The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Luc Besson scripted sequel to the serial killer thriller The Crimson Rivers. However, in director Olivier Dahan’s hands, this emerges as a empty-headed series of shock images and random action scenes
Tobe Hooper delivers an entry amid the early-00s vogue for B-budget CGI monster movies, drawing clear inspiration from Lake Placid. Hooper had not made a good film since the 1980s and this does little to reverse the path of mediocrity
The late 2000s brought a spate of giant crocodile amok films that included some really good efforts like Rogue and Black Water. This is a belated entry from China, featuring some surprisingly good CGI effects
The very first film from Guillermo Del Toro, a unique take on the vampire film concerning an aging antique dealer who finds a clockwork device that rejuvenates but leaves him with a taste for blood
Japanese director Shusuke Kaneko turns his attention to the pyrokinesis theme. Thanks to Kaneko’s expertise with effects, this becomes the best film on the firestarter theme yet
The little-seen final film from Hammer director John Gilling, an Anglo-horror styled work about resurrected Knights Templar
TV movie that was an early effort from celebrated producer Aaron Spelling, concerning an occult conspiracy surrounding a couple who inherit a farmhouse
Xavier Gens film from the screenwriters of The Conjuring films based on a supposedly true-life exorcism. One was hoping that Gens would do amazing things with the exorcism genre but he only rehashes the same cliches
Making claim to being based on a true story, this recounts the brutal beating and killing of a handicapped boy by three youths. More social horror than genre horror, this culminates in a horrible and not easy to watch scene
Controversial William Friedkin film in which Al Pacino plays a straight cop who must go undercover in New York’s gay leather and S&M community to hunt a serial killer. This holds back little in its portrayal of the scene.
A copy of Fatal Attraction where Cary Elwes rents a room from a family only to find himself dealing with a psychopathic underage Alicia Silverstone determined to seduce/wreak vengeance
Dreary film in which Vincent Price is a magistrate who is haunted by a manifestation of The Devil for his witch persecutions. The publicity falsely tried to sell this as an Edgar Allan Poe adaptation.
Fascinatingly torrid Mexican-made film about voodoo, which prefigures much of The Serpent and the Rainbow with striking effect
Smart and intelligent slasher film in which a campus game among students turns deadly as it appears that a killer whose identity they made up may be eliminating their numbers for real
One of the more underrated Stephen King adaptations about a rabid killer dog. Director Lewis Teague turns the last 40 minutes with Dee Wallace and son trapped in a car by the dog into an extended climax of grueling tension
The seventh of the Child’s Play films with the killer doll Chucky. I never much cared for the original series but the modern films – those with Chucky’s name in the title – have become a lot wittier and playful, constantly making jokes back to the rest of the series
A copy of Cat People in which a group of G.I.s violate a Malaysian temple and are subsequently haunted by a mysterious snake woman. This achieves some modest atmosphere
A Quentin Tarantino produced black comedy about a forensic cleaner that is charmed by a serial killer who has returned to the crime scene. An indie film that not many people saw at the time.
The film that brought Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa to attention. Set around a series of hypnotism murders, this is, as with Kurosawa’s films, cryptic and frequently inexplicable but has an undeniable uncanniness
From Gore Verbinski, director of The Ring and the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films, a film about a sinister health sanatorium. A beautiful looking film but it is a long time before we ever find out what is going on
One of the most original takes yet on the creatively exhausted zombie film that asks what would happen if a cure were found but the zombies returned to life with full memory of everything they had done
Actor David Keith directs an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Color Out of Space. Unfortunately the focus on cheesy and ridiculous effects quickly takes the exercise down into Grade Z territory
A sequel entirely unrelated to The Curse only worth seeing for a series of entertaining entertainingly ridiculous effects where a man’s arm transforms into a mutant snake
Sixth entry in the Child’s Play series, made to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the original. Contains lots of fanservice and some surprise cameos. This makes an effort to cut back the black humour and go back to being scary
Harsh and brutal work written by Bret Easton Ellis of American Psycho fame wherein a group of jocks harass and tear apart the life of Bella Heathcote after she accidentally blinds the leader’s eye in the process of rejecting his advances
This and The Horror of Dracula the following year set Hammer Films on the map. A remake of Frankenstein very different to the 1931 version that comes in vibrant colour and places Peter Cushing’s ruthlessly amoral Baron at the centre of the show
The intriguing idea of a horror movie take on the famous nursery rhyme. An earlier work from Scott Jeffrey/Scott Chambers behind the Winnie-the-Pooh horror films
An extension of The Conjuring universe with a film based on the Mexican legend of the crying woman La Llorona. This killed by the director’s constant straining for effect
This sold itself as the first Iraqi horror film, which it isn’t quite (more accurately a film made by an expatriate), although it is rooted in the mythology of the region
This offers the promising idea of Sleeping Beauty reworked as a horror film (and set in the modern day). Never as interesting as it sounds in synopsis, this becomes more a Sleeping Beauty-themed haunted house ride
The second of the Mexican-made Aztec Mummy films. The film has cheap, dreary set-ups and the running time is padded by footage from the first film. This does have the novelty of being one of the first Mexican films to feature a masked wrestler hero
One of the classic horror films from producer Val Lewton. The studio gave Lewton orders to make a sequel to his first hit Cat People but he confounded this by making an entirely different film about invisible playmates that has no cat people
This was the second film set around the real-life Clown Motel in Nevada. Despite which this is not another killer clown films and is focused around the awakening of vengeful Native American spirits
Dreary British occult film that wastes a great cast line-up, including Christopher Lee, Barbara Steele and an 82 year-old Boris Karloff in his last performance
Makeup effects man John Carl Buechler directs a film about a resurrected prospector come to enact vengeance against those seeking his gold claim
A low-budget copy of the Vincent Price Edgar Allan Poe films with a patriarch seemingly returned from the dead and eliminating his relatives with a series of sensationalistic deaths
The second mummy film from Hammer Films, this is a rather dull variant on the genre. Their usual flair and production values emerge here under a director who makes this turn out plodding
A low-budget mockbuster that joins the horde of ghost nun films that were made following the success of The Nun. From the director of Clowntergeist.
Larry Buchanan was a director whose output rivalled Edward D. Wood Jr in quality. This film about an expedition into the bayous encountering a mad scientist creating human-crocodile hybrids registers fairly poorly on most counts
The world’s first vampire Western featuring a vampire gunslinger. Today it’d be called Cowboys vs Vampires but such casual genre cross-hatching didn’t exist back then and it astride two genres with not uninteresting results
Hammer Films offer their take on the werewolf film starring a young, unknown Oliver Reed. Director Terence Fisher creates a lush film rich in symbolism, made with the full weight of Hammer’s production values
Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson had the huge hit of Scream but failed to replicate that with this werewolf film, which was a behind the scenes nightmare that emerges as a mess on screen
The greatly underrated Sean Ellis returns with a beautifully understated film about the hunt for a possible werewolf creature loose in rural 19th Century France. Everything happens in a state of careful ambiguity
A revival of the popular 1970s Blind Dead series about Knights Templar zombies. In this era of zombie films homages and remakes, it is a surprise nobody has thought to do so before
Slasher film that is more like an Agatha Christie whodunnit, this comes with an appealing level of meta-fictionality. Mostly, it is an actor’s film and has been set-up to allow its name cast to do amazing things
Another variant on the containment thriller a la Buried, this has Julianne Hough trapped at the bottom of a cliff in an overturned SUV while being taunted by a serial killer
Gripping German forensic psychology thriller that starts with one of the most memorable hooks in recent years where a pathologist autopsies a body only to find his daughter’s name and cellphone number embedded in its head
Low-budget horror film in which a novice actress signs on to star in a low-budget slasher film only to find the director appears to be killing off people for real
Micheal Bafaro is a justifiably obscure director whose entire career has been built on recycling other horror films. This is his version of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, which is passable until a Sixth Sense-styled twist ending
An enjoyably twisted psycho film that heads into a fairly disturbed headspace concerning a waitress who has a habit of killing people and her former circus performer boss who feeds the bodies to his pigs
A formulaic evil child psycho-thriller where young Gabrielle Boni kills to protect her perfect adopted family. At least young Boni conjures an effective nastiness on screen
Psycho-thriller about a woman who has an abortion and then years later is married and pregnant when she is stalked by her ex-boyfriend demanding that the child is his. From an early Larry Cohen script
Stuart Gordon returns to adapt H.P. Lovecraft for a third time. As before, Gordon allows Lovecraft’s unspeakable terrors to be eclipsed by creature effects but the results are nothing too memorable
A film based on true-life serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer that does a reasonable job in depicting the Dahmer story. This stars a young unknown Jeremy Renner in the title role
Best TV of the year. A mini-series that offers an absolutely compulsive dive into the disturbing mind of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and an exactingly detailed charting of his crimes. Evan Peters shines in the title role
This gets full marks for an attention grabbing title – outside of that it has the cheap shabbiness of a Troma film, substituting a gonzo sarcasm and plentiful bad taste and gore for many of the filmmaking basics
This offers the novelty of being the world’s first Ukrainian zombie film. Being made in the midst the Russian invasion, this lays into Soviet Russia and its failings with a scathing regard
Another gonzo killer shark film, this concerns sharks who have invaded a river and built a dam to trap human prey. Everything comes with an amusingly sarcastic sense of humour
The first of the sequels to The Omen, this follows Damien through his teenage years as he comes into his powers. Mostly though, the film seems to exist to stage more bizarre novelty death scenes
This makes an interesting attempt to rewrite the basics of The Omen as an erotic film. The usual occult happenings but with an emphasis on bodies coupling
A comic-book adaptation about vampire wars in a modern East European war zone. A slick Underworld-styled vampire action film that has some interesting ideas going on inside it
At variance to the assorted other films about survival in shark-infested waters, this features Jai Courtney in a completely crazed performance as a serial killer who feeds his victims to sharks
A passable psycho-sexual thriller that copies Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct with Andrea Roth caught between two men, one of who seems to be stalking her
Australian film in which a psychopathic cop pursues a group of teens who break into a department store after hours. A debut film for Stephen Hopkins who went on to a successful career as a Hollywood director.
A horror film that delves into pleasingly dark places as a man finds that his life is being taken over by his childhood imaginary companion that he realises wants to possess his body
A documentary that interviews Dario Argento, now in his early eighties, along with his family and those around him, where he discusses his life, films and career
Undeniably influenced by Jaws, this Australian effort is the first ever killer crocodile film. Nothing extraordinary, although the film does have an interesting subtext about the conflict between European and Aborigine cultures
Larry Blamire, a director who specialises in genre parodies, takes on the Old Dark House thriller. Not quite up there with Blamire’s funniest films, nevertheless, the film conducts some amusing spoofs of the form
Bryan Bertino has become a Must Watch director ever since The Strangers. Here he makes an uncanny slow burn film about a family gathered to tend a dying father as something evil waits to claim his soul
Modestly effective psycho film with Paulina Porizkova pursued through a deserted asylum by escaped serial killer Larry Drake
Adaptation of an Edgar Wallace novel in which Bela Lugosi leads a blind institute whose donors are being murdered. More a crime thriller that has been twisted into being a horror film to fit Lugosi’s presence
Film created by Finnish heavy metal performer Mr Lordi that takes place in a hospital that seems to exist in a haunted twilight zone
George Romero’s adaptation of a Stephen King novel with writer Timothy Hutton haunted by an evil alter ego. Underrated and quite possibly the King adaptation that is the most faithful to its source material
David Slade seemed a promising directorial name several years ago with works like the charged Hard Candy, before making Twilight films and being lost in tv. Here he returns with a film set around a small town’s deadly Halloween rituals
The underrated Victor Salva, director of Jeepers Creepers, takes on the deviltry and occult film where with his ability to conjure eerie jumps and outlandish images produces something original and out of this world
Pilot for an unsold tv series that was later released theatrically produced by Alfred Hitchcock’s company. Leslie Nielsen plays an occult detective and the film proves surprisingly well-shot and atmospheric
A horror film made by Canada’s indigenous Metis people that concerns a group of women on a therapeutic wilderness trek are stalked and attacked by a monster
Frank De Felitta was mostly known for writing the novel that became Audrey Rose. He directs this tv movie where intellectually handicapped Larry Drake is killed by a lynch mob only to return from the dead as a scarecrow
A forgotten item from the Anglo-horror cycle in which brother and sister Christopher Lee and Joan Collins conspire to fake a series of hauntings in order to obtain an inheritance hidden in a mansion
A low-budget independent film that is making a clear effort to spook an audience. On the other side, it is also mining the ghost story, a genre that feels like it has run out of anything original in its tired and formulaic plot possibilities
Tim Burton’s slide into mediocrity continues with this comedic update of the cult Gothic soap opera tv series, which is now played at a level of cartoonish unseriousness that resembles the Addams Family
The intriguing idea of a haunted radio signal. A ghost story that does something different telling an ambitious double-stranded story even if it fails to pull it off with complete satisfaction
A no expectation adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft’s Dreams of the Witch-House from a director down the low-budget end of the spectrum that does some surprisingly modest things
This is an absolutely fascinating film about the efforts to perfect an occult ritual. It feels as though the filmmakers have dispensed with Hollywood cliches and has researched the real thing
Work of Russian horror that heads into pleasingly dark places as a woman enacts a love spell to bring her boyfriend back to her where you just know that something horrible is going to happen
This comes with an original idea where a troubled girl starts drawing a graphic novel that mirrors her own life only for the characters to emerge into the real world. Less horror than a dark allegorical fantasy
Director Paul Solet made an incredibly creepy debut film Grace. His follow-up has Keir Gilchrist imprisoned on home detention with an ankle bracelet only to find the house is haunted
In her first English-language debut, French director/writer/actress Marina de Van delivers a variant on Carrie, albeit rewritten as a tale about child abuse. Oblique, quiet but undeniably effective when de Van pulls her punches
Hideo Nakata made the highly influential Ringu but his other films have been uneven. This ghost story is one of his few follow-ups that comes near recapturing the same uncanny mood
The English-language remake of Hideo Nakata’s ghost story made by Walter Salles. This version is surprisingly faithful to the original but entirely miscues Nakata’s jolt ending
A film about a woman’s journey to a convent of sinister secrets that is aswim in religious imagery, although the film itself eventually proves to be all imagery with no coherent plot
A Mexican entry in the haunted house genre, featuring a group of girls who inherit a place haunted by an aunt and her black cat. Strikingly rich in terms of set design
An ambitious low-budget variant on 28 Days Later featuring some excellent effects, where a man wakes up with amnesia to find zombies have overrun society
A film about a snuff site that broadcasts a torture gameshow live on the web. This is a thriller that feels as though made by people who know nothing about the internet or law enforcement procedure
A no-budget vampire film from ingenue Kansas-based filmmakers. What the film suffers in the amateurism of its cast and lack of plot, it makes up for with its enthusiastically over-the-top gore effects and bucketloads of gore
From Jaume Balaguero, a film that assembles a decent cast and broods with suggestions of a haunted house and occult conspiracies but never does much to let it pay off
Greg McLean has made an impressive name with the Wolf Creek films and Rogue. In his first US film, he delivers a disappointing and utterly generic haunted suburban house film
Formulaic horror film about an avenging supernatural hag known as the Tooth Fairy. Much of the premise is borrowed from A Nightmare on Elm Street
This exploits the topical fascination with the darknet in a story ostensibly about making snuff videos for sale there. In actuality, this telescopes down to being no more a variant on The Most Dangerous Game
The Woman was one of the least likely films to ever warrant a sequel. But this is what we get here and directed/written by no less than Pollyanna McIntosh who played The Woman in the original