Year in Review: 2022
2022 is now over, so I thought I'd go over my thoughts about the new media I consumed in 2022. This includes The Daily Wire movies Shut In, The Hyperions, What is a Woman?, and Terror on the Praire, the Hollywood films The Batman, Halloween Ends, Secrets of Dumbledore, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Daily Wire Movies
First up, The Daily Wire movies. We kicked things off in February with a tightly made suspense thriller called Shut In. This movie follows a single mother trying to get her life back in order, only to be imprisoned in her pantry by her ex-husband and his drug dealer. Overall it is an entertaining thriller, but I can’t recommend picking up a DW+ subscription just for this movie (or any of the individual movies), maybe this year they’ll release more movies and tv shows on a basis that could justify a subscription if you’re not into their politics.
DW followed up Shut In with The Hyperions, which is not a Daily Wire film, they just picked up distribution rights for it, and stars Cary Elwes. This film is a family drama disguised as a superhero heist film. Overall, it was an enjoyable film, but probably not as good as Shut In.
The final non-documentary film from DW this past year was Terror on the Prairie, staring Gina Carano. This film is a western about a woman (Gina) trying to get used to living on the prairie of post-Civil War Montana, only to be besieged by bandits while her husband is away in town picking up supplies. What follows is a fantastic film about a woman doing everything she can do to protect her home and newborn baby.
The standout DW documentary this past year was What is a Woman? from Matt Walsh. This film has to be both the funniest and scariest film I’ve seen throughout the year. The first half was pretty funny - man on the street interviews and traveling to Africa make it somewhat lighthearted. The second half, the half when Matt starts talking to the “doctors” doing the procures is where it really becomes terrifying. This is a must watch, and once I find some free time, I intend to read the book that accompanies it.
Hollywood Films
Daily Wire wasn’t the only company producing films that I watched this past year. I’ve watched a lot of movies during the year, but a lot of them were older - I’ve especially like the classic Universal monster movies, but that’s not for this article.
So, I think the first new movie released in 2022 was Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore. I’m not sure why I watched this one, I wasn’t a fan of the Crimes of Grindelwald, but I did anyway. Mads Mikkelsen made his debuts as Grindelwald in this movie, and he did a much better job as Grindelwald than Johnny Depp did - he looked like he actually belonged in the 1930s compared to Johnny Depp’s costuming. Overall, it’s not a good movie, and trying to cram Newt Scamander into this story is stupid - and that’s not even considering what this movie says about the wizarding world’s form of government, which doesn’t make any sense given what was previously established. Skip this movie - or at least only watch it if you already have HBO Max. I wouldn’t want to spend any money on it.
Next up is The Batman. And another movie that I think you could easily skip. This Robert Patterson’s first foray as Batman, and he did a good job as Batman, but he did a terrible job as Bruce Wayne. Colin Farrell was great as The Penguin, John Turturro was great as Carmine Falcone, and Zoë Kravitz was just ok as Catwoman. The weak points of the film has to do with the story and their depiction of The Riddler. I’ve been a fan of The Riddler for awhile now, and making him basically the Zodiac Killer was a bold choice - and one that failed, in my opinion. The story tried to paint Batman as a detective, which was nice, but unfortunately, the clues were too obvious and the situation was too easy to solve.
The next movie that I watched was Texas Chainsaw Massacre, released on Netflix. This was a fun movie. I’d say give it a watch if you are wanting to watch Leatherface kill a bunch of entitled millennial kids. It was very satisfying to watch, but it was definitely a stupid movie. If you like blood, gore, and violence, give this one a watch.
Finally, I watched Halloween Ends, and I was disappointed. If you can watch this movie for free and have watched the last two Halloween films, I’d say you could give it a watch, but otherwise, it was one of the worst Halloween movies I’ve seen. The majority of the movie was a mediocre love story, the remainder was an action/slasher movie. As a fan of the franchise, I was eager to see how they were going to wrap up this story, and they did wrap it up, but not in a satisfying way.
Other Media
Over the course of the year, I’ve consumed a lot of other media, not just movies. Most of that has been classic books and tv shows, and I may write reviews later. Suffice it to say, right now, you could follow me on Goodreads or StoryGraph. I think the newest thing I've read was Isom #1 by Eric July, and as I've said in my review, it was a good intro to a new superhero and I look forward to seeing where the story goes.