The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Spinoff from the Japanese Death Note films from Ring director Hideo Nakata featuring the weird detective L. L was a scene-stealer but this fails to come up with an interesting enough plot for him
The idea of a killer targeting all the talentless in Hollywood has satiric amusement but this is an incoherent film delivered in a series of MTV visuals by what feels a coke-addled director
Whether we asked for it or not, director Bruce LaBruce gives us the world’s first gay pornographic zombie film in which a zombie finds it can revive the dead by having sex with them
At contrast to the forgettable James Wan produced version around the same time, this Guatemalan film spins the Latin America folktale as a parable about those behind historic atrocities being haunted
The first screen version of Donovan’s Brain about a brain in a jar exerting mental control over a man’s will. The story has been changed to become one of the era’s mad scientist films
A tawdry erotic thriller where designer Diane Lane creates a series of sexually provocative window dressings only for her to then become targeted by a psycho stalker
One of several continental Frankenstein films of the 1970s, concerning Frankenstein’s daughter. This tries to imitate Hammer Films on a lesser budget and with more nudity
Thriller with Olivia de Havilland as a wheelchair-ridden woman who is tormented after three hoodlums break in to her house while she is trapped in an elevator cage during a power cut
This is a beautifully made Coming of Age ghost story from the greatly underrated Frank LaLoggia wherein a bullied Lukas Haas is led by a ghost to uncover a murderer
This is a misleadingly titled film that features no Krampus and is actually a low-budget Christmas slasher that has been renamed by the distributor. Poorly made on all accounts.
Another film about Countess Bathory, although this returns to the historical record rather than makes her as a vampire. But this is killed by a ridiculously tame account of Bathory’s activities
An Australian psycho film that gained a fascination, being called sleazy and sordid upon its release. Which of course makes it a must see for Moria
A gender-flipped adaptation of the Edgar Allan Poe story, this is surely the equivalent of The Room among Poe adaptations and may be the worst Poe film adaptation ever
Neil Marshall was a highly promising genre name a few years ago on the basis of The Descent. Here he returns with a film about soldiers facing alien hybrid monsters in Afghanistan
Ken Russell adapts a Bram Stoker novel about a snake cult. In Russell’s hand, Stoker’s serious work is turned into a campy over-the-top comedy overloaded with worm and phallic symbols
This seems to be shaping up to be another entry in the over-saturated low-budget haunted house film. While never straying too far from this, this does throw in some interestingly strange twists
Slasher film in which a group of unlikeable teens on Springbreak are slaughtered by backwoods hicks in the Everglades. Sold as a sequel to Lake Fear despite neither film being connected in any way
A cabin in the woods horror made with an ineptitude of execution. This sets out to rip off The Evil Dead but becomes one shock effect after another that runs into an incomprehensible mass like a bad nightmare
An Australian Found Footage film about a haunting. Rather than the intense spookiness of Paranormal Activity, this is more a mockumentary that is constantly turning what we expect is going on on its head
The second in a trilogy of Japanese vampire films that came influenced by the Hammer Dracula films. This generates a reasonable degree of spooky eerieness.
David E. Kelley, better known as a high-profile tv producer, turns his hand to writing a killer crocodile film, although the result never ends up satisfying either as a monster movie or the jokey tone Kelley wants to take
Obscure work of 1980s horror that involves a group of teens deciding to party in a museum and being slaughtered in a variety of ridiculous ways after an antique lamp is opened
George Romero’s return to the zombie genre after twenty years, after others starting remaking and homaging his films. Romero still makes potent social metaphors but the gory extremes of his earlier films seem tamed down
A really shoddily Greek made film that imports Peter Cushing and Donald Pleasence in a story concerning a cult of minotaur worshippers who are snatching tourists in a Greek village
Witty psycho-thriller with Talia Shire giving the performance of a lifetime as a psychopathic landlady who becomes fixated on a handsome border
A low-budget indie comedy about a house that is plagued by demons and vampires. This comes with moments of appealing silliness
A film that sells its premise in three words. Essentially a variant on Phone Booth, this keeps a character trapped on a landmine unable to move and keeps piling on torturous twists from there
Monster movie about larvae emerging from genetically engineered cattle feed and becoming giant bat-like creatures. When a film casts Rachel Hunter as a corporate lawyer, it is not exactly aiming for believability
Film from Ray Dennis Steckler, the cult director of The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies concerning a maniac on a killing spree in Las Vegas
A film about survival in shark-infested waters where a party diving on a wreck become trapped inside by sharks. Featuring the last performance of Julian Sands
One of the very first Found Footage films, predating The Blair Witch Project, although this is less people running around the woods with cameras than an investigative mockumentary
The Italian cannibal film is the most extreme genre ever seen. An earlier effort from the director of Cannibal Holocaust, this delivers the gut-munching goods
An exorcism film made Found Footage-style with Patrick Fabian as a conman exorcist. This is constantly confounding everything one expects of the genre with considerable cleverness
Sequel to the sleeper 2010 Found Footage hit. Alas, this is a sequel that understands almost nothing about what made the first film so original and is just a possession film that comes utterly by the numbers
This asks the question of what happens to the final girl after a slasher film. This is less a slasher film than a work about post-traumatic stress before reaching a jaw-dropping ending
Mike Mendez film about a heist on a safety deposit company. Henry Rollins proves extremely entertaining as a serial killer come to retrieve his collection of eyeballs in the vault and caught in the midst
This was made guerrilla-style during the Cannes festival with many scenes shot at press conferences and premieres as obsessed fan Joe Spinell stalks Caroline Munro’s actress
British effort from the early days of the Found Footage film that reminds of Man Bites Dog with a serial killer demonstrating his techniques to a videographer
A haunted house film from Andrew Jones, who makes an okay but very low key film – the spookiest it ever gets is a phantom record player. Things are lifted by a modest M. Shyamalan-esque twist
A work of exploitation notoriety about snuff movies. Seen in heavily cut and edited forms, the film holds an undeniably sordid and nasty charge but mostly comes across as amateurish
Wes Craven’s first film, a savage shock to the system about a group of psychopaths that brutalise two girls. With this, Craven inaugurated the Backwoods Brutality film; this is still one of the best of the cycle
A disappointing remake of the harrowing Wes Craven classic where the violence has been tamed down and the film is entirely missing the irony of the original’s savage ending
A fitfully amusing H.P. Lovecraft fanboy comedy. Lovecraft, a noted conservative, would likely have deplored the idea of the nerd comedy but this gets the flavour of Lovecraft’s works down better than most
The first adaptation of Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend and the only one faithful to the novel with Vincent Price as the last man alive facing vampires outside his door
Edgar Wright creates a dazzlingly stylish recreation of 1960s London in a work with Thomasine McKenzie as a modern girl haunted by ghosts of the era’s dark underside
This was made following the success of Hostel, a low-budget film concerning a group of girls abandoned at a deserted Mexican resort town that may be haunted
One of several Italian exploitation copycats of Jaws. This has the reputation as the film that was such a blatant ripoff that Universal sued to stop its release
The sixth of the Sharknado films, this has the usual crew fighting sharknados throughout history. With this comes the recognition there is nowhere more ridiculous and over-the-top for the series to go
A ghost story that borrows quite a few touches from Assault on Precinct 13 in its tale of a haunted police station. Director Anthony DiBlasi spends his time on accumulating atmosphere with considerable effectiveness
A strikingly directed film that conjures something of The Witch: A New-England Folktale in its depiction of the horrors present in a religiously oppressive household
One of a spate of recent films that adapt characters or sections from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, this concerns the doomed ship voyage aboard which Dracula travels to England
Paul Leni is one of the great unrecognised directors of silent cinema. Leni was clearly trying to replicate his earlier hit The Cat and the Canary. This is a lesser work but Leni’s visuals are incredible
Rue Morgue magazine editor Rodrigo Gudiño makes his directorial debut with an old-fashioned ghost story that is a slow, moody ambiguous single-person drama
A strong and effective environmental horror film from Larry Fessenden in which the crew of an Alaskan drilling operation disturb something beneath the frozen ground
A disturbing Japanese film about a man in a motorised wheelchair (played by a real disabled actor) who turns serial killer and begins to enact revenge for petty injustices
In the same vein as Grindhouse, an anthology that consists of two longer stories set around the gimmick of a tv horror host playing a double-bill, along with several mocked-up parody trailers
This conducts a perfect simulation of a 1970s tv talkshow with David Dastmalchian as a host who tries to expose/debunk a demonic possession before things go wrong live on air
A highly original treatment of werewolf themes that begins with the unique premise of ‘Werewolf in a Retirement Village’ and features a hero who is an aging blind man
A crazed Evil Dead-styled film directed by sf/horror writer S.P. Somtow about modern-day Aztec sacrifices, this makes a beeline for bizarrely over-the-top gore effects
A gritty US-made adaptation of a Swedish thriller with Walter Matthau and Bruce Dern as detectives investigating a machine-gun murder spree aboard a bus
From the director of The Last Exorcism Part II, a title that does nothing to suggest a horror film. All we get is a ghost story that does an M. Night Shyamalan shift into an improbably contrived fugue state drama
Vigilante film where Gerard Butler exacts revenge against the justice system while imprisoned in a jail cell. The dispatches become entertainingly improbable to the point that Butler almost becomes a Batman villain in all but name
The experiment to bring someone back from the dead has been trod many times before and this Blumhouse production only rehashes it in tired and unimaginative ways
Documentary where director William Friedkin sits down for a fascinating, insightful look at the making of The Exorcist
Supposedly a The Texas Chain Saw Massacre prequel that offers us a Leatherface origin story. The least Texas Chain Saw-like of the sequels and eventually a far cry from the original
The third of the Texas Chainsaw films where the rights have now been inherited by New Line Cinema and the brutality of the original promptly watered down to MPAA standards
A thriller that sells itself to you with its premise where a woman who witnesses a murder and then must face the killers while trapped on a tiny ledge on a mountainside
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?”
Disappointingly not a work about human-animal hybrids but about a woman who obtains a rejuvenation serum but finds it requires devouring male pineal glands. This comes with much amusingly dated sexism
One of the last gasps of the Anglo-horror cycle, this sets assorted deviltry in an English mansion along with a series of novelty deaths that trying to compete with The Omen
The first of a trilogy of Japanese vampire films, although this does not feature Dracula despite the title and should be considered more of ghost story.
The second of the films based on Dolores Redondo’s police procedurals, this heads into an admirably dark and perverse place with plenty of jolt twists
One of the numerous Bigfoot films of the 1970s. This takes a quasi-documentary approach that never makes for a particularly interesting film and where the Bigfoot of the show gets to do very little
While holding similarities to The Haunting, this is a strong, intelligent film about parapsychologists investigating a haunted house. Filled with eerie scares and a standout Richard Matheson script
From the people who made Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, a film where the nursery rhyme of Jack and Jill somehow morphs into a variant on The Hills Have Eyes
Sam Qualiana is a director who has made some incredibly bad films elsewhere. Here he takes on making a Found Footage film about the hunt for a Bigfoot-like creature
A tv movie version of the classic ghost story by Washington Irving and the most faithful version of the story to date. With a young Jeff Goldblum as Ichabod Crane
The last of Hammer’s Dracula films made after Christopher Lee departed. A co-production with Hong Kong’s Shaw Brothers that shows Hammer trying to jump aboard the 1970s kung fu fad
A cult anime about a demon war on Earth and a half-demon child who has been born in the body of a teenager. This quite takes you aback with its extremes of violence and sexual fetishism
A Freddie Francis directed werewolf film from the latter days entry in the Anglo-horror cycle set in 1900s France. This owes much to Hammer’s earlier Curse of the Werewolf
An absurd film where angels conduct a war on Earth, which comes amid much in the way of gunfire and creature effects. Directed by a former visual effects supervisor.
A vampire film that has gained a cult reputation. Nominally party of the 1970s lesbian vampire fad but mostly something unique that takes place on a level of dreamy suggestiveness.
The first in the popular series of films starring Warwick Davis as a malevolent leprechaun. Fairly cheesy and silly, mostly known today for featuring a pre-Friends Jennifer Aniston
The second in the Leprechaun series with Warwick Davis delivering a series of extremely silly novelty deaths accompanied by excruciating one-liners
Third in the series takes Warwick Davis’s Leprechaun to Las Vegas for a series of novelty deaths that have silliness that frequently defies belief
Fifth film in the series starring Warwick Davis as a malevolent leprechaun dispatching bizarre novelty deaths. In a bizarre novelty twist, this sets the leprechaun loose in the world of rap
The Leprechaun films were a cheap ripoff of the Freddy Krueger films. This supposed revival bears nothing whatsoever to do with the originals and doesn’t even seem the same type of film anymore
Leprechaun was a hit of the VHS era. This, the eighth of the films, was made to celebrate the series’ 25th anniversary and contains many tributes to the original
This seems to want to do for the lesbian vampire film what Shaun of the Dead did for the zombie film. Alas, the film makes its appeal fairly and squarely into the crude, sexism of British lad culture
A film about the Manson Family killings told through the eyes of one of Manson Girls Leslie Van Houten. This becomes a savage and biting indictment of 1960s social morality
A milquetoast teacher tires of disrespectful pupils and imprisons two of them with the intention of torturing them into learning. The idea of an intellectual Torture Porn film if such is not an oxymoron.
Cult director Takashi Miike makes a film about a teacher who goes on a shooting rampage through a school where Miike takes an unrestrained glee in the carnage
From Cody Calahan who made Antisocial, a reasonable modernisation of the Jekyll and Hyde story with a girl at war for ownership of her own body with an evil alter ego
Surprisingly good English-language remake of Let the Right One In, the first release from the revived Hammer Films. It is extremely faithful to the original, while also recreating it with some subtlety
A strong and unusual Swedish vampire film that is less a horror film than one about friendship between a boy and the very strange girl next door who we gradually realise is a vampire
An undeniably amusing Irish comedy in which a drunken dimwit ends up being transformed into a vampire. The film comes working at you in its goofy way
A rather effective effort about a Mysterious Stranger locked in a cell who proceeds to expose the dark secrets of everybody around him, before a completely whacked ending
Part post Night of the Living Dead zombie film, part flower child ghost story, part Body Snatchers and lacking in much explanatory logic, this is nevertheless a film of unnerving and eerie effect
Like a version of David Fincher’s The Game rewritten for the mobile user generation where a slacker is forced through a series of scenarios that mess with his sense of reality
Billed as a ‘zom-rom-com’, Dane DeHaan deals with girlfriend Aubrey Plaza who has returned from the dead. The film has a quirky appeal even if it is never quite as funny as it promises to be