The 20 Best Horror Movies of 2022
2022 has been a fantastic year for horror fans. We’ve seen cult classics revived, and a brand-new story here and there emerging to become a modern classic. While it is safe to say that we can look forward to more great films in 2022, here are the 20 best horror movies of 2022 so far.
20. They/Them
Recently released, They/Them lands a spot at the bottom of our ‘Best Horror Movies of 2022’ list. While it has an interesting premise. It’s a decent slasher with a really good cast. However, the filmmakers manage to butcher the story in the final act.
Written and directed by Oscar-nominated screenwriter John Logan (Gladiator, The Aviator) and starring Kevin Bacon, Carrie Preston and Anna Chlumsky, They/Them could have been one of the best horror films of the year, but sadly falls into a few traps that it never works it way out of.
The story follows Jordan, a nonbinary teen who visits a conversion therapy camp in the woods. There they meet a group of other queer and trans teens and the suspiciously nice camp staff. Things go terribly wrong when the camp is stalked by a masked killer.
19. The Requin
Written and directed by Le-Van Kiet, this horror/thriller stars Alicia Silverstone, James Tupper, Kameron Hood, Deidre O’Connel, Jennifer Mudge, and Danny Chung in a chilling tale where the young couple, Jaelyn and her husband Kyle find themselves stranded at sea after a tropical storm hits while they are vacationing on a remote island in Vietnam. The pair find themselves fighting to survive in great white-infested waters.
Yes, this is just another shark-related film but Alicia Silverstone keeps the movie afloat with her epic acting.
18. Firestarter
Firestarter is the story of a little girl’s fear as she develops pyrokinetic abilities and is soon after abducted by a secret government agency that wants to use her powers as a weapon.
Based on a Stephen King novel, this story about a little girl just trying to protect herself and her family is goosebump-inducing.
Starring Ryan Kiera Armstrong as the main lead, Zac Efron, Sydney Lemmon, Gloria Reuben, Michael Greyeyes, and Tina Jung. Directed by Keith Thomas the movie has a mere 10% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and although it isn’t a bad movie, critics and audience agreed that it was no match for the Stephen King book it was adapted from.
17. Umma
Korean for “mother”, Umma finds Grey’s Anatomy star Sandra Oh as a Korean immigrant with her daughter discovers her estranged mother’s ashes, making her vulnerable to a vicious spirit intent on claiming her body for itself.
Creator Iris K. Shim creates a chilling psychological thriller that explores generational trauma and the literal fear of becoming one’s mother. Starring Fivel Stewart alongside Sandra, as well as MeeWha Alana Lee, Tom Yi, Odeya Rush and Dermot Mulroney, the movie has been criticised as being “overstuffed” and “just missing the mark”.
16. Morbius
Starring Jared Leto in the lead role as the titular Marvel comic antihero, while working to cure himself of his rare blood disease, biochemist Michael Morbius accidentally transforms himself into a vampire.
Morbius also stars Adria Arjona, Michael Keaton, Jared Harris, Matt Smith, and Tyrese Gibson.
With a pathetic 15% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes but a 71% audience score (with over 5000 voters), Morbius was seen as a failure, but fans and audiences weren’t nearly as critical about the film as critics. Whatever you think of it, Morbius deserves some kind of recognition for reintroducing vampires to cinema again. For that alone, it deserves a place on our ‘Best Horror Movies of 2022’ list.
15. Texas Chainsaw Massacre
This latest (9th) instalment in the long-running franchise is a Netflix direct sequel to Tobe Hooper’s 1974 that didn’t do much for the streaming service other than providing a gory reemergence for Leatherface after nearly 50 years in the ghost town of Harlow.
From the minds that created the twisted and gruesome Evil Dead and Don’t Breathe, Fede Álvarez and Rodo Sayagues, this sequel is just as gruesome as every instalment before it.
Starring Sarah Yarkin, Elsie Fisher, mark Burnham, Alice Krige, Neil Hudson, and Jacob Lattimore, director David Blue Garcia tried to modernize the cult-classic horror but ended up with a messy and chaotic sequel with a few small references and throwbacks, with plenty of visual shocks and blood-soaked thrills while leaving everything substantial in the past.
14. Fresh
Fresh is described as a horrific satire on modern dating as a newly-in-love young woman named Noa discovers her new boyfriend Steve has some strange appetites.
After a very successful first date, Nao is smitten with the man and accepts Steve’s invitation to a romantic weekend getaway.
The movie is a little disjointed and jarring, however, that seems intentional based on the sinister theme of the film.
It stars Daisy Edgar-Jones as lead actress Noa, Sebastian Stan as Steve, Jonica T. Gibbs, Andrea Bang, Dayo Okeniyi, Charlotte Le Bon, and Brett Dier, and directed by Mimi Cave
13. Hatching
Hatching features a family who has curated their entire lives for social media and portrays themselves as the perfect family. Their young daughter discovers a mysterious egg in the woods and secretly nurtures it. It becomes clear that this is no ordinary egg when it triples in size after the young girl has hidden it away for a while, eventually growing almost to the size of her. What hatches is something that the perfect little family were not expecting.
Starring Siiri Solalinna, Sophia Heilkkila, Oiva Ollila, and Jani Volanen, and directed by Hanna Bergholm, this horror movie – one of the best of the year – has put her in the spotlight as a bright new talent.
This is definitely one of the best and creepiest horror movies of 2022 so far.
12. Hellbender
There have been a few great folk horror movies coming out this year and Hellbender is a great low-budget example of one. This movie sees a lonely teen who lives quietly out in the woods with her mother and finds out that her family has ties to witchcraft, their family name being Hellbender.
The quiet horror of the film is a quality that gets under a viewer’s skin. For a low-budget horror, the movie is fantastic. The movie was made entirely by the filmmaking family John Adams, Zelda Adams and Toby Poser as a horror film based on their music project conceived during the height of the pandemic.
This is a classic coming-of-age story with aspects of folk horror and witchcraft, and it “stirs up a boiling cauldron of adolescent angst”.
11. Master
When a freshman at an elite university of Ancaster finds herself the target of anonymous racist attacks, she, alongside two professors must determine what type of menace is haunting their school.
Starring Regina Hall, Zoe Renee, Julia Nightingale, Talia Ryder, Ella Hunt, Noa Fisher, Will Hochman, and Amber Gray, and written and directed by Mariama Diallo, the film has been praised as “a masterful blend of social analysis and horror” and has a 74% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
10. Men
Alex Garland (creator of the likes of Ex Machina and Annihilation) brought body horror into the world in a truly graphic film that rivals the despicable scenes of James Wan’s renowned Saw.
Starring Jessie Buckley, Rory Kinnear, Gayle Rankin, and Paapa Essiedu, this movie is set in Leicestershire, where the main character Harper, a widowed woman, is travelling to a manor house in the English Countryside after the suicide of her emotionally abusive husband. Strange things start to occur in and around the manor house, and Harper ends up in a nightmare made from her darkest fears. Even stranger, Rory Kinnear seems to play almost every character besides Harper and her husband in the narrative, forcing the audience to question Harper’s sanity from the get-go.
With extreme body horror provocations, playful twists and sexist undertones, Men may not be everyone’s cup of tea.
9. Crimes of the Future
Crimes of the Future was written and directed by David Cronenberg as a comment on bodily autonomy, climate change, and government control, all wrapped up into a visually stunning film.
This science-fiction body horror film is set in the future and stars Viggo Mortensen – as Saul, Léa Seydoux – as Caprice, and Kristen Stewart. Saul and Caprice are performance artists living in a future where pollution has caused humans to lose their ability to feel pain and sometimes grow useless, novel organs. In a world-renowned act, the pair surgically remove Saul’s organs.
There is truly no other way to describe this body horror than disturbing as they cut and remove their flesh in acts that should be painful but aren’t because pain has disappeared from the world.
8. Scream
It isn’t often that a horror movie serial killer reaches the ranks of Leatherface, Michael Myers or Jason, but Ghostface has and he is returning once again. Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (Radio Silence) have brought the legendary killer back to life in the fifth instalment of the widely successful slasher saga.
25 years after the original Woodsboro murders, Ghostface reappears and starts targeting a group of teenagers. The characters of Roger L. Jackson, Marley Shelton, Skeet Urich, Courteney Cox, David Arquette and undisputed Scream Queen Sidney Prescott played by Neve Campbell must return to save Melissa Barrera, Kyle Gullner, Mason Gooding, Mikey Madison, Dylan Minnette, Jenna Ortega, Jack Quaid, Jasmin Savoy Brown, and Sonia Ammar, or at least as many as they can.
As a true homage to Craven’s work, it’s no surprise that Scream has a 76% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and was such a success that another sequel, Scream 6, has already been greenlit.
7. See for Me
Chilling home invasion horror uses an app called ‘See for Me’ to help the visually impaired. When thieves break into a secluded mansion while Sophie, a blind former skier is house (and kitty)-sitting in a secluded mansion, she has to depend on Kelly, an army veteran offering virtual support from thousands of miles away to both defend herself and survive.
Starring Skylar Davenport, Jessica Parker Kennedy, Natalie Brown, Keaton Kaplan, Laura Vandervoort, and George Tchortov. Directed by Randall Okita, known for his innovative approach to storytelling, See for Me is truly and realistically chilling.
6. The Black Phone
Directed by the intrepid director Scott Derrickson and conceived after the director was replaced by Sam Raimi in the directorial role for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, The Black Phone was co-written by the director and C.Robert Cargill, adapted from Joe Hill’s 2004 short story by the same name.
Starring Ethan Hawke as The Grabber and Mason Thames as lead character Finney, a 13-year-old boy who is kidnapped by the notorious child kidnapper and held hostage in a soundproof basement. Also starring Madeleine McGraw, Jeremy Davies, James Ransone, and E.Roger Mitchell, this thriller is about the titular disconnected rotary phone on the wall that allows Finney to talk to the previous victims of The Grabber who won’t let him suffer the same fate.
The Black Phone is definitely one of the best and possibly the most successful horror movies of 2022 so far.
5. Watcher
Meet breakthrough star Maika Monroe once again in Chloe Okuno’s psychological thriller, Watcher. Monroe stars as Julia who moves to the small town of Bucharest with her husband Francis (played by Karl Glusman) where she, unfortunately, becomes the latest target of a serial killer who lives across the street, nicknamed “the Spider” (played by Burn Gorman).
While the movie is posed as a rudimentary stalker-slasher, the excellent direction and acting set it above others as a slow-burning, feminist psychological horror.
4. You Are Not My Mother
You Are Not My Mother is Kate Dolan’s psychological thriller that borders on folk horror, and manages to accomplish what Umma set out (and failed) to do.
Starring Hazel Doupe, Carolyne Bracken, Paul Reid, Katie White, Jade Jordan, Ingrid Craigie, Jordanne Jones, and Aoife Spratt, the movie is described as a deep, emotionally resonant Celtic/Irish folk horror that is extremely atmospheric.
Doupe plays teenager Char whose mother, Angela briefly goes missing. Once she returns several days later, her personality has radically changed, her bizarre behaviour pointing towards a more sinister, demonic force at work.
3. You Won’t Be Alone
Set in 19th Century Macedonia, You Won’t Be Alone is the directorial debut of Goran Stolevski, starring Sarah Klimoska, Naomi Rapace, Alice Engler, Anamaria Marinca, and Arta Dobroshi.
Sarah Klimoska stars as a young girl by the name of Nevena who is kidnapped by a witch and transformed into a shape-changing witch herself, before being abandoned. Left to fend for herself, Nevena accidentally kills a nearby villager, taking on her victim’s form. The horror follows her as she continues to kill to discover what it means to be human, slowly integrating into human society.
Perhaps not the most typical of scary stories, this movie earns its spot as one of the best horror films this year has to offer as it breaks the horror trope constraints in an artsy and poetic way that is disturbing, intense, beautiful, and never strays too far from its true essence as folk horror.
Despite being the director’s first film, the movie has a shocking 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes with excellent reviews. If you haven’t seen it yet, you’ve got to. This is one of the best horror movies of 2022.
2. X
This horror is rated as one of the best this year has produced thus far, as Ti West brings us this unsettling thriller which was written, directed, produced and edited by them, and distributed by A24.
Starring Mia Goth as both Maxine Minx and Pearl, the rest of the cast is made of Jenna Ortega, Martin Henderson, Brittany Snow, Owen Campbell, Stephen Ure and Scott Mescudi (Kid Cudi).
The film sees a group of aspiring filmmakers set out to make a tasteful adult film in the 1970s. Deciding that an elderly couple’s farm is their destination for shooting, the group soon discover that the elderly Pearl and Howard are not as inviting as they seemed.
X is definitely one of the best horror movies of 2022 so far.
1. Nope
Two siblings running a horse ranch in California discover something wonderful and sinister in the skies above after a random object falling from the sky results in the death of their father, while the owner of an adjacent theme park tries to profit from the mysterious, otherworldly phenomenon, an uncanny and chilling discovery.
This horror film marks the latest in Jordan Peele’s works and brings back stars like Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Steven Yeun, and Barbie Ferreira for an extra-terrestrial horror film.
After the success of Get Out, it should be no surprise that Jordan Peele’s Nope has made it onto the ‘Best Horror Movies of 2022’ list.
Honourable mentions that have yet to be released but are some of the most highly anticipated upcoming scary movies: Bodies Bodies Bodies, Smile, Salem’s Lot (based on the novel by Stephen King), Dark Harvest, Don’t Worry Darling (starring Harry Styles and Florence Pugh), Halloween Ends (coming this spooky season in October), The Devil’s Light, Orphan: Fist Kill, and Disappointment Blvd.