Death Warrant (1990)
Nov 6, 1999Prison Action/Organ Harvesting/Serial Killer
A Jean-Claude Van Damme action vehicle set in a prison that becomes an interestingly stylised realm in a wild plot featuring serial killers and organ harvesting schemes
David S. Goyer
Demonic Toys (1992)
Dec 3, 2015Malevolent Toys and Dolls
An entertaining B-budget film about malevolent toys from low-budget producer Charles Band, known for the Ghoulies and Puppetmaster films. One of the first works from screenwriter David S. Goyer
Arcade (1994)
Jun 14, 2002Malevolent Virtual Reality Game
A quickie effort made by Albert Pyun for Charles Band's Full Moon Productions to exploit the Virtual Reality themes popularised by The Lawnmower Man, concerning a malevolent VR videogame
The Puppet Masters (1994)
Dec 15, 2007Alien Body Snatchers
This adaptation of the Robert Heinlein novel was not a success when it came out but is a modest addition to the alien body snatchers genre with some undeniably effective moments
The Crow: City of Angels (1996)
Aug 15, 1999Resurrected Avenger
The first sequel to The Crow extends the look of the original into an amazingly lit Goth designer world. However, the plot (an early work from David S. Goyer) is no more than a rehash of the first film
Dark City (1998)
Jun 7, 1999Reality Manipulation
From Alex Proyas and David S. Goyer, this has an astonishing conceptual audacity in its plot dealing with shifting realities and transplanted memories, making it arguably the finest science-fiction film of the 1990s
Nick Fury, Agent of Shield (1998)
Sep 22, 2013Marvel Comics TV Pilot/Spy Adventure
Way back before Marvel Comics' extraordinary domination of cinema screens and Samuel L. Jackson's airing of the role, there was this tv pilot with David Hasselhoff; Although the film has a ridiculed reputation today, David S. Goyer delivers a tongue-in-cheek script filled with side-splitting one-liners
Blade (1998)
Apr 18, 1999Comic-Book Vampire Hunter
Nobody knew it at the time but this was the beginning of the huge surge of Marvel Comics adaptations on screen in the 00s/10s. This distills the basics of the vampire hunter comic-book down into a smart, kinetic action film
Blade II (2002)
Jul 29, 2002Comic-Book Vampire Hunter
Blade was a solid vampire/action film but the sequel is a quantum leap over that, a visually kinetic and immensely exciting comic-book of a movie thanks to the employment of Guillermo Del Toro in the director’s chair
Blade Trinity (2004)
Jan 6, 2005Comic-Book Vampire Hunter
Third of the Blade films with Wesley Snipes. As director, series screenwriter David S. Goyer emulates the same exhilarating, kinetic moves that Guillermo Del Toro infused the second film with, while the script zings with his wryly cynical dialogue
Batman Begins (2005)
Jun 15, 2005Comic-Book Superhero
After Joel Schumacher killed off the cinematic Batman franchise, Christopher Nolan successfully revives it, bringing back the dark, psychologically brooding superhero and telling a Batman origin story
The Invisible (2007)
Jun 15, 2009Disembodied Teenager
David S. Goyer directed remake of a Swedish film about a teenager stuck in a disembodied state between life and death. Despite Goyer’s sterling resume as a screenwriter, this fails to work
Jumper (2008)
Feb 23, 2008Mental Teleportation Abilities
Doug Liman makes a film that has a great concept – a secret world of people with the mental ability to teleport anywhere – that emerges as no more than a slickly polished effort that does nothing with its premise
Batman: Gotham Knight (2008)
Jul 27, 2008Compilation of Batman Anime Shorts
Taking a leaf from The Wachowskis with The Animatrix, DC went to Japan and hired a bunch of anime directors to deliver an anthology of six different animated Batman stories
The Dark Knight (2008)
Jul 18, 2008Comic-Book Superhero
Christopher Nolan brought the cinematic Batman franchise back to life with Batman Begins and here expands it into something amazing. The show is capped off by Heath Leder's towering Academy Award winning performance as The Joker
The Unborn (2009)
May 5, 2010Haunting/Possession
Scriptwriter David S. Goyer takes the director's choice to make a possession film. The one distinction here is that Goyer draws from Jewish mythology, otherwise this feels like another canned teen horror film
The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Jul 19, 2012Comic-Book Superhero
The Dark Knight is a hard act to follow and Christopher Nolan almost does but not quite. The story keeps Batman off-screen for half the film. Tom Hardy's Bane dominates the show, while Catwoman is surprisingly subdued
Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2012)
Mar 8, 2012Comic-Book Avenger/Demonic Superhero
Ridiculous sequel to the Marvel Comics adaptation with an indifferently written script assembled from cliches, forgettable action scenes and Nicolas Cage giving one of his silliest performances in ages
Man of Steel (2013)
Jun 14, 2013Comic-Book Superhero
Zack Snyder's reboot of Superman leaves you irritated in the first half of the film at its throwing chunks of comic-book canon out the window and the second half bored with the mass destruction orgy that drags on
Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)
Mar 27, 2016DC Comics Superhero Team-Up
It took DC Comics the better part of a decade to catch up with the massive success Marvel Comics are having on screen in crossing their characters over. Zack Snyder comes to the party offering up THE biggest headline double-bill in superherodom
The Forest (2016)
Jan 16, 2016Haunted Japanese Suicide Forest
Film about Japan's legendary Suicide Forest that comes rich in a sense of original mythology. All possibilities are wrung out by incredibly tepid direction that fails to deliver anything remotely scary
Tau (2018)
Nov 30, 2018Imprisoned Woman Befriends an A.I.
This comes with an intriguing central premise – a woman is imprisoned in the house of a mad tech genius where her only hope of escape is befriending his home security A.I. that is hungry for input about the world. An interesting idea alas doesn’t carry it past an ill-informed idea of how an A.I. would behave
A-X-L (2018)
Feb 14, 2021Robot Dog
Outside of animation, there has never been a decent genre film about cute dogs. This film about a robot dog is no exception. The surprise is that this is produced by the normally respectable David S. Goyer
Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)
Jan 25, 2020Time-Travelling Killer Androids
The sixth Terminator film that boasts the return of both James Cameron and Linda Hamilton to the franchise. After the troughs of Terminator: Genisys, this makes one forget about the last three sequels
The Night House (2020)
Oct 22, 2021Haunting
Rebecca Hall gives a standout performance in an eerie ghost story about a woman possibly haunted and discovering disturbing things in the aftermath of her husband’s death
The Tomorrow War (2021)
Jul 16, 2021War Across Time
Chris Pratt is recruited to fight an alien invasion in a war across time in a big-budget film that flounders in its own ridiculousness
Antlers (2021)
Dec 26, 2021Wendigo Creature
A wendigo film, this comes with impressive prospect and backed by no less names than Guillermo Del Toro and David S. Goyer
Hellraiser (2022)
Oct 14, 2022Sadomasochistic Demons
A valiant attempt to remake Clive Barker’s glistening and brilliant original that only emerges as a better made version of one of the sequels. This has a disappointing tameness that would never have inspired a series of sequels
The First Omen (2024)
Jun 7, 2024Prequel to The Omen
Did the world ask for a prequel to the events of The Omen, explaining how Damien was born etc? It's not an issue that has given me sleepless night, but it is a question the film sets out to answer anyway