This has been a great year for movies, both for the horror genre and for film in general. Just keeping up with everything has been, and continues to be, a challenge. I have a huge stack of FYC screeners sitting on my desk, staring at me as I type this newsletter. The list of genre films I still need to see for the year is just as daunting. It’s a wonderful problem to have, though. I’m very privileged to be able to write about films and television, and I’d like to take a moment to look back at what I’ve watched and written about this year. I do this not just to be self-indulgent, though I refuse to apologize for that. In this business, tooting your own horn is necessary for survival, and as someone who has trouble celebrating my own accomplishments, I think it’s okay to look back on my 2022 and tell you that I’m proud of it. I also just want to celebrate the things I love and shine a light on some of my favorite films this year.
I’ve made some exciting professional strides in 2022. I was very proud to be selected for the Sundance Film Festival Press Inclusion Initiative. I saw dozens of incredible films at the festival and reviewed many of them, with a few of my favorites being A Love Song, Hatching, Master, and Piggy. I also covered South by Southwest for the first time, reviewing a number of films, including X, Slash/Back, The Kids in the Hall: Comedy Punks, and Jethica.
I joined Slash Film as a features writer in July, so I’ve spent the second half of this year doing things like learning as much as I can about pirate movies and becoming an expert on the Addams Family. I devoted a lot of time to researching undersung zombie films, and I made my way through George A. Romero’s entire filmography (an endeavor that will come in handy for a project I have planned for 2023). I also returned to Inverse, writing about Jenna Ortega’s stellar year as one of our most interesting new scream queens.
I was immensely proud to contribute a video essay to the DVD release of Revealer this year. If you follow me on Twitter, you know that contributing special features to physical media releases is a big goal of mine, so being asked to do just that was a thrill and a huge source of professional pride for me. I’m eager to continue contributing essays, both video and written, as well as commentaries to future releases.
I wrote one of my favorite pieces this year: a two-part essay for Manor Vellum about the masks that female slashers wear. This is my favorite kind of writing, and I think it’s where I excel the most — finding new connections between films that either haven’t been written about much or have been written about so often that you wouldn’t think there would be anything new to say about them. I think that’s my true purpose as a writer (I’ve written about that in my newsletter before), and I’m endlessly proud of that essay.
Another piece I’m proud of is a deep dive into Frank Whaley’s high wire act of a performance in Vacancy. I’ve always loved Whaley, and his work is what holds that film together, so I wanted to sing his praises and put down some thoughts on why I love character actors so much. It’s the type of piece I’d like to do more often, and I plan to do just that in 2023. Exploring great performances that people don’t often mention goes hand in hand with the new connections I mentioned earlier, and I’m hoping that my 2023 intentionality will bring about more writing I’m proud of like my Whaley piece.
I didn’t do as many interviews in 2022 as I would have liked, and I hope to do many more next year. The interviews I did conduct, however, were fantastic. I spoke to writer-director Avalon Fast about her Slamdance world premiere Honeycomb. Also on the festival circuit, I spoke to two incredible people about their Sundance films: costume designer Charlese Antoinette Jones on her Grand Jury Prize winner Nanny, and editor Luca Cappelli on the mesmerizing You Won’t Be Alone. Both Sundance films appeared on my Best Horror in 2022 list that I discussed on the Pod and the Pendulum podcast. I also had the chance to speak with production designer Michael Perry about his work on one of the year’s most heavily discussed franchise entries, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and I had the pleasure of talking to the Adams Family for their fascinating folk horror movie, Hellbender.
Even when I didn’t love the film I was reviewing, I wrote some pieces I’m proud of. Boris Karloff: The Man Behind the Monster was a disappointing documentary about a fascinating man, and I was in the very small minority of people who found A Wounded Fawn lacking. The Horror Crowd was a poorly conceived and even more poorly constructed vanity project. The first season of Wednesday had a lot of potential, and featured a star-making turn from Jenna Ortega, but its regressive treatment of race, gender, and sexuality left it a bizarre mess instead of the return to glory that the Addams Family deserves.
Reviewing television series is another thing I want to do more of in 2023. I loved the second seasons of both Russian Doll and Undone, a beautiful animated series that you should check out on Prime if you haven’t already seen it. Like most other horror fans, I fell in love with Yellowjackets this year, and Chucky continues to be the queerest thing on genre TV right now, so I’m planning to cover both in 2023. I also plan to do more reviews of older films in the coming year; I had a wonderful time penning this ode to Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr from 1932.
I’d like to close out this post on a few positive notes. I’ll start with some films you might have missed this year that I’d encourage you to seek out when they’re available. The Outwaters is a stellar found footage film that should be easier to see in 2023. I also loved Stanleyville, Hypochondriac, Mad God, and No Exit. Finally, French auteur Alexis Bruchon is a filmmaker I highly encourage you to keep an eye out for; I caught his films The Woman with Leopard Shoes and The Eyes Below at festivals this year, and I am completely invested in what he does next.
This has been a great year for me from a professional standpoint, and I can’t thank you enough for reading, sharing, and supporting my writing. I’m excited for what 2023 will bring, and I hope to have an even more exciting newsletter for you at this time next year. Thank you again, and may 2023 be a wonderful year for you as well!