8 Wacko Horror Movies Coming Out Just Around The Corner

Perhaps an obvious prediction, but we're making it anyway: 2022 will go down as one hell of a year for horror movies. January opened with a meta horror “requel” kicking a Spider-Man movie off its top Box Office spot. We'll shortly get to enjoy a brand-new Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Later this year, a new Evil Dead entry produced by devilish duo Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell will hit us in the face like a possessed, severed hand, just the way we like it. We’ll also be getting the final film of the latest Halloween reboot, and to top it all off, they're bringing back everyone's favorite sexy sex god, Pinhead.

A bunch of original, lesser-known but already highly praised horror movies will also be vying for our attention in the coming year, and while these movies—which will all be dropping before June, hopefully—may fly under most people’s radars, we’re here to give them a little spotlight action. Who knows, maybe one of these will be getting its own sequel reboot revival in 25 years.

8 The Cursed

Release date: February 18

While every die-hard horror fan will surely be watching the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre on Netflix come February 18, a brand-new horror that made waves at Sundance last year will be released in theaters the very same day. This one taps into a somewhat forgotten genre mashup: Old-Timey Werewolves. That's right, The Cursed takes the period genre and mixes it with the supernatural to give us a retelling of werewolf lore — an addition that is always welcomed in this often forgotten and underrated subgenre.

Heck yeah. We’ve got creepy scarecrows possessed by demons or something…

Scary-looking forest people…

And whatever seems to be happening to this young fellow.

The movie is set in the 19th-century hellscape of plagues, pitchforks, and land barons. So, pretty much like today, only with every second person wearing a top hat.

7 X

Release date: March 18

Ti West has been responsible for a couple of cult-favorite horrors over the years, including The House of the Devil (2009), The Innkeepers (2011), and The Sacrament (2013). For a while now fans have been openly calling for another Ti West horror and, come March this year, they'll be getting just that! Gosh, it just goes to show that if you want something in this life, sometimes you just have to ask for it and this is why we’ll never stop bugging Hollywood for a John Wick movie that also features Godzilla somehow. We're thinking big lizard equals one epic mode of transportation.

Anyway (and you’re welcome for the incredible images in your head right now) X follows a group of adult filmmakers who end up shooting their movie in a secluded Texas farmhouse. Unfortunately for them, their hosts—an elderly reclusive couple giving off some serious The Visit vibes—seem to be a bit too interested in the crew’s shenanigans. The trailer doesn’t show why, but we bet it’s because they were denied cameo parts in the porno being filmed on their property.

Starring new horror-favorite Jenna Ortega (The Babysitter: Killer Queen, the new Scream) this A24 comedy horror survival slasher feels like sheer unadulterated fun. It’s campy, it seems to reference everything from Texas Chainsaw to It Follows to Shyamalan movies, and it’s got some great retro visuals as the story takes place in 1979, a time of corduroy pants and killings in corn fields.

6 Hatching

Release date: April 29

When the IFC group buys a film, you know it’s got some serious chances of being the next best thing. They’re the ones who’ve given us everything from Werewolves Within and Relic to The Vigil and Sputnik, to name but a drop of their successful movies released in the last two years alone. Hatching, a Finnish creature feature body horror, already sports a 91% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, with the site quoting their consensus as “A message movie in a hard horror shell, Hatching perches between beauty and revulsion—and establishes director Hanna Bergholm as a bright new talent.”

This Sundance psychological coming-of-age horror follows a 12-year-old gymnast with an obsessive and controlling mother who finds an egg and decides to keep it warm until it hatches. What an absolutely normal, very Mama Drama premise … that no doubt will have us squirming in our seats when it’s time for something (that apparently has elements from the Alien and Jurassic Park animatronics) to emerge from that gigantic egg.

5 You Won’t Be Alone

Release date: April 1

Starring the marvelous Noomi Rapace (Lamb, The Trip), this movie follows a young feral witch who accidentally kills a villager, only to take over her body and find out what life is like for non-witchy folk who use things like soap sometimes. Soon enough, she’s jumping from body to body to experience life in different skins and throughout different lifetimes, it seems. We don’t know, but it all looks wonderfully witchy.

Good, that trailer’s running through your veins now, too. The movie is set some time during the 19th century in Macedonia and features an old-timey dialect, but nothing like The Witch where it felt at times like we could've done with some baked-in subtitles.

You Won’t Be Alone also has some beautiful looking cinematography. You can practically smell the hay bales being rolled down the hills while the flesh of a witch burns at the stake.

4 A Banquet

Release date: March 11

Another entry picked up for distribution by IFC Midnight because these folks know what slaps, horrifically. This one sees a single mom having to deal with her teenage daughter who believes that someone has possessed her body and that she now lives in servitude of this higher power, who apparently doesn’t want her to eat. It's all terribly teenage-y.

IndieWire calls it part psychodrama, part possession horror. By the look of that trailer, we'd say throw in part cult horror, too, as it feels somewhat reminiscent of Hereditary—what with the mom and the whole “my teenager’s possessed” thing.

There also seems to be a lot of ice skating, a sport known for its ability to turn horrific in a matter of seconds. We know, we’ve all seen Blades of Glory.

3 Speak No Evil

Release date: Shudder to confirm

Oooh boy. Another psychological thrill-fest that, according to critics who’ve seen the film at Sundance, has one helluva WTF ending. A Danish couple meets a Dutch couple on holiday in Tuscany, and the Dutch couple invites the Danish couple to come and visit them back home. It's all very European and sounds terrifying already.

It soon becomes clear, however, that the Dutch couple aren't who they say they are. And we mean that literally, because the Dutch dude told the Danish folks that he was a doctor, only to later go “Oh yeah no I lied about that LOL.”

There also may or may not be more to the story of the couple’s little boy who has no freaking tongue.

Speak No Evil seems to be some kind of fictional study into how far people will stretch their politeness in the face of discomfort—and quite possibly worse things—and the bleak consequences that could potentially follow. Of course, it could also just be an honest take on how hard and downright weird it is to try and make friends when you’re older.

2 Unwelcome

Release date: March 17

What we have here is a comedy horror that sees a pregnant couple from London inherit a house in the beautiful Irish countryside only to be chased through the woods by murderous goblins because the daft English folk didn’t leave a blood offering for the “Redcaps.” Or something like that—who knows how goblins work!

The point is that this movie looks totally rad.

It’s got a good dose of humor, creepy stalking scenes, and townsfolk that don't seem like the kindest bunch themselves. It all sounds delightfully macabre, in a Gremlins/Hot Fuzz/Get Out But With Anglo-Irish Issues And Also Goblins sort of way.