Witchboard (2024)
A remake of the 1980s horror Witchboard. The original was just a VHS release and here is given a better budgeted workover, but disappears among a host of ouija-titled films of recent years
Horror
Witchcraft (1964)
Entry in the Anglo-horror cycle with a resurrected witch and an imported Lon Chaney Jr presiding over deviltry in a sleepy English village
Witchery (1988)
Italian horror film featuring David Hasselhoff and Linda Blair that has little going for it bar some imaginatively gruesome deaths
The Witches (1966)
Hammer film, not as well known as some of their other works, from a Nigel Kneale script that creates some effect in its story of schoolteacher Joan Fontaine moving to a sleepy English village and finding the locals engaged in witchcraft
The Witches Hammer (2007)
Low budget vampire action about a vampire woman who is recruited into a secret government organisation
With a Friend Like Harry (2000)
French psycho-thriller where Sergi Lopez gives an unnervingly charming performance as a psychopathic schoolfriend who inserts himself into Laurent Lucas’s life
Without Warning! (1952)
Fascinating early psycho film about the police hunt for Adam Williams who kills girls with garden shears
Witness Infection (2020)
Unexpectedly rather funny comedy that combines Mafia on a witness protection program and zombies
The Wizard of Gore (1970)
One of Herschell Gordon Lewis’s splatter films about a stage magician who cuts up women on stage and real life. The film makes mind boggling plays between reality and illusion
The Wizard of Gore (2007)
A remake of the cult Herschell Gordon Lewis splatter film about a stage magician who creates illusions of eviscerating people on stage
Wolf (1994)
Reasonable box-office hit that offers a stripped-back werewolf film with minimalist effects as milquetoast Jack Nicholson suddenly discovers the beast within
Wolf (2019)
Not to be confused with the Jack Nicholson film, this is a fine low-budget film about a group of centurions during the Roman occupation of Britain encountering werewolves on an expedition north of Hadrian’s Wall
Wolf Creek (2005)
Making dubious claim to be based on real-life, this courted considerable controversy with its violence. Essentially an Australian Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Greg McLean readily pushes things to extremes
Wolf Creek 2 (2013)
Greg McLean and John Jarratt return to the Australian Backwood Brutality saga of Wolf Creek for a second outing that is just as effective as the first. McLean often pushes the material into black humour and creates at least one sequence that makes for genuinely uncomfortable watching
Wolf Garden (2023)
This may be or may not be a werewolf film. What we have is a work that is long on mood and much ambiguity as a man hides in the English countryside from a crime he has conducted
The Wolf Man (1941)
Although it wasn’t the first werewolf film, this is the one the created all the mythology of the werewolf film – full moons, silver bullets etc – while the wolfman went on to join the pantheon of Universal Famous Monsters.
Wolf Man (2025)
After reviving The Invisible Man, James Wan associate Leigh Whannell takes on a reworking of The Wolf Man
Wolf Manor (2022)
A British werewolf film that takes place during the shooting of an old-fashioned Hammer-styled film
The Wolf of Snow Hollow (2020)
A film directed by actor Jim Cummings about a small Utah town that is facing a series of werewolf attacks. This works surprisingly well due to a series of witty and well-rounded characterisations
WolfCop (2014)
Deliberately made to look like a lost 1980s/early 90s film, this has a winning concept and sets in with an appealingly sarcastic amusement. On the other hand, the film is never quite as amusing as it gives the impression it is going to be and starts to lose it in the third act
Wolfen (1981)
Adaptation of a Whitley Strieber book about intelligent wolves hunting in New York City from Michael Wadleigh, the director of Woodstock … The film tends to bury Strieber’s straightforward horror story under social concerns as though wanting to distance itself from the horror label
The Wolfman (2010)
The 1941 Lon Chaney Jr The Wolf Man is given the remake treatment in a way that builds out on the creaky original with lavish sets and state of the art transformation effects
Wolves (2014)
Evidently intended to be a werewolf equivalent of the Star Wars saga in in its epically contorted familial struggles, this sits just between the stylish and another classic monster repackaged for the teen crowd and cast with handsome good-looking faces
Wolves at the Door (2016)
Another film about the Manson Family murders, this focuses on the Tate-Folger crime scene. It adheres to the fact general but twists them so it now operates more as a home invasion film
The Wolves of Kromer (1998)
British werewolf film that wittily uses being a werewolf as a metaphor for being gay
Wolves of Wall Street (2002)
Way before The Wolf of Wall Street, we had this David DeCoteau film about werewolf stockbrokers
The Woman (2011)
Lucky McKee’s highly controversial film about a family man who makes a feral woman prisoner is out-there, takes-no-prisoners horror. Forget the kneejerk reactions, this is brutal, highly original and with a whiplash sense of dark humour
The Woman in Black (1989)
The revived Hammer Films had with the ghost story The Woman in Black. This is the original version of the story made as a movie for British tv with a script from Quatermass creator Nigel Kneale
The Woman in Black (2012)
The revived Hammer Films visit the classic British ghost story tradition. This is impeccably mounted but the film offers nothing more than a series of disappointingly superficial boo moments of zero impact
The Woman in Black: Angel of Death (2014)
A sequel to the 2012 ghost story from the revived Hammer Films, this adds precisely nothing to the original, has nothing to say and nothing in its directorial arsenal that is not a tiresomely over-cliched jump – you just ask, why was this film even made?
The Woman in the Window (2021)
Slickly produced psycho-thriller that comes mired in controversy, featuring Amy Adams as an agoraphobe who maybe witnesses a murder.
The Woman in the Yard (2025)
Blumhouse film with Danielle Deadwyler and family having to deal with the ominous threat of a mystery woman in black veil who simply sits in their yard
Woman of the Hour (2023)
Actress Anna Kendrick directs a film based on a true-life serial killer Rodney Alcala who appeared on tv’s The Dating Game
Womaneater (1957)
Behind the lurid title, this concerns a mad scientist sacrificing women to a plant in his basement … This came out the same year as Hammer Films burst onto the English horror scene and by comparison is a plodding affair with no greater ambition than being a 1940s Bela Lugosi cheapie
The Womb (2014)
The first occasion I have had to review a horror film from Peru – a thriller about a young woman imprisoned and forced to bear a child. This is never a work that particularly reinvents the wheel, just turns out a solid and suspenseful imprisonment thriller
Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror (2021)
One of the most in-depth film documentaries ever made where Kier-La Janisse exhaustively excavates every example of Folk Horror
World Apartment Horror (1991)
After making the groundbreaking anime Akira, Katsuhiro Otomo then chose to direct this oddity – a live-action comedy about a frustrated Yakuza enforcer trying to evict an apartment of foreigners that turns into a horror film in its last third
World War Z (2013)
You wonder what this can do with such an overworked genre as the zombie apocalypse. It is not a film that reinvents the wheel for the genre but spins the basics out into an exciting, international locale hopping survival story
The Worm Eaters (1977)
A film that comes with such a level of psychotronic dementia that it may seriously damage your sanity concerning the relationship between a man and his pet worms
Would You Rather (2012)
The old party game about choosing between two difficult decisions is spun out into a rather lame attempt to make another Saw. Given a generic commercial handling, the film fails to get inside the psychological tension of its life and death decisions
Wound (2010)
The always interesting David Blyth returns to screens with what feels like an amateur remake of Nicolas Roeg’s Track 29 that becomes a confused and plotless mishmash of hallucinations, random BDSM scenarios and shock effects
A Wounded Fawn (2022)
This starts with a woman going on a date with a man she does not realise is a serial killer, before things go off at a very strange tangent
Wounds (2019)
Iranian director Babak Anvari impressed with Under the Shadows. This is his follow-up where barman Armie Hammer’s life is turned upside down after he picks up a sinister cellphone
The Wraith (1986)
An unknown Charlie Sheen stars in a film about teens haunted an avenging ghost car. An uncredited copy of Clint Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter
Wraiths of Roanoke (2007)
B-budget Syfy Channel outing that attempts to answer the true-life Unsolved Mystery of the lost colony at Roanoke. Unfortunately, the film’s answers are no more interesting than a bunch of Viking spirits, while the film generates little atmosphere or anything beyond rudimentary historical conviction
The Wrath of Becky (2023)
Becky was a modest effort with Lulu Wilson as a thirteen year-old violently fighting off home invaders. This is a sequel with her up against white supremacists
Wrecker (2015)
I have to search my memory to think of another film that is so openly plagiaristic – this is almost a scene-for-scene remake of Steven Spielberg’s Duel about a man facing a killer truck on a highway. This misses the subtlety of the original so widely you could run a highway through it
The Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummy (1964)
This is surely one of the great exploitation titles of all time. Another Mexican wrestling superhero film where a duo of woman wrestlers take on the Aztec Mummy from another Mexican horror series
The Wretched (2019)
The biggest box-office hit six weeks in a row in 2020, albeit during Corona lockdown. This gets some extremely creepy effects in that managed to work on a jaded viewer
Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (2007)
A sequel that has been arranged for the sole purpose of serving up a series of gory dispatch set-pieces every few minutes
Wrong Turn (2003)
Passable effort that copies that basics of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre with a group of stranded teens running afoul of an in-bred family
Wrong Turn (2021)
A reimagining of the long-running Wrong Turn series of Backwoods Brutality films, this does imaginative things with the set-up and emerges as the best of the series so far
Wyrmwood: Apocalypse (2021)
Sequel to the cult Australian zombie film, this refines the first film and exists as even more of a visual comic-book – all that seems missing is dialogue that comes in comic balloons
Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead (2014)
Australian zombie film that comes with a hyperactive fierceness and energy that reminds of early Sam Raimi or Peter Jackson. On the minus side, the zombie genre is now so creatively strip-mined that the film never offers anything original
Wyvern Hill (2021)
Low-budget British film about a mysterious killer lurking in the house
The Wyvern Mystery (2000)
BBC tv adaptation of Gothic potboiler by J. Sheridan Le Fanu with newlywed wife Naomi Watts facing an evil squire and mad women in a big gloomy house
X (2022)
Ti West returns with a fascinatingly charged psycho film that takes place on the shoot of a 1970s porn film
X-Ray (1982)
An early Cannon Films offering among the 80s slasher fad premised around a hospital setting and seeing the phenomenally well-stacked former Playmate Barbi Benton undressed. Most of the paper thin plot seems to have been made up on set and the direction is ridiculously overwrought
Xombies 3D (2011)
Amid the vast horde of low-budget zombie films of the 00s, this Norwegian effort in 3D emerges as possibly the worst. It has no discernible plot, while the gore only consists of cheap digital overlays that looks like Monty Python cutout animation
XX (2017)
As directors, women are underrepresented – in terms of the content listed on this side, for example, probably less than 5% has been made by women. As a believer in equal opportunities for all, one can only cheer on XX where five women have gotten together to make a horror anthology
YellowBrickRoad (2010)
Not much to do with The Wizard of Oz – more like The Crazies by way of The Blair Witch Project, this creates a genuinely unsettling otherworldly mystery before entering into decidedly disturbed headspace
The Yeti (2026)
A monster movie based around The Yeti, this starts out as a B-budget adventure film with an expedition to Alaska in search of missing explorers who become trapped by a ferocious Yeti
Yeti: A Love Story (2006)
Troma film about a group of trampers attacked by a Yeti only for one of the group to discover gay love with the Yeti
Yoga Hosers (2016)
Kevin Smith’s follow-up to Tusk slides off the cliff somewhere between Johnny Depp’s incredibly silly performance, a nemesis you can’t take seriously and what largely becomes a vanity exercise in nepotism – Smith and Depp creating a vehicle to highlight their daughters
You Are Not My Mother (2021)
An unsettlingly effective Irish Folk Horror film about a teen whose mother disappears and then returns ‘changed’
You Can’t Kill Stephen King (2012)
You have to admit the title gets your attention but this is otherwise a slasher film of sorts about a group in search of Stephen King’s home
You Can’t Run Forever (2024)
The 2020s have seen a surprise upsurge in films about people being pursued by attackers. This is another about a teen girl flees pursued by a J.K. Simmons as a business professor who suddenly goes psycho
You Might Be the Killer (2018)
There have been some clever and witty deconstructions and parodies of the slasher film in recent years. This starts in with an immediately captivating hook where the title phrase is turned around on the protagonist
You Should Have Left (2020)
David Koepp has an impressive resume as a screenwriter, even better as a director. Here he makes a film where Kevin Bacon rents a sinister holiday home that has shifting topography
You Won’t Be Alone (2022)
An absolutely extraordinary work of Folk Horror about a young witch who learns the ability to inhabit the bodies of others
You’ll Find Out (1940)
Old Dark House comedy set around the antics of big band leader Kay Kyser. Starring several horror names of the day – Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Peter Lorre
You’ll Never Find Me (2023)
Australian film where a girl turns up at the trailer home of a recluse. A series of tense psychological games ensue where it becomes apparent neither of them are being truthful
Young Frankenstein (1974)
Mel Brooks’ finest moment, a witty stylistic homage to and spoof of the Universal Frankenstein films. A great cast are on perfect form all around.
The Young Poisoner’s Handbook (1995)
A true-crime film based on real-life British murderer Graham Young, this comes with a black humour tone and a great performance from Hugh O’Conor as Young
You’re Next (2011)
Adam Wingard directs a home invasion thriller in a similar vein to The Strangers. This is a film that strips everything extraneous away and simply lets Wingard go for broke and give the audience a brutal and intense workout – at which you cannot deny he succeeds most satisfyingly
Yummy (2019)
Belgian film that starts out as a blackly funny work about a cut-price East European hospital before seguing into a zombie film
Zebra Lounge (2001)
An erotic thriller where a couple are stalked by psychopathic couple after venturing into the swingers scene, this comes with a ridiculously high-handed condemnatory moralism
Zeder (1983)
Acclaimed classic of 1980s Italian horror where a mysterious typewriter ribbon leads a writer in search of zones where the dead can return to life
Zinda (2006)
A blatant Bollywood copy of Oldboy, often scene-for-scene
The Zodiac (2005)
Not the David Fincher film but an earlier work based on the Zodiac Killer. Unlike Fincher, this stays to the facts and doesn’t indulge theories about the identity of the killer
Zodiac (2007)
David Fincher’s gripping investigation into the unsolved true-life Zodiac Killer case. Fincher’s stagings are exacting and the mystery he builds intensely absorbing
The Zodiac Killer (1971)
A film based on the Zodiac Killer. Unlike other Zodiac films, this was made while the killer was still active. The film comes with a fascinating backstory where it was made as part of an elaborate trap to lure the Zodiac Killer out
Zoltan … Hound of Dracula (1978)
aka Dracula’s Dog. Most people who hear the title think this is a joke but this is a real film and one that takes a ridiculous premise – the idea of Dracula’s dog – surprisingly seriously
Zombeavers (2014)
Gonzo killer animal and zombie films have been hugely popular in recent years – it was probably inevitable they meet. This comes with the deliriously ridiculous image of zombified human-beaver hybrids on the attack
Zombi Child (2019)
An extraordinary French film that has nothing at all to do with flesh-eating zombies but delves into voodoo religion that expands out to makes contrasts with French colonialism with striking results
Zombie Ass: The Toilet of the Dead (2011)
Completely insane gonzo Japanese horror that feels like it is made by a mad scat fetishist involving parasites that emerge out of people’s asses. The film is driven by its outrageously perverse imagery but for all that is haphazard and incoherent when it comes to explanatory rationale
Zombie Cop (1991)
A very low-budget film from regular genre director J.R. Bookwalter about a police officer who is resurrected from the dead by a voodoo priest
Zombie Fight Club (2014)
It is mind-boggling to think how you could combine zombies with Fight Club, the classic anti-capitalist manifesto about brawling clubs and split personality … Such an idea proves too challenging for this Taiwanese effort but we do get a solid zombie version of The Raid
Zombie – Flesh Eaters (1979)
Italian film conceived as a quickie copy of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead with the focus on gore scenes. This made the name of cult Italian splatter director Luci Fulci.
Zombie for Sale (2019)
A rather charming South Korean comedy about a family who try to exploit the commercial aspects of having a tame zombie
Zombie Holocaust (1980)
One of the most extreme films among the early 1980s fad for Italian zombie films, which it also manages to merge with the Italian cannibal film. Beyond the provision of gore effects, there is not much else to the film
Zombie Honeymoon (2004)
The surprise in seeing this after the tide of gonzo mash-ups and wacky title collusions that has taken over the zombie genre in the latter half of the 00s is that, despite the title, it is a zombie film that is playing itself seriously, emerging as another variant on the zombie relationship drama (*)
Zombie Hunter (2013)
Post-apocalyptic zombie action played with a tongue-in-cheek comic-book tone. Plus Danny Trejo as a badass zombie-hunting priest
Zombie Killers Elephants Graveyard (2015)
Another entry among the zombie revival fad of the 2000s/10s, this should be commended for taking an epic and ambitious scope in its story, enough it feels to fuel multiple seasons of The Walking Dead
Zombie Nation (2004)
Not to be confused with tv’s Z Nation, this for a time ranked on the IMDB’s Worst Films of All-Time list . It’s been called the Worst Zombie Film Ever made, although I’d suggest other contenders
Zombie Shark (2015)
A fairly typical entry in the gonzo killer shark fad. The filmmakers have clearly had a title idea that they were able to sell but not too many ideas how to make it work. Director Misty Talley offers a sufficiently tongue-in-cheek approach to overcome most shortcomings
Zombie Strippers! (2008)
One of the more entertaining entries among the gonzo zombie film, this offers precisely what its title promises in an appealingly trashy, sarcastic and suitably gore-drenched blend
Zombie Tidal Wave (2019)
Ian Ziering and the director of the Sharknado films reunite in an effort to repeat the same kind of deliberately ridiculous success with a gonzo zombie film
Zombie Town (2023)
An adaptation of an R.L. Stine book, a work of safe anodyne horror about zombies trapped inside a film made by director Dan Aykroyd getting loose and overrunning a town
Zombie Women of Satan (2009)
A WTF am I watching film where a performing freakshow troupe led by Pervo the Clown are pursued around a farm by topless zombie women