The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The first feature film from David Bruckner who has been doing strong work in various anthologies. This is like The Blair Witch Project with regular camerawork and an actual witch where Bruckner creates a strong and effective sense of foreboding and accumulating mood
A film based on what is said to be the most well-documented exorcism in US history. Al Pacino plays the exorcist
A film that stands much in the shadow of Se7en and the serial killer thriller with Morgan Freeman tracking a ritual African killer
A quite good but little seen Backwoods Brutality film from the great era of Canuxploitation with overtones of Deliverance as hikers in the wilderness are harassed by mysterious figures who play taunting psychological games
The rare example of a sociological horror film concerning a teenager who kills his girlfriend and how his peers seem unconcerned. Filled with great performances, this is a film with a chilling nihilism that puts its finger on a 1980s youth generation with no seeming future ahead
Amnesiac persons wake up in a bunker filled with monstrosities. Sort of H.P. Lovecraft served up as a low-budget variant on Resident Evil
Sequel to the earlier The Rizen with the group of people trapped inside a labyrinth of Lovecraftian horrors
Filipino variant on the Japanese ghost story (Ring, The Grudge et al). Much more low key than some of the other variants but with moments of undeniably spooky effect and with an ambitious story that takes place across three different decades
While the title suggests something of the classic The Hitcher, this reminds more of And Soon the Darkness with its image of tourists being stalked in the pastoral French countryside. Ravishingly photographed, creating a strong sense of dis-ease to arrive at a great twist ending
Australian film that takes a big bite out of Duel with a group of people being pursued through the Outback by a truck-trailer that appears to be fueled by human blood
Psycho road movie in which Christopher Lambert must rescue his family after they are abducted by a gang. An amazing cast list deliver subtle and effective performances
A standout Australian psycho-thriller with Stacy Keach as a truck driver who believes he has seen a killer on the highway. Director Richard Franklin creates a series of astonishing set-pieces.
A low-budget film about an evil doll that was made not long after Annabelle came out and boasting a similar Based on a True Story claim. Four sequels have followed
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
A bad movie classic. As the title explains, we get a revived mummy pitted against an actor in a ridiculously clunky tin man suit. Third in the Mexican-made Aztec Mummy series, the biggest ripoff is that 3/4 of the film consist of footage recycled from the preceding films
A bad movie classic. A vanity project for Canadian heavy metal star/bodybuilder Jon-Mikl Thor who plays a heavy metal star who takes frequently his shirt off to pose while his band are killed by demonic forces (represented by the screen’s maybe worst ever puppet effects) as they try to record an album
Troma film less terrible than most about a modern who gets involved with a vampire from the 1950s
The first in a cluster of mostly terrible 80s films that tried to incorporate horror and rock music, this concerns a rock star sent to the electric chair after a killing spree who now appears to return from the dead
Painfully unfunny vampire comedy from Cannon Films about a vampire teenager who becomes a rock star. This has one of the least credible premises I’ve ever seen in a film. Mostly it seems to have been conceived around placing various musicians of the day in acting roles with bizarre results
The second film from Greg McLean, made directly after the hit of Wolf Creek. In this tale of a killer crocodile. McLean borrows more than a few pages from Jaws to create an incredibly gruelling and intense ride
Megan Fox is the leader of a troupe of mercenaries (!) conducting a hostage extraction from rebel territory as they come under attack by a killer lion
Imprisonment thriller where a woman finds herself confined by deranged husband and wife Bill Moseley and Lucinda Jenney
Film based on true-life German cannibal Armin Meiwes who met a man online and by mutual agreement killed and ate his body
1970s disaster movie with George Segal tracking Timothy Bottoms as a mad bomber blowing up rollercoasters
From Paco Plaza, a beautifully made film supposedly based on a true incident featuring Julian Sands as a man placed on trail in 19th Century Spain with the defence that he is a werewolf
A documentary about Rondo Hatton, the 1940s horror actor who suffered acromegaly, and Robert Burns, the eccentric art director from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Documentary where people offer up various crackpot theories about the hidden meanings of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Fascinating in a bizarre freakshow way, an undeniable cult film in the making
Not to be confused with Tommy Wiseau’s bad movie classic. This comes from Christian Volckman who made an impressive debut a few years ago with the animated Cyberpunk film Renaissance. Moving to live-action, this creates an air of unspeakable dread as a couple buy a house that has a hidden room that can manifest anything they wish for
Modest and well-made film where Lin Shaye has the time of her life as an elderly widow who rents out her room and becomes attached to her tenant in disturbing ways
London couple find the perfect room to rent in the home of a very strange aging husband and wife. What starts out seeming an oddball comedy gradually slides over into horror movie territory but in truth this is not a very well made film on all fronts
Tame psycho-thriller that plays out as a teen version of Fatal Attraction or Single White Female where Minka Kelly gets a psychopathic dorm roommate in Leighton Meester
A copy of The Blair Witch Project with a trio of filmmakers trekking into the woods with cameras in search of The Wood Devil
Alfred Hitchcock conducts an experiment in shooting a film in only eight takes. Based on the true-life Leopold-Lowe case where two gay students murdered a child as an exercise in moral superiority.
Extremely good thriller from an Elmore Leonard script with Donald Sutherland as a Catholic priest who tries to stop a serial killer without violating the sanctity of the confessional
A Stephen King scripted tv mini-series about the investigation into a haunted house. This is not quite a classic in the vein of its model The Haunting but is a solid and effective entry
Classic film and one of Roman Polanski’s finest works, the comically paranoid story of a housewife who increasingly comes to believe that the child she is pregnant with was fathered by The Devil
Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby was a classic film that popularised the modern interest in occult and deviltry on film; this sad remake is something that only parrots the cliches that have set in in the ensuing 46 years and clumsily mishandles all of Polanski’s comically edgy paranoia
Victor Salva is one of the genre’s more underrated directors and his films are filled with incredibly eerie jumps. Here Rose McGowan finds her life terrorised by a malevolent paperboy possibly of supernatural origin
Straggler in the 1970s Animal Amok genre about a small South Carolina town under attack by killer dogs. This was done better elsewhere by films like The Pack and i>Cujo. Made in short-lived 3D fad so we get dog snouts poking out the screen
Spooky Russian film about a haunted plane flight, this recalls something of The Twilight Zone’s famous Nightmare at 20,000 Feet episode
One of the better of several films depicting the famous meeting between Mary Shelley and Lord Byron at the Villa Diodati that led to her writing Frankenstein. Starring a then unknown Hugh Grant as Byron
Film with a bizarre concept where a teenager girl is recruited into a human beehive
The best killer car tire film ever – a monster movie spoof wound in so many layers of meta-fiction that it is positively side-splitting. The smartest and funniest monster movie in ages
The underrated Curtis Harrington makes a quickie possession film about a haunted drive-in theatre. Cast soon after Carrie, the film is headed by a fierily passionate performance from Piper Laurie
Not that the title gives you any reason to expect it but this is actually a vampire film, one of the rare entries in a genre that is looking very anemic these days. An original and quite interesting smalltown take that resembles George Romero’s Martin and Let the Right One In
One film that defies the dictum that there has yet to be a decent killer plant film, this does a reasonable job of developing out tension in its story of teens encountering malevolent flora at a South American pyramid
Rather good New Zealand made horror film set in a geriatric home with Geoffrey Rush and John Lithgow engaged in a series of psychological games as a stroke-impaired Rush tries to stop a murderous Lithgow
Well constructed thriller where a wheelchair-confined teenager discovers that her mother is up to sinister purpose and attempts to escape despite her lack of mobility
Sarah Snook stars in an Australian ghost story in which her daughter seems to become possessed by the sister who went missing years ago
Monster movie where a runestone uncovered in the present day unleashes the Norse god Fenrir
Passable entry towards the end of the 80s slasher cycle with a killer stalking a campus during fraternity recruiting week
Ti West, a rising name in horror in the last few years, makes a film about the activities of a sinister cult. Soon into the film, you realise that he is actually conducting a modern Found Footage retelling of the infamous Jonestown mass suicide of the 1970s
Michael Madsen is a bank robber who makes an escape from jail and goes on the run to track down the serial killer who killed his daughter
This comes with much promise – rune-covered bodies found on a remote island, ritual murders and a secret society that believe they are the descendants of Celtic supermen – that you wonder what caused the filmmakers to let it slip through their hands
Jenn Wexler directs a film about thugs taking over a girls’ boarding school that pleasingly subverts your expectations of everything it is going to be at every turn
Folk Horror is a term that has emerged as a distinct genre of its own in recent years; this is a B-budgeted attempt to join the bandwagon
This was the eighth of the Ring films. This is made as a sequel to the earlier Sadako 3D, the worst of the Japanese series, although is actually a better film
The original Ring was a classic, an eerie ghost story that was a success that spawned a series of copies right around the Asian region. Here the Ring cycle has been rebooted in a heavy letdown that abandons all of the creepy atmospherics of the original for a series of pop-up CGI effects
The thirteenth film in the Ring/Ringu franchise. The question is whether the return of original director Hideo Nakata to the franchise can revitalise the series
The two most popular Japanese horror franchises come together to fight it out. Both series work on the provision of intensely uncanny effect but brought together the result is diluted at best
A film from cult exploitation director Jesus Franco that combines a masked thief and a killer artist plot but emerges tawdrily, not to mention has nothing whatsoever to do with the suggestive title
An early film from prolific exploitation director Jess Franco, one that comes with some beautifully Gothic photography in its tale of a hooded killer
Vietnam War film where the setting makes a unique and surprisingly effective backdrop for a modern film noir psycho-thriller
Saw series director Darren Lynn Bousman makes a film set at a convent for unwed mothers in the 1950s. Is there any chance this might be a work about institutional cruelty or the plight of unwed mothers in the era? Hardly, all it really is is Bousman inflicting a series of tortures on the girls
The first film from Pascal Laugier who has emerged as a leading French horror director since, a ghost story set at a girl’s boarding school, Laugier does produce some eerie jumps but the script is a frustrating tangle of narrative loose ends
Highly acclaimed film about a nurse’s descent into madness and religious hallucinations
Clive Barker based work about a monk pursuing two demonic succubi through time to the present. Clive Barker watered down for the Sci-Fi Channel but worth watching for the imaginative creature effects
One of the best Stephen King adaptations made as a tv mini-series concerning a town overrun by vampires. Director Tobe Hooper excels himself, staging the book in terms a series of captivating set-pieces
TV mini-series remake of the Stephen King novel, this fails to hold a candle to the earlier 1979 version
The Stephen King novel about a small town that is invaded by a vampire and is population taken gets its third screen adaptation in this film treatment. The 1979 mini-series is still the best version
Pier Paolo Pasolini’s adaptation of the work by the Marquis de Sade is a catalogue of depravities and tortures and one of the most disturbing films ever made
A modestly effective British variation on the mass insanity outbreak film. The film has one of the best out of the blue openings of any film one has seen in some time and is good at finding a kitchen sink realism, less so when it comes to explanations for what is happening
Solid little effort about a group of teens who wake up on a beach to find that the sand is trying to devour them and the only shelter they have is picnic tables and the lifeguard station. This delivers a tight, contained survival story that generates some excellent tension
This was made just before Sharknado turned the killer shark film into something deliberately ridiculous and is an entertainingly tongue-in-cheek B movie that has a perfect sense of its own limitations
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
This comes with one of the great exploitation titles of all time. Despite the enormously entertaining possibilities inherent in the premise, the film misses all of them and falls down into complete amateurism within moments
Christmas horror film with wrestler Bill Goldberg playing a demonic version of Santa Claus
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
Another of the films from the Mexican wrestling superhero Santo where he and his friend Blue Demon encounter assorted Famous Monsters raised by a mad scientist
One of the films featuring the Mexican masked wrestler Santo. A rehash of Mystery of the Wax Museum/House of Wax with Santo facing a mad waxworks curator who is using human bodies as exhibits
Another of the films featuring Santo, the Mexican masked wrestler superhero. In one of the duller entries, Santo here travels to Spain and is pitted against a mad scientist operating an artworks theft operation
The Mexican masked wrestler superhero Santo faces Frankenstein’s daughter who wants his blood to perfect her rejuvenation serum in this entertainingly madcap outing
This is the most famous of the Santo films, one that evinces an often crudely effective poetry out of its assemblage of B movie elements as he goes up against a vampire priestess and her minions
With the sensation of the Gimlin-Patterson film that supposedly depicted a Bigfoot, the 1970s gave us a spate of Bigfoot films. This was the most high-profile, a mockumentary about an expedition that sets out to find Sasquatch
Remake of the classic tv movie with Shannen Doherty investigating her sister’s death among deviltry in a girl’s school
Two couples on a road trip start to experience sinister happenings after witnessing a devil worship ceremony. Essentially Kalifornia meets Race with the Devil, this develops some modestly creepy effect
A multi-director horror anthology where all the directors are Latin American
Rather funny comedy about Satanists and a virginal pizza girl who is chased as their intended victim. This comes with a bizarrely akilter sense of humour that reminds of Martin Scorsese’s After Hours
The eight of Hammer’s Dracula, the second-to-last they would make and the last featuring Christopher Lee. This follows on from the previous film Dracula A.D. 1972 in featuring Dracula in the present day and at least does more with the idea than that film did
From Jeff Lieberman, a wonderfully malicious film where a young kid befriends and ends up aiding a serial killer on Halloween
A horror film that was the biggest box-office hit ever in Indonesia as a family tragedy stirs up hauntings and the occult. A follow-up to an earlier 1970s film that has become a cult hit.
A strikingly original work of folk horror that creates an incredibly haunted and uncanny atmosphere of mysterious things lurking in the backwoods
Friday the 13th so changed the horror genre that within two years it produced two four parodies of its title. From Roger Corman, this is more of an occasionally amusing parody of classic monster movies than the slasher film
A dark and mysterious historical fantasy about cartographers mapping the Finnish-Russian border who arrive at a mysterious village and an enigmatic stone sauna in the forest
There has very rarely been a good killer bee movie. This is one exception, a directorial effort from no less than the creator of Mission: Impossible that gains its effectiveness by using real rather than optical bees
Forget the grim and sadistic sequels that followed, this low-budget directorial debut from James Wan is a masterwork that conjures unbearable dread and tension in its study of characters forced to consider the horribly inconceivable
The first sequel to the sleeper success of Saw where Darren Lynn Bousman inherits the director’s chair but delivers a film that lacks the torturous suspense that James Wan gave the original
Third of the Saw films and the point where director Darren Lynn Bousman places the series’ focus on grim gore-drenched sadism and torture
Supposedly the final chapter of the Saw saga – where the sole novelty on offer is gore and body parts coming out the screen in 3D. This is conducted with a tired lack of effort that makes for tedium-inducing watching
Fourth of the Saw films, the third under Darren Lynn Bousman who has placed an increasing emphasis on torturous extremes at the expense of credible plotting