The Weirdest Movies Of 2022

For all the franchises, remakes, and sequels that dominate Hollywood's release schedules, there are still movies, big and small, that take massive creative risks. These movies don't merely attempt to meet their audience's expectations; they seek to push viewers out of their comfort zones and tell stories that expand their minds, broaden their tastes, and force them to feel the full spectrum of their emotions. Such endeavors aren't always entirely successful, but there's value even in the thrown darts that miss the board altogether, let alone the bullseye. 

With horror ascendent, multiverses multiplying, and comedic sensibilities as niche and varied as ever, 2022 welcomed a healthy crop of peculiar films. A few of the entries on this list stand might get some major award nominations, and few even managed to do big business at the box office despite their hard-to-sell premises. Others came and went, but are hidden gems to be discovered and enjoyed on streaming platforms when you're in the mood for something out of the ordinary. Some are deadly serious, some have their tongues firmly planted in their cheeks, but most mess with comedy and tragedy as freely as they mess with all the other conventions of traditional storytelling... which is to say, when you press play on any of these 12 movies, you're in for some dropped jaws, raised eyebrows, and confounded stares.

Another excellent film with a long title, "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent" unfortunately didn't find a particularly wide audience. This meta screwball comedy about Nicolas Cage's career is one of the funniest movies of the year and it gives the self-aware actor the opportunity to do some of his best comedic work to date. A desperate Nic Cage is embarrassing himself at industry lunches and even at family functions trying to get his star back on track. He's about to retire when his agent calls him to tell him a billionaire in Mallorca would like to pay him a million dollar fee just to attend his birthday party. 

That billionaire turns out to be suspected arms dealer Javi Gutierrez (a phenomenal Pedro Pascal), who's also the world's biggest Nicolas Cage super fan. Cage's initial reluctance melts away as he and Javi become besties over their shared passion for cinema. But, this is a list of weird movies, and what makes "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent" weird is how the audience is never quite sure if what they're watching is a movie or a movie within a movie or something that's just going on in the mind of Nicolas Cage. The film has a blast playing with genre tropes and is at its best when poking fun at Hollywood itself. Physical gags and non-sequitur jokes abound. But for all its trippiness (including a hilarious tripping sequence), "Massive Talent" is also one of the best and most earnest buddy films in recent memory. 

Speaking of body horror, the father of the genre, David Cronenberg, released a new movie at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival that's his most explicitly about the body yet. It's just as thought-provoking, visually compelling and stomach-churning as his previous work. "Crimes of the Future" imagines a future in which the human body has organically evolved along with the medical technology that we use to extend natural life. For most people, this means they no longer have to experience pain or illness —but others developed more specific mutations. Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortenson) still feels pain, but can grow organs within his own body, which he and his partner Caprice (Léa Seydoux) demonstrate as traveling performance artists in a type of public surgical theater.

Meanwhile, the government is trying to regulate mutation and its affect on society with bureaus like the National Organ Registry. One of their investigators, Timlin (Kristen Stewart) becomes involved with Tenser, who decides to infiltrate an extremist group that modifies their own bodies so as to be able to consume and process plastics. "Crimes of the Future" is, like the body of a Frankenstein's monster, something stitched together from existing genres that comes back to life as something darker, pulpier, and sadder. Cronenberg has made a series of bold moving images about bodily functions, and furthermore, he's using them to ask bold questions about bodily autonomy. 

It's been seven years since George Miller shocked and awed audiences with the weird, wild, and wonderful "Mad Max: Fury Road." He has a prequel, "Furiosa," in the works, but in between trips to everybody's favorite post-apocalyptic desert wasteland, Miller took some time to tell a gentler though still epic and unusual story. "Three Thousand Years of Longing" stars Tilda Swinton as Alithea, an academic who studies the anthropological history of storytelling. While at a conference in Turkey, Alithea unleashes a Djinn (Idris Elba) from its bottle. Rather than partake in the wishes she's granted since she's skeptical she'll actually receive what it is she desires, she wants to hear more about the Djinn himself. 

From there, "Three Thousand Years of Longing" hops and skips throughout time and world culture. Genie-in-a-lamp stories are, of course, nothing new and thus not particularly weird, and the film uses its familiar conceit and structure (Alithea's gotta make those three wishes eventually, right?) to explore familiar themes such as the human cravings for love, knowledge, and power. What's atypical about this version is the sheer earnestness with which Miller blends realism and mysticism, and the ambitious literary-ness with which Miller approaches those themes. If you thought Will Smith's Genie with his crush on Nasim Pedrad was novel, you're probably not prepared for "Three Thousand Years of Longing."

Netflix's "Spiderhead" is the first movie to be adapted from the works of George Saunders. The acclaimed author is famous for his playful and creative writing style, even when tackling serious subject matter. It'd be a challenge to capture his worlds; his characters often take the form of children, animals, and non-human entities, and the action largely takes place in their minds. "Spiderhead" has the benefit of an all-human, all-adult cast, but the mind is still the main point. 

The title refers to a private prison-slash-pharmaceutical research facility run by hip, cool CEO-bro, Steve (Chris Hemsworth), who has struck a deal to commute the sentences of convicts who volunteer to be his guinea pigs. A "Mobipak" is installed in their bodies, from which Steve can flood their systems with experimental mood altering drugs. We're not talking Prozac, Ritalin, or any substance which might have a slight impact on depression or attention. The Mobipaks allow Steve to control the prisoners' moods as if they're skins in a video game. They've consented because, like our protagonist Jeff (Miles Teller), their pasts are traumatic and they don't want to feel what they currently feel. 

"Spiderhead" is as madcap as it is menacing. It has relevant things to say about corporate prisons and healthcare systems, as well as memory and mental health. But Hemsworth plays Steve mostly for laughs, the drugs themselves have names like Darkenfloxx, and after keeping you on the edge of your seat in its second half, the whole thing ends with a bang that'll make you scream, laugh, and think, in no particular order. 

"Wendell & Wild" comes from the imagination and the painstaking stop-motion animation of Henry Selick, with a screenplay co-written by Academy Award winner Jordan Peele. Selick ("The Nightmare Before Christmas" and "Coraline") and Peele ("Get Out," "Us," and "Nope") both excel at telling dark but relatable outside-of-the-box stories in visually exciting ways, and the result of their collaboration for Netflix is as kooky, chaotic, slightly deviant, and yet still heartfelt.

The only thing that detracts from "Wendell & Wild" is that there might be too much story in this story. Any attempt at a plot description fails to properly capture its scope, not to mention its singular vibe — but let's try. After the death of her parents in an accident she thinks is her fault, a girl named Kat becomes a juvenile delinquent and is eventually sent to a corrupt Catholic girls school. While she's busy trying to make a deal with some of the Devil's minions (Peele and Keegan-Michael Key) to bring her parents back to life, a couple of land developers attempt to turn her economically depressed hometown into the site of their latest private prison. "Wendell & Wild" has really important things to say about how marginalized people are affected by politics and business, but it's also kind of a zany kids movie with gags about magical nose hair cream and teddy bears that speak in demonic tongues. It's neither Selick nor Peele's best work, but it's an admirably big and bizarre swing. 

"The Menu" isn't about cannibalism, but the latest indie romantic drama from Luca Guadagnino and Timothée Chalamet, is! However, with its prestigious pedigree (Mark Rylance and Michael Stuhlbarg also appear alongside rising star Taylor Russell), and gauzy marketing, some of the people who wandered into theaters to see "Bones and All" may not have realized just how much about cannibalism is was. 

Maren (Taylor Russell) and Lee (Chalamet) are disaffected teenagers who became cannibals, but not really by choice. They meet, fall in love, take to the road, and "Bones and All" fully expects us to root for them as they stop to murder and digest people every once in awhile. A cameo by Stuhlbarg as a fellow transient cannibal who isn't nearly as cute or sympathetic is pretty weird, but nothing compares to Rylance's Sully. Everything the character says, does, and wears is so incomprehensibly weird, people may not believe what they're hearing and seeing. Sully speaks in third person, has a nifty little feather in his cap, collects enamel pins and human hair, and eats people on while all fours in his tighty-whities... and that's just what we learn about him in his first few minutes of screen time. "Bones and All" has become something of a critical darling and awards hopeful, so Rylance might just take home some hardware for what's arguably the weirdest performance in Hollywood history.