With the recipient of the Palme d’Or announced and the rest of the Cannes prizes now awarded, 2022s competitors are making their way to more screens and wider audiences.
Several movies provoked walk-outs, including the highly anticipated Crimes of the Future, David Cronenberg’s new film. Hatching, which premiered as part of Sundance’s Midnight section, plays within the same world of body horror as Cronenberg often does, but tackles themes of domestic horror and coming-of-age turmoil. Horror as a genre is rife with excellent films that deal with these universal fears.
Raw (2016)
Though her more recent movie, Titane, is on everyone’s mind, Julia Ducournau’s 2016 film will sink its teeth right into its viewers. When a lifelong vegetarian follows her older sister’s footsteps to veterinary school and is forced to consume meat, a new kind of hunger overwhelms her.
This coming-of-age tale is a unique look at the stresses of going away to school and encountering new parts of oneself. Though its turns are dark, it leaves its audience plenty of room to mull over the experience.
Eraserhead (1977)
This classic tale of young parents' anxieties has been confounding, shocking, and frightening audiences for decades now. Whether he’s considered a horror director or someone with a wider scope, David Lynch is an influential director and his style is unmistakable.
Many aspects of Eraserhead defy traditional explanation, but every element works to provoke viewers' minds and hearts. It’s weird and often uncomfortable, as life can be sometimes. Beyond the oddities, there are universal worries brought to life here in the meditative mind-boggling journey.
Border (2018)
Border is much more of a romance film than a horror, but it blurs genres into a fable-like story of crime, connection, and self-discovery. Its strangeness comes from this genre-bending that will bring viewers on a wild emotional ride and visuals that have never been put to film before.
It’s a messy, shocking, and deeply affecting movie. Set in Sweden, a border patrol agent with unusual gifts meets a curious man with whom she shares some connection. While she helps to investigate a crime, their bond grows deeper, leading to revelations that will change her life forever.
The Witch (2015)
An exiled puritan family begins turning on each other when their youngest child goes missing in The Witch, a modern classic. Much of the film is permeated by an ominous mood, but the battle waged between the teenage girl, Thomasin, and her domineering father stands at the forefront.
This tense folk-horror film has a slow pace that builds to a bizarre yet satisfying finish. With well-drawn, complex characters weighty questions of allegiance, duty, conspiracy, zealotry, and more interplay on screen.
Men (2022)
The newest picture from Alex Garland sees a woman (portrayed by the remarkable Jessie Buckley) go on a personal retreat following her ex-husband’s shocking death. What comes next is an atmospheric nightmare in the English countryside.
Garland mutilates his characters, physically and emotionally, and pulls no punches when depicting all that grotesquery. Thematically, Men is all about the way women navigate patriarchal society and the various insults many women are made to bear. It’s folk-horror at its most gruesome, and it makes no apologies for its harsh visuals.
The Silenced (2015)
Set during the Japanese occupation of Korea, The Silenced is a tale of young women trapped at a boarding school that claims to heal while doing unthinkable harm. What begins as a seemingly typical school-mystery horror quickly becomes something else entirely.
The film broaches the atrocious history of colonialism, bonds, and feuds between women, and abuses faced by neurodivergent people and those living with mental illness, along with more typical themes of adolescent alienation and rebelling against authority.
His House (2020)
It’s a great feat to attempt to tackle domestic horrors at the same time as the fears that come with emigration and the difficult search for community when people are displaced from their homes. But His House does all this and more with a deft hand.
A couple arrives in England and is placed in a dilapidated home with little assistance after a traumatic flight from South Sudan. They are then haunted by ghosts from their past and tormented by the unwelcoming society around them. It’s a fresh and compelling update to the classic haunted house tale.
Angel’s Egg (1985)
Though it technically lies outside the realm of horror, the dreamlike world of Angel’s Egg can be at times as unsettling as it is beautiful. This animated feature charts the path of a small girl as she searches a desolate land for shelter and food while caring for an egg.
Though there are obvious similarities between this and Hatching (young girls, large mysterious eggs), there’s more to be found in each of these films. For any viewer wanting to delve into a strange and fantastical world that inspires as much awe as it does fear, Angel’s Egg is not to be missed.
Teeth (2007)
Having a somewhat infamous reputation, this movie gets straight to the center of sexual anxieties for young adults coming of age. After meeting a boy who makes her question her dedication to abstinence, a teen girl re-discovers a frightening fact about her body: she has teeth in her vagina.
Teeth, a horror movie based on old American folklore, is as comedic as it is whacky and dark. It covers taboo topics like first-time sexual encounters as well as bodily insecurities and intimacy woes. It may not be for everybody, but when it lands, it leaves an impression.
A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2014)
It could be described as a cautionary tale for men who behave badly in regards to women, but this film is an inventive vampire story with a clear message. Set in the fictional location of Bad City, Iran, this film follows a young vampire who stalks and kills men that mistreat women.
Akin to the more recent Promising Young Woman (a drama verging on horror), the protagonist here wants to help the women around her. It’s probably the least strange of all the films on this list, but it’s a spooky folktale with a bold stance.