How was it for you? Arts writer Ed Power picks his highlights of 2022
Ed Power picks from TV, books, film interviews and more.
Sarah Davachi, Unitarian Church, Dublin: Haunting drone music wrenched from a pipe organ which at once lulled the listener into a trance and filled them with foreboding.
The, Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe at BGE Theatre, Dublin: CS Lewis received a folk-horror do-over in this adaptation of his best-loved novel, complete with an Aslan who looked like he’d arrived straight from the set of the Wicker Man. Creepy as anything yet true to Lewis’s novel, which is darker than often remembered.
, 40th-anniversary screening: Don Bluth’s The Secret of NIMH is an all-time fantasy classic and one of a generation of animated features that terrified children during the 1980s – see also and , which likewise turned 40 in 2022. Dark, stark and mysterious.
Pet Shop Boys at Live at the Marquee, Cork. Distance and exhaustion prevented me from seeing Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe negotiate their greatest hits.
Talking to the indie band Midlake about their comeback album, For The Sake of Bethel Woods. There’s a lot of sadness wrapped up in the record and it was hugely moving to explore that journey with them.
by Julia Armfield: Lovecraftian horror receives a contemporary twist in this account of a woman whose wife has returned from a deep sea diving exhibition profoundly changed. Massively unsettling, with a conclusion that leaft a lingering chill.
, Robert Eggers' winningly gory revisionist Viking epic, featured thrills, chills and all the entrails you could reasonably want from a hyper-violent Norse romp.
Netflix’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s captured the weirdness and wonder – but also the chill factor of the comic books. The “diner” episode was almost as horrifying as on the page.
I avoid podcasts like a medieval plague – but enjoyed the audiobook of Rosie Andrews’s , a folk-horror fever dream set in 17th Norfolk.
Plague Tale: Requiem was one of the video games of the year. How emotional it was to again join Amicia and Hugo in 14th century France as they negotiated such pitfalls as hostile villagers, violent beekeepers and feral magical rats. Also enjoyed Elden Ring – aside from getting constantly mashed by early boss Margit. My 12-year-old has made considerably more progress - I am actively considering bribing him to get past the difficult parts for me. In board games, I loved the re-release of HeroQuest. And the most satisfying role-playing books of the year was the haunting Ruins of the Lost Realm for the One Ring RPG, set in Tolkien’s Middle-earth.
Speaking of Midde-earth – and its terrible “Irish” harfoot hobbits. Needs to be cast into the pit of doom without delay.
, in cinemas in March, is about a group of dysfunctional anti-heroes who accidentally set in motion the end of the world. Which pretty much sounds like my Dungeons and Dragons party, so it will be fun comparing notes.
