Scream, Morbius, and some kid-friendly monsters kick 2022 off on a spooky note

Even by the standards of Hollywood’s dumpiest dump month, this January is quiet. Things could get even quieter, if the studios get cold feet about releasing any movies during another COVID surge. As of now, the beginning of 2022 belongs to a new Scream, a long-delayed superhero movie, and some straight-to-streaming animated sequels. What, no Liam Neeson? He’s taking this January off, and leaving the ass-kicking to Adrien Brody. Of course, as always, there will be Oscar contenders to catch up with during the chilly opening stretch of year. And that isn’t going anymore—it’ll still be hanging around in multiplexes, ready to serve those waiting for the crowds to shrink or the infection rates to drop. Keep reading to find out everything that’s coming to theaters and a living room near you this January.

Not satisfied with the outmoded one-female-assassin-at-a-time rhythms of,, or? Confused by how much of was actually a family soap opera? Jessica Chastain, Lupita Nyong’o, Penélope Cruz, Fan Bingbing, and Diane Kruger have a spy/assassin movie for that. Their international team of super-agents presumably saves most or all of the world in The 355, the first wide-release movie of the year. It looks like a would-be franchise-starter, with the January release date putting the emphasis on “would-be.” Still, it’s hard not to hold out a little hope that the all-star cast will elevate the movie into the.

“Something about this one just feels different,” croaks David Arquette in the trailer for what should really be called 5cream. Is that the eternally self-referential slasher franchise’s way of acknowledging that it’s not just the killers behind the mask but the creatives behind the scenes that have changed in part five? Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, a.k.a. the guys who made , have taken the directorial reins from the late Wes Craven, while the screenplay is written not by Kevin Williamson but James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick. Fans can at least cling to the comforting presence of returning cast members Arquette, Courteney Cox, and of course Neve Campbell. All are back to play yet another deadly game of Trivial Pursuit meets Clue.

The story is about humans changing into monsters and monsters changing into humans, but the most notable act of transformation in Hotel Transylvania 4 has happened off screen. The series’ cranky-old-dad version of Dracula is no longer voiced by Adam Sandler, whose Happy Madison sensibilities apparently clashed with the squash-and-stretch fundamentals of animator Genndy Tartakovsky on the previous films. Tartakovsky isn’t actually directing this one, but he worked on the screenplay, with animation vets Jennifer Kluska and Derek Drymon taking the reins. Still, maybe this will go all-in on looney-tune energy. Stranger things have happened; the previous Hotel Transylvania movie was the!

Anime director Mamoru Hosoda, of the acclaimed Mirai, returns with a sci-fi riff on Beauty And The Beast. The “Belle” of this version is a J-Pop singer beloved in a virtual-reality world, whose real identity is the shy and socially withdrawn Suzu (Kaho Nakamura). Through her beautiful social-media persona, Suzu attempts to help a virtual figure known as “The Beast,” who is pursued by a gang of extremely online doxxers and hides a secret of his own. Based on glowing reviews from various festivals last year, Belle sounds like a heartfelt trip.

Adam Leon, master of the New York ramble, gets dreamier and more unsettling with his latest walk-and-talk, wherein a writer played by Vanessa Kirby loses her memory and wanders the city streets. Sometimes she slips into the kinds of conversations with chatty strangers that characterizes Leon’s other movies like or; sometimes she quietly tries to piece together clues about her life. Assembled piecemeal over the course of a few years, Italian Studies is a curiosity worth seeking out.

No, it’s not a drama about the honeymoon phase of recent sobriety. The pink cloud here is quite literal (though also possibly metaphorical): a toxic gaseous phenomenon that forces the entire world, including a pair of strangers awaking from a one night stand, into an indefinite, years-spanning quarantine. Lest one confuse this well-liked Brazilian sci-fi parable for another movie about COVID made during COVID, the timeliness is actually a bizarre coincidence—though The Pink Cloud premiered at Sundance a year ago, it was shot two years ago and conceived earlier. (The trailer notes this up front, to stifle groans and/or trumpet the film’s spooky prescience.)

Kaya Scodelario just can’t stay away from creatures. But after fighting giant alligators in and zombies in the most recent, she’s taking a friendlier approach in The King’s Daughter, wherein she befriends a mermaid, Aquamarine-style. This friendship is complicated by Scodelario’s character being the illegitimate daughter of King Louis XIV (Pierce Brosnan!), who wants to steal the mermaid’s lifeforce. It all looks a bit softer than the bonkers fantasy that its premise describes; director Sean McNamara does have kid-friendly creature experience, having worked on direct-to-video projects featuring aliens, Casper The Friendly Ghost, and the Baby Geniuses. He must be a nurturing and patient parent: The King’s Daughter was completed in 2014, which means in 2022 it will either be released in theaters or enter the third grade.

Credit due to the faith-based-cinema industrial complex: It’s mixing things up a bit with the awkwardly titled Redeeming Love, a Western romance set during the California Gold Rush of 1850. Angel (Abigail Cowen) has been sold into prostitution as a child, and grows understandably bitter until she finds the, yes, redeeming love of Michael Hosea (Tom Lewis) in this retelling of the Biblical story of Gomer and Hosea. It’s adapted from a 1991 novel; original author Francine Rivers co-wrote the screenplay with director DJ Caruso–making something of a left turn (or is it a hard right?) from his last, movie.

Having famously escaped the source-material indignity of having his nose chopped off on , Peter Dinklage now plays a Cyrano de Bergerac whose schnoz isn’t gigantic. That’s not the only way Joe Wright’s Cyrano deviates from the classic Edmond Rostand play. This version is also a musical, adapted by Erica Schmidt from her own 2018 stage show and featuring songs by Aaron and Bryce Dessner from The National. Our reviewer, who during its brief qualifying run a couple weeks ago, praised Dinklage’s acting but was less enamored with his singing. As he put it: “A musical with numbers written by The National was a terrific idea, and so was Dinklage as Cyrano. Just not at the same time.”

Finnish filmmaker Juho Kuosmanen launched his career with a low-key subversion of the underdog sports biopic, the immensely charming . For his sophomore effort, the writer-director essentially offers a very naturalistic take on an opposites-attract romantic comedy, following a Finnish graduate student (Seidi Haarla) who ends up warming to the boorish Russian knucklehead (Yuriy Borisov) she gets stuck rooming with on a long train ride. Our correspondent at this fall’s Toronto International Film Festival was a fan of Compartment No. 6, writing: “In some sense, the film almost collapses the arc of into a single trip, wondering what might have happened if that film’s initially testy rapport had blossomed into attraction over the course of its long, opening car ride, instead of over a matter of years.”

Not included among the plethora of dimensionally displaced supervillains in this month’s was classic Spidey foe Morbius. The Living Vampire will instead make his big-screen debut in this several-times-delayed solo vehicle that seems to take place, like the , in the Sony cinematic universe… though the trailer also includes a cameo from Michael Keaton’s vanquished Vulture, so who the hell knows. What we do know: Jared Leto plays the titular anti-hero, a scientist whose experimental attempts to cure his own rare blood disease end up giving him a bad hankering for the red stuff. Daniel Espinosa (, ) directs from a script by the writers of another, very cruddy vampire origin story, .

Don’t let the fact that Disney bought Fox and keep you from enjoying this newest and direct-to-streaming installment of the Ice Age franchise! After all, what better way to celebrate the upcoming 20th anniversary of Ice Age than firing all of the animators who might have worked on it or its many sequels? The voice talent remains for this sorta-spinoff that will include the lead trio of critters played by Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, and Denis Leary but focus more on a leading story for Simon Pegg’s Buck character, a weasel with the mentality of a crazed soldier.

Does every actor of a certain age want his own ? Adrien Brody evidently wanted one bad enough to co-write and produce it, arranging for himself the role of a seemingly gentle garbage man who has to get in touch with his secret violent side after he crosses a crime boss (Glenn Fleshler). We’ve seen odder choices for the aging ass-kicker mantle—the Oscar winner has played against type in action fare before, having once headlined a . Anyway, in the shocking absence of a Liam Neeson vehicle this January, someone has to, ahem, take out the trash. Brody will do in a pinch.