The Secret of Dr Orloff (1964)
Prolific exploitation director Jesus Franco creates a sequel to his first horror film about a mad scientist creating a mind-controlled man that he sends to go out and kill strippers
Forgotten Experiment (2023)
A Russian SF film where a plane is forced to put down on an island where people find themselves caught up in a series of time travel experiments and thrown between different eras
The Visitor from the Future (2022)
A French film about a time traveller come to prevent the catastrophic explosion of a nuclear power plant. A low expectation film that turns out to be a comedy that sparkles with wit and inventivity
The Mortuary Assistant (2026)
Based on a videogame, a film set at a morgue where a new assistant has to fight off supernatural forces and complete a series of rituals to prevent herself from becoming possessed
Disclosure Day (2026)
Steven Spielberg makes a thoughtful return to the theme of alien contact. Rather than the rosy optimism of Close Encounters and E.T. , he seems to have embraced the dark conspiratorial view of The X Files
Kill Me Again (2025)
One of a growing number of horror takes on Groundhog Day with the unique premise of a serial killer trapped in a timeloop where he kills everybody but must change his ways to escape
Rat Man (1988)
An Italian exploitation film about models in the Caribbean being hunted by a vicious rat-monkey hybrid. Some occasionally gory deaths but not much happens
Metamorphosis (1990)
An Italian exploitation film intended to take advantage of the 80s makeup effects revolution of the day as a scientist injects himself with an untested serum and transforms into a monster
The Gathering (2003)
Made not long after The Da Vinci Code was huge, a similar archaeological mystery centred around an amnesiac Christina Ricci and a sinister buried church dating back to The Crucifixion
SleepStalker (1995)
Clearly influenced by A Nightmare on Elm Street, this is a film about an executed killer who returns as a dream boogeyman who transforms from a flow of sand
The Silent Planet (2024)
A Canadian film starring Elias Koteas as an aging man banished to solitary servitude on a prison planet where his loneliness is broken by the arrival of a fellow prisoner
Goldilocks and the Three Bears: Death & Porridge (2024)
Another in the spate of horror versions of fairytales and children’s stories, this is essentially The Strangers played out with people terrorised by a group dressed as Goldilocks and the Three Bears
Mary Had a Little Lamb (2023)
The people behind Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey deliver a horror version of the nursery rhyme. Here Mary becomes a middle-aged woman living in the woods with a hulking son who has a lamb’s head
The Mandalorian and Grogu (2026)
A spinoff film from The Mandalorian tv series, this is the best film set in the Star Wars universe this side of the 2000s for the simple reason that it has invested in characters rather than slavish fanboy callbacks
Scary Movie (2026)
The Wayans Brothers and most of the regulars return to revive the franchise to make more crude farce of the Scream and Halloween revivals and other horror films to come out in the last few years
Mummy Shark (2024)
In a seeming competition for the most ridiculous killer shark of all time, Z budget director Mark Polonia gives us a film about a mummy shark revived from an Egyptian pyramid
Playing With Dolls: Havoc (2017)
Third of a trilogy of slasher films where people isolated at a cabin are stalked by a hulking maniac in a barbed wire mask. This mixes the formula of the previous films up in some interesting ways
Johnny Got His Gun (1971)
Classic anti-war film with Timothy Bottoms as a limbless, sightless soldier in a hospital bed as his mind wanders between hallucinations, visions of the afterlife and attempts to communicate with the medical staff
Into the Deep (2025)
One of spate of near-identical films that all came out in the same year where Scout Taylor Compton’s boat is taken over by drug smugglers who force her to dive into shark-infested waters to retrieve drugs
Great White Waters (2025)
Anthony Ferrante made the Sharknado films. He returns here to make a serious survival thriller about a woman who is forced by drug dealers to dive and retrieve a stash in shark infested waters
Deep Water (2026)
The perpetually terrible Renny Harlin makes a halfway watchable film about the survivors of a plane crash at sea trying to stay alive as the sinking plane is surrounded by sharks
Backrooms (2026)
A fascinating word-of-mouth hit based on a YouTube series about the exploration of a labyrinth of extra-dimensional office rooms built on an eerily alien design scheme
Undertone (2026)
A really quite spooky film about a series of audio recordings send to a podcast that seem to contain evidence of a possession. A film that almost entirely has its effect relayed by sound
Midnight Movie (2008)
A horror film about the screening of a lost horror film whose director is reputed to have killed people for real. Now the killer emerges from the screen to slaughter the attendees in the theatre
Robot Ninja (1989)
The title sounds like a cheesy 80s killer android film but this is actually about a comic-book artist who becomes a costumed vigilante. A strange mix of superhero with no powers, a splatter film and Death Wish
Tarzan and the Great River (1967)
Producer Sy Weintraub made some of the best of all Tarzan films in the 1960s, shooting in real locations and with thrilling adventure elements. This is one of his weaker ones that takes Tarzan to Brazil accompanied by an annoying cute kid
The House of Snails (2021)
A Spanish horror film that develops some reasonable effect in its story about a writer who moves to a small town only to find the locals are keeping sinister secrets
The Sleeping Woman (2024)
A Spanish film that comes with overtones of I Walked with a Zombie and Patrick where a comatose wife starts to take control of the mind of the nurse who is tending her
The Yeti (2026)
A monster movie based around The Yeti, this starts out as a B-budget adventure film with an expedition to Alaska in search of missing explorers who become trapped by a ferocious Yeti
The Magic Faraway Tree (2026)
Adaptation of a book by famous children’s writer Enid Blyton about a series of adventures in a magical tree. Blyton would be turning in her grave at some of the changes and modernisations
Redux Redux (2025)
A strong and intelligent multiverse film filled with some great twists where a woman travels across multiple worlds to track down and kill different versions of the man who murdered her daughter
A Taste of Evil (1971)
TV movie psycho-thriller produced by Aaron Spelling (plus assorted Anglo-horror veterans) where heiress Barbara Parkins thinks she is going crazy. Barbara Stanwyck goes the Baby Jane route
Dawn of the Dragonslayer (2011)
From the people who made the Mythica films, this is a modest and well made fantasy film about a young farmboy thrust into the role of dragonslayer that does good things on a limited budget
Beautiful Teacher in Torture Hell (1985)
An imprisonment thriller with a difference, a work of Japanese BDSM erotica where a young teacher is imprisoned and erotically tortured. Quite out there and different to anything Western erotica turns out
Stream (2024)
Horror film with a substantial cast of genre veterans where Jeffrey Combs imprisons guests in a hotel and livestreams as a group of killers compete to rack up the most creative kill
Death Streamer (2024)
A film from low-budget producer/director Charles Band about a trio of horror podcasters who come across a vampire that livestreams its kills on the internet, only for their attention to bring it after them
Altered (2025)
From Iron Sky director Timo Vuorensola, Tom Felton stars as a wheelchair-ridden hero battling a genetic dystopia. This emerges as a bizarre melding of Gattaca and Upgrade
Obsession (2025)
A nerdy guy’s wish to have a girl love him goes badly wrong turning her into something deranged. This became a word of mouth box-office hit and signals Curry Barker as a major new genre director
Amsterdamned II (2025)
Amsterdamned with a detective pursuing a frogman serial killer prowling the canals of Amsterdam was a hugely underrated action film. 37 years later the director and lead actor reteam for a sequel
Latency (2023)
A film about an agoraphobic videogamer confined to their apartment who is given a Virtual Reality headset to test that soon starts to warp their sense of reality
ClearMind (2024)
This starts out as a seeming improv piece about several couples gathered for a weekend where the bickering becomes increasingly darker, all before it reaches an SF twist
Pulse 2 (2008)
This was the first of two sequels to the Wes Craven scripted Pulse, the English language version of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s intensely spooky film about ghosts from the internet
The Last Loner (2019)
A homage to Andrei Tarkovsky’s classic Stalker about people venturing into a mysterious alien zone. This is rather fascinatingly filmed inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone
Solvent (2024)
An Austrian film shot entirely using a GoPro camera where a team investigating an abandoned farm uncover Nazi artifacts and an evil that seems to possess the lead character
Compulsion (2024)
Director Neil Marshall once had great promise but his recent work has become fairly tatty. Here he and lead actress, the controversy-laden Charlotte Kirk, have fun making a throwback to the 1990s erotic thriller
Bone Lake (2024)
A psycho-sexual thriller that is being heralded as a throwback to the 1990s erotic thriller a la Basic Instinct but suffers from an utter tameness that would have been ridiculed in the 1990s heyday
Masters of the Universe (2026)
A reboot of Masters of the Universe, this fully embraces the mythology of the animated series and gives them great life. But is also a work that is constantly deflating any chance you are taking it seriously
The Sheep Detectives (2026)
This has one of the most off the wall premises in some time – talking sheep team up to act as detectives and solve the murder of their shepherd. Think Babe meets Agatha Christie. The results are hilarious
Ape vs Mecha Ape (2023)
Ape vs Monster was The Asylum’s mockbuster take on Godzilla vs Kong. This is a sequel that takes a few leaves from Godzilla’s Mechagodzilla and pits the giant ape up against a giant robotic ape
Atlantic Rim: Resurrection (2018)
When Guillermo Del Toro made Pacific Rim, The Asylum switched US seaboards to make Atlantic Rim. With the release of the Pacific Rim sequel, The Asylum followed in kind
Dead & Breakfast (2004)
A sometimes amateurish film about people at a B&B surrounded by zombies. This takes a horror comedy tone and gets very gory. Not to mention features an amazing cast
Santo and Blue Demon vs Dracula and the Wolfman (1973)
One of the better films from Santo the Mexican wrestling superhero, quite an atmospheric work where Santo and his friend Blue Demon faces Dracula and his werewolf acolyte
Michel Gondry: Do It Yourself (2023)
A documentary focused on the unique and distinctive French director Michel Gondry, tracing his emergence through music video and to the success of films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Doctor Plague (2026)
A British thriller where detective Martin Kemp has to deal with a series of murders conducted by someone in a plague doctor mask, which supposedly replicate the Jack the Ripper killings
Primitive War (2025)
Essentially Platoon meets Jurassic Park. A surprisingly watchable film that places a unit of soldiers in the midst of the Vietnam War up against dinosaurs where things get bloody and ferocious
Citizen Vigilante (2026)
Uwe Boll makes a return to filmmaking. The side of Boll that most people never appreciated was him angry at social issues. With a charismatic Armie Hammer in the lead, Boll gets angry about the European refugee crisis
The Slasher … Is the Sex Maniac! (1972)
A giallo film about a killer who is murdering adulterous women. Standard material but some of the film’s dated sexual attitudes cause quite a double take today
The Red Queen Kills Seven Times (1972)
A giallo film where a family curse about the vengeance of a red queen starts being enacted with a mystery figure bumping off relatives following the reading of a will
Licensed to Love and Kill (1979)
One in a series of British spy films made in imitation of the James Bond series. As evidenced by the alternate title The Man from S.E.X., this takes things further than the Bond films do
The Navigator: A Mediaeval Odyssey (1988)
The hugely underrated Vincent Ward makes a film about Mediaeval pilgrims travelling through time to the present. Shot in an series of extraordinary images that show how bewildering the modern world would be to them
The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil (2019)
The tough hard-boiled Korean gangster film is a genre of its own. This uniquely has a detective and a crime kingpin deciding to join forces to track down a serial killer. Slated for remake by James Wan
Crackcoon (2024)
This is another of the low-budget films that take their inspiration from Cocaine Bear with a drug-addicted raccoon amok. This sits right between bad movie stakes and passable amusement
Catnado (2022)
We’ve had Sharknado. Now comes Catnado, an anthology about storms of cats. This contains episodes so pitiful and ineptly made that this enters into the unwatchable
Apex (2026)
Charlize Theron is on a wilderness adventure in the Australian Outback when she is hunted by Taron Egerton. A variant on The Most Dangerous Game with Egerton seemingly cast as Mick out of Wolf Creek
Afterburn (2025)
Action film with Dave Bautista as a treasure hunter retrieving items in a post-apocalyptic world. Directed by a former stuntman, this plays much to the action element with little else of substance
Seeding of a Ghost (1983)
A completely deranged film from Hong Kong’s Shaw Brothers involving the resurrection of a dead wife to exact retribution. Full of ghost sex, gore and madcap creature effects
The Ghost Snatchers (1986)
Hong Kong supernatural film about a new tower block that is haunted because its feng shui is out. This goes well beyond the initial fantasy it starts out as being into moments of out-and-out dementia
One Million AC/DC (1969)
A lost Edward D. Wood Jr film. Clearly made as a parody on the hit Raquel Welch-starring One Million Years B.C., this is adult work depicting the sex lives of cave people
Helldriver (2010)
A mind-bogglingly wacky entry in the gonzo Japanese splatter film featuring a crazed bloodbath as Japan is overrun by zombies. This goes frequently nuts featuring vehicles and plans made up of zombie bodies
The History of Time Travel (2014)
An ingenious mockumentary about the development of a time travel machine. This takes place as a ‘documentary’ discussing the invention but the cleverness is in seeing how small details keep changing in the background
Troll 2 (2025)
Not the notorious bad movie but a sequel to Troll, the Norwegian-made effects spectacular about the revival of a giant troll. This is more of the same but with the effects pushed to a more spectacular level
Hokum (2026)
Irish director Damian McCarthy impressed a good deal with Oddity. In his equally spooky follow-up, writer Adam Scott travels to a hotel in Ireland only to become trapped in a haunted suite
The Astronaut (2025)
Kate Mara plays an astronaut returned from a space mission strangely changed. Before you can say The Quatermass Xperiment, ‘something’ mysteriously appears to be entering the house at night
The Amityville Harvest (2020)
Another film masquerading with some relevance to The Amityville Horror, although this extends no further than the title. This is an almost interesting effort where a film crew interview a possible vampire
Amityville Cult (2021)
Another film that appropriates the Amityville name for an otherwise unrelated film concerning a man who inherits a house in the town, digs into the past and soon finds a devil worship cult all around him
Madame White Snake (1956)
Lushly beautiful Japanese film from a Chinese folklore tale about a mortal who marries a snake goddess. An early Japanese colour film with fantastical touches way ahead of their time
Right At Your Door (2006)
One of the fear-fraught films made in the aftermath of 9/11, a tense thriller concerning the detonation of a dirty bomb in L.A. and the panic that descends as one man tries to barricade his home
The Man in the White Van (2023)
A fake True Crime film. This is loosely to the point of almost non-existently based on a serial killer who stalked victims in a van in 1970s Florida. This is blown up into a Duel wannabe with the van prowling everywhere
The Occupant (2025)
A woman survives a helicopter crash and must make a harsh wilderness trek through the Caucasus Mountains before discovering that the helpful voice on the other end of the radio may be something not human
Animal Farm (2025)
Actor Andy Serkis directs an adaptation of George Orwell’s satiric talking animals fable. However, the decision to update the story comes unstuck in spectacularly awful ways
Sangre Del Toro (2025)
A documentary about Guillermo Del Toro made on the occasion of an exhibition of props and artwork from his collection. Interviewed, Del Toro talks candidly, granting us an extraordinary insight into his influences and process
Violent Blood Bath (1974)
A Spanish thriller about the investigation into mysterious payment made to an executed killer, which is then followed by a series of copycat killings that mimic those conducted by the dead killer
Vengeance of the Zombies (1973)
One of the few films to come out after George Romero where zombies are still associated with voodoo. Spanish horror star Paul Naschy writes and plays three roles in a film that comes with a wild mix of cross-cultural ideas
Dick Barton Strikes Back (1949)
From the early days of Hammer Films, one of several films based on Dick Barton, a popular radio hero. A progenitor of the spy movie with the title hero trying to prevent foreign agents unleashing a deadly sonic ray
The Greenaway Alphabet (2017)
A documentary about arthouse director and regular genre contributor Peter Greenaway. This takes an alphabetical look through Greenaway’s themes and offers some peculiar insights into him as a person
Out of Darkness (2022)
A film that follows a group of cavepeople who set out on a journey to find a new land to only to be hunted by mysterious unknown, possibly supernatural threat
Piglet (2025)
Another of the horror versions of children’s stories, this has a in-name-only connection to Winnie-the-Pooh’s Piglet and is otherwise a variant on The Texas Chain Saw Massacre about a growth-hormone enhanced killer
Alice in Terrorland (2023)
Following Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey and its trashing of a classic children’s character, a horror version of Alice in Wonderland where the heroine has dark, hallucinatory visions of the book’s characters
Mortal Kombat II (2026)
A sequel to the 2021 revival of the film series based on the videogame and a much more satisfying film than its predecessor. The first film was all origin story, but this plunges us into the actual kombat itself
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy (2026)
Blumhouse conduct not a reboot but a new mummy film – that has no actual mummy in it and instead seems to have taken most of its moves from The Exorcist. And naturally the title leaves you asking “Lee who?”
Insanitarium (2008)
Horror film where Jesse Metcalfe has himself committed to an asylum to rescue his sister but comes up against Peter Stormare conducting mad science experiments turning inmates into zombies
Hellmaster (1992)
Typical 1990s video release with mad scientist John Saxon creating zombie experiments amid entertainingly gooey meltdowns and a title intended to make you think this is a Hellraiser film
Evangelion: 3.0+1.01 Thrice Upon a Time (2021)
This was the fourth film in the Neon Genesis Evangelion reboot film series and concludes the saga. Rather than offering any answers or solution to the cryptic world we are in, this opts for a major letdown of a wrap-up
The Rocking Horse Winner (1949)
Classic adaptation of a D.H. Lawrence story where a boy’s rocking horse has the ability to predict winners at the racetrack. Shot in stark black-and-white and set amid the grim economic realities of post-War Britain
New Life (2023)
A thriller about the hunt for the carrier of a deadly mutated form of Ebola. This is a not uninteresting film but it seems stuck in pre-Covid depictions of plague and pandemic
Hold Your Breath (2024)
This has quite a few similarities to the underrated The Wind with Sarah Paulson as a mother in the 1930s Dustbowl seeing possible supernatural figures amid the dust storms, which could just as easily be fraying sanity
Project Hail Mary (2026)
A popular hit based on a book by Andy Weir, who wrote The Martian, where Ryan Gosling is a scientist who undergoes a space expedition and makes alien contact in an effort to save the Earth
Cold Storage (2026)
David Koepp is the high-profile screenwriter of Jurassic Park and other works. Here he adapts his own novel about a deadly fungus that overruns a storage facility into a wonderfully snappy horror show
Chronicles of an Exorcism (2008)
This has the distinction of being the very first Found Footage possession and exorcism film. This has become commonplace since but is quite different in its treatment than subsequent efforts
The Devil’s Doorway (2018)
Irish made Found Footage film where the investigation into a seeming miracle at a Catholic orphanage uncovers a case of possession and assorted deviltry taking place