mark Mylod’s The Menu is a treat. It’s a genre melange, as it could also be described as a dark comedy, a mystery, and a thriller, but horror is very much at the forefront as a group of wealthy customers at a prestigious and remote restaurant are served a meal of escalating terrors.

Mylod works with an outstanding cast that includes Anya Taylor-Joy , Nicholas Hoult , John Leguizamo , and Ralph Fiennes , and it’s a sharp and vicious take on class warfare that has all of its stars playing a special, individual role in the mix. You should most definitely watch with a full stomach, however, as the ironically beautiful food photography might otherwise leave you feeling starved.

The Menu will be available to stream on HBO Max on January 3, 2023.

3. Soft & Quiet

Ambitious filmmaking always earns a lot of points, and Beth de Araujo’s Soft & Quiet most definitely has that – as the movie is made to unfold in real time with only a few hidden cuts. That alone, however, does not qualify the feature for consideration on this list. What qualifies it is that as soon as the movie reveals what it’s actually about, it throttles you hard and throws down metaphorical iron bars that make you feel trapped with the main characters (in a great way).

I won’t use this forum for spoilers, but not only is the movie ceaselessly skin-crawling, but it manages that feeling by never getting fantastical or unreal. It’s grounded, real-world horror, and as such it’s a searing commentary on modern America. It’s de Arujo’s feature directorial debut, and instantly establishes her as an exciting talent to keep an eye on.

You can rent/buy Soft & Quiet on Amazon Prime Video .

2. Resurrection

Psychological horror is tricky business for even the most talented filmmakers, but Andrew Semans’ Resurrection is a movie that gets knuckle-deep in your brain and then wiggles your body around like a puppet. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival all the way back in January , and it has not left my mind since then.

This is the second year in a row that Rebecca Hall has had a high-ranking title on this genre Top 10 (I ranked David Bruckner’s The Night House as the best horror movie of 2021), and her work is breathtaking and haunting. Hall’s brilliance is matched with one of Tim Roth’s greatest performances, as he portrays a man so frightening that you hold your breath whenever he is on screen.

You can stream Resurrection on Shudder .

Thanks to smart marketing, Jordan Peele’s Nope was able to arrive in theaters with audiences not wholly aware of what to expect… and then what they were delivered was (in part) a phenomenal homage to one of the greatest horror movies of all time: Steven Spielberg ’s Jaws . It has a genius take on a science-fiction staple, and it balances impressive dread and jumps with exceptional commentary about modern society’s relationship with spectacle.

It’s been a long time since anyone has made such an indelible mark on any genre as Jordan Peele , and he is three-for-three since his surprising 2014 revelation that he was pivoting his career focus from comedy to horror . He is a brilliant filmmaker with a stunning eye for detail, symbolism, and metaphor, and Nope is pure proof. There is every expectation that we’ll be seeing his movies top lists like these for many years to come.

You can stream Nope on Peacock .

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Be on the lookout here on CinemaBlend for more of our Top 10 lists for the year 2022, and you can get a preview of everything that’s coming in the year ahead with our 2023 Movie Release Calendar .

Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.

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The best horror movies of 2022 so far, according to critics

2022 is shaping up to be a banner year for horror buffs.

Among the year's spooky flicks include the return of legendary horror auteur David Cronenberg with the Viggo Mortensen-led "Crimes of the Future" and two Jordan Peele projects, the Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer starrer "Nope" and animated "Wendell and Wild." Viewers have also been treated to newcomers within the genre, including the advent of Jane Schoenbrun's creepypasta-inspired film "We're All Going to the World's Fair" and the Finnish coming-of-age body horror tale "Hatching" from Hanna Bergholm.

Meanwhile, jumpscare mastermind Ti West made plenty of waves in this year's horror selection with not one but two slashers led by Mia Goth: the '70s horror-inspired "X" and its prequel, "Pearl," which puts a sinister twist on Hollywood's golden age. But which scary movies are the best of the year yet?

To identify the 25 best horror movies of the year so far, Stacker looked at all horror movies on critical review aggregator Metacritic with a 2022 release date and ranked the top 25 according to Metascore. Ties were broken by the number of films that each film received.

So pop some popcorn, sit back, and read on to figure out which of 2022's horror films are most worth your time.

#25. Crimes of the Future

- Director: David Cronenberg - Metascore: 67 - Runtime: 107 minutes

Body horror master David Cronenberg returned after an eight-year hiatus with this year's "Crimes of the Future." The film takes place in a bleak, futuristic world where humankind has undergone strange biological changes, including the disappearance of physical pain. Viggo Mortensen stars as Saul Tenser, a man who regularly grows new organs, which are then tattooed and removed by his partner, Caprice (Léa Seydoux), as performance art.

#24. The Sadness

- Director: Rob Jabbaz - Metascore: 68 - Runtime: 99 minutes

Pandemic-related horror hits harder than ever after the last few years, and "The Sadness" is no exception. In this movie, Taiwan is engulfed by a pandemic that turns ordinary citizens into blood-thirsty maniacs—yes, basically zombies. Berant Zhu and Regina Lei play Jim and Kat, a young couple struggling to avoid infection at all costs.

- Director: Parker Finn - Metascore: 68 - Runtime: 115 minutes

As the title suggests, having something to smile about in your life isn't always a good thing. Sosie Bacon stars as a therapist who goes through an increasingly bizarre experience after witnessing a patient's suicide—and yes, it involves a lot of sinister smiling. The film has gained attention for its effective jumpscares and homages to J-Horror films like "Ringu" and "Cure."

#22. Bodies Bodies Bodies

- Director: Halina Reijn - Metascore: 69 - Runtime: 94 minutes

Part horror movie, part whodunit, part Gen-Z satire, "Bodies Bodies Bodies" squeezes a lot into its 94-minute runtime. Mixing stars like Pete Davidson and Lee Pace with promising talents Rachel Sennott and Amandla Stenberg, the film follows a group of rich 20-somethings whose plan to ride out a hurricane at a family mansion goes awry when a murder mystery game yields actual carnage. Charli XCX even made a song for it , so there's that.

#21. What Josiah Saw

- Director: Vincent Grashaw - Metascore: 70 - Runtime: 120 minutes

We could always use more intriguing Southern Gothic horror, and "What Josiah Saw" answers that call. The film opens two decades after an estranged family split apart over past traumas. Now, they've reunited at a remote farmhouse in an attempt to reconcile before everything naturally descends into chaos.

#20. Hellbender

- Director: John Adams, Toby Poser, Zelda Adams - Metascore: 70 - Runtime: 86 minutes

"Hellbender" has a mother-daughter metal band and witches—what more could you want? Toby Poser and Zelda Adams star as Mother and teen daughter Izzy, respectively, whose relationship becomes strained when a chance meeting with a fellow teenager encourages Izzy to dig into her own dark family history. Making the film was a family affair: Zelda and Lulu Adams are Poser and John Adams' own children, and many of the scenes were improvised .

#19. Resurrection

- Director: Andrew Semans - Metascore: 70 - Runtime: 103 minutes

After starring in last year's "Night House," actress Rebecca Hall made her return in "Resurrection." Here, she plays Margaret, a woman seemingly plagued by her abusive ex-boyfriend (Tim Roth). Both leads turn in committed performances, even as the film's third act veers into nutty nightmare territory.

#18. Wendell & Wild

- Director: Henry Selick - Metascore: 71 - Runtime: 105 minutes

Jordan Peele wrote and stars in "Coraline" director Henry Selick's first feature film since 2009. "Wendell & Wild" centers on demon brothers Wendell (Keegan-Michael Key) and Wild (Peele), who convince 13-year-old Kat (Lyric Ross) to summon them earthside. Of course, stop-motion chaos ensues.

#17. All My Friends Hate Me

- Director: Andrew Gaynord - Metascore: 71 - Runtime: 93 minutes

In this " scary-funny " British satire, reformed jerk Pete (co-writer Tom Stourton) is cautiously excited to spend a birthday weekend with his college friends and prove how much he's changed. But when his pals begin turning against him, he becomes fearful for his life. Is he narcissistic and paranoid, or genuinely in mortal peril?

- Director: Dan Trachtenberg - Metascore: 71 - Runtime: 99 minutes

The latest installment in the "Predator" franchise jumps back to 1719 North America, where Comanche warrior Naru (Amber Midthunder) must defend her people from a bloodthirsty alien threatening their very means of survival. Midthunder emerged as a breakout star, with numerous critics praising the film's Indigenous representation and noting that it's one of the series' strongest entries to date.

#15. The Menu

- Director: Mark Mylod - Metascore: 73 - Runtime: 106 minutes

In this darkly comedic class commentary from frequent "Succession" and "Game of Thrones" director Mark Mylod, young couple Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy) and Tyler (Nicholas Hoult) journey to a remote island to dine at a celebrity chef's lavish restaurant. However, their culinary delight soon turns to horror as they discover the sinister forces behind their fine dining. The film's ensemble cast includes Ralph Fiennes, Hong Chau, and Aimee Carrero.

#14. She Will

- Director: Charlotte Colbert - Metascore: 73 - Runtime: 95 minutes

After undergoing a double mastectomy, "She Will" protagonist Veronica (Alice Krige) visits the Scottish countryside to heal. There, the aging movie star stays at the site where women were once burned as witches hundreds of years earlier. Soon enough, their spirits compel her to enact revenge for them within her own dreams.

- Director: Ti West - Metascore: 73 - Runtime: 102 minutes

This prequel to Ti West's "X" tells the origin story of the villainous Pearl (Mia Goth), a Texas farm girl whose dreams of stardom curdle into bloody violence. The film notably drew from several golden age Hollywood films, including " The Wizard of Oz " and " Mary Poppins ." A sequel to "X" and "Pearl," titled "MaXXXine," is in the works.

#12. You Are Not My Mother

- Director: Kate Dolan - Metascore: 74 - Runtime: 93 minutes

Hazel Doupe stars in this Irish horror film as Char, a young woman who comes into conflict with her grandmother (Ingrid Craigie) after Char's own mother, Angela (Carolyn Bracken), goes missing. When she returns with what seems like a completely different personality, all three generations of women are forced to contend with the inherited trauma they all share.

#11. Hatching

- Director: Hanna Bergholm - Metascore: 75 - Runtime: 86 minutes

"Hatching" follows young Finnish gymnast blogger Tinja (Siiri Solalinna), who lives under the scrutinous gaze of her content creator mother. Things change when Tinja brings home a mysterious egg that eventually hatches and becomes her doppelgänger in revelatory, dangerous ways. The film received general praise from critics for its genre exploration of the repression and societal expectations young girls endure during adolescence.

#10. Bones and All

- Director: Luca Guadagnino - Metascore: 76 - Runtime: 130 minutes

Girl meets boy, girl and boy fall in love, girl and boy… eat people together? That's the basic premise of Luca Guadagnino's dark road trip romance "Bones and All," in which cannibalistic lovers Maren (Taylor Russell) and Lee (Timothée Chalamet) traverse the backroads of Reagan's America. The Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw gave the film a five-star review, calling it "startling in its warped romantic idealism."

- Director: Jordan Peele - Metascore: 77 - Runtime: 135 minutes

Jordan Peele's latest film combines elements of horror, neo-Westerns, and science fiction, as horse-wrangling siblings OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald Haywood (Keke Palmer) attempt to capture footage of the mysterious alien terrorizing their family farm. Steven Yeun, Brandon Perea, and Michael Wincott comprise the supporting cast. Peele told GQ the film was inspired by "our addiction to spectacle."

- Director: Jean Luc Herbulot - Metascore: 78 - Runtime: 84 minutes

This Senegalese horror-thriller centers on the Hyenas, a mercenary trio who find themselves shot down after extracting a drug dealer and his gold amid Guinea-Bissau's coup d'état. Variety 's Richard Kuipers praised "Saloum," noting that it "freely mixes and marries the cinematic languages of spaghetti Westerns, samurai dramas and classic monster movies to tell an exciting and distinctly African story."

#7. Speak No Evil

- Director: Christian Tafdrup - Metascore: 78 - Runtime: 97 minutes

Rule number one of horror movies: Do not go to someone's remote country home. That rule of thumb is lost on the central couple in "Speak No Evil," played by Morten Burian and Sidsel Siem Koch, who agrees to spend a weekend with the Dutch friends they met on vacation at their getaway home. Suffice it to say, tensions shoot sky high. New York Times critic Jeannette Catsoulis called the film "an icy satire of middle class [mores]" that is "utterly fearless in its mission to unsettle."

#6. We're All Going to the World's Fair

- Director: Jane Schoenbrun - Metascore: 78 - Runtime: 86 minutes

"We're All Going to the World's Fair" takes on the terror of internet creepypastas as teenage Casey (Anna Cobb) becomes immersed in an online role-playing horror game, and the lines between fiction and reality begin to blur in strange ways. Director Jane Schoenbrun has confirmed that the film seeks to explore gender dysphoria and trans coming-of-age narratives through horror.

#5. The Innocents

- Direcotr: Eskil Vogt - Metascore: 79 - Runtime: 117 minutes

During "The Innocents," an idyllic summer day turns sinister when several young children demonstrate dark, unnatural powers as soon as their parents turn their backs. Jessica Kiang praised the film in her review for Variety , calling it "both a satisfying genre exercise and a minute observation of the process by which young children acquire morality."

#4. Barbarian

- Director: Zach Cregger - Metascore: 79 - Runtime: 102 minutes

"Barbarian" opens with a truly modern horror scenario: A young woman named Tess (Georgina Campbell) arrives at an Airbnb late at night, only to find it double-booked with someone else (Bill Skarsgård)—yes, the man who once depicted Pennywise the clown in "It." However, when Tess uncovers something disturbing in the rental home's basement, the movie takes a dark turn as a series of twists reveal the house's violent history. Truly, go in knowing as little as possible.

- Director: Ti West - Metascore: 79 - Runtime: 105 minutes

In this '70s horror pastiche, a ragtag crew of actors set out to make an adult film at a rural Texas farmhouse. But when its elderly owners find out, the group finds itself in an unexpected fight for their lives. Mia Goth plays the dual roles of heroine Maxine and the haggardly villain Pearl, who received a prequel origin story in Ti West's other 2022 entry "Pearl."

#2. Mad God

- Director: Phil Tippett - Metascore: 80 - Runtime: 83 minutes

It's not often that you can say a horror film is 30 years in the making, but that's exactly the case when it comes to "Mad God." In this stop-motion horror film, a figure known as the Assassin must descend into a hellish pit and take on monsters and titans. Director Phil Tippett first started working on "Mad God" while working on "RoboCop 2" and "Jurassic Park" in the '90s.

#1. You Won't Be Alone

- Director: Goran Stolevski - Metascore: 80 - Runtime: 108 minutes

"You Won't Be Alone" puts a new spin on witches, following peasant girl Nevena (Sara Klimoska) in 19th-century Macedonia as she's kidnapped and turned into a shapeshifter by a witch. The girl gets an unexpected chance to live in human society, but the witch's jealousy threatens to put her new life in mortal peril.

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‘Smile’ Review: The Demons Grin Back at You in a Horror Movie With a Highly Effective Creep Factor

A therapist looks like she's losing her mind in a shocker that puts a happy face on trauma.

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“ Smile ” is a horror film that sets up nearly everything — its highly effective creep factor, its well-executed if familiar shock tactics, its interlaced theme of trauma and suicide — before the opening credits. In an emergency psych ward, Dr. Rose Cotter ( Sosie Bacon ), a diligent and devoted therapist, is speaking to a woman who sounds like her soul went to hell and never made it back. Her name is Laura (Caitlin Stasey), and she describes, in tones that remain rational despite her tremulous panic, the visions she’s been seeing that no one else can.

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The smile, as a signifier of maniacal fear, goes back a long way. Just think of Jack-’o-lanterns and the Joker, or the leer that flashed across the mottled face of Linda Blair’s Regan MacNeil, or the rictus grins in a movie like “Insidious” or the movie that inspired it, the great 1962 low-budget freak-show classic “Carnival of Souls.” In “Smile,” the first-time writer-director Parker Finn, drawing on films like “Hereditary” and “It Follows” and “The Strangers,” turns the human smile into a spooky vector of the shadow world of evil. The movie has a shivery quality that I, for one, thought “Black Phone” lacked. Yet I wish “Smile” were more willing to be…suggestive.

If you’re haunted by visions of people smiling at you, but no one else sees them, the world is going to think you’re crazy, and much of the drama in “Smile” revolves around Rose looking like a therapist who’s lost her mind. Sosie Bacon, who’s like a taut neurasthenic Geneviève Bujold, creates an impressive spectrum of anxiety, tugging the audience into her nightmare. It makes sense that Rose, teaming up with her police-officer ex-boyfriend (Kyle Gallner), turns herself into an investigator, because that’s what therapists are (at least the good ones). And she’s got a primal trauma of her own: the suicide of her mother, which we glimpse in the film’s opening moments. “Smile” lifts, from “Hereditary,” the idea that the emotional and psychological demons that are passed down through families are our own real-life ghosts. But in this case it’s a megaplex metaphor: literal, free of nuance, illustrated (at the climax) with a demon who sheds her skin, all the better to get inside yours.

There’s a good scene set at Rose’s nephew’s seventh birthday party, where the usual tuneless singing of “Happy Birthday” melts the film into a trance, and the kid unwraps a present that stops the party dead in its tracks. But I would have liked to see three more scenes this dramatic — especially in a movie that lasts 115 minutes. “Smile” will likely be a hit, because it’s a horror film that delivers without making you feel cheated. At 90 minutes, though, with less repetition, it might have been a more ingenious movie. (And why is “Lollipop,” the 1958 hit by the Chordettes, played over the closing credits? It’s one of my favorite songs, but it has zero connection to anything in the movie.) Yet let’s give “Smile” credit for taking a deep dive into the metaphysics of smile horror. The nature of a smile is that it draws you into a connection with the person who’s smiling. That’s why the forces who come after Rose are more than just bogeywomen. That’s why it feels like they’re meant for her.

Reviewed at Regal Union Square, Sept. 26, 2022. MPA Rating: R. Running time: 115 MIN.

• Production: A Paramount Pictures release, in association with Paramount Players, of a Temple Hill Entertainment production. Producers: Marty Bowen, Wyck Godfrey, Isaac Klausner, Robert Salerno. Executive producer: Adam Fishbach.
• Crew: Director, screenplay: Parker Finn. Camera: Charlie Sarroff. Editor: Eeliott  Greenberg. Music: Cristobal “Christo” Tapia de Veer.
• With: Sosie Bacon, Jessie T. Usher, Kyle Gallner, Robert Weigert, Caitlin Stasey, Kal Penn, Rob Morgan.

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Deeply creepy visuals and a standout Sosie Bacon further elevate Smile 's unsettling exploration of trauma, adding up to the rare feature that satisfyingly expands on a short.

You may need to pay close attention in order to keep up with the story, but fans of slow-burning horror should leave Smile with a grin.

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The Absolute Best Horror Movies on Hulu

Stream one of these highly rated scary movies in September.

Hulu  is packed with fascinating horror films. Before we get into a list of the absolute best options on the streaming service, let's cover some worthy alternates. 

Hulu is home to David Cronenberg's Crimes of the Future (2022) and Bong Joon-ho's The Host (2006). There's also spine-chilling sci-fi Alien (1979), psychological horror flick Mandy (2018) and romance-gone-wrong Fresh (2022). Finally, you should check out The Omen (1976), Smile (2022) and Immaculate (2024) starring Sydney Sweeney.

Now, onto a roundup of the best horror movies on the streamer. All these films scored higher than 70 on Metacritic.

A family comes face-to-face with terrifying doppelgängers of themselves in Jordan Peele's thought-provoking second feature. The stellar cast includes Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke and Elisabeth Moss.

Piggy (2022)

A teenage girl is viciously bullied at a local pool and then happens upon a stranger abducting her three tormentors. This gripping, Spanish-language movie is based on a short film and stars Laura Galán.

Infinity Pool (2023)

Mia Goth and Alexander Skarsgård star in this disturbing film directed by Brandon Cronenberg (son of horror filmmaker David) about a vacationing couple that ventures outside their island resort and accidentally commits a crime. You won't be able to take your eyes off scream queen Goth, and Succession fans will enjoy more of the talented Skarsgård.

Hatching (2022)

This Finnish creature movie is plucked straight from your feathery nightmares. The flick introduces Tinja, a 12-year-old girl who discovers a strange egg that hatches into a monstrous bird. The horrendous creature contrasts greatly with her family's expectations of perfection. So it's kind of like a cursed version of E.T. Well, maybe not. You can watch and come to your own conclusions.

Prey (2022)

If you count incredibly capable,  invisible killing machines as scary, you may be watching some of the scenes in Prey through your fingers. This addition to the Predator franchise takes place in the Comanche Nation 300 years ago and centers on a young warrior named Naru. Watch this one for a compelling underdog story about a human determinedly fighting against a powerful alien.

You Are Not My Mother (2021)

You Are Not My Mother introduces Char, a bright teenage girl who's living with her grandmother and mentally ill mother, Angela. Angela disappears, and when she returns, she acts eerily different. It's a creepy, slow-burn mystery you'll want to stick with, anchored by a strong central character.

The First Omen (2024)

This flick stars a captivating Nell Tiger Free (Myrcella Baratheon in Game of Thrones) as an American woman working in Rome who uncovers a scheme to birth the Antichrist. It's a prequel to 1976's The Omen, which is also streaming on Hulu.

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New Netflix Horror Movie Leaves Fans Stunned & Rises to the Top of the Streamer's Charts

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Move over Mark Wahlberg and Halle Berry’s The Union , there’s a new number one movie on Netflix which happens to feature the legendary Glenn Close in a role that no one could have expected. Debuting on August 30, The Deliverance has quickly risen to the top of Netflix’s charts to dethrone the Wahlberg and Berry action-comedy after its two-week stranglehold on the top spot. Directed by Lee Daniels and also starring Andra Day, Mo’Nique, Caleb McLaughlin, and Demi Singleton, the horror film was the talk of the social media this past weekend, and rightfully so.

Based on the Ammons haunting case which took place in Gary, Indiana in 2011, The Deliverance tells the story of a Black family’s struggle with demonic possession, and the lengths a mother will go to in order to save her children. It’s not the first time the Ammons case has been in the spotlight, as paranormal investigator Zac Bagans of Ghost Adventures fame released the documentary titled Demon House in 2018 after purchasing the Ammons home for $35,000 in 2014 with the hopes of getting to the bottom of the supernatural mystery.

The Deliverance

Ebony Jackson, a struggling single mother fighting her personal demons, moves her family into a new home for a fresh start. But when strange occurrences inside the home raise the suspicions of Child Protective Services and threaten to tear the family apart, Ebony soon finds herself locked in a battle for her life and the souls of her children. Inspired by a true story, The Deliverance is directed by Academy Award nominee Lee Daniels and stars Andra Day, Glenn Close, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, and Mo’Nique in a genre-defying take on darkness, possession, and finding a higher power. 

Perhaps the most startling thing in The Deliverance – aside from its portrayal of a family in the thralls of a demonic attack – is the performance of Academy Award-nominee Glenn Close. Close takes on the role of Alberta Jackson, the foul-mouthed matriarch of the family who is also struggling with her own battle against cancer. As a white woman who grew up in the Black community, it’s a part that felt completely alien to Close, who says that she "had no clue" about how to approach Alberta until she had a few discussions with Daniels, who ultimately guided her in the right direction.

What Fans Are Saying About The Deliverance

With just a 31% score from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s clear that not everyone is impressed with The Deliverance , which is only Daniels’ second venture into the realm of horror following his credit as executive producer on The Reading in 2023. Still, users on social media seem to be having a blast with the genre release, and Close’s performance.

As user @kodakk6000 put it: "Man that horror movie The Deliverance was surprisingly good af, seeing Glenn Close as a hood Grandma was crazy af, she killed it."

@SHALOMEIBBOTSON echoed those sentiments, saying that while the overall movie might have been lacking, Close’s performance was second to none: "The Deliverance movie gets a 4/10, but Glenn Close, wearing a lace front wig and ripped skinny jeans, gets a 12/10 from me. I've always rated Glenn as an actor from way back in the 80s, I'll watch anything she's in."

There’s one particular line in The Deliverance that Close utters that had everyone talking, and even got a response from Daniels. Toward the end of the movie, when an exorcism is being performed on young Nate, the demon takes on the grotesque appearance of Close, and says… Well, we’ll let you watch the clip for yourself.

The Deliverance Review: Andra Day & Glenn Close Stun in Lee Daniels' The Exorcist

A troubled woman (Andra Day) and her cancer-stricken mother (Glenn Close) battle a demon in Netflix's unique film.

In a year when horror releases such as Longlegs , In a Violent Nature , and Late Night with the Devil have been standouts, fans would do well to not sleep on The Deliverance . On the surface it might seem like your run-of-the-mill possession film, but Daniels’ movie goes so much deeper than that to highlight themes of addiction, isolation, and faith in such a way that separates it from the pack of other exorcism films that have debuted in recent years.

The Deliverance is available to stream on Netflix.

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The most anticipated horror movies of 2022.

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The horror genre has been going through a great run in recent years, and it’s carrying that success and popularity into 2022, and this year is bringing a lot of interesting titles from the genre – from reboots to sequels and prequels and more adaptations of other works. Although the coronavirus pandemic is not over, theaters all over the world are now open and working again, allowing studios to release all those movies that had to be delayed, and there are a lot of horror movies waiting to finally be projected on the big screen, while others will continue to choose a streaming release.

2021 saw the release of some big horror movies in cinemas and streaming (and, in some cases, in both at the same time), and some of these will even pave the way for some of 2022's most anticipated horror movies. Among the most notable horror movies released in 2021 are Halloween Kills , Last Night in Soho , Candyman , Lamb , A Quiet Place Part II , Malignant , Spiral: From The Book of Saw , There’s Someone Inside Your House , and the Fear Street trilogy, and while not all of them were critical successes, they brought variety to the genre and cinema in general during these complicated times.

Related: The Best Horror Movies Of 2021

Following the steps of the previous years, 2022 will carry on with the reboot trend while also bringing prequels, sequels, adaptations of other works, and original stories, with some of them releasing on streaming as well – and hopefully, none of them will be delayed until next year. Here are the most anticipated horror movies of 2022.

Scream – January 14

The Scream franchise is back with a fifth movie, simply titled Scream . Directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, Scream is set 25 years after the events of the first movie, and now a new killer with the Ghostface mask is terrorizing Woodsboro. The killer targets a new group of teenagers and resurrects secrets from the town’s deadly past, leading the survivors of the past massacres – Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), and Dewey Riley (David Arquette) – to return to their hometown to save Ghostface's new targets (who all seem to be connected to past killers) and discover who’s behind the mask this time. Also starring are Melissa Barrera, Jack Quaid, Mason Gooding, Jenna Ortega, Marley Shelton, Dylan Minnette, Jasmin Savoy Brown, and Mikey Madison. Given the franchise's style of awareness of horror clichés and addressing current trends and social issues, Scream will surely have a lot to say about the current nostalgia trend, which is what brought the franchise back.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre – February 18 (Netflix)

Following the example of the Halloween franchise, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre one is back with a direct sequel to the 1974 original movie. Also titled Texas Chainsaw Massacre and directed by David Blue Garcia, the movie follows Melody (Sarah Yarkin), her teenage sister Lila (Elsie Fisher), and their friends Dante (Jacob Latimore) and Ruth (Nell Hudson), as they head to the remote town of Harlow, Texas to start an idealistic new business venture. Their dream soon turns into a waking nightmare when they accidentally disrupt the home of Leatherface , the deranged serial killer whose blood-soaked legacy continues to haunt the area's residents, including Sally Hardesty (Olwen Fouéré), the sole survivor of his infamous 1973 massacre who's hell-bent on seeking revenge. The previous movie in the franchise, Leatherface , got mixed reviews and its many delays in release led Lionsgate and Millennium Films to lose the rights to future movies, which then landed with Legendary Pictures, so there could be more of Leatherface in the near future.

Morbius – April 1

Sony’s Spider-Man Universe is leaning more towards horror with Morbius , directed by Daniel Espinosa. Morbius tells the story of Dr. Michael Morbius (Jared Leto), a man suffering from a rare blood disease. In his search for a cure, Morbius tries a dangerous treatment involving bats that ends up afflicting him with a form of vampirism, giving him superhuman abilities but none of the superstitious weaknesses associated with vampires. Morbius has gone through various delays but it’s expected to finally release this year, and it's among the most anticipated movies of superhero fans now that the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Sony's universe are blending more following the events of Venom: Let There Be Carnage and Spider-Man: No Way Home .

Related: Who Will Win Marvel Vs DC's 2022 Movie Battle?

The Black Phone – June 24

The Black Phone is a supernatural horror movie directed by Scott Derrickson, written by him and C. Robert Cargill, and based on the 2004 short story by Joe Hill. The Black Phone takes viewers to 1970s Colorado, where five children go missing in a suburban town. Soon after, Finney Shaw (Mason Thames) is kidnapped by a serial killer known as The Grabber ( Ethan Hawke ) and is trapped inside of a soundproof basement. Finding a disconnected phone, Finney discovers its ability to transmit the voices of the killer's previous victims, who try to help him escape. Meanwhile, his sister finds she has recurring visions that may help her find Finney. The Black Phone brings together three of the biggest talents in horror (Derrickson, Cargill, and Hill) and has received positive reviews following its premiere at Fantastic Fest in September 2021.

Nope – July 22

Nope is Jordan Peele’s new horror project, written and directed by him. Nope was revealed by Peele at San Diego Comic-Con 2021, but details about the story haven’t been revealed, though it’s known that, just like his previous horror works ( Get Out and Us ), it will have a social commentary angle. The cast of Nope is formed by Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Steven Yeun, Barbie Ferreira, Brandon Perea, and Michael Wincott, and the only “clues” the audience has about the plot and its characters is the mysterious poster, which has made way for different theories on what this project will be about, making the anticipation even bigger.

Salem’s Lot – September 9

A new adaptation of Stephen King’s 1975 novel Salem’s Lot is coming this year. Directed by Gary Dauberman, Salem’s Lot follows Ben Mears (Lewis Pullman), who returns to his childhood home of Jerusalem's Lot in search of inspiration for his next book, only to discover his hometown is being preyed upon by a vampire, leading him to band together with a ragtag group that will fight the evil presence. Salem's Lot is one of Stephen King's favorite stories and also a favorite of fans, and it got a two-part TV miniseries adaptation in 1979, so expectations are high for this new version.

Halloween Ends – October 14

The final entry in the Halloween reboot trilogy arrives this year. Appropriately titled Halloween Ends , the movie is intended to be the closing chapter of the story of Michael Myers and Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) after years of terror and a lot of trauma. Plot details on Halloween Ends are still unknown, but director David Gordon Green has shared it will take place four years after the events of Halloween Kills and will address the COVID pandemic, even calling it a “coming of age story”. It’s also unknown if it will follow the steps of Halloween Kills and be released simultaneously on Peacock for 60 days. After the disappointment of Halloween Kills , fans of the franchise hope Halloween Ends will be a satisfying conclusion to the reboot trilogy, especially now that Michael Myers has been made supernatural one more time .

Related: Halloween Ends Theory: Karen Replaces Michael Myers As The Villain

Dark Harvest

Dark Harvest is a fantasy horror movie directed by David Slade and based on the novel of the same name by Norman Partridge. In a small Midwestern town, every fall a supernatural specter named "Sawtooth Jack" arises from the cornfields and approaches the town’s church, where violent gangs of teenage boys hungrily await their chance to confront the legendary nightmare in an annual harvest rite of life and death. Richie Shepard (Casey Likes) lives in the shadow of his big brother who won last year’s “October Prize” to get his ticket out of town, so to prove himself and join his brother, Richie pairs up with Kelly Haines (E’myri Crutchfield), who will do whatever it takes to escape this dead-end town. Against the rules and the odds, Richie and Kelly decide to hunt down the legendary nightmare to win the Run and their freedom, together.

Evil Dead Rise (HBO Max)

Evil Dead Rise is the fifth installment in the Evil Dead franchise following the 2013 soft reboot by Fede Álvarez. Directed by Lee Cronin and executive produced by Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell, Evil Dead Rise follows a road-weary Beth (Lily Sullivan) who pays an overdue visit to her older sister Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland), who is raising three kids on her own in a cramped LA apartment. The sisters’ reunion is cut short by the discovery of a mysterious book deep in the bowels of Ellie’s building, giving rise to flesh-possessing demons and thrusting Beth into a primal battle for survival as she is faced with the most nightmarish version of motherhood imaginable. Evil Dead Rise won't see Bruce Campbell's iconic character Ash Williams back, so it's to be seen if there will be references to him or if it will introduce a new character who can take his place.

Hellraiser (Hulu)

Another franchise coming back to life in 2022 is Hellraiser , with a movie set four years after Hellraiser: Judgement and which is also intended to serve as a reboot of the movie series. Simply titled Hellraiser , the project is directed by David Bruckner and will reportedly be closer to the source novella The Hellbound Heart , by Clive Barker, with Jamie Clayton now in charge of playing iconic villain Pinhead.

Prey (Hulu)

The Predator franchise is also coming back this year with its fifth installment titled Prey . Directed by Dan Trachtenberg, Prey is a prequel to the other movies in the franchise and tells the story of a Predator and his first journey to Earth. Plot details about Prey are scarce, but it’s known it will follow a warrior named Naru (Amber Midthunder) who needs to protect her tribe against this highly-evolved alien invader. The Predator franchise is one of the most profitable ones in the realms of sci-fi and horror, and a prequel will surely solve some long-time mysteries of the movie series (or, at least, it will give fans more reasons to fear the Predator )

Jeepers Creepers: Reborn

One more film series that will get a new movie in 2022 is Jeepers Creepers . This fourth movie and reboot of the series is titled Jeepers Creepers: Reborn and is intended to be the first installment in a trilogy separate from the first three movies. Jeepers Creepers: Reborn takes viewers to the Horror Hound festival, which is being held for the first time in Louisiana, and among the attendees are Chase (Imran Adams) and his girlfriend Laine (Sydney Craven), who begins to experience unexplained premonitions and disturbing voices associates to the town's past and the not-so-mythical Creeper. Although the Jeepers Creepers movies haven't been critical successes, they have amassed a fan following that will surely be happy to get a new story featuring the Creeper.

Next: Most Disappointing Horror Movies Of 2021

Key Release Dates

Scream (2022)

The Black Phone

Halloween III: Season of the Witch

• SR Originals

The Worst Netflix Original Horror Movies, According To Rotten Tomatoes

For the horror heads among us, perusing a streamer's genre page can be a goldmine of camp opportunities or disturbing folk horror to keep us up at night, but it can also be home to some of the most tedious stories put to film. Whether it's an ill-advised continuation of a franchise or an adaptation in the wrong hands, even the mighty Netflix isn't immune to acquiring, producing, and/or distributing some stinkers. In fact, they tend to excel at it.

While Rotten Tomatoes isn't the be-all and end-all of movie criticism ( and it almost seems to be trying to discredit it more and more ), it can provide a quick temperature check to a movie's well being — a helpful measure for all of us when considering how we want to spend our time rotting away on the couch. Mileage can vary on how much to trust the aggregated rating of a bunch of critics, but for these original Netflix horror movies, there's a clear warning sign ahead: proceed with caution, because these movies kind of suck.

The Open House – 7%

Beginning with the most rotten by a country mile, Matt Angel and Suzanne Coote's "The Open House" failed to impress even a tenth of the critics that reviewed,  sitting at a pithy 7% on the Tomatometer . The film follows a mother and son forced to move to a secluded mountain following the sudden death of their husband and father. Starring Dylan Minnette and Piercey Dalton, the two encounter strange behaviors and happenstances, eventually going head to head with the film's villain, "Evil Boots."

While the premise of "The Open House" is far from being terrible, it's the execution of the film that sinks any positives. Andrew Wyatt at The Lens defiantly calls the movie, "Utterly insufferable and almost maliciously pointless." While at Den of Geek , Alec Bojalad points to the "astonishingly bad ending" as the film's most significant undoing.

Hypnotic – 24%

Another directorial collaboration between the husband and wife duo Matt Angel and Suzanne Coote, "Hypnotic" follows a cruel hypnotherapist (Jason O'Mara) who engages his client, Jenn (Kate Siegel), in a chilling game which finds her at the mercy of a madman.

There may have been a time where a film like "Hypnotic" felt fresh and exciting, but Matt Fowler at IGN Movies notes that in 2021, the movie  currently sitting with a 24%  instead feels "very out-of-time and, subsequently, very inconsequential. It dilutes what could have been a rather diabolical and memorable story and delivers a disposable ride that ends with a stilted and safe re-entry."

Taking a wider view, Nick Harley at Den of Geek sees "Hypnotic" as part of a greater problem saying, "Netflix original movies are like fast food; they're cheap and easy to make, they'll temporarily fill you up, have a passable taste that's familiar and unchallenging, but you'll either forget about the quick fix or regret it entirely."

Secret Obsession – 28%

Following a car accident, a woman (Brenda Song) finds herself in the hospital with amnesia. Unsure of who she is, how she got hurt, or anything about her life, she's told by the man at her bedside (Mike Vogel) that he is her husband and proceeds to show her pictures of their life together, seemingly filling in her memory gaps. As time wears on, she becomes increasingly wary of the stories she's been told and slowly unravels her nightmarish reality.

"Secret Obsession" gives away the farm in its title and recalls the straight-to-video movies of the '90s. While Pittsburgh Magazine's Sean Collier humorously quips, "They don't make movies like this anymore. And it's good that they don't," Eddie Strait at The Daily Dot doesn't even think "Secret Obsession" meets the standards of sub-par TV movies: "'Secret Obsession' is a soulless lump of generic mush that aspires to the cheese level of a Lifetime original joint but doesn't come anywhere close."

However, both Linda Holmes of NPR and Karen Han of Polygon take the view that while "Secret Obsession" is indeed worthy of its 28% rating , it does exactly what is says on the tin. Holmes writes, "This is a pretty bad movie, but it seems to be bad in the way it's meant to be bad." Adds Han, "'Secret Obsession' does pretty much exactly what you expect it to, and presumably what you want it to, if you watched the brief preview clip while browsing Netflix and then decided that, yes, you would like to hit play."

The Cloverfield Paradox – 22%

Since 2008, the J.J. Abrams' produced "Cloverfield" franchise has spawned a trilogy and a graphic novel to varying degrees of success. Undoubtedly, "10 Cloverfield" starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead and John Goodman has seen the most success, critically and commercially; although the same cannot be said for its successor, "The Cloverfield Paradox."

Released on Netflix in 2018 and directed by Julius Onah, a considerable amount of hype was attached to the film based on the severe secrecy behind the production, aided by a since-deleted tweet from director Ava DuVernay hyping up the ending of "The Cloverfield Paradox" during the Superbowl that year . Sadly, even with a great cast, including Elizabeth Debicki, Daniel Brühl, David Oyelowo, Zhang Ziyi, and Chris O'Dowd, the third (and currently final) franchise installment fell flat.

Summarizing the movie's 22% score perfectly, Alex Hudson at Exclaim! describes the film as "too silly to live up to its potential." Recalling the pre-production madness that prompted the hype train, Cinema Sentries' Matthew St. Clair says, "Unfortunately, the hype surrounding the super secretive and constantly delayed film turned out to be more interesting than the actual film itself."

You can read our full review of "The Cloverfield Paradox" right here .

The Silence – 30%

In a world where vesps, a flying reptile type creature, hunt humans by sound, a deaf teenager and her family seek out shelter and fight for their survival, all without making any noise. No, this isn't "A Quiet Place," it's the Kiernan Shipka and Stanley Tucci led "The Silence" — a movie released a year after John Krasinski's directorial debut and based on a novel published in 2015.

Similar to the coincidental releases of "Olympus Has Fallen" and "White House Down" in 2013, "The Illusionist" and "The Prestige" in 2006, and of course, "Armageddon" and "Deep Impact" in 1998, "The Silence" and "A Quiet Place" seem to be victims of time and space — though, moreso the former than the latter. Where "A Quiet Place" was lauded for its originality and Krasinski's direction, critics were decidedly less enthused about "The Silence," resulting in a 30% rotten rating and unfavorable comparisons aplenty.

Kristy Puchko at IGN Movies succinctly states, "Imagine 'A Quiet Place,' but deeply mediocre." While Charles Bramesco at The Guardian takes aim at Netflix, "This is the most insidious type of knockoff: the one that sincerely expects you to believe that it's the real thing. Leave it to Netflix to take the fun out of incompetence."

Whether the timing was truly coincidental or Netflix attempting to capitalize off of a proven new horror trend, we can all agree that "The Silence" is aggressively forgettable .

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022) – 30%

For as legendary as Tobe Hooper's 1974 "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" has become, as a franchise, it feels like they've been batting at or below the Mendoza Line for the better part of its nine-movie existence. In an effort to jump start and perhaps recapture the essence of the original film, David Blue Garcia's 2022 film, "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," takes place 50 years after Hooper's, following the continuity that began in 1974, and in turn, forgoing the alternate timeline Millennium Films' had previously set up (and concluded with 2017's "Leatherface").

"Texas Chainsaw Massacre" attempted to modernize the franchise by haphazardly including references to social media, trendy buzz words, and commentary on issues prevalent to the times. Lex Briscuso at Paste Magazine describes this effort as "trite," concluding that the film rests "on topical concepts that it doesn't know how to comment on."

Contributing to the film's 30% rating , Josh Korngut for Dread Central found some positives, but ultimately concludes that "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" didn't live up to the reputation set by its original predecessor, commenting, "Even though a handful of violent scenes do breathe some life into the desecrated corpse of this legacy sequel, they in no way make up for the levels of disrespect faced by its characters and its audience."

Quite simply: "Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022)" is one of the worst films of the franchise .

Death Note – 36%

Considered to be one of the worst live-action anime adaptations , "Death Note" currently sits at 36% on the Tomatometer . The original manga series that follows a high school student who discovers a notebook that grants him the ability to kill anyone whose name is written in the pages has proven to be incredibly successful around the world, selling millions of copies and spawning numerous animated television shows. The series raised questions surrounding morality and justice, while also being highly entertaining and thrilling at the same time.

Bringing together a wealth of emerging talent at the time, such as LaKeith Stanfield and Margaret Qualley, as well as screen veterans like Willem Dafoe, Adam Wingard's adaptation and Americanization of "Death Note" just didn't land with audiences or critics. Joshua Rivera at GQ simply states, "I'm not sure who 'Death Note' is for," where Brian Tallerico at RogerEbert.com takes it a step further: "The ending will have you switching off your Netflix app in disgust. If you don't die from boredom before you get there."

Netflix, though, seems completely unbothered by the overwhelmingly negative reaction to "Death Note" and as of October 2022, plans are in place to give this one another go, this time via a live-action adaptation series with Halia Abdel-Meguid set to write and executive produce for "Stranger Things" creators Matt and Ross Duffer by way of their production company Upside Down.

Extinction – 31%

A sci-fi, horror, action mash-up, "Extinction" stars Michael Peña as Peter, a man terrorized by a recurring nightmare that an alien invasion destroys the world. At first understanding these dreams to be the effect of an underlying psychological issue, Peter soon begins to believe that rather than nightmares, they're premonitions of things to come.

What could have been an enticing thinkpiece on humanity and technology becomes a messy plot that clunks its way to the finish line, earning itself a 31% rating . Brad Newsome of the Sydney Morning Herald didn't find the film altogether terrible, "The big twist is a good one, there are some decent action sequences," however Newsome accepts that even with these positives, "there isn't enough here to keep things from dragging."

The general consensus of those who found the movie weak points to a movie that dreams big with little to show for it in reality. "Big Blockbuster aspirations but without much charisma or soul," writes Meagan Navarro at Bloody Disgusting . While Nick Allen at RogerEbert.com calls the movie, "A B-movie with a blockbuster attitude, and not in a fun way."

Old People – 33%

Of all the films on this list, the 2022 film "Old People" directed by Andy Fetscher intrigued me the most. Given society's penchant for discarding our elderly when we've decided they are more burdensome than valuable members, the idea of "Pensioners Fighting Back" feels ripe for either campy entertainment or thoughtful commentary on our derisive impatience as a collective. To my dismay, "Old People" more than deserves its 33% standing .

"The genre isn't known for its profundity, but Fetscher could have leaned into that more and given this movie the chance to become that horror rarity, a genuinely disturbing thriller," comments Roger Moore at Movie Nation . In place of being a properly horrifying picture, "Old People" settles for being a tedious watch where, as John Sooja at Common Sense Media notes, "the worst offense is the writing that has characters often doing stupid things or making dumb decisions, which completely dissolves any suspension of disbelief."

In the Tall Grass – 36%

One of the most prolific authors of our time, Stephen King has had his fair share of work adapted to the big screen and of course, he has his favorites . It's a safe assumption, though, "In the Tall Grass" isn't one of them.

With only 36% on Rotten Tomatoes , "In the Tall Grass" suffers from a common problem among films but a comical one when adapting King's work, even a novella: not enough source material to stretch across an acceptable feature film runtime. King is not a man of brevity and his novellas would be considered regular novels for most writers, but somehow Vincenzo Natali, who wrote and directed the film, struggled to fill a rather taut 90-minute runtime without fumbling.

At Cinema Axis , Courtney Small says, "Deep in the dense grass that surrounds the plot of Vincenzo Natali's 'In the Tall Grass' is a spectacular horror film. Unfortunately, one gets lost trying to find it." More to the point, Brian Lowry at CNN  states, "Despite an uneven track record, 'In the Tall Grass' gives the lamest King adaptations a run for their money, as writer-director Vincenzo Natali labors to stretch out the story, which takes a wrong turn in more ways than one."

Things Heard & Seen – 38%

There's nothing sadder in film than to see a tremendous performer debase themselves with lesser than material. Such is the case in the 2021 film "Things Heard & Seen" written and directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, starring Academy Award nominee Amanda Seyfried.

The film takes us back to 1980 where Catherine (Seyfried), an art restorer living in Manhattan, moves to a spooky farmhouse in upstate New York for a career opportunity for her husband. As Catherine, her husband, and their daughter settle in, Catherine and her daughter begin witnessing and feeling a spirit in their new home. "Things Heard & Seen" is a classic ghost story in every sense, including being based on real-life events , but it's one that flies every which way, never landing any of its attempts at tension or thrills. Trading in, instead, trite boredom.

ABC News critic Peter Travers colorfully quips, "You know a ghost story is a hot mess when it strands a stellar Amanda Seyfried and a top cast in a remote, country house haunted by toxic masculinity, dangling plot threads and nothing worth hearing or seeing." Almost unanimously across the board, critics agreed that Seyfried shouldn't be looped in with this mess of a film, as David Ehrlich at IndieWire says, "[W]hile Seyfried acquits herself and then some, an actor of her talent is wasted on a character that spends most of the movie just connecting the dots."

I have to imagine that the 38% of critics who liked this film , only did so because of Seyfried.