22 of the Best Movies of 2022 That Won’t Get Nominated for Oscars
Reading Time: 8 minutesHear us out: The Northman, Fire Island, Prey, and Barbarian all deserve some awards love.
We all know how this goes: The Golden Globe nominations just dropped, Oscar nominations come out in January, and in both cases, most of the discourse surrounding both is/will be about what didn’t get nominated.
Some of that has to do with the fact that popular blockbusters rarely get recognized in anything but a few technical categories (‘How could they snub Jurassic World: Dominion?’ people will ask). But there are lots of reasons movies get ignored by awards bodies—genre among them. Horror movies rarely get nods, for instance (with Nope a possible exception this year), and the same goes for science fiction films. There’s always a certain stodginess to the Oscar selections (though less so these days, now that the voting body has been made more inclusive), so anything weird or experimental is unlikely to make the cut. Likewise, obscure indies rarely grab attention, especially in the streaming era (because there are so many of them).
But genre, weird, experimental, and obscure movies (or movies that are all four) still deserve some love. Here are 22 movies from the past year that deserve awards recognition but probably won’t get it. (If any of these movies do wind up as major-award nominees, it’s not because this list was inaccurate; more likely it’s because voters were inspired by the film’s placement here.)
There’s life in the found footage genre yet, as proven by this year’s most inventive horror-comedy, which cleverly calls back to the original Evil Dead with its blend of goofy good humor and wonderfully gross practical effects. Director/star Joseph Winter plays Shawn, a once popular YouTube personality working on a comeback (one of the movie’s most clever conceits is in tricking you into liking a character who, it becomes increasingly clear, doesn’t deserve your love). Beloved for his outrageous stunts, he builds an all-night livestream around locking himself in a purportedly haunted house. You can certainly see where that’s going, but Winter and company deftly blend solid scares, technical wizardry, and a few laughs into a movie that’s uniquely fun while still managing to get in some good digs at our toxic social media landscape.
Where to stream: Shudder
Pride and Prejudice in the Pines, Fire Island takes it gay characters for granted in the best possible sense: by placing them in the gay mecca, Andrew Ahn and Joel Kim Booster’s film skips past most of the usual gay movie tropes; there’s no straight-audience handholding via narratives involving coming out or homophobia, and that’s refreshing. Instead, we get right to social concerns that Austen would have recognized (romance and classism), and others that she probably wouldn’t; I doubt ‘no fats, no femmes, no Asians’ stereotypes were particularly a problem for white ladies of the Regency. It’s all done with an appropriately light touch, and great chemistry among the stacked cast.
Where to stream: Hulu
A trilogy capper that makes the other films look better in retrospect, Halloween Ends introduces Rohan Campbell’s Corey Cunningham, who eats up a surprising lot of screen time in a movie that’s meant to be the conclusion of a 40-year battle between Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode and slasher all-star Michael Myers. Yet it works perfectly. By serving as a foil to all of the series’ main characters (after the town’s abuse pushes him into Michael-territory), Corey makes clear the ways in which this modern trilogy has been about the cost of unprocessed trauma on individuals, communities, and families, and the ways in which it all gets passed along until we deal with it. Oh, and there are some effective kills as well, and a suitably epic finale. It’s probably the best Halloween movie since the original.
Where to stream: Peacock
Another franchise entry with higher ambitions, this was the direct-to-streaming movie that had every right to the big-screen release it never got. No matter: Prey manages the nearly impossible act of balancing top-tier action with effective character work and deliberate pacing. In so many movies, those elements feel like they’re in conflict. Here, they’re inseparable. Amber Midthunder gives a performance that feels like the second coming of Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley: a real human being who’s also an undeniable badass.
Where to stream:
There’s probably no weirder cinematic experience this year, certainly in terms of major studio releases. If you’ve not seen it, it’s probably best to go in blind, though I can tell you it starts out with Georgina Campbell’s Tess showing up at an Airbnb-type rental house to find out that someone’s already staying there—a seemingly harmless guy played by Bill Skarsgård. That really seems like the premise for a horror movie right there, but Barbarian quickly takes multiple wild turns that make it feel like multiple movies in one, even as it stays just this side of coherent. I’m not sure what it all adds up to, but I wouldn’t be mad if more movies went this shamelessly off the rails.
Where to stream: HBO Max
It’s not entirely fair to compare them, but where Fire Island takes its characters gayness for granted, Bros does almost exactly the opposite, exploring lifelong scars of homophobia and misguided ideas about masculinity in the context of what’s ultimately a very sweet rom-com. The social satire is sometimes too heavy-handed, but it’s all grounded by an anger that’s genuine, as well as real heart. Luke Macfarlane, best known for Hallmark TV movies, is a surprise standout.
Where to stream: Peacock
Reaching for and achieving a level of blockbuster excess that American movies only dream of, RRR is simultaneously the action-packed musical of my dreams (with impeccable fight and dance choreography), and a biting and entirely uncompromising example of anti-colonialist agit-prop.
Where to stream: Netflix
Though fairly billed as horror, the Senegalese film Saloum blends tones and genres effortlessly, maintaining a pace that never lets up, but which never feels frenetic. Initially it looks a like a crime thriller, following a group of mercenaries hunting a drug lord in Guinea-Bissau. Then it starts to feel more like supernatural horror—but, for all that, it maintains a fleet touch, with moments of unexpected, but effective, comedy.
Where to stream: Shudder
In the year of the queer rom-com, it’s been too easy to overlook Billy Porter’s directorial debut, a needed update on the tried-and-true John Hughes-style high school romance formula. A radiant Eva Reign plays Kelsa, a supremely confident teenager who struggles with romance when Abubakr Ali’s Khal takes an interest. The fact that Kelsa is trans is neither entirely incidental, nor is it played for tragedy. The result is a charmingly low-key story with timeless elements and a distinctively modern touch.
Where to stream: Prime Video
It’s possible that The Woman King might build a bit of Oscar buzz, so I could be off-base with this one, but it doesn’t seem as though things are headed in that direction (though I’d never entirely count out Viola Davis). Though I’m sure the performers and filmmakers won’t feel quite the same, it’ll be fine if it doesn’t pick up any major nominations. The film was a box office success (a rare feat for this type of mid-budget film, especially in the COVID era), and it works every bit as well as an action spectacle as it does the type of historical drama that Oscar loves. Though it has deeper ambitions, it’s entirely too much fun to watch swole Viola Davis lead a team of all-but-unstoppable African women warriors as they fight back against colonialist invaders.
Where to stream: Digital rental
Roku declined to give Weird a theatrical release, which looks like a mistake, given its fantastic streaming numbers. In a world of endless dull biopics, Daniel Radcliffe stars in this movie that’s almost as wonderfully strange as its subject, full of over-the-top events that are mostly not true, and generally doing for the biopic genre what Weird Al’s music does to pop songs. That’s how you honor an icon.
Where to stream: The Roku Channel
Robert Eggers’ latest tanked at the box office, which is too bad given it’s at least as accomplished as anything else he’s created (The Witch, The Lighthouse). Cold, and violent, with great performances from Alexander Skarsgård and Nicole Kidman, it feels very much like a journey to a distant and fully realized world, an impressively intricate and accurate version of Norse history that might as well be an alien planet.
Where to stream: Prime Video
Agatha Christie-style whodunnits are never entirely out of fashion, and certainly not this year, thanks to movies like Glass Onion and director Halina Reijn’s Bodies Bodies Bodies, which finds a group of twenty-somethings trapped in a mansion during a hurricane when the titular bodies his the floor. Class-consciousness is often at the heart of modern murder mysteries, and that’s very much the case here, as is our modern preoccupation with using our online presences to obscure our true identities and motives.
Where to stream: Digital rental
In an Afrofuturist-inspired village built out of old computer parts in Burundi, a miner in hiding finds romance (and musical harmony) with an intersex runaway in a story that’s equal parts a biting critique of tech-obsessed capitalism and a beautifully romantic musical.
Where to stream: The Criterion Channel, Kanopy
It had been nearly a decade since director Ti West’s last horror movie, and he nailed his return with the one-two punch of X and its surprise prequel Pearl, released just months later. The first is a wonderfully depraved homage to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, buoyed by a central performance from Mia Goth, who returns as star and co-writer of Pearl, which goes back further to serve as a candy-colored, blood-red ode to the golden age of Hollywood.
Where to stream: X is available on Showtime Anytime and Fubo; Pearl is a digital rental
Viewers seemed to have missed Richard Linklater’s latest, a love letter to his childhood in Houston of the 1960s in much the same way that Spielberg’s The Fabelman’s celebrates his own youth. It’s a beautifully animated movie with modest and entirely uncynical ambitions, one that wins through with sheer charm.
Where to stream: Netflix
Beavis and Butt-Head were always a little smarter than their reputations (well, OK, the show was always a little smarter), or at least, Mike Judge knows how to make idiots funny. The new movie takes pains to explain why these particular fartknockers are beating around our present rather than mocking ’90s music videos, as the impressively constructed plot that places them both in the middle of their very own multiversal blockbuster, which they navigate with all the stupid they can muster. Nominate this for Best Animated Feature, you cowards.
Where to stream: Paramount+
The movie struggled (to say the least) at the box office, in part because of its confusing premise (the movie about the character that inspired the toy from Toy Story?), and in part because of a single same-sex kiss that became part of the uproar over Disney’s initial support for Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill (the moment was initially cut from the movie, then reinstated in a waffle that made headlines and pleased no one). All of that obscures the joys of the film, which is very much of a piece with its Pixar siblings: gorgeously animated, with plenty of humor and a sense of pathos (Buzz’s time-dilating trips into space mean that he has to watch his friends age without him) that elevates it above what would still be a solidly fun sci-fi adventure.
Where to stream: Disney+
What can I say? It was a good year for long-running horror franchises. The fifth Scream movie did everything that a new movie in the series needed to do: introducing new faces and a few modern twists and finding reigning later-day scream queens Neve Campbell and Courtney Cox in fine form. It might not be as groundbreaking or buzzworthy as the new Halloween and Predator movies, but there’s something to be said for a solid, smart slasher movie.
Where to stream: Showtime Anytime, Fubo
From franchise favorite to art-house darling, Claire Denis’ latest is far too acerbic to appeal to Oscar voters, but her story of a disintegrating, late-in-life marriage is spellbinding. Juliette Binoche and Vincent Lindon play Sara and Jean, who find that they can’t escape their pasts to forge a new relationship; Binoche, in particular, offers a brilliant portrait of a woman trapped by her own self-deceptions.
Where to stream: AMC+
Peter Strickland’s surrealistic tendencies (in movies like Berberian Sound Studio and The Duke of Burgundy) are well-established by now, but Flux Gourmet takes things even further. It follows group of artists (overseen by Gwendoline Christie) whose medium is food; specifically, the sounds that food makes. It’s never entirely clear whether Strickland is ruthlessly mocking the performance-art types who might be engaged in these sorts of activities, or if he’s celebrating the creative spirit. That tension powers the film’s weird, chaotic energy.
Where to stream: Shudder
Director Brett Morgen has crafted an all-time great music documentary in his portrait of David Bowie, offering up an experience that feels just a bit like the movie that Bowie would have made about himself had he had the inclination. Utilizing a trippy montage style, Moonage Daydream covers the scope of Bowie’s life entirely through clips and archival footage, and, in the process, paints a portrait of an artist’s evolution over the years, from anything-to-shock youth to more comfortable middle age. In that, it winds up being both oddly specific and broadly universal.
Where to stream: Digital rental