Warning: There are some big SPOILERS below for some of the horror releases of 2022. Proceed with caution.
It doesn’t matter if it’s Spooky Season or not, horror fans are ravenous for carnage-filled content all year round. Yup, these days every season is spine-chilling and the multiplexes are always ready for the return of an iconic horror property.
Halloween Ends and the return of Scream (after more than a decade absence) to movie screens fueled several of Fandom’s top searches across our Horror Wiki this past year, but let’s take a look at the full Top 10 for horror movie characters because there are definitely a handful of surprises. As in monsters and maniacs who haven’t had a new film in years — or decades! — still ranking high.
We got new scary stories from horror luminaries like Michael Myers, Chucky (via Season 2 of his TV series), and Ghostface in 2022 but others stand out simply because we have not seen them in ages. It just goes to show that having an important, integral part of horror history still means something!
Here are Fandom’s most searched for horror characters of 2022.
10. Pazuzu
Rounding out the Top 10 is the ancient Mesopotamian “king of the wind demons” Pazuzu, which was the evil entity that possess poor young Regan MacNeil in 1973’s The Exorcist. So why was this diabolical dude from fifty years ago so popular in 2022? Well, The Exorcist is obviously an all-time beloved horror classic. And now David Gordon Green is following his Halloween trilogy with a decades-later legacy sequel to The Exorcist opening in 2023, which has gotten a decent amount of coverage, especially with Green mentioning it while doing press for Halloween Ends.
Pazuzu was also a key element in The Exorcist II as well as the two prequel films in 2004 and 2005 and the short-lived Fox TV series in recent years. More recently though, a survival horror game, House of Ashes, was released in October of 2021, which likely still sparked interest into 2022, given there was a collector’s edition of the game called the Pazuzu Edition.
Or maybe this is all wrestling related since AEW star Danhausen has face paint based on Pazuzu’s look from the first Exorcist movie. Whatever the case, people have got Pazuzu fever!
9. Reverend Henry Kane
Like Pazuzu, here’s another surprising find. The creepy-looking Reverend Kane from Poltergeist II and III was the ninth most searched horror character this year! The acclaimed Poltergeist has had sequels, a 1990s TV series (with only a meager connection to the movies), a reboot in 2015, and the broken promise made back in 2019 by the Russo Brothers for another reboot. It’s not like it hasn’t been around in some way, or been the previous topic of conversations, on a frequent basis.
But there was no peep from this property in 2022, aside from new t-shirts and other merch being released, and Kane – though a well-received element of the lesser sequels – is not usually the very first element of this series people think of, though it is worth noting he is ultimately identified as the embodiment of the evil at the center of the franchise. Also, maybe y’all just like freaky old harbingers of evil.
8. Sidney Prescott
You can’t have a Scream movie without Neve Campbell’s Sidney (well, not until 2023’s Scream VI at least, which will be Neve-free) and 2022 brought the Ghostface facer back into the fray, as a new batch of Woodsboro teens, headed by previous psycho boyfriend Billy Loomis’ daughter, were being savaged by a brand new killer.
This entire time, Sidney has been the Scream franchise, as Ghostface, whoever they might be at any given time, was always after her for various reasons. The new Scream was the first time Sidney wasn’t the full target, but that didn’t stop fans from reading up on her entire history, which started way back in 1996’s Scream. Whether she was fighting off lovers, brothers, mothers, or others, Sidney is the most successful Final Girl of all time, leaving a trail of dead Ghostfaces in her wake.
7. Glen
The second season of Chucky brought in the teenage versions of Glen and Glenda, the human-born children of Chucky and actress Jennifer Tilly – who’d later be actually possessed by Tiffany, who is played by Jennifer Tilly IRL. (This series is wild!) Yup, two offspring who began as one gender-fluid doll, Glen, that now existed as separate twins who didn’t remember their past lives in doll(s) form, except during dreams.
You see how bonkers this is? It’s no wonder that when Lachlan Watson showed up to play both Glen and Glenda on 2022’s run of Chucky, people would want to catch up on all things Glen. Especially those who maybe had never seen 2004’s Seed of Chucky, which was the last time Glen was actually seen in this decades-long story.
Glen and Glenda showed up on a particularly meta stretch of Chucky this year, using a surprise party as a distraction to free Nica from their mother’s deranged clutches. These two are such a fun and fascinating part of this franchise’s 35 year history that it’s no wonder readers wanted to learn all they could about them.
6. Dewey Riley
2022’s Scream saw three legacy stars return to pass the torch to a new generation. But out of longstanding Ghostface survivors Sidney, Gale, and Dewey, only one didn’t make it back from the battlefield this time.
Given the more prominent, Han Solo / Force Awakens type role among the legacy cast, David Arquette’s deputy-turned-sheriff-turned-former-sheriff Dewey Riley was the fan favorite franchise alumni that sadly got the axe this year (or, er, knife), a death that upped the ante and raised the stakes for our new gen of Scream-ites. Dewey had been a major part of all four previous Scream movies and finally his time had come (after surviving multiple nasty life-threatening stabbings over the years, mind you). Sir, it was an honor.
5. Laurie Strode
It totally makes sense why Laurie Strode would land a solid spot on this list. Sure, Jamie Lee Curtis had reprised the role in other Halloween sequels previous to her big 2018 comeback in David Gordon Green’s Halloween, but this time she was sticking around for three movies in a row and had promised that Laurie would bring the entire saga to a brutal conclusion.
So with Jamie Lee back in full force, going toe-to-toe with Michael Myers in a way she didn’t in Halloween Kills – where the two never shared a scene – fans were reading up on the versatile Ms. Strode. Also, considering how Laurie was also in 1998’s Halloween H20 (and had been rather lamely killed off in Halloween: Resurrection) there were probably still many readers who wanted to sort through and clarify the different timelines, since this new trilogy was a different years-later Laurie Strode than the one who appeared in H20. All in all, a good year for a character who set the template for slasher film Final Girls.
4. Billy Loomis
Scream returned in a huge way in 2022 and while you might think Ghostface would have been the “character” from the series that got searched the most on Fandom, keep in mind that Ghostface was never just one person. He’s the costume the killers wear to hide their identity. Which is why it makes sense that Billy Loomis, one of the two people who were first Ghostface back in the original 1996 movie, cracked the Top 5, especially since actor Skeet Ulrich made a big surprise return to the role for 2022’s Scream.
In the latest Scream installment, Billy’s daughter, Sam Carpenter, played by Melissa Barrera, took center stage as not only the target of the latest Ghostface(s) but also as someone who may have inherited her father’s madness. One of Sam’s more unhinged traits? Seeing visions of her deceased dad (who so many of you searched for on Fandom), seen offering her psycho advice. Yes, Ulrich’s return devilishly delighted diehard fans of the Scream series.
3. Brahms Heelshire
This one is possibly the most puzzling on the list (in terms of relevance vs placement) since The Boy franchise is most definitely not on the same level as the Nightmare on Elm Street movies (you’ll see…). Yeah, its sequel was not too long ago — in 2020, just before Covid shut down theaters — but still, this is a lot of attention for Brahms Heelshire.
For those who haven’t seen the two Boys films – that’s The Boy and Brahms: The Boy II – Brahms is a killer who wears a porcelain doll-style mask to cover his burned face. The first film made a nice bundle at the box office but The Boy II didn’t fare so well (again, it was also released in February of 2020). As far as news in 2022 is concerned though, series director William Brent Bell mentioned, during an interview given in August, the possibility of a third Boy film, completing the trilogy.
2. Freddy Krueger
Are we dreaming? A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger making huge waves in 2022 as the second most searched for horror character? This stands out because not only was there no new Nightmare project this year, but there’s nothing currently in the works as the series remains frustratingly dormant. There was even an upcoming Friday the 13th prequel series called Crystal Lake, from Hannibal‘s Bryan Fuller, announced in 2022, yet Freddy’s old nemesis Jason Voorhees didn’t crack these rankings.
So why is Freddy here? Is it because O.G. Freddy Final Girl Heather Langenkamp made her most high profile appearance in years via Netflix’s The Midnight Club? Or just eternal Freddy love? The Springwood Slasher’s last appearance was in the 2010 reboot, where he was played by Jackie Earle Haley (the first time Freddy was portrayed by someone other than Robert Englund). So it’s been over a decade. And you might think he wound up here, so high in the rankings, because Michael Myers is of the same 1970s-80s era but none of the other big names from that time period are here so… we’ll just have to chalk it up to Freddy being an all-timer, right?
1. Michael Myers
Well of course! Michael Myers, AKA The Shape, had himself (itself) a big year, what with the final movie of David Gordon Green’s sequel trilogy, Halloween Ends, arriving with a ton of fanfare. And though the movie took some huge creative swings, splitting audiences down the middle — just as Michael was splitting his onscreen killing duties with Corey Cunningham — Michael Myers was still the most wanted madman out of every other horror character from Fandom’s wikis. Maybe it’s because this time he really really really really met his end and we’ll never see him in a movie again. Hah, just kidding. Nothing will ever stop this masked Haddonfield hellraiser.
Despite the mixed-to-negative reception for Halloween Ends, Double M still managed to top this list as the most sought-out slicer. We should also mention that Halloween Ends marks the thirteenth Halloween movie, making this franchise, even with all its splintering timelines, the biggest of the slasher-boom era.
