The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
A zero expectation film that turns out to be surprisingly good. Falling somewhere between Primer and Chronicle, this does a reasonable job of showing its time travel device in action and the unintended consequences
A Russian SF film about an expedition through a wormhole that then gets lost, this bites off an ambitious conceptual reach only for it to fall apart in a shaggy dog ending
A popular hit based on a book by Andy Weir, who wrote The Martian, where Ryan Gosling is a scientist who undergoes a space expedition and makes alien contact in an effort to save the Earth
Low-budget film set aboard a space station clearly springboarding from the success of Destination Moon and featuring a Robert Heinlein script
Suffering superhero fatigue from screens overwhelmed with Marvel and DC adaptations? This is one of the most original superhero treatments in some time, concerning a drug that give the user superpowers for five minutes only
Completely ridiculous mix of The Terminator and Die Hard where, for no clear reason, an android terrorist decides to take hostages in an office building and the FBI’s only hope is a cryogenically unfrozen football player
Sequel to the ridiculous Project Shadowchaser, which has another android terrorist this time take over a nuclear power plant
Third in the series about android terrorists, this is now about an amok android on a spaceship
Gimmick master William Castle makes an SF films about scientists engaged in simulations and mental probing to obtain secrets from a man’s mind
Animal rights activism film with Matthew Broderick and Helen Hunt as Air Force employees shocked at the tests being performed on chimpanzees
Ridley Scott’s promised prequel to Alien. The first half creates epic mystery but the answers provided are not nearly as interesting as promised, while the latter half disappointingly settles for doing the Alien standard with decidedly lesser effect
Low-budget film that was clearly trying to ride on the coattails of Ridley Scott’s Alien prequel Prometheus. This tells an almost interesting story about a timeloop and gets full marks for winding in the Greek myth of Prometheus
Fred Olen Ray and Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson combine forces on a low-budget action film about psychic powers. The action scenes are competent but the film lacking in the script department
I can’t say the premise of this – a gold prospecting story located in space – did much for me. Contrary to expectation, this is a surprisingly good planetary adventure that does a fine job creating an alien world with minimalist effect and telling a strong character-driven story
This is a standard 90s direct-to-video SF/action film about warring cyborgs in a burned-out future. This has borrowed most of its moves from other films. Not a lot happens
Strong and intelligent Spanish film that readily homages Philip K. Dick in its mind-expanding story of a science-fiction fan being contacting aliens
Cheaply made and frequently unintentionally hilarious variant on UFO conspiracies that wheels out all the usual cliches – alien implants, the Men in Black, recovered memories etc
A film overstuffed with mad ideas and genre cameos about psychic experiments that have unleashed a series of other-dimensional entities
Film spinoff of an anime series about a future police force that uses a system to monitor the brains of the populace for the potential to commit crime. Reminiscent of Minority Report, this is not uninteresting, although falls short of being another Appleseed or Ghost in the Shell
From the director of Train to Busan, this starts out as a psychic powers film before becoming a South Korean superhero film. Made with a nicely grounded realism that makes refreshing contrast to the bombast of the MCU et al.
A film about psychic powers. The one distinction the film has is that its name inspired Michael Weldon in the creation of the psychotronic film cult. The actual film proves a major letdown
Reasonable low-budget revived dinosaur film with not bad CGI effects and an often witty, genre savvy script
Modest and underrated film where the electrics all around start conspiring against people with murderous intent
Italian film about a superhero that gains animal powers by putting on a belt. A strong contender for the worst superhero film ever made
Dolph Lundgren’s The Punisher is minus his trademark t-shirt and the film takes considerable liberties with the source material but this is a hugely entertaining action comic-book of a film with hilariously tongue-in-cheek dialogue
Amid the huge surge of Marvel Comics adaptations in the early 2000s, there came this version of The Punisher. Cast with Thomas Jane, the film is tepid and singularly lacking in the grim, dark avenging violence of the comic-book
The Punisher (2004) with Thomas Jane was a dud among the 2000s Marvel Comics adaptations. Here the role is recast with Ray Stevenson and director Lexi Alexander gets the dark, violent tone of the comic-book right
From Peter Watkins, a remarkably stark and brutal film set in a near-future USA where political prisoners are allowed to run for freedom through the desert while hunted by law enforcement officials
This adaptation of the Robert Heinlein novel was not a success when it came out but is a modest addition to the alien body snatchers genre with some undeniably effective moments
Film based around the improbable concept of a future where on one night of each year all crime including murder becomes permissible. While this promises a rich vein of satire, the film only emerges as a variant on Straw Dogs
Slightly more interesting than its predecessor in that it takes the action out from gated communities into the streets, otherwise this offers just the same as The Purge – much in the way of heavy artillery and a patina of contemporary politics that have all the depth of a protest placard
The Purge was a routine film that caught on with audiences but the premise lacks the legs to be a franchise – for one, it is based on a future scenario that has zero plausibility. This makes paper-thin stabs in terms of social issues but all interest evaporates when the guns start blazing
An inanely awful film based on the Sheb Wooley song. This is a really lame copy of E.T. in which a young Neil Patrick Harris forms a band with the title alien
A positively ingenious film about psychic powers that comes with an enormous conceptual joy in seeing the ways the various powers can be combined
Interesting and well-made low-budget film about a scientist who builds an android duplicate of himself that starts to gain its own independence
One of the more likeable among the 2000s fad for low-budget CGI monster movies, this is aided considerably by a sense of humour and a line-up of oddball characters
British air adventure story with Ralph Richardson trying to stop an enemy armed with a raygun and all played with an appealingly eccentric comic tone
Another cheap Syfy Channel end of the world film. So cheap that the catastrophe mostly ends up being talked about rather than depicted, while the rest of the show runs by disaster movie cliches
The second of the Quatermass films. An alien body snatchers tale that suggests even the British government has been infiltrated. This is regarded by many as the best of the series
The fourth and final of Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass stores, which shows the professor as an old man in decaying future Britain trying to deal with an alien force manifest through ancient megaliths. A surprisingly bleak and cynical end to the saga but still with the greatness of Kneale’s writing
The third and in the opinion of many the best of Hammer’s Quatermass films in which Nigel Kneale introduces a conceptually wild array of ideas about Martians, race memory, psychic powers and The Devil
A remake of the first Quatermass story conducted as a live broadcast tv movie. Quite a considerable technical achievement considering the limitations and one that works with quite reasonable results
The first of the Quatermass films and the first major genre hit for Hammer Films. Nigel Kneale creates a literate work of science-fiction horror about a returned astronaut mutating after exposure to an alien fungus
A spectacularly terrible film. Designed to exploit the 1976 remake, this offers up a sex-reversed parody of King Kong – only the Kong producers didn’t see that way and sued to stop the film being released. Robin Askwith, the star of the softcore Confessions films, engages in a romance with a female Kong amid excruciating puns
Another of Roger Corman’s films reusing footage from Soviet SF films. Director Curtis Harrington gives the tale of a spaceship crew who bring on board an alien vampire woman an eerie otherworldliness
Absurd space exploration fantasy where men encounter an all-women planet and proceed to put them in their place. The film has a Plan 9 from Outer Space-level badness and the appallingness of the sexual politics makes you do a double-take today
Beautifully shot directorial debut from Jean-Jacques Annaud that sets out to dispel all the cinematic cliches about cavemen and dinosaurs and offers up an anthropologically realistic prehistoric film
One of the rare cinematic ventures into alternate history, a British film adapted from a story by John Wyndham. This holds up as a fair and reasonable alternate history outing, driven by a strong and original romantic story
Another of the unsold Gene Roddenberry tv pilots, the story of an android searching for its purpose. This is excellent science-fiction, one of the most credible portraits of an android intelligence on screen up to this point, while Questor later became the model for Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation
Evocative New Zealand-made Last People on Earth drama. Although the film reaches a frustrating ending that leaves much unanswered, the earlier scenes showing a man alone in a deserted world have an uncommon poetry
An uncommonly effective film that takes place in the aftermath of an invasion by creatures with ultra-sensitive hearing where the survivors must maintain an existence that requires not making the slightest sound. Director (also lead actor) John Krasinski uses the set-up to create unbearable tension
The third in the trilogy of A Quiet Place films, this is a prequel that takes us back to the start of the invasion
The first A Quiet Place was No 1 on this site’s Best of 2018 list. John Krasinski still pulls off great set-pieces a second time but reveals the pitfalls of trying to extrude a premise to make a sequel
The great Robert Altman’s most frustrating film set around an enigmatic dice game in a frozen future
An astoundingly bad low-budget RoboCop copy about an android motorcycle cop that goes amok
A Bollywood venture into science-fiction that does a reasonably impressive job of trying to mount CGI superheroics … on the other hand, the plot deals in simplistic black-and-whites and draws on models of SF two decades out of date
TV movie in which aging William Devane travels back in time to try and prevent the death of his father
Revival of the Disney Witch Mountain films of the 1970s. Now the films have been dragged into the post-X Files era and flashy effects added to negligible result
The second of the Rocket Man serials in which Commando Cody faces invaders from the Moon. This comes with the creative impoverishment of serials where the alien invaders are no more than regular gangsters.
Adaptation of an autobiographical Philip K. Dick book that he wrote in an attempt to make sense of a series of bizarre hallucinations, this long-rumoured film manages, despite a low-budget, to mainline the brain-twisting nature of Dick’s writing better than any other adaptation
Wacky offbeat film about a group that set out across post-apocalyptic terrain in search of a pirate radio signal
Film in which the entire US Western seaboard falls into social chaos after being hit an EMP burst focusing on one girl’s journey to safety across anarchic territory
This comes with a fascinatingly original premise – man wakes up with complete amnesia and finds that he has the ability to kill anyone within thirty feet of him. The case of a film that holds attention with a captivating and unusual plot and a series of constant whiplash reversals
This directorial outing from actor George C. Scott is an interesting if not wholly successful film about one man’s anger over the military cover-up of a biospill
Typical Syfy Channel monster movie directed by actor David Hewlett. Hewlett seems to be taking little of the film seriously, while the two lead characters are played as strung-out thrill-seeking skateboarders
Massively ambitious Clive Cussler adaptation about the attempts to raise the wreck of the Titanic, which became one of the most over-budgeted flops of its day. The actual raising of the Titanic looks utterly magnificent but the rest of the film remains sunken amid murky underwater photography that looks like children’s toys shot in a bathtub
The idea of Dwayne Johnson facing a giant gorilla in an adaptation of a 1980s arcade game doesn’t exactly shout out Academy Award material; on the other hand, appreciated as a zero expectation cartoon of a film and the mindless mass destruction spectacle it is, this works in a goofily entertaining way
BBC tv play adaptation of a short story by John Wyndham that also furnished the earlier film Quest for Love about a man finding himself in an alternate world. Despite this version being more faithful to Wyndham, the earlier film makes the central relationship work better
Animated film based on the popular computer game. On screen, this emerges as essentially an instantly forgettable variant on one of the Star Wars prequels retooled for the Under Tens with the emphasis all on frenetic slapstick and visual eye candy
A post-apocalyptic film that predates Mad Max 2, which set the benchmark for the genre a couple of years later. This is watchable but hat you notice in comparison is that this is lacking the action element.
Steven Spielberg adapted Ernest Cline’s book about a massive virtual treasure hunt through 1980s pop culture trivia. The film winds up the pop culture references by a factor of ten, but misses the book’s compulsive readability
A Japanese-made variant on the dream incursion theme of Inception. Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa is noted for his bafflingly surrealistic horror films but in working in a genre like science-fiction that requires an implied explainability, he makes a far less interesting film
Highly enjoyable comedy set among the hi-tech hijinks of a group of university science geeks. Val Kilmer owns the show in his second screen performance
A really strange comedy where John Ritter is dragged away by Jim Belushi who claims to be a spy supposedly dealing with aliens
Film about robot boxing that leaves no sports movie cliche untouched, nevertheless works effectively on all the right emotional cues. Capably made, with good effects and the cute kid steals the show
Strong and worthwhile film about the first man woken from cryogenic suspension in the future. A film from Alejandro Amenabar’s regular co-writer, the writer of Open Your Eyes
Zack Snyder returns with a work that is all but a Star Wars film in name where he draws heavily on the basics of The Seven Samurai/The Magnificent Seven
Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon was intended as a two-part space opera saga. This first half emerged watchably and this is Part Two
One of the worst among the usually worthwhile Japanese monster movie revivals of the 1990s. Much of the film is played down at an inanely silly children’s movie level, with there only being the requisite mass destruction effects to enliven the show
After their successful revival of Godzilla in the 1990s, Toho revived Mothra for a series of standalone battles, albeit with a very juvenile focus made for children. This was the second and better of the three films
A group of friends at a cabin in the woods are subject to alien abductions. Directed by a production illustrator on a number of high-profile films, this comes with some unique designs and effects
A low key but modestly effective film where an amnesiac man comes to the gradual realisation that he is a clone
Unknown, no-name film that proves an unexpected surprise. Three friends go camping on an island are are stalked by cloned doppelgangers of themselves. Economically constructed, full of twists and undercurrents and a fine set of double performances
Robert Rodriguez made his first film for $7000 and repeats the same here to show anyone can do it. The result is a wild, mind-bending work loosely based on his own experience as a human test subject in drug trials
Ridiculous red-blooded, flag-waving film in which the Soviets invade the USA and a group of high-school teenagers maintain a lone guerilla campaign
The idea of remaking John Milus’s ridiculous 1984 survivalist fantasy about a Communist invasion of the USA maybe counts as one of the most absurdly unnecessary of all remakes. The film laughably tries to deal with the absence of a Soviet Union by creating a boogeyman out of North Korea
One of a spate of scientifically grounded Mars movies that came out in 2000, featuring a space mission crew stranded on the planet
One of the most bizarre of 1950s Communist Fear films in which humanity begins to receive radio message from God on Mars. The film’s politics are hysterical today.
Standard action film made interesting by the choice of its setting in a post-Soviet Russia Cyberpunk future
A strong and intelligent multiverse film filled with some great twists where a woman travels across multiple worlds to track down and kill different versions of the man who murdered her daughter
An extraordinarily stylised homage to the 1960s spy movie, which strips everything down to a series of provocative, stylised high-end fashion poses. The visuals in the film are quite extraordinary
This has the interestingly original premise of being set in a post-apocalyptic world where revived dragons have eliminated most of humanity. The show is stolen by Matthew McConaughey in wild man mode
Second half of the two-part animated adaptation of The Death of Superman, which depicts the aftermath where Metropolis is puzzled over the appearance of four impostors all claiming to be the real Superman
Mind-bogglingly surreal, almost indescribable film from Joel Potrykus as a slacker attempts to complete a videogame sitting on a couch as assorted things including the Y2K apocalypse happen around him
This is a copy of Alien with a monster hunting people through darkened corridors and is generic in all regards, although you have to admit that Stan Winston creates an original monster and the film generates reasonable suspense
Most of the comics of the 1960s made a film dealing with the Space Race and here it is the turn of Don Knotts. Lots of bumbling slapstick ensues in this hardly inspiring entry
Film about a device that can record and play back memory. This comes with a reasonable cast but the great disappointment is the idea is never used for anything more than a mundane murder mystery
Lisa Joy, co-creator of tv’s Westworld, directs a work of future noir in an ingenious plot involving a memory recording device and Hugh Jackman obsessed with a missing woman
A film that comes with a lame premise about aliens distributing a video of a 1950s SF film that turns people into mind-controlled killers all as prelude to an invasion
Dazzling French animated Cyberpunk film shot in the performance capture animated process and then rendered in striking two-tone black-and-white