The Best Movies Of 2022
Whodunnits, talking shells, and multiverse madness… there’s a lot to love about the movies that came out this year. As the year comes to a close, Pop Culture Planet is sharing the Best Of 2022.
Bodies Bodies Bodies (Prime Video)
Dead bodies and fake friends show up at every turn when a party game goes very, very wrong in Bodies Bodies Bodies.
With the killer (pun intended) cast of Amandla Stenberg, Maria Bakalova, Myha’la Herrold, Chase Sui Wonders, Rachel Sennott, Lee Pace, and Pete Davidson, the film is cleverly written with an twisted and unexpected answer to who really dunnit.
Cursed Friends (Hulu)
Mansion, Apartment, Shack, House… your 2000s future is coming for you.
Harvey Guillén, Nicole Byer, Jessica Lowe, and Andrew Lewis Caldwell star in Comedy Central’s new original movie Cursed Friends. It follows four childhood friends who reunite for a drunken Halloween night to find that the MASH game they played in 2002 is coming true in disturbing ways. They must work together to save each other from their wild new fates — from having 100 kids with the hometown loser to marrying N*SYNC’s Joey Fatone.
Cursed Friends is a surprisingly spooky delight, chock full of early 2000s nostalgia and over-the-top humor that will take you back to your own MASH days of youth. I loved every minute of it!
Deadstream
From married co-directors and writers Joseph and Vanessa Winter comes Deadstream, a comedy-horror about a cancelled Internet personality who tries to win back his followers while livestreaming in a haunted house. His big comeback event turns into a fight for his life when he pisses off a vengeful spirit. Shot in a uniquely high-quality dual perspective found footage style, the film boasts excellent effects and an expert balance of humor and horror.
Joseph Winter also leads this film as one-man show Shawn Ruddy, known for his pranks on the Internet as Wrath of Shawn. He does a great job playing up the larger-than-life stereotypes of influencer culture and has you rooting for him despite all of his goofiness and mistakes.
Emergency (Prime Video)
Director Carey Williams returns to Sundance with his sophomore film Emergency, a timely social commentary satire that tackles racism and white privilege throughout one wild college night. Best friends Kunle (Donald Elise Watkins) and Sean (RJ Cyler) have plans to wrap up their college experience by making history as the first Black men to successfully complete the “Legendary Tour,” attending a string of frat parties that take place in one night. Their plans go off the rails when they arrive home to get ready for the night only to find a random white girl passed out in their living room.
What ensues is a stressful road comedy that expertly explores racial biases as they try to get this woman help without compromising themselves in the process. With a stellar young cast and focus on racial commentary, Emergency brings a fresh and realistic take to the traditionally white-led party comedy genre and solidifies Williams as a director to watch.
Everything Everywhere All At Once
Everything Everywhere All At Once is a hilarious and big-hearted sci-fi action adventure about an exhausted Chinese American woman who can't seem to finish her taxes. With Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, and Stephanie Hsu, the entire cast is full of stand outs.
A true genre-bending wonder with phenomenal performances from the entire cast, stunning visuals, and powerful themes, the hype behind Everything Everywhere All At Once is real!
Enola Holmes 2 (Netflix)
Millie Bobby Brown is back and better than ever in Enola Holmes 2! Alongside Henry Cavill as her older brother Sherlock Holmes, the duo take on separate cases that come together in an original story based on the real 1988 matchgirls’ strike and life of labour activist Sarah Chapman.
Enola Holmes 2 triumphantly builds on the first film with added layers of charm, action, empowerment, and even a bit of romance. Fans will be excited about the end credits scene that expands the world with the introduction of Sherlock’s future partner and flatmate Dr. Watson himself.
Fresh (Hulu)
Mimi Cave’s directorial debut Fresh takes a sinister turn when Noa (Daisy Edgar-Jones) is invited by her new boyfriend Steve (Sebastian Stan) on a weekend getaway. It’s best to go into Fresh without spoilers so you can truly appreciate the wild places the film goes to. Lauryn Kahn’s original script delivers a darkly comedic and twisted allegory about dating culture and the ways some men exploit and mistreat women.
Cave is the perfect person to direct, bringing Kahn’s script to life with edgy style, grotesque sequences, and meaningful parallels, punctuated by a stellar retro soundtrack. Sebastian Stan gives a career best performance, spanning from awkwardly charming to full on unhinged. A disturbingly gory feature that explores the horrifying side of modern dating, Fresh isn’t for the faint of heart.
Honor Society (Paramount+)
Honor Society finds the popular and ambitious Honor Rose (Angourie Rice) ready to do whatever it takes to take down her competition to get into the Ivy League of her dreams. From the beginning the film sets up Honor as a manipulative chameleon, doing “nice” things for her fellow students and then breaking the fourth wall to tell us about how this helps her further her plans of sabotage. Honor is established as the smartest person in the room, but there’s a surprising twist as we get into the third act of Honor Society, as it seems someone is onto Honor’s act.
Rice is pitch perfect as the conniving and overachieving Honor, with a journey of growth that feels earned by the end of the film, while Stranger Things’ Gaten Matarazzo is a stand out in a role that allows him to stretch his acting chops from nerd to romantic lead to… something a little darker. Honor Society is a sharp and twisted ride that subverts expectations and delivers surprisingly layered characters that you can’t help but root for. The film ends in a campy yet satisfying way as friendship triumphs over prestige.
Ivy + Bean (Netflix)
Author Annie Barrows has been writing Ivy + Bean since 2006, with 12 books in the franchise so far. Netflix has now adapted the series about the quiet and intellectual Ivy and the loud and fearless Bean into not one, not two, but THREE movies. Kids and kids at heart will love following Ivy and Bean’s adventures as the duo get into whimsical adventures with the power of imagination, friendship, and maybe a little bit of magic.
Keslee Blalock and Madison Skye Validum star as the unlikely friends in Ivy + Bean, Ivy + Bean: The Ghost That Had To Go, and Ivy + Bean: Doomed To Dance. Big names like Sasha Pieterse, Jane Lynch, Nia Vardalos, and Jesse Tyler Ferguson round out various members of their community.
Marcel The Shell With Shoes On
Marcel is a 1-inch-tall shell who lives with his grandmother in a cluttered Airbnb. When a filmmaker stays at the house, Marcel finds himself the subject of a short film that brings him passionate fans and a new hope of reuniting with the rest of his family.
Marcel The Shell With Shoes On is so wholesome and pure with some truly laugh out loud moments of humor and sweetness.
Meet Cute (Peacock)
What do they call doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results? Oh yeah, insanity. That’s what Kaley Cuoco and Pete Davidson go through in Meet Cute. The film centers around a young woman grappling with suicidal thoughts who discovers that a tanning bed in a nail salon is a time machine. She continues to travel back 24 hours to relive the best date of her life over and over again, only to begin meddling even further into the past to “fix” her boyfriend when things aren’t going how she wants.
Sweet, funny, and poignant in the way it addresses relationships, mental health, and trauma, Meet Cute is surprising in the best way. Cuoco and Davidson have brilliant chemistry and play off each other so well.
Purple Hearts (Netflix)
Purple Hearts follows an aspiring musician (Sofia Carson) and troubled marine (Nicholas Galitzine) who agree to marry solely for the military benefits, but when tragedy strikes, the lines between their fake romance begin to blur. Based on the 2017 novel by Tess Wakefield, Purple Hearts tackles everything from differing political opinions to the broken healthcare system to show that we are more alike than we are different. Carson and Galitzine have magnetic chemistry together, with complicated yet satisfying character development and story arcs leading into their romance. I literally ugly cried through the entire movie.
From The Craft: Legacy to Cinderella, Nicholas Galitzine has continued to be a bright spot in every project he’s in regardless of the success of the project itself. Meanwhile, Purple Hearts serves as a great catalyst to expand on Carson’s growing career. Not only does she executive produce for the first time, but she successfully showcases her musicianship, performing multiple covers and original songs that she co-wrote. You can really feel all of the love and care she put into the production across the board.
RRR (Netflix)
Looking for a movie to watch that's crazy, over-the-top, vibrant, and unforgettable? You’ve got to check out S.S. Rajamouli’s new film RRR!
An Indian Telugu-language epic action adventure that follows two real-life Indian revolutionaries and their fictional friendship and fight against the British Raj. The bromance is real, the fight sequences are so heightened and insane, and there's great music and dance numbers. Honestly I’ve never seen cinematography on this level, so it makes sense why it's the most expensive Indian made film to date.
The movie has already been getting so much awards buzz. It even won the Golden Globe for Best Original Song — beating out icons like Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, and Rihanna — so you know it’s gotta be good! It might be three hours long, but I promise you it does not waste a single second. Between the stunts, the music, and the acting, you don't want to miss this fantastical spectacle of an adventure. It's cinema at its finest!
Scream (Paramount+)
Twenty-five years after the murders that shocked the town of Woodsboro and turned Sidney Prescott into a final girl, a new killer dons the Ghostface mask. Billed as a relaunch of the series, Scream is a direct sequel to Scream 4 that finds a new Ghostface killer targeting a group that has connections to the original victims.
The new Scream gives us a solid combination of new and nostalgia. The cast is refreshingly diverse featuring queer characters and people of color who don’t all stereotypically get killed off as would be expected in a typical slasher. In fact, these characters have the chance to become final girls themselves, which is so exciting to see for the first time on screen. With classic scares, tons of laughs, and meta commentary on the horror genre, Scream is a bloody good time and secures Jenna Ortega as this generation’s newest scream queen.
The Batman
An emo-thriller take on the world of Gotham, The Batman explores the mysteries of the dark underbelly of the city with expert world-building and unexpected humor.
Led by Robert Pattinson, this is a Batman story that stays true to the gritty Detective Comics that started it all.
The House (Netflix)
Home is where the heart is… and in Netflix’s new film The House we go on a journey across three eras all tied to the same mysterious house. The House is an unnerving and unconventional nightmare anthology disguised as a cozy stop-motion film. The recurring house promises falsehoods of affluence and a better life, but it is a trap that’s difficult to escape.
The details in the stop-motion film are elaborate and deliberate, with great care being put into the creation of the characters and sets. With characters voiced by Matthew Goode, Mia Goth, and Helena Bonham Carter, The House is a horrible fever dream that will leave you wanting more.
The Invitation (Netflix)
Jessica M. Thompson directs The Invitation, about a young Black woman who meets long lost family members for the first time, only to discover the dark secrets they carry with them.
Nathalie Emmanuel and Thomas Doherty are magnetic in this well-crafted and thrilling vampire romance that gives off Ready or Not vibes.
The Lost City
Led by Sandra Bullock, Channing Tatum, and Daniel Radcliffe, The Lost City is about a reclusive author who gets kidnapped by an eccentric billionaire who thinks she can lead him to an ancient city’s lost treasure that she wrote about in her last book. Determined to prove that he can be a real hero, her cover model sets out to save her.
There might not be any crazy twists or turns in The Lost City, but there is also not a single weak link in the film. It’s self-aware, poking fun at the genre, while delivering a solid story of heart and humor from start to finish. Every moment is purposeful and hilarious, giving the phenomenal cast the very best material to work with. The Lost City has to be one of the best movies of 2022. It’s hilarious, super quotable, and has a rock solid cast.
The Menu (HBO Max)
In The Menu, a young couple travels to a remote island to eat at an exclusive restaurant where the chef has prepared a lavish menu, with some shocking surprises. Led by Anya Taylor-Joy and Ralph Fiennes, the film explores classism and wealth through the performative lens of food and nostalgia.
The People We Hate At The Wedding (Prime Video)
Family tensions rise among siblings the week leading up to their half sister’s wedding in The People We Hate At The Wedding, based on the book by Grant Ginder.
The all-star cast of Kristen Bell, Ben Platt, Allison Janney, and Cynthia Addai-Robinson shine as the flawed family at the center of this story. While they might drive each other crazy, there is a biting authenticity that make them feel like a genuine, fleshed out family with all the good and bad in between. The People We Hate At The Wedding expertly balances over-the-top high jinks with the heart that comes with the imperfect but unconditional love of family.
The School For Good and Evil (Netflix)
Based off the popular book series by Soman Chainani comes Netflix’s fairytale film The School for Good and Evil. The story follows two best friends who’s friendship is tested when they are kidnapped and taken to The School for Good and Evil to train to be heroes and villains. High School Musical: The Musical: The Series star Sofia Wylie takes on the role of the self-aware and goodhearted but misunderstood Agatha, while Sophia Anne Caruso, best known for originating the role of Lydia Deetz in Beetlejuice on Broadway, plays the “princess with a dark edge” Sophie and explores being a villain with her own unique flair.
What excites me most about The School for Good and Evil are the themes the film tackles and how they explore fairytales in an out of the box way. People are complicated, they’re human. They have a little bit of everything in them. All in all, The School for Good and Evil is ambitious in its themes and makes you question the fairytales and archetypes we’ve come to know. There’s a powerful message within this film about how stories impact both society as a whole and our individual self-worths in positive or negative ways.
Have you checked out these movies? What were some of your favorites of 2022? Get more recommendations, here.
