As we say goodbye to 2022, we asked a few Fango friends a simple question: “What was your favorite horror thing of the year?” We’re not making a top movies of the year list because our annual Chainsaw Awards are our big version of that. So instead, we invited some friends to share their favorite horror things of 2022.
We told these folks that their favorite thing could be anything — a movie, a show, a scene, a score, a poster, a moment…whatever brought them great joy within the genre this year. The below contributors have brought joy to many of us in various ways in the last twelve months (and beyond), so what brought joy to these joy makers? Read on to find out.
Josh Ruben – (Actor, A Wounded Fawn; Director, Werewolves Within)
I could go off endlessly praising Rachel Sennott’s ingenious performance in Bodies Bodies Bodies or cheat, citing John Hyam’s SICK from Kevin Williamson (a 2023 release, but I saw it at *2022’s* Beyond Fest, sue me!). Instead, I’ll drop some clues as to my Favorite Horror Thing of 2022. Did you see the one about lengthy monologues? How about the one with Rahul Kohli as a baby? Or, when he offers his wife a “present” aka, the prosthetic head of John Malkovich?
I’m talking about Mike Flanagan’s TikToks. They’re my favorite horror thing of 2022. Flanagan is already a prolific master of heartfelt horror and jump scares with Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass, The Midnight Club, and the upcoming Dark Tower series… but, my god, he’s also FUNNY AS FUCK!? Adding to this multi-hyphenate mastery, the dude is evidently a generous mensch behind the scenes. This guy sets the bar. I wanna be Mike Flanagan when I grow up, and yet, I hardly know how to upload my Jason Bateman impressions.
Josh Miller – (Writer, Violent Night)
When I first moved to Los Angeles in the early 2000s, back in caveman times, a friend gave me a bootleg VHS copy of Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace. For those unfamiliar, Darkplace was a brilliantly bizarre British television horror-comedy-mockumentary series created by and starring Matthew Holness and Richard Ayoade that lasted but one glorious season in 2004. I don’t have the word count here to properly summarize the show-within-a-show concept, but to my uninitiated American eyes at the time, it seemed to come from another universe of comic intelligence. It became a cult classic in the UK, and most of the cast and crew went on to other stellar things: Matt Berry, Alice Lowe, Julian Barratt, Noel Fielding, Paul King, and Stephen Merchant.
I don’t know if I can actually call Garth Marenghi’s TerrorTome the long-awaited follow-up because Darkplace was the exact kind of show I wanted more of but was positive I’d never get. Yet here we are! TerrorTome is as perfectly meta as I could have hoped for; in some ways even better than getting a new series. As impossible to summarize quickly as Darkplace (read this), the basic idea is that Matthew Holness’s fictional author Garth Marenghi has now written another book that is also about an author (of course) who buys an accursed typewriter that soon takes over his life and unleashes fountains of horrors from the author’s genius brain. You can purchase physical copies of the book if you’re willing to pay UK shipping, but I couldn’t resist the audiobook, read by Holness himself (in character as Marenghi, reading his audiobook). “I know writers who use subtext, and they’re all cowards.” – Garth Marenghi.
C. Robert Cargill – (Writer, The Black Phone, Sinister)
The Acceptance. For years horror has been a marginalized genre, treated as an embarrassing but necessary low-cost money maker for studios and production houses. In 2022, that all finally changed. That dam has been buckling for years, but this year it burst. And it is not due to the work of one voice, but many. In September, I tweeted about how this year was proving to be the 1982 of horror, a comment met with both controversy and skepticism. But in three short months, we went from critics saying only superhero movies and remakes made money to only superhero movies and horror movies.
The year was not only replete with horror blockbusters, but a steady stream of beautiful, funny, brilliant, experimental, and audacious entries into the genre, met not with repulsion, but admiration from audiences and critics alike. A genre that once considered a 60+ Rotten Tomatoes rating a big win now regularly sees scores in the 80s and 90s. And as someone who gets to make horror, I want to thank the thousands who came before us, paving the way here. We aren’t the margins anymore; we are the mainstream.
Michael Varrati – Filmmaker, Cult Film Commentator
All told, I think 2022 was a remarkable year for horror. We saw creators across a number of mediums push boundaries, innovate bold original stories, and approach classic themes from new angles. That’s why, in considering my favorite horror moment of the year, a particular title comes to mind…because, in many ways, it embodies all of these things. Taking a simple and almost universally recognized bit of holiday kitsch and making it the portal to a surprise horror film, the Adult Swim Yule Log is the kind of delicious oddity I yearn to see more of in genre. Released with no warning or advance fanfare, the film’s conceit of a cozy fireplace video slowly becoming a full-fledged cabin in the woods horror picture may seem on the surface “gimmicky,” but to apply that descriptor dismissively would be a great disservice.
Legendary lord of ballyhoo William Castle always understood that a well-executed gimmick was no mere ploy but a means to draw the audience deeper. Viewers, especially horror fans, want to surrender to the spectacle…and I think we need to give proper credit to works that make that happen. I love movies that disrupt our expectations or play with format, taking what we know, subverting it, and delivering something wholly unique.
To that end, Adult Swim Yule Log is an unquestionably disruptive piece of media. Yes, it trades in the late-night bizarreness that we expect from the brand, but pushes far past mere absurdism. Filmmaker Casper Kelly and the cast and crew imbue the piece with interwoven social commentary and bursts of enough genuine humanity that the “what the fuck” moments are made all the more tangible and lasting. That is all to say that yes, Adult Swim Yule Log is brazen, unapologetically weird, and certainly steeped in a nice balance of satire and outright stoner humor. But it’s also layered and unforgiving. By taking something we all inherently know and presenting it in a new way, Adult Swim Yule Log didn’t just give us something fun, it gave us a true surprise.
Justin Benson – Director, Something In The Dirt
I was going to write about Alan Moore’s latest (and possibly final) collection of comic works, the Providence compendium. But then I realized that though I read it in 2022, it was actually released in late 2021, so I’ll keep this honest. The back cover describes it as “The Watchmen of horror,” and perhaps that is all that should be said before opening it up anyway. I look forward to a day when this bone-chilling analysis of Lovecraft can be debated among friends, but for now, I’ll focus on the year at hand.
My favorite horror movies of the year were probably Ti West’s extremely impressive two-feature saga Pearl and X, as well as Jordan Peele’s Nope. It’s so rare that we get a big summer movie that is as singular and ambitious as Nope. Beautifully shot by Hoyte van Hoytema with some game-changing day-for-night photography, the artistry across all departments is bursting with bold choices. While it has no easy go-to comps – which is wonderful in itself – I suppose I might describe it as Magnolia with a genre spine, but even that is obviously way too reductive.
A Jordan Peele superfan since the Gremlins 2 sketch, I walked out of an electrified London theater inspired by what could be achieved at this scale. A smart, original, studio tentpole experience in our rearview, as my fiancé and I discussed the merits on a summer evening stroll through Hackney, we kept returning to the same beautiful thought: “It can still be done.”
Aaron Moorhead – Director, Something In The Dirt
My favorite thing I read this year, and perhaps ever, is Richard Powers’ Bewilderment. A follow-up to his Pulitzer-winning tome The Overstory, almost no one would initially categorize this as horror. It has little intent to terrify, but every intention to share a mutual feeling of mourning our existence, and dread at its fast-approaching unraveling. I was so moved by this book that I wrote Richard a letter, and he confirmed that he was happy to find a shared aesthetic in the deep-set Lovecraftian dread that permeates the novel and my own work with Justin, so I’m taking that and running with it so I can still be part of this article.
Bewilderment is a staggering, brilliant, beautiful piece of humanist fiction about a single father trying to raise his young son in our modern-day world gone mad. His son does not understand why the world is the way that it is, and he’s right — as a group, we humans have gone insane on a self-hating suicidal death-march, but individually almost none of us want what we’ve made. The father doesn’t want to lie to his son about the nature of reality, but he knows he needs to give him the emotional understanding to survive in this imperfect world, and those things are in direct conflict.
It’s about the incomprehensibility of the human race having willingly chosen to craft the world to be this way. Powers sees the imbalance of our incredible accomplishments as a species and how we’ve othered ourselves from the natural world, resulting in not just the missed opportunities in our one shot at telling the story of our own existence, but in our self-destruction.
I beg you to read this book. I was in a trance for days after reading it. I’ve gifted it over, and over, and over for almost everyone I know. I hope it hits you the way it did me, and leaves you with a blast crater you can only fill with love.
Brea Grant – Director, Torn Hearts
Anyone who knows me or has seen my work knows that I love a musical number in my horror viewing, particularly when it comes with dancing. The Wednesday Addams dance sequence hit that perfect spot of fun, darkness, and what I can only call pure horror joy. It was a moment that made me sit up in my seat with a happy smile plastered across my face. And then I got to relive it again and again, watching adorable goths recreate it on the internet. To the incredible goth kids – I have watched all your cute videos of your arms flailing and loved it so much! Jenna Ortega, showrunners Alfred Gough, and Miles Millar, and Tim Burton, should all be patting themselves on the back for creating pure horror joy in even the darkest of hearts in the world, including my own!
Honorable mention to other moments that gave me this same pure horror joy: Justin Long driving down the highway in Barbarian (which got applause in the theater, because what a bold move!!)! The ending of Pearl! The ending of Bodies Bodies Bodies! Daniel Kaluuya’s final battle with [redacted for spoilers but seriously, just go watch Nope!] And, of course, the ending of The Rehearsal, which, if you ask me, is the most horrific show on television. Thank you for the joy this year, horror fam!
Travis Stevens – Director, A Wounded Fawn
I bathed in the abundance of great horror released in 2022 like Lionel Cosgrove with a lawnmower in Braindead. In fact, it was too much! I’m still spitting out blood, trying to catch my breath.
Throughout the onslaught of memorable movies, essays, podcasts, film festivals, twitter threads, crosswords, artworks, and magazine covers, the horror trend that I was most excited by was how the element of surprise was utilized in a number of interesting ways. From good old Leatherface doing his chainsaw dance in a wash of bright neon light, to a Comanche warrior teaching the Predator a thing or two about hunting, to Ti West dropping a pair of films that are as bold as they are stylistically different, to the tape measuring, breastfeeding, high flying narrative twists in Barbarian, to the little clown that could slaughtering the box office. This year was filled with unexpected concepts, projects, scenes, and successes that served as an exhilarating reminder of just how effective horror can be when the audience has no idea what might happen next.
I loved it, and I hope it’s a sign of things to come.
Scott Wampler – Host, The Kingcast Podcast
This was a banner year for the horror genre on several different fronts (those “bulletproof” box office returns, the sheer variety in the types of horror we saw released), but it was a particularly strong year for genuinely disturbing, sock-you-in-the-gut horror. I saw multiple excellent horror films this year that I probably won’t be revisiting as often as I’ll rewatch, say, Jordan Peele’s Nope, and chief among them was a vicious little title by the name of Resurrection.
Written and directed by Andrew Semans (whose screenplay for this film landed on the 2019 Black List), Resurrection initially presents itself as your standard-issue stalker movie, with an utterly incredible Rebecca Hall being menaced by an unhinged ex played by Tim Roth. Then, scene by scene, Semans ratchets up the tension and the weirdness and the sheer horror of it all before arriving at one of the more shocking endings I saw this year. I’ve spent more time thinking about Resurrection than any other horror film I watched in 2023, and cannot wait to see what this filmmaker does next. Go in blind, expect the unexpected, and don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Lea Anderson – FANGORIA Contributor
I’m saying it now, folks: 2022 is destined to go down as a historic year for horror. And because the sheer abundance of mind-bendingly excellent genre work made selecting a single favorite moment an exquisitely excruciating task, I’ve decided to just lean into failure. There were two horror moments that had me lose my effing mind; moments that have stayed with me, that I’ve thought about every single day since their initial releases.
This is real testimony given Nanny’s January premiere (and subsequent Grand Jury Prize win) at Sundance. And while I could carry on for several thousand words about all the brilliant movements in this film, what it all really boils down to is writer-director Nikyatu Jusu‘s conjuring of Mami Wata and Brother Anansi to ultimately ask the ever-prescient question, “how do you use your rage?” As terrifying as it is majestic, Nanny is a Black folkloric study in sublimity.
Jordan Peele was also chasing the sublime with Nope, whose alien predator angel, Jean Jacket, is easily my favorite monster of the year. A UFO essentialized as a simultaneous eye and mouth, the scene where OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) watches as she hovers and pukes blood over his family home elicits the type of terror that only expands in the details: the undigested objects of her last meal piercing the house and lawn, the screams of said meal as they’re digested through her system. Because Nope is primarily concerned with the relationship between spectatorship and consumption, this particular shot functions as a distillation of the entire project—a true horror movie moment for the ages.
Emily Bennett – Writer/Director, Alone With You
The ending of Alex Garland’s Men horrified me in a way I’d never quite experienced before. This polarizing film (and thank goodness for polarizing films!) seemed simple at the outset but culminated in a sequence so visceral and grotesque that I actually laughed out loud in the theatre.
At the end of the film, the antagonistic men give birth to each other, one by one. Each man becomes rapidly pregnant to the point of bursting and births another man in a mess of tearing flesh and blood. Sometimes the men are birthed through the anus. Sometimes through the spine. Sometimes feet protrude through a standing man’s mouth and slowly work their way out until the birth is complete. And I found my jaw on the floor every time, watching the madness unfold. It was somehow horrifying and hilarious at the same time. And it was a twisted joy to watch. I think Garland is one of our most exciting filmmakers today. He continues to show audiences things they’ve never seen before, and Men is no different. This gorgeous allegory provided my favorite horror sequence this year, and I cannot wait to see what Garland does next.
Toby Poser of The Adams Family – Director/Actor, Hellbender
I’m a biology geek, so I can’t get enough of anatomical functions that are necessary (and very human) but also uncomfortable or horrifically jarring. So my favorite visual moment in film this year was the birthing sequence in Men. Birth is a wild thing in and of itself – anatomy pushed to the extreme. So not only was it incredible to watch the physical enactment (again and again, and depicted so gloriously), but adding men to the typically female equation adds a whole new mind-bending element of Fuck Yeah.
Jason Kauzlarich – FANGORIA Creative Director
Working at Fango” top horror moments “are a plenty, but showing the Hellraiser cover to the creators at Fantastic Fest (before issue#17 hit shelves) and seeing their enthusiasm and reaction in real-time is something I will never forget. From Jamie Clayton holding the cover, to the cast of A Wounded Fawn seeing their spread and showing Noah Segan the layout for the article based on his new movie Blood Relatives. Nothing can top that.
Phil Nobile Jr. – FANGORIA Editor In Chief
Before even celebrating the specifics of the film itself, my favorite thing in 2022 was walking into a theater and seeing a new David Cronenberg movie playing on a big screen. I didn’t think it would happen again in my lifetime, and to be clear, that lifetime has been spent seeing David Cronenberg movies on the big screen. Crimes of the Future felt both familiar and alien, unquestionably and proudly a David Cronenberg Movie, while at the same time subverting all expectations. We were shocked, amused and confronted as Cronenberg’s body horror palette once again served as a launchpad for more sociological concerns. I’ve been reluctant to revisit it, for fear the rush and thrill of seeing Brand New Cronenberg be dissipated.
Angel Melanson – FANGORIA Digital Editor
Holy shit, we’ve been wonderfully and wildly spoiled this year. Ghostface gracing the big screen once again felt like a whole-ass event, an abundance of original horror and surprises mentioned above, and an uptick of all-out bonkers horror hitting screens. Being the Digital Editor, most of the things I do are… well, digital. Virtual. So in the rare instances I’m able to experience face-to-face interactions without a screen between us, be it at festivals, conventions, screenings, or other events, there’s something so special about the time there and the people I get to interact with. From our favorite filmmakers to horror icons and all the Fango readers that have shared kind words or fond Fango memories with me, I’m grateful. To everyone who shared their time with me this year —you are my favorite horror experience of the year. (Ok, Neve Campbell ranks very high on this list, but so do you!) Thank you to everyone I had the opportunity to meet, and if we didn’t meet in 2022… well, I hope to meet you in 2023. Lots to look forward to on the horizon. Cheers, creeps!
