2022 is officially in the books, and we’re still here, against all odds.
Actually, for the purposes of weird movie accounting, we put 2022 to bed last month. Our annual movie calendar ends on the last day of November, to allow 366 Weird Movies Yearbooks to go out in December. We’re not missing out on much; usually, December releases are limited to extended universe entries and Oscar bait dramas. This year, however, we do have to apologize to one movie that got caught in the late November rush: Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead‘s low-budget supernatural paranoid thriller Something in the Dirt. It might have the weirdo qualities necessary to make this list, but I confess I still haven’t seen it. So much to see!
As always, there were hard cuts at the bottom of the list. The eerie Finnish feathery horror Hatching was the last film cut from the top ten list. The whimsical dream auditing romance Strawberry Mansion also scored strong with our staff—when it was released in early 2022, I assumed it would finish in the top 10, but the weird movies just kept flowing in and passing it by.
I personally finalize this list. The staff here has input, but I set the voting rules, create the universe of candidates, and break all ties. Therefore, if you feel that it’s a crime that fan-favorite Everything Everywhere All at Once came in at a measly #3 when any idiot can see it obviously deserves to be #1, I am the idiot to blame. When ranking, I use a secret proprietary formula that accounts for cinematic craftsmanship, the degree of surrealism/weirdness, and the perceived prestige in the weird movie community based on buzz and reader feedback, then I shuffle them into whatever arbitrary order I momentarily feel like without regard to any of that.
So, on to the official Weirdest Movies of 2022 List! As always, films are listed in random order—the weirdest of orders.
7. Neptune Frost – In an alternate-reality Rwanda, an escaped coltan miner teams up with an intersexed refugee to hack global information systems through their dreams. This Afro-surrealist feature is also a musical (and the music is its most successful element). There’s almost too much to process here in this intellectualized film that deals with politics (global, local and imaginary), the intersection of technology and mysticism, gender identity, and more. It’s part of a larger independent universe that includes a concept album, “MartyrLoserKing,” from co-writer/composer Saul Williams.
2. Flux Gourmet – A “culinary performance” art troupe (e.g. a woman smears herself with tomato soup while a pair of DJs mike up her digestive tract and mix it with the sound of a blender) perform a one-month residency, where cutthroat rivalries and digestive problems Continue reading TOP 10 WEIRD MOVIES OF 2022