The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Set around a secret society of vampires, this is a strong contender for the worst vampire film ever made. It suffers badly from a directorial approach that is unsure if it is taking things seriously
From Cannon Films, a Sylvester Stallone action vehicle with a near-fascistic view of law enforcement that proves to be an absurd comic-book of a film that is preposterously entertaining
A horror film produced by Seth Rogen that gains some really creepy effect as a boy finds something is living in the walls of his home
Very loosely based on a real-life incident, this is an Animals Attack film about a rampaging bear wired on cocaine. Director Elizabeth Banks makes a play for darkly funny humour
Prolific Z-budget director Mark Polonia jumps aboard the bandwagon of Cocaine Bear and offers a film about a shark-human hybrid that is created by experimental cocaine
Cocaine Bear seems to have given birth to a mini-genre of films about drug-addicted animals amok. Here regular Z-budget Mark Polonia gives us a cocaine-snorting werewolf
Beyond the title, this is a straightforward take on the modern zombie comedy. It is undeniably trying to be another Shaun of the Dead, at which it proves consistently amusing and likeable
Thai entry in the Asian horror fad. A film that has a premise but little beyond that. It feels like it is being too nice to push its audience in any way with all the supernatural manifestations eventually blurring into a sameness
From director Fruit Chan, director of the great Dumplings, a film that takes a satiric jab at Hong Kong’s rental shortage crisis and concerns haunted apartments
The fifth and final of the Cold Blood films, brings Matthew Kelly’s serial killer back but still lacks the gripping tension of the first two films
One of the best copies of The Silence of the Lambs, a British tv mini-series in which police must seek the help of imprisoned serial killer Matthew Kelly, who delivers a great performance in the role
Mike Figgis, the director of Leaving Las Vegas, visits the Backwoods Brutality genre in this Southern Gothic, but despite a top drawer cast, this never does more than stir lukewarm cliches
From cult director Shion Sono, a typically bizarre and gore-drenched Japanese black comedy about tropical fish salesmen, serial killings and the reclamation of traditional male pride
While The Shape of Water took attention, there was 2017’s other film about sex between human and fish people. From Xavier Gens, a a Lovecraftian tale about men in a lighthouse engaged in a fierce battle against amphibians
David Koepp is the high-profile screenwriter of Jurassic Park and other works. Here he adapts his own novel about a deadly fungus that overruns a storage facility into a wonderfully snappy horror show
Zombie film made on a shoestring micro-budget from the point-of-view of a young man as he transforms into a zombie. The guerrilla approach results in an amateurism but also a work made with more imagination than you expect
Disappointing sequel to the Torture Porn film The Collector. The captivating premise of an ordinary house turned into a series of deadly traps is gone, while the sadistic, gore-drenched set-pieces are tame and unimaginative
Adaptation of a John Fowles novel where shy Terence Stamp makes Samantha Eggar a prisoner so she can love him. Made not long after Psycho, this tries similar but becomes more of an Odd Couple comedy
A directorial debut from one of the writers of the Saw sequels, a Torture Porn film that has a highly unusual set-up about a burglar stumbling into a family home that has been turned into a death trap by a serial killer
One among the series of German krimi films adapted from Edgar Wallace about a series of murders at a girls college. Shot with wonderfully lurid and colourful schemes
One of Herschell Gordon’s Lewis’s splatter films, this readily rips off the plot basics of Roger Corman’s A Bucket of Blood as an artist starts to paint using human blood
A blatant copy of Basic instinct with psychologist Bruce Willis getting involved with Jane March as his patients start being murdered. Much bare flesh but the film is killed by ludicrous plot twists
Richard Stanley made one of the most exciting directorial debuts with Hardware. Welcomely returning after a long absence, he is one of the few directors to mainline the essence of H.P. Lovecraft’s cosmic horrors
Film about a Vietnam Veteran snapping and going over the edge that gained acclaim when it came out. More a work of grim social realism than horror, it is frequently amateurish but contains an undeniably bleak charge
At the outset, this seems to be either a routine stalker or a clairvoyance film. On the other hand, it is driven by an undeniable WTF component and definitely arrives at bizarrely left field explanation
This is a surprisingly good film that generates quite a degree of spooky eeriness concerning a child on the autism spectrum and the sinister entity inside his tablet that just wants to be his friend
A Canadian-made horror film about a teenage runaway who signs into a mysterious dream institute that conduct experiments that open up something disturbing inside her
One of the films from Pete Walker, a greatly underrated director working in the British horror film in 1970s, in which pop star Jack Jones retreats to a country house only to be stalked by a psycho
Droll black comedy with Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and Basil Rathbone as morticians who decide to drum up business by murdering people. This assembles much of the team behind the Roger Corman Edgar Allan Poe films
A Paul Schrader director psycho-sexual thriller set in a beautifully brooding Venice as a couple are befriended by menacing husband and wife Christopher Walken and Helen Mirren
Canadian film about a girl’s strange obsessive relationship with her talking tattoo. The idea has been done before but the film and fine performances give it life
1950s B movie director Bert I Gordon makes a film in which present-day schoolgirl Susan Swift is possessed by her ancestor who was burned at the stake as a witch
Thai horror film with the interesting idea of ghosts emerging out of a movie screen. This has a couple of undeniably spooky moments but is still just another of the numerous copies of the basics of Ring
A variant on Edgar Allan Poe’s The System of Dr Tarr and Professor Fether with Jennifer O’Neill as a woman wrongly committed to an asylum before discovering it has been taken over by the inmates
A psycho-thriller that has gained a modest cult reputation. This comes seeped in Catholic guilt and director Alfred Sole delivers twists and turns with a fine hand. Featuring a young Brooke Shields in her film debut.
Spanish-made film that feels like a mash-up of Annabelle and The Nun about the communion doll belonging to a girl who went missing that appears and curse everyone it touches
In his first film, Neil Jordan adapts an Angela Carter story that retells Little Red Riding Hood as a werewolf film that becomes a fascinating swim of fairytale and sexual allegory
Hideo Nakata will always be known as the director of the original Ring. Here he revisits the kaidan eiga in the story of a haunted apartment but the show falls apart after a confusing Sixth Sense-type twist mid-film
A so-so adaptation of an Iain Banks novel featuring Jonny Lee Miller as a crusading journalist who becomes involved in the hunt for a serial killer who is tied to his own past
Director Neil Marshall once had great promise but his recent work has become fairly tatty. Here he and lead actress, the controversy-laden Charlotte Kirk, have fun making a throwback to the 1990s erotic thriller
An action movie where the toughest criminals are forced into a barehanded survivalism competition against one another while this is livestreamed. As the hero, wrestler Steve Austin has zero charisma
Modest film about a man who becomes involved with a woman who increasingly appears to be responsible for a series of murders. The director and lead actress create a sense of mystery and fascination about what is happening
Supposedly based on a true story. A film that feels written entirely by cliches taken from every other haunting and exorcism film, but you cannot deny that director James Wan generates a more than fair degree of spooky atmosphere
If you want a genuinely scary spook show that will make you jump out of your seat, you would not go wrong with this. On the other hand, the Conjuring films with their claims to true stories of peddle superstition and fabricate most of their so-called facts
Another supposedly true story from the casebook of the psychic investigator frauds Ed and Lorraine Warren. James Wan’s first two entries were eerily haunting; by now, the constant profusion of effect becomes overkill that produces no results at all
The third of the Conjuring films, this lacks the presence of James Wan in the director’s seat while peddling an even more highly dubious Based on a True story claim regarding a demonic possession
Christopher Smith was a highly promising director several years ago with Creep, Triangle and Black Death. Here he returns with a film about sinister happenings in a convent
Adaptation of DC’s Hellblazer comic-book that gets the Hollywood treatment where all of the character’s background and look has been thrown out and the part badly miscast with Keanu Reeves
The Dc Comics character John Constantine was made into an animated web series that was compiled as this film. One is quite taken aback at how much more edgy and adult this is than most of DC’s animated offerings
Not a pandemic film despite the title, an obscure oddity from the great era of Ozploitation where a man undergoes a series of strange experiences as he is drawn to a mystery house in the backwoods
Modestly effective effort about a woman who contracts an infection that causes her to physically decay. The horror comes in watching the heroine’s progressive physical decomposition.
Contracted was a modestly effective film that depicted its heroine’s progressive meltdown due to a deadly infection. This is a sequel so sub-par you doubt it would even been released without connection to the first film
Early Mike Mendez film that quickly abandons being a standard venture into a haunted convent and launches into an entertainingly over-the-top splatter show filled with zombified nuns
A very funny film about a horde of zombie schoolchildren. Co-written by Saw‘s Leigh Whannell, this has a great deal of fun deflating zombie cliches and is wittily on the ball in its characterisations of the teachers
A James Ellroy-adapted crime thriller with James Woods giving a very disturbed performance as an unhinged detective on the trail of a serial killer
Strong and effective serial killer thriller that was overlooked by the success of the same year’s much more high profile Se7en. Sigourney Weaver and Holly Hunter give excellent performances in a finely tuned script
Film about a tough guy detective settling into the destined role of a monster hunter. With lots of dark streetwise urgency and Corey Feldman proving unexpectedly entertaining in drag as the lead vampire
Documentary about legendary B-budget director/producer Roger Corman, although this is more of an awe-struck tribute that disappointingly fails to venture into any of the stories of notorious cheapness and cost-cutting practices attributed to Corman
A Charles Band film that has the distinction of being the first film released during the Corona Virus Pandemic. You watch out of curiosity of how the usual logistics of filmmaking deal with quarantine and social distancing
Key film from cult exploitation director Ted V. Mikels. The film’s premise – “pet food company uses bodies from the graveyard as their cat food, making the cats hungry for human flesh” – seems the essence of the grindhouse film
One of a host of low-budget mad scientist films Bela Lugosi made during the 1940s, slightly better than most of the others. Here he uses orchids to place brides in death-like comas
Early Anglo-horror film that seems to be trying to push a story about a 19th century doctor (Boris Karloff)’s discovery of anaesthetic gas out of shape and make it into a horror story.
Peter Cushing plays a surgeon who devises an advanced technique to restore his wife’s burn-disfigured face – only to find he must kill to maintain it. An Anglo-horror effort that borrows the basics of Eyes Without a Face/Les Yeux Sans Visage
Andy Serkis and Reece Shearsmith are inept kidnappers in this black caper/horror comedy – imagine something like A Life Less Ordinary peopled with characters from a Guy Ritchie crime drama
Christopher Lee was inveigled to play the title role in what was advertised as an adaptation of the book as Bram Stoker wrote it. While somewhat true, this befell the cheapness of exploitation director Jess Franco
The most faithful version of Dracula to date. A BBC mini-series that adapts the book as a no-nonsense costume drama and even shoots in the mentioned locations, giving the impression of the story taking place as Bram Stoker visualised it
A copy of the Hammer Dracula films starring Spanish horror legend Paul Naschy. Naschy is an Dracula but the film is never much more than assorted runnings around an abandoned asylum and softcore tumblings
One of the better efforts among a spate of attempts to modernise the vampire that came out the 1970s. Robert Quarry gives a witty, urbane performance in the title role. A sequel followed.
This feels like the Final Destination franchise updated for the mobile user generation concerning a sinister app that predicts how long the user has to live
Actress Julie Delpy directs/stars in an adaptation of the Countess Bathory story. In trying to pitch itself as a work of historical feminism and having sympathy for Bathory, this downplays the considerable horror element of the story
Not another of Hammer’s Dracula films despite the title. This still builds on the brand name but is instead their loose adaptation of the story of the infamous blood-bathing Elizabeth Bathory.
Donald F. Glut is famous as a genre historian and novelist. Here he directs an erotic vampire film. Despite the title, Count Dracula doesn’t feature much but we get Paul Naschy in one of his few English language films
Ridiculous film from the perpetually awful Renny Harlin about teen male witches that feels like a gender-swapped version of The Craft cast with pretty boys and directed amid absurdly overblown effects
A horror movie set around a modern day Western recreation town that was quickly retitled on the tail of Cowboys vs Aliens. It’s debatable though whether it does actually feature any vampires
Colin Minihan has been a director on the rise in recent years. Here he makes an amusing film about Justin Long under siege in his home by killer coyotes that manages a deft blend of fine tension and humour
This is another of the low-budget films that take their inspiration from Cocaine Bear with a drug-addicted raccoon amok. This sits right between bad movie stakes and passable amusement
Blumhouse revival of/sequel to The Craft, the film about a quartet of teenage witches. This updates the original to the modern era in ways the original never did
Alexandre Aja makes a based on true life film where Kaya Scodeario becomes trapped in the crawlspace under a house with alligators as floodwaters rise all around
A strange but compelling tv movie in which an aging couple befriend a homeless man they find living in their crawlspace and adopt him as a son of sorts
George Romero’s most underrated film, filled with disturbing images of the population of a town driven crazy by a bio-weapon spill. The first and best film on the theme of an outbreak of mass insanity
George Romero’s underrated classic about a madness-inducing biospill gets a makeover amid the fad for remakes of 70s/80s horror films but emerges as just another zombie film
An enthusiastic B movie that takes its ridiculous premise of a group of friends encountering an alligator man lurking in the backwoods Louisiana swamps far too seriously for its own good
A 1970s Bigfoot/Sasquatch film made for drive-in audiences about students searching for the creature in rural backwater Louisiana
An interestingly strange and undeniably different film where two teens break into a house at Christmas time to find a mother who keeps her daughter confined lest the creature inside her get free
An anthology of three tales on an occult theme. The standout among these is the opening episode about a courtroom trial of a woman who was possessed
Creep was a wonderfully creepy film with Mark Duplass as someone who invites a videographer to make a film but proves over-friendly to the point of highly disturbed. This is a sequel where Duplass returns for more
A tense and well sustained horror with Franka Potente trapped in the London Underground after hours and menaced by a deformed creature that lurks in the tunnels
An improvisational project shot between actor Mark Duplass and friend Patrick Brice, a two person handheld-shot film where videographer Brice is hired by an over-friendly Duplass who becomes increasingly disturbed
Imagine a slasher movie version of Duel – a film about an unseen driver and a van outfitted with a series of novelty killing attachments. A film driven by its gore set-pieces that tends to drag when it comes to the comedy relief
An interesting never-quite-ran from the heyday of Anglo-horror cycle with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee as Victorian anthropologists dealing with a prehistoric skeleton that is an embodiment of evil
Stephen King and George Romero collaborate on a horror anthology made as homage to the EC Comics, telling five tales that replicate the blacker-than-black sense of humour (and even the visual look) of the comic-book with hilarious results
The sequel to the hit George Romero-Stephen King horror anthology. This misses the original’s black humour by a mile and instead becomes overblown and filled with shrill unlikable characters
A third entry in the Creepshow series but made without the involvement of George Romero (or Stephen King). This tries to give more of the same but is abysmally made on all counts
One of Hammer Films’ psycho-thrillers. Unlike the others, this is in colour where it loses much of the edgy tension the others had from shooting in b/w. The plot is slow to kick in but does produce some worthwhile twists
Team-up between Ken Russell and Anthony Perkins with both in full-on lunacy mode. Kathleen Turner gives her best performance ever as a fashion designer moonlighting as a hooker who is stalked by Perkins as a psycho priest
From the heyday of the giallo film, an extravagantly colourful psycho-thriller involving the killing of models by a killer with a black cat. This works all the tropes of the genre with considerable style
From the Films That Could Never Get Made Today file – an exploitation classic about an obese woman who goes on a killing spree. This comes with a level of derangement that leaves you puzzled why this has never become a cult classic
A film based around real-life YouTube influencer Brian ‘Faze Rug’ Awadis as he buys a new mansion only to move in and find his neighbours are an alley of sinister clowns
Guillermo Del Toro takes on the Victorian ghost story. What we get is the most gorgeously designed and costumed haunted house film ever but where the excess scenography actually distracts from producing any boo moment
A strong well-made French thriller that comes with the influence of Se7en involving murders on a mountainside glacier and a secretive boarding school with ties back to the Nazi era