"After Effects can't continue: unexpected failure during application startup"

When trying to start up AE (v22.3) i get the the above error message. Rolling back to version 18.4.1 gets AE working again. CC also downloads media encoder 15.4.1 automatically. 

Prior to rolling back I made sure AE had full disk access and cleared preferences manually, as well as the usual uninstall/re-install/restart computer. 

Computer is getting on a bit but has been reliable. 

Any ideas as to why this is? Am I stuck with 18.4.1?

System specs: 

Mac (27-inch, Late 2012)

Processor 2.9 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5

Memory 32 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

Graphics NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660M 512 MB