The Best and Worst Halloween Movies of 2022

Sadly, tomorrow starts the Christmas movie season. But before we let go of Halloween, let’s take a look back at the top five best and worst movies this year.

The Best

5. Lou
4. Sissy
3. Deadstream
2. The Midnight Club
1. Grimcutty

Honorable mentions: Pearl, My Best Friend’s Exorcism

The Worst

5. Control
4. Dark Glasses
3. Who Invited Them
2. Flux Gourmet
1. We’re All Going To The World’s Fair

Dishonorable mentions: Raven’s Hollow, Matriarch

Let me know which movies you loved and hated. Were there any movies that I missed that you loved? Leave a comment so I can check it out!

Wendell & Wild | Halloween 2022

Coraline is a favorite movie in this household. When we heard that Henry Selick, the writer and director of Coraline, was releasing a new stop-motion animated movie with Jordan Peele, I knew we had to watch Wendell & Wild.

Kat (Lyric Ross) is a young teenager that blames herself for the death of her parents. When she is enrolled in an all-girls school in her old hometown of Rust Bank, Kat finds out that she is a “Hell Maiden.” Two demon brothers - Wendell (Keegan-Michael Key) and Wild (Jordan Peele) - are trying to make a fairground for souls, one that is better than the one their father, Buffalo Belzer (Ving Rhames), uses to torture souls. However, the brothers need money to create their dream. They convince Kat to summon them to the mortal world, where they make an agreement with the evil Klaxons, Irmgard (Maxine Peake) and Lane (David Harewood). The demons will resurrect the deceased members of the town council so they can vote in favor of the Klaxons demolishing Rust Bank. But Wendell and Wild also promised that they would bring back her dead parents, which the Klaxons don’t want. Who will win the fight for Red Bank and will Kat ever forgive herself?

As I said, Coraline holds a special place in our hearts. A lot of people will compare Wendell & Wild to Coraline but they are very different movies. The music in Coraline is catchier and there isn’t quite as much humor in it. Instead, W&W is more punk rock. I did expect it to be a little scarier, since horror king Jordan Peele helped write the script but it doesn’t quite make it. It lies in this weird middle ground where it’s not family friendly enough for small children but it’s not scary enough for older teenagers. W&W seems to be aimed at a very specific demographic - pre-teens who are looking to figure out who they are apart from their parents. Or people who really like stop-motion animation.

I do think Wendell & Wild is worth watching. Almost all of the cast is made up of people of color, which is amazing. But, as such, it’s not getting as much publicity from Netflix as it deserves. The more people that tune in, the most Netflix will realize this is what people want to see. And, I mean, Key and Peele are always magical when they are together. You may not walk away singing the songs but you will walk away loving the characters and hoping for more. Oh, and stick around after the credits. There’s a little scene with Selick and Kat that is adorable.

The Good Nurse | Halloween 2022

Most of the time during the Halloween season, I try to stick to reviewing scary or spooky movies. However, The Good Nurse is a different type of scary and spooky. Especially for those of us that lived in the southeast Pennsylvania and New Jersey area in the late 1990s to early 2000s. Yes, this movie is based on a true story.

Amy (Jessica Chastain) is a single mother working as a nurse in a New Jersey ICU. Despite her strenuous job, Amy tries to hide her heart condition from her bosses and coworkers until her health insurance kicks in. The hospital hires a new nurse, Charles (Eddie Redmayne), to help with the night shift. Suddenly, patients that weren’t fatal begin to die. When all of the hospitals that Charles previously worked at continue to stonewall the police investigation into the patient deaths, Amy steps forward to help catch the man responsible.

This is a story that hit close to home. Not only is my mother a nurse and not only do I live in southeast Pennsylvania, I am also old enough to remember his happening. So watching The Good Nurse had a different type of horror for me. It’s the type where you never know if someone evil could take advantage of you when you are at your most vulnerable. If you have never felt like that before, be thankful. It’s not a good feeling.

There is a lot of backlash nowadays about true crime movies and podcasts and YouTube videos. And I don’t disagree that the victims need to be honored and not exploited. However, I also believe that stories like this need to be told. While it can be difficult to tell the difference between an exploitative movie and a good movie, I think that The Good Nurse is one of the good ones. The main focus of the movie is Amy, the woman who wouldn’t let hospital red tape brush these murders under the rug. She really is the true hero of the story. The one person who risked everything to do the right thing. I wish everyone could be like Amy.

Barbarian | Halloween 2022

Since there were so many movies that came out this year, I couldn’t pick the next scary movie to watch. My husband picked Barbarian for me. I didn’t know a lot about the movie so I agreed to watch it.

Tess (Georgina Campbell) has booked an AirBNB in a small neighborhood in Detroit. When she arrives at the house, she finds a man named Keith (Bill Skarsgård) already staying there. After finding out there is nowhere else nearby to stay, they decide to share the house for the night. The next day, after her job interview and while Keith is out of the house, Tess finds a secret door in the basement that leads to an underground maze of tunnels. Two weeks later, sitcom actor AJ Gilbride (Justin Long) has lost his job due to a rape allegation. He comes back to his house in Detroit to get ready to sell it. Even though he finds luggage and toiletries in the house, the property manager insists that no one has rented the house in a few weeks. Shrugging it off, he goes into the basement where he also finds the secret door. Excited that he could list that as more space in the house, he explores further.

Barbarian is a little all over the place. There are three separate storylines that all come together. Tess and Keith’s story takes place two weeks before AJ’s storyline starts and then there’s a man named Frank (Richard Brake) has a story that starts in the 1980s and ends when AJ finds him. It is a little jarring when they switch to another storyline. The transition between the three isn’t done very well so it takes some time before you realize what is going on.

With that said, I did like the horror aspect of the movie. The “monster” isn’t a new idea in horror movies. It has been done before. However, there is a bit of a twist that makes it slightly different. I think that twist is just enough to make Barbarian interesting. Take the time to watch it. Even if you hate it, it will give you pause the next time you book an AirBNB.

Deadstream | Halloween 2022

Sadly, we are nearing the end of the Halloween season. There are only a few more movies to go before we reach the dreaded Christmas movie season. In the hopes of finding a really amazing Halloween movie this year, I turned on Deadstream, a Shudder original movie.

YouTuber Shawn Ruddy (Joseph Winter) has recently done a few things that caused him to get cancelled. After a six month hiatus, he is back with a livestream. He stream spending one night in a haunted house. When he accidentally releases vengeful spirit Mildred Pratt (Melanie Stone), the fight for his live becomes more than just an internet stunt.

There haven’t been a lot of good movies this season. Grimcutty and Sissy currently hold the top spots on my Top 5 list. However, Deadstream is fighting to get that top spot. If you have spent any time watching YouTubers, you will probably relate a lot to the audience watching Shawn’s livestream. We do see some comments from them occasionally and they are hysterical. From people not believing anything he’s doing to people making fun of him for being scared to people giving advice on what to do. The only thing the comment section is missing is the terrible racist/misogynistic/asshole people. Then again, Shawn is a young white guy. He probably wouldn’t get a ton of those comments anyway.

My favorite part of the movie, though, is how they add the comedy to the scary parts. Sometimes the ghosts will attach Shawn in a funny way, sometimes Shawn says something completely out of pocket, and sometimes it’s a combination of both. Every time I thought I was about to lose interest, there was something different to bring me back in. Deadstream isn’t like any other horror comedy movie I have watched. I might actually add this one to the annual list of movies to watch in my free time.

If you couldn’t guess by now, yes, I recommend watching this one. While I would classify any of the gory parts as “unrealistic gore,” there are some head explosions and whatnot. But they are all played for laughs, not for terror. I think Deadstream is pretty safe for any adult to watch. It’s probably not for the kids, though. Keep them away. Far away.

Hayride To Hell | Halloween 2022

Last night, my husband and I attended the world premiere for a movie filmed nearby. Hayride To Hell was filmed in Willistown Township, PA and stars Bill Moseley from Repo! The Genetic Opera and House of 1000 Corpses and Kane Hodder from Friday the 13th Part VII through Jason X. This was lining up to be a good movie.

Farmer Sam (Bill Moseley) is fighting to keep his farm. Many of the town officials want him to shut down his annual hayride, even though it is an extremely profitable event. Between traffic problems, rowdy patrons, and not being able to make payments to the bank, Sheriff Jubel (Kane Hodder) and the commissioner Betsy Butte (Allyson Malandra) have a point. But Sam won’t go down without a fight. He gathers his family and farmworkers to put on one last hayride for the naysayers. If only they knew it was their last.

When I heard about the premiere, there wasn’t a ton of information on Hayride To Hell. Would it be a slasher film? Would it be a thriller? A comedy? Well, it’s a little bit of everything. It’s not a straight comedy but it’s also not really a slasher. Yes, there are a lot of deaths. I believe the body count is somewhere around 12. But there is a lot of really funny bits in there. At the Q&A after the movie, we found out that many of the best scenes were improved by the cast. I didn’t realize how funny these guys could be.

As of right now, Hayride To Hell doesn’t have a distributor. It sounded like they should have a deal set sometime in the next few months. Unfortunately, that means I can’t give you any information on where you can find it. But, if you do hear something about it coming to a theater or streaming service near you, you should definitely check it out. Especially if you like horror comedies.

Matriarch | Halloween 2022

The horror movies this year have been all over the place. Hulu has given us some terrible thriller movies but it has also given us some of my favorite. I sat down to watch Matriarch, which is listed as a horror movie, and…I think that Hulu doesn’t know the definition of horror.

Laura (Jemima Rooper) is a bit of a mess. She has a decent job but she is an alcoholic addicted to cocaine. When she accidentally overdoses, she wakes up to find herself with a strange new affliction that causes black goo to seep out of her. After receiving a call from her awful mother, Celia (Kate Dickie), she goes home to try to figure everything out. What she figures out is that her family and her hometown isn’t what she thought it was.

This was probably the slowest movie with the worst payoff I have had this Halloween movie season. It took forever for the story to get where it was going. I know the writers wanted to hammer home how messed up Laura is and how absolutely terrible Celia was to her but they went a little overboard. The whole movie is just under 2 hours long. Most of the time is spent with Celia rocking between trying to murder her own child and cooing at her in an attempt to earn forgiveness. We never get a sense that Celia is anything but an awful person and it isn’t until the last 15-30 minutes of the movie that we get any sort of answers for anything.

Also, I’m not sure why this is listed as horror. There are no horror elements here. I think we’re supposed to be scared of the black goo but the only thing it does is seep out of eyes, ears, and noses. It doesn’t seem to make anyone behave any differently. There aren’t even jump scares, which can be a very lame element of horror but that would at least validate the category. Even the big reveal at the end isn’t particularly horror. Well, maybe it is if you haven’t watched a lot of horror or get scared very easily.

Sadly, I can’t recommend Matriarch. I couldn’t find a single redeeming quality of it and I’m sorry I wasted my time watching it. There are much better movies out there. Especially if you are looking for actual horror.

The School For Good And Evil | Halloween 2022

When I first heard about The School For Good And Evil, I didn’t realize it was a book adaptation. In hindsight, duh. I should have realized it from the title. All I really knew is that it starred Sophia Anne Caruso from Beetlejuice the Musical and Sofia Wylie from High School The Musical: The Musical: The Series. That was enough to make me want to watch it.

Sophie (Sophia Anne Caruso) and Agatha (Sofia Wylie) are best friends that live in a village called Gavaldon. While Sophie dreams of being a princess, Aggie is called a witch by the townsfolk. After finding out about The School For Good And Evil, Sophie writes a letter requesting to become a student and leaves it in the Wishing Tree. That night, as Sophie attempts to run away from home, she is abducted by a skeleton bird. Agatha sees her friend being taken and grabs on, trying to keep her in Gavaldon. The bird takes both girls to The School, dropping them at their designated buildings. Sophie at the School For Evil and Aggie at the School For Good. Both girls swear they are at the wrong school and try their best to convince the deans to switch them. Or send them home.

This is one of those movies where you think you know where the story is headed but you aren’t exactly sure. I thought of at least three different ways it could have gone. But that doesn’t make the movie any less enjoyable. Actually, I think it makes it more fun to watch. While I don’t want to give too much away, there are a few things I want to talk about.

Both Caruso and Wylie are great as Sophie and Aggie, respectively. Their desperation to get out of their situation in any way possible comes through clearly. It helps that they are surrounded by some big talents too. Charlize Theron is Lady Lesso, the dean of the School of Evil, and Kerry Washington is Professor Dovey, the dean of the School of Good. Laurence Fishburne, Michelle Yeoh, Patti LuPone, Peter Serafinowicz, Rachel Bloom, Rob Delaney…there is so much talent in this movie that the only way it would have failed is if the source material was awful. Thankfully, the actual storyline is amazing. You’ll have yourself questioning the definition of good and evil at the end.

The School For Good And Evil should be on your list of movies to watch. I’m not sure how closely it follows the books, as I have not read them, but the movie is a ton of fun to watch. As of today, there are seven books in the series. I would love to see more adventures of Sophie and Aggie.

The Midnight Club | Halloween 2022

I generally try to stay away from series during the Halloween and Christmas review season. Not because I dislike them or I think they are going to be bad but simply because I don’t usually have the time to dedicate to an entire series when I’m trying to post a new review each day. Thankfully, I was able to fit The Midnight Club into my schedule this year.

Ilonka (Iman Benson) is a teenager with terminal thyroid cancer. She decides to move into Brightcliffe, a hospice for dying teenagers. Every night, the group of eight teenagers get together at midnight to tell scary stories. Is there more to the tales they tell and is Brightcliffe just a hospice center?

Last year, Mike Flanagan gave us the brilliant Midnight Mass. While The Midnight Club is based on a handful of young adult novels by Christopher Pike, I had high hopes that this would be a good series. While there are some slow parts, I was not let down.

To be honest, I don’t want to give too much of the story away. I think that this is a show that should be experienced without a lot of knowledge ahead of time. There are a few things that are up to interpretation but some other things are explained eventually. But I think my favorite thing about the series is that each story told by a teenager is based in other Christopher Pike books. They aren’t exact replicas of the books, that tends to make for terrible television anyway, but they are versions that fit the members of The Midnight Club. It is definitely an imaginative way to make the most out of all of the source material available.

In short, yes, I think you should watch it. The Midnight Club is set up to be a multi-season show. I hope that Netflix doesn’t let us down and renews the series. We could definitely use a good spooky series like this every Halloween season. And since the show is set up to have the characters die and get replaced with new ones, having the actors age out of their characters shouldn’t be a big deal. I really would love to see more of this.

V/H/S/99 | Halloween 2022

Anthology series can be tricky. Sometimes you get a pile of really great stories, sometimes you get a pile of crap, and sometimes you get something in between. As a follow up to last year’s V/H/S/94, we are shot into 1999 with V/H/S/99. Where 94 was found footage, 99 is presented as a mixtape of sorts.

The first story we see is “R.A.C.K.,” which is an acronym for the lead characters - Rachel (Jesse LaTourette), Ankur (Keanush Tafreshi), Chris (Dashiell Derrickson), and Kaleb (Jackson Kelly) - as well as the name of their band. One night, the decide to break into a music venue that burned down during a show three years ago. The band that was playing, Bitch Cat, were trampled to death as the audience fled the fire. As R.A.C.K. was messing around, they get attacked by the zombie members of Bitch Cat. Things don’t end well for the pranksters.

“Suicide Bid” is the story of college freshman, Lily (Ally Ioannides), as she pledges the Beta Sigma Eta sorority. Four of the sorority sisters invite Lily out to a graveyard, where they dare her to spend the night buried in a coffin. Lily agrees and somehow puts up with the torture pranks the sisters pull on her. However, when a security guard comes to investigate what is going on, the girls leave Lily in the coffin in the pouring rain. As Lily’s coffin fills with mud and rain, she is…saved by a previous hazed student, Giltine (Chris Page), who died during the same prank. The sorority girls return the next morning to find the grave filled with water and Lily missing. Now it’s Lily’s turn to haze them.

Forcing us to remember old children’s adventure game shows like Legends of the Hidden Temple or Double Dare, “Ozzy’s Dungeon” shows us what can happen when those games go wrong. Donna (Amelia Ann) is competing to win a wish from Ozzy (Amelia Ann). Unfortunately, Donna suffers a major leg injury on the final obstacle, meaning she didn’t win the wish. Years later, the host (Steven Ogg) of the show is kidnapped by Donna’s mother, Debra (Sonya Eddy). Debra tortures the host until he takes the family to get their wish from Ozzy. Only Donna didn’t wish for things Debra wanted her to.

In between all of the episodes of V/H/S/99, we see stop motion movies with plastic army men. In “The Gawkers,” we find out that these little movies are being made by Brady (Ethan Pogue) with a camera owned by his brother, Dylan (Luke Mullen). Dylan and his friends take the camera back from Brady in order to record their hot neighbor, Sandra (Emily Sweet). The boys see Sandra getting a new computer delivered to her house. She has asked Brady to help her set up the webcam. Of course, the boys coerce Brady into setting it up so they can watch her from Dylan’s computer in the hopes of seeing her naked. But when Sandra starts to undress, the boys find out that she’s not the human they thought she was.

Finally, my favorite episode, “To Hell And Back.” Nate (Archelaus Crisanto) and Troy (Joseph Winter) are filming a ritual where a woman (Tori Pence) is offered as a sacrifice to the demon Ukoban (Dustin Watts). She will be the vessel he uses when he rises from hell. When the ritual begins, Nate and Troy see an uninvited demon, Furcas (James C. Morris), in the room. The witches cast him out but he takes Nate and Troy with him. As they try to escape, the men get help from Mabel (Melanie Stone), a tortured soul, with the promise they they would write Mabel’s name in witches’ book when they get back. Nate and Troy manage to hitchhike with Ukoban back Earth, where the witches kill them for ruining the ritual. Dying, Troy scribbles Mabel’s name in the book with his blood.

Unlike V/H/S/94, I thought these stories worked well. Each of them were a complete story with an actual ending and the camera wasn’t swinging all over the place (most of the time) so you could actually see what is going on. A lot of these stories are filmed with a handheld camera, meaning there is a bit of jerkiness to the visuals but it’s not nearly as bad as last year. There were some fun ideas in there. I would have liked to have seen “The Gawkers” tell a little more of Sandra’s background or “Ozzy’s Dungeon” flesh out Donna’s character a little more. Otherwise, “Suicide Bid” and “To Hell And Back” are the strongest stories of the bunch. I don’t know if we’ll get another V/H/S release next year but I hope that it continues to improve the stories it tells.