The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
This is a Russian dark fantasy that has been misleadingly titled as a mermaid film in English release. It in fact concerns an avenging rusalka water spirit who haunts a small lake
In his last ever produced screenplay, cult director Larry Cohen turns in a wonderfully playful script with Matthew Lillard as a screenwriting lecturer harassed by a killer only to find real-life doesn’t obey the same rules that screenplays do
The Pang Brothers, two of the most exciting genre directors in the world, have their distinctive style swallowed up in their bland US mainstream debut produced by Sam Raimi
A strong and worthwhile serial killer thriller mini-series from the BBC with a killer targeting victims with the names and professions of the apostles
Film that has developed a cult reputation set in a seaside town where the dead are returning to life. The film has an unsettling nightmare ambience where things happen without any explanation
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
A Countess Bathory film actually made by Hungarians (the area where Bathory lived historically) but this promptly heads into extremely bad movie territory
Cocaine Bear proved a reasonable success. The Asylum’s response was to give us Methgator about a drug-addicted giant alligator
Chilling portrait of a paedophile and the young boy he keeps locked in his cellar. The entire film is an astonishing exercise in calm and mannered understatement
A standout South Korean film about a deaf girl pursued through the streets by a serial killer
Mike Flanagan horror mini-series adapted from Christopher Pike’s book, this is set around a group of patients in a hospice who form a group to tell each other horror stories
Classic Halloween tv special. As with most of its ilk, it places the focus on a light-hearted treatment where the monsters are no more serious than Halloween revelers
Mike Flanagan returns with his best work to date. Effectively a Catholic version of Salem’s Lot, this comes with some flat out great pieces of writing
One of the best Clive Barker adaptations. Japan’s Ryuhei Kitamura brings a masterful assurance with the horror elements and does gore in astonishingly new and unrealised ways
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
Cheaply made Cannon Film that plays out like an action version of The Hitcher featuring a completely over-the-top Mark Hamill as the psycho
Ari Aster made a big word of mouth splash with his debut film Hereditary, which had him acclaimed a major new name. This was his follow-up, a fascinating dive into Folk Horror territory in the depiction of a pagan cult
Very impressive British mini-series about a woman exorcist. This dispenses with the usual head-turning, barf-bag theatrics and feels like the first theologically thought out work of its type, one that largely eschews horror effect to come together as a superbly well-written story
Routine psycho-thriller with Brian Bonsall as a child who murders his adopted families when they fail to meet his expectation. An amusing idea plays out with comic-bookish set-ups and a cliched plot
One of the films from the Italian Gothic cycle of the 1960s, Released fairly soon into the cycle when the tropes were not set in place, it draws strong influence from Hammer Films and goes off at a strange tangent that is one part House of Wax, another part resurrection experiments
The Y2K Problem was a now largely forgotten social apocalypse that never happened so why someone is making a film about it now is a scratch of the head. This is a Backwoods Brutality film that abruptly jumps tracks to become a monster movie
This comes with an interestingly different premise wherein characters are abducted and wake up inside a simulation of Night of the Living Dead and realise they are meant to replay the roles of the people in the farmhouse at siege from the zombie onslaught
Sequel to Mimesis, which had people trapped in a simulation of Night of the Living Dead, where this time people are trapped in a recreation of Nosferatu
Serial killer thriller from the perpetually terrible Renny Harlin. A variant on Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians, it promptly collapses into ludicrous plotting and an even more ridiculous string of deaths
Low-budget action film with Dolph Lundgren as a modern-day Knights Templar tasked with preventing The Devil returning to Earth at the millennium
Standout film featuring Owen Wilson as a genteel serial killer
A 1990s video release, a variant on Carrie where a bullied teen girl enacts vengeance against tormentors with the aid of a cursed mirror
A sequel to Alexandre Aja’s Mirrors that abandons most of the basics of the first film and strips everything down to a series of gory, novelty deaths
Alexandre Aja film about haunted mirrors. Aja is more a director of physical horror and seems less attuned to the supernatural mood
From a Larry Cohen script, a side-splitting effort with Kevin Dillon as a psychopathic sperm donor who forcibly intrudes into the life of his baby’s mother
A classic Stephen King adaptation from Rob Reiner with writer James Caan imprisoned by psycho fan Kathy Bates, who gives a terrifying performance that won her an Academy Award
There is an irresistible appeal to this film – Katie Holmes as a perfect, sweetly smiling Miss Manners dressed in Sunday Best who, in between correcting people’s manners and punctuation, is also a gun-toting vigilante in the best tradition of Charles Bronson
A remarkable little Japanese zombie film about a family who adopt a zombie maid. This is shot kitchen sink style and becomes a study in the way her blank presence begins to affect everyone around her
An appealingly tongue-in-cheek killer shark film with sharks attacking along the Mississippi
Frank Darabont delivers one of the best Stephen King adaptations where the story of people at siege in a supermarket from unseen creatures in a mystery fog outside becomes a study in fear and prejudice. With one of the great unforgettable endings
A wonderfully grotesque and sinister film about a failed children’s show host who returns from Hell as a boogeyman come to snatch children away from bad parents. Think Death to Smoochy meets A Nightmare on Elm Street
This starts out seeming like another haunted house film before developing some conceptual reversal twists of the first M. Night Shyamalan-esque order
The Frankenstein film, which deals with grave robbing and hideously scarred corpses, seems an unlikely choice for adult movie treatment. This is one of the offerings
Bryan Bertino who made the impressive home invasion thriller The Strangers and this was his follow-up. This was held up so long in release that its originality has been rendered everyday by others milking the Found Footage genre
Richard Elfman film about chic vampires who have become an elite living in Hollywood. Despite promise and some interesting ideas, this is ruined by an atrociously overacting cast
Very cheaply made film about a deadly mold going amok at a laboratory, which is only notable for some gory meltdown effects and the filmmaker’s laughable lack of knowledge about contamination procedures
Folk Horror about the discovery of a witch’s body in a bog, this is a slow burn film that falls together with great subtlety
A captivating variant on the mass insanity film where parents are frenziedly driven to kill their children. As the murderous father, Nicolas Cage gives a performance where he lets all stops go, while director Brian Taylor, formerly one half of Neveldine/Taylor, makes a rather watchable film
Sequel to Mommy, which featured Patty McCormack as a psychopathic mother
Patty McCormack played a psychopathic child in The Bad Seed. This is essentially a sequel where McCormack has grown up and become a mother
Amiably silly children’s vampire film that manages to take a juvenile approach off with tongue planted in cheek
Another low-budget monster movie for the Syfy Channel. Between Sean Patrick Flanery’s unconvincing adventurer hero and the filmmaker’s failure to even vaguely approximate what Mongolia or its locals look like, this quickly slides down into a tatty, indifferently made copy of Tremors
Incredibly shabby film about residents of a Texas boarding house being killed by a supernatural dog
An adaptation of a classic 18th Century Gothic novel about a priest who faces diabolic temptations in the form of a woman disguised as a novice monk amid much tortured guilt and damnation
The Monk is a sordid classic of 18th Century Gothic literature, filled with crazed lusts and Catholic guilt and damnation. However, in the hands of French director Dominik Moll, all the tortured sexuality has been watered down and the story stuffed as a costume drama
Osgood Perkins adapts a Stephen King story about a toy monkey that causes deaths whenever it is wound, which becomes the opportunity for Perkins to go into full-on Final Destination territory with bizarre deaths
Disappointing George Romero film about a paraplegic man’s psychic link with his monkey that then comes to enact his suppressed anger. A fine idea drowns in shrill moral characterisations.
Obscure 1970s film about a monster emerging from a Colombian lake. The film taps a bunch of subplots and cliche themes but fails to make any of them even remotely interesting. The entire show though is plunged into bad movie stakes by the emergence of the ridiculous monster at the end
A monster movie that consists of a mother and daughter cowering in a crashed car on a remote stretch of road. The effectiveness of the film comes in the incredibly raw emotional groundwork laid in the first half
Mad scientist film in which George Zucco transplants an executed man’s brain into a gorilla’s body whereupon the ape-man proceeds to exact revenge against those who wrongly convicted him
This has the mildly amusing idea of taking the idea of films like Dracula vs Frankenstein et al one step further and actually pitting various classic monsters against one another in a wrestling match. Beyond its mimicry of televised wrestling though, there is almost nothing else to the film
Following the collapse of Amicus Films, producer Milton Subotsky went on on his own to make this horror anthology, the bread and butter of Amicus in their heyday. Though he brings in some major horror names – Vincent Price, John Carradine – the jokey tone failed to find any success
Patty Jenkins and Charlize Theron combine forces on their portrait of female serial killer Aileen Wuornos. The result won Theron, who undergoes an amazing transformation, an Academy Award for Best Actress
Another Z movie attempt to join the 1960s beach party movie fad with the additions of monsters that ends up being fairly ridiculous on all counts
Monster movie parody that spoofs a number of classic films, including King Kong where it takes the title literally and the monster makes off with the hero giving the film a certain LGBT community relevance in its day. Contains quite an impressive cast list, including featuring both Paul Walker and singer Fergie as kids
Mad scientist film from poverty row studio PRC with George Zucco in a Bela Lugosi role as a madman injecting his enemies with doses of acromegaly
The Asylum conduct a monster bash – a crossover between the Famous Monsters – and actually do a modest and quite enjoyable job that pays affectionate homage to the characters
Minor and largely undistinguished 1950s monster movie. The monster is a blatant copy of The Creature of the Black Lagoon and similarly has biologically improbable designs on the heroine. Routine on all accounts
This has an interesting premise where a trio of house burglars break into a mansion during a dinner party only to stumble into a support group for serial killers
Rather charming effort where the Famous Monsters – Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster, the Wolf Man, The Mummy, The Creature – are revived and pitted against a group of kids. The film has a great deal of affection for the originals and the encounters are delightful
An eight-episode tv mini-series based on true-life necrophile/grave robber Ed Gein. This expands the story out and considerably embellishes the facts but is one of the most outrageously out there pieces of tv watching you will ever come across
This was misleadingly sold as a monster movie and is otherwise an Old Dark House thriller, most of which is blatantly borrowed from The Cat and the Canary
Video-released compilation of above average horror short films all set around the titular website
Australian exploitation homage that is like a collision between Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! and a monster movie. Low-budget but this has an authentic recapturing of the spirit of trash cinema
An amusingly lurid Z budget film with a widow using an atomic reactor to transfer her mind into a younger body
Film in which Christina Ricci fears her son is being drawn to a monster in the lake, this hangs around a very contrived twist ending
Sony’s attempts to wring everything possible from the Spider-Man copyright in order to compete with the MCU continue with this film devoted to the Spider-Man vampire villain
Another effort in the sad slide into shabby amateurishness that marked that latter years of Tobe Hooper’s career, a muddled effort set around a mortuary involving body-snatching fungus and deformed relatives in the crawlspaces
Intended as a horror riff on the phenomenally popular Police Academy series, this sets a series of gags in as bad a taste as possible around the locale of a mortuary
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
A horror anthology with a mordant sense of humour with Clancy Brown doing a great turn as an octogenarian mortuary attendant who tells several stories of the bodies he has tended
A biopic of Paula Maxa, the real-life star of Paris’s Grand Guignol Theatre. The Grand Guignol specialised in plays depicting gory on-stage deaths and she was killed on stage an estimated 10,000 times during her career. Here the biopic elements are blended with a mystery in which she is targeted by a serial killer
Ana Asensio, a Spanish immigrant, writes, directs and stars in a story about a cash-strapped Spanish immigrant who is forced to seek employment in a secret society in order to make ends meet (*)
The first and best version of the oft-told story in which shipwreck survivors are forced to survive with their bare hands while being hunted by a mad Russian aristocrat
Remake of the oft-filmed story wherein a couple are forced to survive with their bare hands while hunted by a sportsman. This has been updated where hero John Hennigan is now a reality tv star
A new version about the classic human bloodsports film where a group of shipwreckees are hunted across an island by a mad aristocrat
Studio-backed attempt to enter the Backwoods Brutality genre ends up as an uncertain black comedy that fails to push the envelope anywhere near what its models do
A Hungarian-made Found Footage horror film with vague claims to being about the Mothman. This only goes where The Blair Witch Project trod before, although subverts it in a twist ending (8)
Interesting attempt to rewrite Carmilla for the Twilight crowd. In fact, this is a film that features more credible teenage girls and is far more successful as a horror film and at creating uncanny mood than the Twilight films were
From the same people who made Demonic Christmas Tree, this is a supernatural retribution film that was sold as a Krampus film
There was undeniable shock value watching 1960s sex symbol Diana Rigg cast as a venomous middle-aged woman with murder on her mind. While this BBC mini-series won awards, you feel that a 1960s Hammer psycho-thriller would have conducted it in half the time
The Adams Family have become one of the most impressive genre talents in recent years. It has been fascinating watching them explore a dark version of American folk horror – this takes them into the darkest places they have visited yet
After 27 years, Dario Argento finally rounds out his Three Mothers trilogy begun way back with Suspiria but the underwhelming results give all evidence of his having lost his mojo
One in a series of popular British drag comedies, this imports Bela Lugosi as a mad scientist for a series of frenetic and none-too-funny goings-on that make little sense
Thriller with Jamie Lee Curtis as a psychopathic mother determined to get her boys back from her ex
A parody of the Backwoods Brutality film. One of the very first films produced by Lloyd Kaufman of Troma fame
This has almost nothing in common with the 1980 film it is supposedly based on. Instead we get a home invasion film where Darren Lynn Bousman of Saw sequel fame shows that constant scenes of brutality and torture are all that he has in his arsenal
Genuinely creepy film supposedly based on a true story in which Richard Gere investigates a phenomenon known as the Mothman and starts to receive visions, time blurrings and much in the way of uncanny happenings. A film that leaves you with a sense of something unearthly happening just beyond your grasp
Ridiculous backwoods slasher film featuring a no-name cast that frequently collapses into the laughable
A strong contender for the worst Blair Witch copy AND the worst Amityville film ever made. This has the feel of a home movie made by a husband and wife and is laughably ridiculous in its failings
One of several horror films based around Mickey Mouse now that the character has entered into public domain. Here Mickey Mouse is a half-human hybrid slaughtering victims at a deserted fairground
Another of the Mickey Mouse horror films that emerged when the character entered public domain. This features a Mickey Mouse masked killer pursuing teens through an amusement arcade
Takashi Miike tv mini-series with a mind-bogglingly confusing plot involving a split personalitied detective, possession, a terrorist pop star and barcodes imprinted in eyeballs
Overlooked effort where Kevin Costner, in a surprisingly dark and undeniably effective turn, plays an everyday man who has a dark side as a serial killer. A very impressively outing on all levels
A nicely made Stephen King adaptation about a teen who starts to receive text message from beyond the grave. From Ryan Murphy, the producer behind tv’s Glee and American Horror Story