The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Eli Roth produced film made in Chile, this concerns a mysterious stranger to town who turns out to be a vampire that is soon sought and hunted by everybody. A promising premise given a not terribly interesting handling
A British film about a mother and daughter who open a B&B only to be taken hostage by a mysterious stranger on the run from sinister forces
True crime film based on a woman who was best friends with serial killer Ted Bundy
Routine psycho-thriller where Mimi Rogers’ home is invaded by psycho babysitter David Orth
The film that Sean S. Cunningham went on to direct after the huge hit of Friday the 13th. Though sold as a horror film, this is more of a kidnap thriller
Cited as the first film noir, this is a fascinating psycho film about a man tormented by guilt over convicting the wrong man
TV movie with a script from Richard Matheson in which Barbara Eden becomes mysteriously pregnant. The film seems to be a copy of Rosemary’s Baby before it is suddenly turns into an alien impregnation film
Australian thriller that is a blatant copy of Fatal Attraction
A harrowing home assault film that highlighted the debut of Bryan Bertino, a new director of considerable promise. The surprise about the film is just how much influence it has had on other works subsequently
The Strangers was one the sleeper hits of the 2000s. This is the first chapter in a three film reboot. On the minus side, it has been handed over to Renny Harlin, who should be on any worst directors list
The Strangers was an incredibly eerie home invasion story that has become a modern classic. This is the second chapter in a trilogy of reboot films that have been handed over to the perpetually terrible Renny Harlin
The concluding chapter in a desultory trilogy of films based on the eerie home invasion classic The Strangers. The surprise is that this ends up being the best of the three films
One of the most darkly engrossing of Alfred Hitchcock’s thrillers, a classic about two strangers who make a murder pact after meeting on a train. Where any other director would have made a straight thriller, Hitchcock lingers on the mordant humour with unnerving effect
Passable attempt to return to the heyday of the 1990s erotic thriller. Made on the cheap side, this does an okay job of covering the basics until an improbable denouement
The Strangers has been cited as one of the best horror films of the 2000s. This sequel emerges as a by-the-numbers entry that plays out no differently than a generic teen slasher film
A film from the famous poverty row studios of its era that has gained a certain cult reputation. The film transcends its cheapness to create an undeniable spooky atmosphere in its tale of a ghostly revenant, even if the cult has tended to overstate its effectiveness
Strong and powerful formative entry in the Backwoods Brutality genre where Dustin Hoffman and wife Susan George stir up locals in a small Cornwall town and are forced to mount a brutal siege after he shelters a man hunted by a lynch mob
Another wholly unnecessary remake that waters the raw savagery of the original down to a safe tepidness. Everything that the original set down has now become formulaic
Horror film with a substantial cast of genre veterans where Jeffrey Combs imprisons guests in a hotel and livestreams as a group of killers compete to rack up the most creative kill
An Indian horror film about a folk tale of a witch spirit the Stree, this was a popular success that was then built out into an Indian version of The Conjuring Universe
Low-budget, almost entirely plotless film about a cheap liquor that starts causing the bums in the area to meltdown. A film that in lieu of anything else readily dives into bad taste
Gritty urban drama with Christina Applegate as a teenage runaway on the mean streets of L.A. harassed by a psycho cop
The first vampire film actually made in Romania, although this. more a film about petty corruption and decades old disputes with vampirism coming to represent corrupt land ownership than anything to do with classic movie vampires
Action thriller with Bruce Willis as a river patrol detective hunting a serial killer
A giallo film about a masked man killing models. This comes with an attention-grabbing title that proves more sensational than most of what happens in the film
A Found Footage film where a group on a party weekend to Las Vegas call a brothel that promises to do anything – only to enter into full Hostel territory
The very first film with the plot of a woman cop going undercover in a strip club. The police procedural plot and psycho element takes a very clear backseat to the stripper set-pieces, some of which are imaginatively staged. On the plus side, the film is directed by a woman
Probably the next logical move after Zombie Strippers! Alas, where we should have had a fast, funny and sarcastic genre entry, the humour in this British entry becomes painfully belaboured in its constant unfunny efforts to get laughs
Stuart Gordon, the cult director of Re-Animator, makes a film based on a bizarre true incident where a woman ran a homeless man down and drove home with him still impacted through the windshield of her car
Classic German silent film where a man sells his shadow, which then becomes a malevolent doppelganger that torments his life
A classic of the German Expressionist era about a poor student who sells his shadow to The Devil, only to have it become a malevolent doppelganger. As with much of the work to emerge from this era, the film manages directorial effects that still look amazing today
A horror comedy starring the Foo Fighters where the band’s antics sit alongside some entertainingly outrageous gore
Largely forgotten Sherlock Holmes entry that was the first film to pit Holmes against Jack the Ripper. Both sides are treated with respect amid lush production values
Comedy about a shipwrecked crew that are rescued by a German U-boat that is carrying a vampire on board
Horror film in which Tom Cavanagh goes into hospital for a routine procedure only to emerge with his leg amputated amid increasingly more surreal things happening around the hospital
The first in a series of vampire films from Charles Band and Full Moon Productions. Several sequels followed.
An absurdly over-the-top film where aging Demi Moore takes a serum that turns her into a youthful Margaret Qualley. A ridiculous film that for some reason did well at awards season
From the director of Excision, another film that satirically digs its claws into middle-class values but there is the feeling we have seen all of this before and the film fails to provide anything funny. Added to this is a barely scary ghost plot the film occasionally remembers to get back to
Fascinating film set during Puritan witchery as men travel into the woods to confront a witch, this has many similarities to Robert Eggers’ The Witch: A New-England Folktale. Made by an historian who makes everything authentic to the era
Japanese horror film that launched the name of Shion Sono and is attention grabbing but proves an unfathomable mix of mass suicides, mysterious websites that predict deaths and a pop band seemingly controlling it all
A horror film made by the alt modelling website Suicide Girls where several girls go away for a modelling shoot only for something to cause them to start disappearing
An H.P. Lovecraft adaptation, this is a venture into bodyswap horror that proves immensely entertaining ride
Not a title that automatically suggests a horror film – and even if it does, you automatically think of the locale for a 1980s slasher film. What we get is a Spanish-made effort about a madness-inducing infection – a modestly and tightly contained effort that twists around on itself with considerable vigour
The second film from the trio that made Turbo Kid. This taps 80s nostalgia focusing on a group of kids who believe a neighbour may be a serial killer but was overshadowed by tv’s very similar Stranger Things
An early, little known Wes Craven film originally shot for tv in which Linda Blair believes that that cousin who comes to stay might be a witch
The unique idea of an anthology made up of five different slasher tales. Unfortunately, the film’s only raison d’etre is serving up serial gore scenes, which have the effect taken out of them because they are all conducted digitally and look biologically preposterous
A Spike Lee film, a fictional work set during the real-life Son of Sam killings, although Lee seems less interested in the true crime aspect than the various storylines of his characters
This has been construed as a modern-day vampire western with tongue planted in cheek. From Anthony Hickox who made a series of OTT horror films during this period
Occasionally amusing comedy where a group of fans set out to rescue the heroine’s unrequited crush from a house of vampires
Modestly effective film about people being hunted by a shapechanging killer car
An early mockbuster from The Asylum, a copy of 2007’s crocodile amok films with a giant 100-foot-long crocodile heading towards Los Angeles
Standout Russian SF/horror that undeniably captures something of The Thing with scientists encountering a monster in the depths of a deep drilling project
A film that one entered with no expectation whereupon it turned into a quite reasonable effort with Gracie Gillam owning the show as a splendidly mad AirBNB host
Carole Lombard plays an heiress who becomes possessed by the spirit of an executed murderess. From the Brothers Halperin who were behind >i>White Zombie
The first film on the theme of zombies from the American Civil War. Not too badly made and with an unusual cast line-up including Nichelle Nichols as a drill sergeant
Fairly negligible film about a family who move into a house to face the vengeance of a witch
A classic Troma title that is actually more interesting than the actual film, which concerns wars between surf gangs in a collapsed future. The film does eventually achieve a bizarre over-the-top lunacy
George Romero’s sixth and final zombie film where he writes characters and a script with much more of a richness of theme than he did in the last two entries
The title suggests a work about film fans facing the end of the world but this is actually a documentary about the cult film phenomenon
South African-shot film that pretends to be set in The Philippines. Utterly generic on every level, the film seems to be about Filipino vampire monsters but everything is vaguely sketched
Blatant copy of Jean-Claude Van Damme’s Hard Target and both in turn from The Most Dangerous Game. Here Ice-T is a homeless man forced to flee hunters and survive with his bare hands.
Australian-made adaptation of a James Herbert novel with Robert Powell as a airline pilot who is haunted following a crash. In the director’s chair, actor David Hemmings kills all atmosphere
Serial killer thriller with Aaron Eckhart on the trail of an ambiguous Ben Kingsley. This offers some interesting twists but fails in the core issue of developing it into an absorbing thriller plot
The work on which the cult of director Dario Argento was built. The film consists of a series of extravagantly arty deaths at a girls boarding school, although comes without any real connecting plot
Dario Argento’s original Suspiria was an almost entirely narrative-free work set around a series of extravagantly arty deaths; this remake could not be a more different film. Not to say it is uninteresting in what it does
Classic from the Golden Age of Horror with John Barrymore as a malevolent hypnotist who places a young model under his control. he film’s design scheme draws heavily from German Expressionism and comes with some amazingly inventive directorial effects
A film of considerable creepy fascination where Haley Bennett has married into a family of wealth and develops an obsession with eating objects. This heads into an area of disturbed psychology that is quite unsettling
A blatant copy of Snakes on a Plane featuring mutated ants aboard a plane. Without the other film’s tongue-in-cheek approach, this collapses into absurdity
Not the classic Irwin Allen bad movie but a work of disturbed psychology about a woman who develops an unhealthy obsession with feeding locusts blood and turning them into a killer swarm
A formula Syfy Channel killer bug film wherein a new experimental insecticide creates a horde of deadly genetically tinkered wasps that run amok through a small town
Released before the Tim Burton version, this is a British tv production that offers a grimly realistic, non-musical historical portrait of Sweeney Todd with Ray Winstone in the title role
Another version of the Sweeney Todd legend. Rather than a musical, this is a straight horror version, produced on low-budget. Here we learn that Sweeney is on a mission to kill off members of the aristocracy
NOT the Tim Burton film, this is one of several earlier versions of the Sweeney Todd story. Crudely made, it is lit up by the lurid melodramatics of the forgotten British horror actor Tod Slaughter
Tim Burton takes on the film version of the Stephen Sondhiem musical about a murderous barber, featuring Johnny Depp in the title role. But disappointingly, Burton still makes the same film he always does
Spike Lee makes a vampire film (even though the title gives the impression is he has detoured off into gospel). The even bigger surprise is he conducts a remake of the Blaxploitation classic Ganja & Hess
Japan’s Kiyoshi Kurosawa has developed a reputation for his intensely uncanny and deeply unfathomable horror films. This is one of his earlier works, a much more straightforward haunted house film that in its more bizarre moments attains the whacked-out dementia of the cult Japanese film House
80s slasher film about a teenage temptress who leaves a trail of dead men around her. An impressive cast but the film sits on a very dubious line
Blumhouse production from J.D. Dillard who made a modest splash with the street magician film Sleight, this features Kiersey Clemons as a survivor stranded on a desert island facing a monster that comes out at night
This is essentially Fatal Attraction relocated to a high school where athlete Jesse Bradford is stalked by Erika Christensen. This collapses in a series of ridiculous motivations
Directorial debut from the Die Hard scriptwriter Jeb Stuart is a solid thriller but the film was a surprise flop despite bringing together an impressive cast
Beautifully tightly wound thriller that takes place in a hotel room between a bank robber, his hostage and an escaped convict where nothing is what it seems
Strange film from Spanish director Joseph Larraz about mysterious happenings at a country mansion
Film based on the popular campus mock killing game where one player snaps and starts to kill for real. Featuring the screen debut of Linda Hamilton
A completely ridiculous film about mutant scorpions on a plane – after something this laughable, it’s hard to see why Snakes on a Plane needed to plant tongue in cheek
Film about a penis-enlarging drug that creates zombies, this goes for an outrageous bad taste vein are rarely lets up
Tawdry copy of Basic Instinct, an erotic thriller about a woman detective going undercover to investigate a series of murders that are linked to a health club
Serial killer thriller with Angelina Jolie as an FBI profiler tracking a killer in Montreal and becoming involved with suspect Ethan Hawke. The plot falls apart in some shabby twists
An anthology of horror tales from Indonesia, most being too short to make much distinction,, the exception being The Mo Brothers gore-drenched first film Dara
Part of the 1990s fad for dark romantic vampire films with vampire Julian Sands lurking around a library and fixating on Suzanna Hamilton
A South Korean ghost story that achieves quite a degree of spookiness, albeit influenced by the Japanese Ring phenomenon, although things fall apart at a confusing twist ending
Amicus adapts several stories from the notorious EC Comic as one of their anthology films. Missing is EC’s black humour but this is a worthwhile Amicus anthology
The second of the films spun off from tv’s Tales from the Crypt. While the first film Demon Knight took itself seriously, this does not and is killed by a campy tone and a miscast Dennis Miller keeping up a running barrage of excruciating one-liners
Film spinoff from the popular Tales from the Crypt horror anthology tv series but with more gore effects, this is competently done but does nothing to distinguish itself
Film spinoff from the Tales from the Darkside tv series, this is an anthology of three horror tales, the result is a surprisingly slick and well made film
Tales from the Hood was the novelty of an African-American made horror anthology. 23 years later the principal talents (including producer Spike Lee) reunite for a sequel
Tales from the Hood was a horror anthology made by African American filmmakers that worked familiar horror themes in around race issues. It has developed a small cult reputation. This was the second of two sequels
Horror anthology with a specific focus around African-American issues. This conducts a fine revival of the anthology genre and delivers a series of episodes that are all solid and well above-average horror tales
An anthology of Halloween-themed horror tales, all from different genre directors, including some interesting high-profile names. The results are uneven with the film providing a couple of amusing segments but nothing truly standout
Trilogy of Edgar Allan Poe tales from three European directors. Roger Vadim’s opening episode drags but both Louis Malle and Federico Fellini deliver standout works in their respective segments
The fourth of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe films. This mixes it up slightly and adapts four Poe stories into three episodes, each of which stars Vincent Price