The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Indie superhero comedy that reads a good deal funnier on paper than it ever produces laughs on screen. The production lacks the budget to produce more than a handful of cheap superheroic digital effects
A fine film from The Blair Witch Project co-director Eduardo Sanchez about the tensions among a group of friends who hold a captured alien in their garage that then begins to affect them
From Iron Sky director Timo Vuorensola, Tom Felton stars as a wheelchair-ridden hero battling a genetic dystopia. This emerges as a bizarre melding of Gattaca and Upgrade
Ken Russell’s big studio-backed film about drug trips, the meaning of life and William Hurt reverting to a caveman is a glorious madcap and visually stunning work that reaches for the same cosmological grandeur that 2001: A Space Odyssey does
TV mini-series released as a theatrical film in some parts of the world that resurrects Captain Nemo in the present-day. It is Irwin Allen returning to his tv roots where Captain Nemo’s adventures become a blatant attempt to copy Star Wars
One of the better of Bert I. Gordon’s B movies of the 1950s. This was rushed out not long after The Incredible Shrinking Man and displays some imagination despite cheap effects
The reasoning behind rebooting the Spider-Man franchise after ten years and only three films is a puzzle. That said, this offers an edgier origin story than Sam Raimi’s take and Andrew Garfield makes for a fine Spider-Man
One of the best among the modern Marvel Comics screen adaptations. All involved are at the absolute peak of their game and the balance of superheroic action, humour and tragedy makes you cheer at how well they get it right
Edgar G. Ulmer gained a small cult reputation as a director. Here he makes a very cheap invisible man film, one that spends more of its time as a 1940s crime melodrama
An anthology of comedy skits from several different directors including Joe Dante and John Landis. The result is fairly scattershot with moments of occasional humour falling between laughs that do not come off
One of the last directorial outings from cult director Larry Cohen. Comic-book artist Eric Roberts is wound up in trying to trace a mysterious ambulance that is abducting women into illicit experiments
The theme of Mind Upload is waiting for the one film to come along and define its theme. This, in which a comatose wife’s body is loaded into an android body, is not that film and only reaches for cliches
Head-scratching oddity from Cannon Films, a gonzo post-holocaust film set in a satiric women-ruled world with a culture based on half-remembered fragments of the present
Genre-bending film that mixes B movie space opera cliches with rock’n’roll and a David Lynch-ian sense of surrealism. Interesting but the film left me scratching my head trying to get a handle on it
A routine post-apocalyptic action film with Nicole Hansen as the last fertile woman on the run hunted by killer cyborgs while being protected by Joe Lara
Tired of the bombast of Marvel/DC Comics superheroics overunning screens? This is a superhero film for you – one welcomely brought down to Earth set in working class neighbouhoods and with a focus on real-life problems. The results are surprising and refreshing
A sleeper awakes comedy where Seth Rogen falls into a vat of pickles in 1919 and is awakened in the present-day. A decided change of pace for Rogen who plays two lead roles throughout
This seems like it had all the elements to be a biting satirical crosscut of the 1970s in which the US President holds a telethon to keep the country from going bankrupt but flounders in a series of unfunny skits
Chuck Norris’s son directs spectacularly bad film that acts as a fantasy for every lunatic right wing conspiracy where the UN wants to overthrow the US government and confiscate everybody’s guns
The Russian Aquaman. One of the most popular hits from the Soviet Union, a film about a merman who comes onto land to woo a woman. Said to have influenced Guillermo del Toro with The Shape of Water
Children manage to incarnate the soul of their late father inside a robot body. A children’s film where the title is the most imaginative thing about the show.
Andrei Tarkovsky is one of the greatest of all directors, having made films like Solaris and Stalker. This is a documentary about his life and films made up of archival material
Witty and quite charming low-budget SF film with Don Opper as a gawky android on a space station trying to understand the human condition amid the arrival of escaped convicts
A variation on The Defiant Ones with a human and an android chained together but this fails to find anything to say either about androids or prejudice
An Asylum mockbuster intended to come out at the same time as the RoboCop remake. Okay low-budget action and use of Cyberpunk tropes where the film’s saving grace is a sense of humour
A painfully cheap film that feels like an amateur effort that was accidentally given a dvd release. Essentially Resident Evil but with killer robots instead of zombies, this shouts its impoverishment from every scene
A Soviet SF film about the exploration of an alien planet. Though they tended to the dramatically stolid, these Soviet films had amazing budgets their US counterparts of the era never did
Robert Wise’s standout adaptation of Michael Crichton’s first novel about scientists trying to contain a virus brought back from space. This does a very faithful job of capturing Crichton’s fascination with the science
TV series remake of Michael Crichton’s novel about the attempts to contain a viral outbreak from space. Crichton’s story was a straightforward work, whereas the mini-series has been absurdly overburdened with other plots
An early Takashi Miike film where a teenage girl is killed and her personality uploaded to the internet, having been conveniently backed up by her father on three cd roms!
Work of softcore erotica that gives the old 1950s B movie plot of astronauts encountering a planet inhabited only by women an Adults Only workover. Aside from the obvious reasons to watch this, the SF content is entirely negligible
A group of people whose memories have been blanked wake up in a mysterious labyrinth and have to survive death traps and each other. A promising mix of Cube and The Hunger Games killed by clumsy storytelling
Ron Howard and Tom Hanks follow up their adaptation of The Da Vinci Code by turning to an earlier Dan Brown novel concerning conspiratorial goings-on in The Vatican but the show collapses amid absurdly contrived plotting
One of the earliest works of anime director Mamoru Oshii, later famous for Ghost in the Shell. This is a plotless, almost dialogueless work about a young girl journeying across a strange planet that is more surrealism than SF
1950s B movie about an expedition to Mars that encounters exotic and hostile lifeforms there. Not much happens before the aliens pronounce judgement on humanity
A film spun out around a YouTube channel of videogame reviews. This sinks down into unfunny fannish in-joking, while the attempts to be a mock bad movie only seem silliness for its own sake
Film based on a full-length Swedish SF poem that concerns the despair, emptiness and strange societies that emerge among those aboard a spaceship that is thrown off course
One-gag comedy where Rob Schneider receives transplants of various animal parts and ends up exhibiting animal behaviours – usually at the most inopportune time
An award-winning and highly acclaimed French film set in a world that is affected by a series of mutations where people are transforming into animal hybrids
To accompany their two Matrix sequels, The Wackowskis hired seven anime directors to each make a short film set in The Matrix universe. The results are often quite remarkable
A modest and quite well written children’s film about a gifted twelve year-old (Martha Byrne) who gradually discovers that she is a clone
Alex Garland’s second directorial effort after Ex Machina. Clearly influenced by Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, this features a group venturing into an alien-affected zone where Garland does a fine job of creating a sense of the otherworldly
A surprisingly good conceptual SF film concerning a man trying to deal with a series of increasingly more surreal jumps in which he finds his body is being hijacked
Andrew Niccol is one of the consistently intelligent and original directors out there. This, set in a world where mass surveillance has erased the concept of anonymity, is the most fascinating and original depiction of a future in some time
An indie hit starring/co-written by Brit Marling that is a well-played mumblecore drama about redemption and loneliness. On the other hand, the central premise of a mirror Earth is preposterous science-fiction
While there is little doubt that Edgar Wright would have made a much better film, this emerges with an engaging likeability. Less epic superheroics, this plays out more as a caper comedy where a good ensemble and comedic playing carry the show
Ant-Man was a lightweight but perfectly enjoyable entry in the horde of Marvel Comics adaptations. This sequel has amplified the comedy element, seemingly with the intent of being the joker among the MCU pack
The third of the films devoted to Marvel’s miniature superhero. This ventures into multiverse themes works well when it comes to introducing the MCU’s big new super-villain who ended up never happening
This has cult midnight hit written over it. It’s a loopy trip into people doing drugs, alien impregnation and government conspiracy that should have been quirky and funny but sort of goes asleep at the wheel
IT industry thriller that borrows the title from the Microsoft antitrust case that was in the headlines at the time and casts Tim Robbins as a villainous Bill Gates lookalike
Brandon Cronenberg makes an impressive writing-directing debut, taking up the thematic reins of his father’s earlier films in a darkly satiric future escalation of contemporary celebrity culture
South Korean-made cheapie intended to ride the coattails of the 1976 remake of King Kong, this must be one of the worst films ever made with some of the most pitiful special effects ever put on film
Ape vs Monster was The Asylum’s mockbuster take on Godzilla vs Kong. This is a sequel that takes a few leaves from Godzilla’s Mechagodzilla and pits the giant ape up against a giant robotic ape
The Asylum’s mockbuster version of Godzilla vs Kong that features a giant-sized chimpanzee and gila monster facing off against one another
Passable B-budget 1990s direct-to-video sf/action film about robots and humans warring across time that develops out an interesting plot about a changed timeline
Another of the last films that Bruce Willis made before his mental deterioration forced him to retire. A variation on The Most Dangerous Game where Bruce plays a bad-ass facing hunters with his bare hands
The title is a cheat as this is not about the End of the World, merely a film about a spaceship on a collision course with Earth. Essentially Die Hard aboard a spaceship
One of the bizarre early oddities from The Asylum, a disaster movie about an oncoming asteroid. This also try to jump aboard the mid-2000s fad for Biblical movies where faith elements are combined with the scenario in ways that are bizarre
Not another killer clown film as you might initially assume, but a really funny Irish comedy about a group of dysfunctional clowns in the aftermath of the collapse of civilisation
Richard Linklater makes a charming animated film about a kid selected for a secret Moon Landing. Most of all a film with a lovely nostalgia for growing up in the era of the Moon mission
Probably the best among Ron Howard’s mostly undistinguished films, a dramatisation of the real-life Apollo 13 space mission disaster. Once the film gets the capsule up into orbit, the drama is gripping
Clever and well made Found Footage film about a NASA crew encountering something alien on The Moon’s surface. Falls somewhere between Alien, Apollo 13 and Paranormal Activity
Excellent low-key time travel film where Judy Greer is faced with the choice of eliminating the drunk driver who killed her husband from the timeline – only to end up with unexpected results
This is a strange and not particularly accessible deadpan Greek-made film where people are affected by a plague of amnesia. Similar to early Yorgos Lanthimos
The first anime film to be based on the manga, this is set in a future where the heroine is the head of a heavily armoured SWAT team fighting terrorists. Several different incarnations followed.
A dazzling reboot of the earlier manga/anime made with stunning photorealistic animation design and breathtaking action scenes that made this a benchmark for modern anime. Sequels followed.
Shinji Aramaki returns to the Appleseed franchise for a third time with this prequel. Though it abandons the Cyberpunk milieu, Aramaki crafts action scenes with a stunning realism
Shinji Aramaki’s immediate sequel to his reboot of the Appleseed franchise. This lacks the visually stunning qualities of its predecessor and seems more conceptually muddled but Aramaki eventually gets it together
This comes with the clear influence of The Martian, telling a similar but more low-key story of a lone astronaut having problems on the way to Mars. This is less about science ingenuity that his fracturing mental state
Animated film that takes place in a Steampunk alternate history. This brims over with an extraordinary degree of visual invention from the amazingly detailed vistas of the world to a script tossing in quirky twists and wacky inventions
A few years ago Aquaman was regarded as a joke among superheroes. James Wan dispels any notion of Aquaman’s wimpiness in a series of jaw-dropping effects sequences that propel this ahead of anything the MCU is doing at the moment
The sequel to the DCEU’s Aquaman reaches for epic effects spectacle, although the character of Aquaman undergoes a substantial shift and is now given more of a comedy playing
Giant fire-breathing spiders invade New Orleans. A passably entertaining film of its type made for the Syfy Channel with effects that are above-average and it taking itself seriously
A quickie effort made by Albert Pyun for Charles Band’s Full Moon Productions to exploit the Virtual Reality themes popularised by The Lawnmower Man, concerning a malevolent VR videogame
A post-apocalyptic film that seems a conceptual merging of I Am Legend and A Quiet Place where Nicolas Cage and sons are at siege from monsters that surround their farmhouse every night
An interestingly odd film where a videographer looking for a story investigates homeless man Joe Manganiello’s claims to being a superhero, which may or may not be true
One of the better in the fad for Artificial Intelligence films we have had since the 2010s with Theo James trying to place his late wife’s consciousness into an android body
Another cheap Syfy Channel disaster movie featuring a cold wave that freezes everything in its path. As expected, this ignores basic science while offering cut-price digital mass destruction effects
A low-budget film about a venture into the Hollow Earth in search of a missing person and encounters with creatures there. So low budget the underground caves seem shot in a darkened room
Not to be confused with the Oren Peli Found Footage film. Sean Connery’s son Jason directs a film where a host of alien nasties imprisoned at Area 51 manage to escape
Paranormal Activity director Oren Peli’s second film – a gripping Found Footage film about a group breaking into Area 51 in search of evidence of the alien visitors that the US government is holding
Found Footage film as survivors from a commercial airliner that has crashed on a top secret government test site find themselves hunted by mysterious creatures
A film that relentlessly celebrates its own brainlessness. Michael Bay directs an asteroid collision film amid plenty of loud noise, mass destruction, flag-waving patriotism and resolute heroism
An anthology of short films from three different directors set in the world after the collapse of civilisation
Behind the generic action movie title, this is an SF about a unit of soldiers led by Wesley Snipes venturing into an automated prison to investigate the death of personnel by an unknown force
Jules Verne’s classic adventure novel is turned into a comedy vehicle for Jackie Chan. One of Chan’s biggest flops, an overblown turkey packed with celebrity cameos and replacing Verne’s adventure with incredibly unfunny slapstick
Inspired by Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, this was one among the spate of 1960s underwater adventures. Passable adventure following a team on a quest to plant earthquake sensors on the ocean floor
Another variant on the Groundhog Day theme with characters trapped in a timeloop. This come with an SF rationale and contains the plot in a single location while spinning each repeat through some smart twists
One of a series of Hollywood films based on popular British adventurer hero Bulldog Drummond. This throws Drummond into the midst of a plot to obtain a raygun
This is a weird little film about an alien vampire that is slowly rejuvenating. This has an interesting swim of strange ideas but in reality isn’t very good
An alien invasion and takeover film that was clearly inspired by the success of tv’s The X Files. This is a smart effort that emerges as something unworldly in David Twohy’s hands
Most SF films gloss over the issue of communication with aliens, having them either speaking English or with devices like Universal Translators. This is a superbly intelligent film that grapples with how to communicate with something different
One of the best of the recent spate of artificial intelligence films. A programmer creates an A.I. for the purpose of trapping sexual predators on the internet only to be faced with ethical questions about what he has created
A very eccentric Australian film about a man wound into solving a temporal paradox by aliens who time travel in a greasy spoon diner
A variant on Buried, which had Ryan Reynolds trapped in a coffin for the duration, featuring a girl trapped in an elevator as it conducts high-speed rises and drops, all before a bizarre left field SF ending
Fascinating tv mini-series set around the notion of a generation ship – the show explores the scenario in interesting ways then proceeds to put some wild spins on what we think is happening
The rapper turned filmmaker Flying Lotus directs a copy of Alien with an amnesiac crewmember of a ship landed on a hostile planet where the crew are hunted by an alien nasty
A faith-based film that comes with a great hook where a time-traveller seeks to go back and kill Jesus, eliminating Christianity from history
Another of the low-budget films Bruce Willis made before his retirement, this has a plot about body-hopping assassins that has surprising similarities to Possessor
Disappointing live-action film from anime director Mamoru Oshii of Ghost in the Shell fame, construed as nothing beyond a live-action videogame with kick-ass girls engaged in serial combat encounters