Entertainment choices and viewing options experienced a seismic shift in 2020. Months of lockdowns followed by sporadic and unpredictable openings and re-closings made us rethink things we took for granted, like going to theaters to watch new films and sporting events being televised as expected. Even the production and airing of scripted and unscripted television shows have had to adjust.

So, my own choices for What to Watch 2020:

Science Fiction Features:
Parallel
The Vast of Night (Amazon)
Sea Fever
Volition

Horror Features:
Blood Quantum (Shudder)
Tigers Are Not Afraid
The Wolf of Snow Hollow
After Midnight
Color Out of Space (Shudder)

And on my list of features on the Disappointments 2020 list:

The Dark and the Wicked (horror)
Jiu Jitsu (science fiction)

Noah Richman has these on his list:

Best Genre Movies and TV Shows I Saw that were Released in 2020
1. Blood of Zeus: Season 1 (2020, Netflix): In some respects this is like a 1980s Saturday morning cartoon with R-rated graphic violence. However if you’ve ever read classic Greek literature, like The Iliad and The Odyssey, that’s pretty much what what those stories are. This series does a good job capturing the feel of epic storytelling from the Greek classical tradition and is straight up fun for those who enjoy watching anime-style blood and violence.

2. The Umbrella Academy: Season 2 (2020, Netflix) – More chaos and dysfunction from everyone’s favorite indie superhero team, this time taking place in the year 1963.

3. A Whisker Away (2020) Netflix – A somewhat typically cute anime story, this is a nevertheless fun movie about a girl that uses a magic mask to take the form of a cat so she can gain the attention of a boy she has a crush on.

A couple non-genre shows from 2020 that I think are worth honorable mentions were The Queen’s Gambit and Season 2 of Dead to Me, both Netflix releases.

Biggest Disappointments of 2020
Welcome to the Blumhouse (2020, Amazon Studios): It’s not that the films in this series were particularly bad, though I did find them generally mediocre. It’s more that they were presented as creepy October releases for Halloween when none of them turned out to be something I would think of as a “horror movie.”

Ragnarok: Season 1 (2020, Netflix): It’s not that Ragnarok was bad, it had plenty of engaging moments and I watched the season straight through, but being a Norwegian show about the gods and giants of Norse mythology I expected something along the lines of a Thor comic-adaptation done right. Instead it was a very pedestrian story of kids in high school with lots of plot holes and relatively little action. Unless it’s given a larger effects budget and some major changes in pacing, it’s unlikely I’ll be back for a season 2.