The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
A Russian SF film about humans who have been selected to participate in an intergalactic sports tournament. This feels that it has been construed as an anti-Alita: Battle Angel and has some stunning design work
David Cronenberg film that takes place in a limousine and consists of a surreal drift through a near-future world in the midst of economic collapse, observing it with darkly brilliant, razor-sharp agitprop dialogue
Strong and intelligent SF film about amateur astronomers who receive radio signals from space indicating existence of alien life. A film made with a remarkable economy – most of it takes place inside a car – and rooted in good science
An early Robert Altman film about the planning and launch of a Moon Landing starring then unknown James Caan and Robert Duvall. The most realistic depiction of a space launch up to that point.
The time paradox film has always been one of the most ingenious and conceptually challenging SF films in recent years with the likes of Timecrimes and Predestination. This is a B-budgeted variant
The feature film spinoff of a cult anime tv series
High-concept Jon Favreau directed film that has a winning title concept, overflows with star power and is made on a big budget. But the script feels like it had no idea what to do after setting up its title conceptual mash-up
Despite the disappointment that it is not a Western but set modern-day. This enlivens a formula plot quite well and provides dinosaur effects that range between the surprisingly good and the occasionally ropy
This gets you watching with its deliberately ridiculous title but once you do, you soon wish you hadn’t. Winner of this site’s Worst Film of 2021.
An amusingly tongue-in-cheek horror comedy that is a throwback to the1950s featuring an attack by giant crabs. With some surprisingly good crab effects too.
An End of the World film in which an atomic bomb causes a crack in the Earth’s crust. From the era before the disaster movie, this has yet to discover the idea of creating pieces of self-contained spectacle but works in its own sprawling way
David Cronenberg tackles J.G. Ballard’s controversial novel, creating a fascinatingly perverse work that ventures into a world where people become sexually aroused by car crashes
Charles Band film that gives the impression it is a Transformers-type film. While a Transformer does appear in a few scenes, this settles down to be more of a killer android whodunit.
A surprisingly better than expected film from the Disney Channel, a Coming of Age story set on The Moon about a group of kids who break out to go on a jaunt across the lunar surface
An attempt to make an American equivalent of a Loch Ness Monster film. This drowns amid a dreary cheapness. The passable stop-motion animation effects have been a frequent source of ridicule
Australian effort that seems to follow the path of Aliens/Resident Evil with soldiers venturing into a laboratory of amok monsters before a Philip K. Dick-ian twist on what we think is happening
George Romero’s most underrated film, filled with disturbing images as the population of a town are driven crazy by a bio-weapon spill The first and also the best of a number films on the theme of outbreaks of mass insanity
An experimental silent film from the great Rene Clair that depicts a group of people who remain unaffected as all of Paris around them has been frozen in time by a ray experiment
An excellent underrated science-fiction film that was way ahead of its time about a class of androids in a future fighting for their rights as they gain increasing self-awareness
Biochemistry professor Peter O’Toole tries to clone his late wife. A sublime film that has a way over-the-top eccentricity and sparkles with an exuberance of life
Gareth Edwards, the director of Monsters and Godzilla, makes a genre-defining work about robotics and artificial intelligence set in a stunningly detailed future world. This site’s Top Film for 2023
A classic 1950s monster movie where an expedition up the Amazon discovers a Gill Man. Here an average story is propelled into the memorable by Jack Arnold’s moody direction. Two sequels followed.
Roger Corman makes a film about sea monsters and mobsters. Things get very silly but not as funny as when he tried the took the same wacky approach in his cult classic The Little Shop of Horrors
The second and last of the sequels to The Creature from the Black Lagoon, which comes with the intriguing premise of the creature undergoing an operation to make it human
A not very funny science-fiction spoof that has been intended in the vein of Airplane/Flying High but sending up Alien – one where the creature also gets to sing.
Atomic became the explain-all buzzword for almost every monster movie of the 1950s.This is the novelty of the one and only atomic zombie film, although at heart is no more than a 1940s mad scientist film
The fourth and final of Hammer Films’ cycle of prehistoric adventure films, this far less interestingly throws out stop-motion animated dinosaurs and opts for relative anthropological realism
In the same vein as Ed Wood, a biopic of Art Nelson, director of the bad movie classic The Creeping Terror. Where Wood was an inept innocent, Nelson was a conman and pathological liar, which makes his story wilder
This is one of the all-time classic bad movies about a rampaging alien monster come to devour people. Filled with hilarious gaffes and ineptitudes, including the famous carpet monster
A low-budget SF-action film produced by Roger Corman with David Carradine as a police chief in a dystopian future who becomes wound up in the lives of two young lovers on the run
The second film from David Cronenberg. Despite the SF title, this is more a work of arthouse surrealism where Cronenberg spends the film documenting strange behaviours in an hilarious deadpan tone that mimics a scientific paper
A 79 year-old David Cronenberg returns with one of his best films, a synthesis of his major themes in an extraordinary and perverse look at a future where surgery has become performance art. This site’s best film of 2022.
Everything indicates this should have been a hit – an impressive star line-up, big polished action sequences – only it tanked. Much has been assembled in the service of a hackneyed idea where the memories of an FBI agent are implanted into criminal Kevin Costner
A rather dull twelve-chapter serial in which a criminologist tries to stop the titular criminal mastermind tries to steal a device that can block electrical transmissions
Gripping submarine drama from Tony Scott with captain Gene Hackman and second-in-command Denzel Washington fighting over whether to obey orders and fire their nuclear missiles after receiving a possibly faulty alert
Low-budget Fred Olen Ray action film is another variant on Die Hard with security guard Treat Williams foiling a terrorist hijacking of a nuclear power plant. For some reason this also includes reuse of footage from Terminator 2
A surprisingly likeable Gremlins copycat concerning an invasion by a horde of malicious alien creatures. An enjoyable popcorn muncher that has produced four sequels.
Critters was an entertaining ripoff of Gremlins. This sequel alas draws that appeal thin by being placed in the directorial ham fists of the perpetually awful Mick Garris
The third of the Critters films and in my minority opinion the best of the series generating some reasonable suspense. Featuring the film debut of a teenage Leonardo DiCaprio
For reasons known only to those involved, Critters, the quintessential 1980s VHS series about malicious creatures, has been revived for another sequel but with unmemorable results
Australian thriller about an inventor who has created an A.I,, although the film only puts it at the purpose of a routine murder mystery plot
Modest and clever venture on the alternate worlds theme where an average student is dragged into a war for the multiverse after meeting a strange woman at a party
Forget Mad Max et al, this Ethiopian film is a fascinatingly different take on the post-holocaust film – set after the collapse of civilisation where the junk culture of today has developed a mythology of its own
This has an intriguing premise where a group awake from cryogenic suspension with their memories blank as someone among their number now begins killing them
Syfy Channel film that mashes the disaster movie together with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The result is peculiarly unsatisfying either as disaster movie or the tomb raiding adventure we expect
Devastatingly brilliant mockumentary that depicts an alternate history where the American South won the Civil War and slavery remains legal to this day
An excellent conceptual SF film, a directorial debut for Vincenzo Natali with six people trapped in a labyrinth of identical rooms some of which contain death traps where they must solve the puzzle to find the way out
The first sequel to Vincenzo Natali’s fine conceptual puzzlebox film. This expands out on the idea, having a cube that bends through time and space, and has a certain fascination if not as much as the original did
Japanese remake of the Vincenzo Natali film where a group of people wake up in mysterious labyrinth of identical cubed rooms filled with death traps
This was the third of the Cube films but has nothing new to add to the mix except a focus on the technicians monitoring the operation and the addition of gore effects
The second sequel to the original The Fly, which does feature more teleporter accidents and mutations but for some reason no fly hybrids this time
Film about an expedition through the jungles of the Yucatan to investigate a Mayan pyramid that is revealed to contain alien artefacts. This ventures well inside wacky fringe science theories
Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson stars as a law enforcement officer pursued by killer androids in a blatant made-for-video action movie copy of the basics of The Terminator and RoboCop
B-budget director Fred Olen Ray makes a cyberpunk action film where the cut-price nature of the exercise is elevated by a tongue-in-cheek sense of humour
An absurd action movie copy of Die Hard where Michael Dudikoff tries to stop terrorist Brion James as he seek to steal an artificially intelligent computer virus
At face value, this seems to be no more than a Lorenzo Lamas action film for video release, but it surprises one and becomes a quite reasonable Cyberpunk film that conducts a smart airing of the tropes
In this sequel to Cyber Tracker, Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson is a police officer fighting a criminal mastermind who is attempting to replace world leaders with android duplicates
The first of Albert Pyun’s kickboxing killer cyborg films featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme who was largely unknown at the time. Pyun creates wall-to-wall action but there is almost nothing else to the film
Sequel that abandons that mindless chop suey of Albert Pyun’s Cyborg and reconstructs it into a halfway reasonable Cyberpunk film. A then unknown Angelina Jolie plays the cyborg
The second of Michael Schroeder’s sequels to Albert Pyun’s Cyborg both of which are better than the original. This does interesting things with the hokey idea of a pregnant android.
The film that inspired The Terminator! Michael Rennie plays a cyborg who travels back in time to prevent a machine-dominated future coming about, while being hunted by two killer androids sent back to stop him
A completely ridiculous action film (that features no cyborg cops) and instead concerns the attempts to create an army of cyborgs using insect DNA
A low-budget action copy of RoboCop starring David Bradley as a DEA agent up against drug lord John Rhys-Davies who has transformed his brother into a cyborg
From the height of the 90s RoboCop copycat video release, a sequel that this time pits DEA agent David Bradley up against an army of rogue cyborgs
A Japanese romantic comedy about a lonely nerd who falls in love with a cyborg girl that has time travelled back from the future
From Arrowstorm Entertainment, a low-budget company that make highly professional films. Here they have even roped Danny Trejo into playing a role in a passable attempt to replicate a 1990s Albert Pyun post-holocaust cyborg film
B-budget hackmeister Fred Olen Ray makes a hi-tech vehicle fantasies that reads as a cheap attempt to do Blue Thunder with a motorcycle instead of a helicopter. Cheap action but what an amazing cast line-up
This has the clever idea of updating the Cyclops from The Odyssey to the era of the atomic monster movie. Director Bert I. Gordon is otherwise back at his usual tricks of serving up optically enlarged insects and animals
Vincenzo Natali’s second film, a cool and superbly disquiet thriller about corporate brainwashing and espionage that comes with a series of Philip K. Dick-ian reality bending twists
The second of the theatrically released Doctor Who films intended to highlight the popularity of The Daleks, this is an improvement in that it dispenses with the first film’s buffoonish comedy elements
Disastrous adaptation of the Roger Zelazny novel where the story of a Hell’s Angel on a trek across the post-apocalyptic wasteland is recast with a G.I. and a girl and kid along for the journey, plus the addition of giant mutant cockroaches
A very atypical Hammer film. US director Joseph Losey makes a stark and effective contemporary set film about the discovery of children that have been left radioactively mutated by an experiment
Luc Besson produced film set among drum and bass dance culture in New York that follows an aspiring mute dancer (Mia Frye) who is asked to test a new technology that translates dance to music
A video-released submarine drama that is a blatant copy of Crimson Tide with a crew unsure whether to launch a nuclear strike. This is competently made if every move feels spelled out in advance
This is an enjoyable low-budget homage to the Indiana Jones film that comes with a number of knowing references to the genre and the addition of a clever time travel plot
Finally, the answer to what happened to Marc Caro after parting ways with Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Caro directs what would appear to be a darkly lit and confusing variation on The Green Mile set on a space station
An absurd monster movie that was started by Tobe Hooper who walked off set whereupon it was completed by another director whereupon SF elements were added to sell it as a copy of Alien
Rather enjoyable action film that conducts an amusing spin on Lethal Weapon buddy cop formula with Dolph Lundgren taking on an intergalactic drug dealer
An action movie inspired by tv’s The X Files involving space shuttle pilots returned to Earth possessed by aliens. The emphasis is more on action scenes than a coherent plot
From Alex Proyas and David S. Goyer, this has an astonishing conceptual audacity in its plot dealing with shifting realities and transplanted memories, making it arguably the finest science-fiction film of the 1990s
SF film about a woman suffering amnesia who is sent to an automated house to recuperate only to be made prisoner by the sinister A.I. that runs the house
A modestly effective film about UFOs and alien abductions. This follows familiar paths to other films but is conducted with a quite reasonable degree of atmospheric
This feels like a mockbuster thrown together to exploit the popularity of the tv series Lost concerning an island haunted by a sinister cloud of smoke. The scenario quickly collapses into absurdity.
a low-budget SF film set in an underground world ruled by a caste of genetically engineered people concerning who now face rebellion from among the lower classes
A routine SF film about an space expedition through a wormhole to investigate a habitable planet where the mission is endangered by warring factions among the crew
Film where a woman in an asylum insists that her baby has been stolen from her womb and that she has psychic powers. Or equally possibly she is delusional. This sits on an ambiguous fence with some subtlety
Conceptually ridiculous film where a spaceship crew in lunar orbit come across a space shuttle that disappeared through the Bermuda Triangle and contains a parasitic organism that is The Devil
Former effects supervisor Scott Stewart surprises here in producing a carefully restrained alien abduction film that focuses on the incursion of the inexplicable into the everyday
A low budget indie film about a spaceship crashlanded on an alien planet that is no more than a glorified fan film that features a level of effects that are extremely well accomplished
John Carpenter’s first film, made as a student project in collaboration with an also unknown Dan O’Bannon. A send-up of the boldly going space exploration of Star Trek, this features a ship where the crew are going stir crazy. The results are hilarious
Documentary about H.R. Giger, most famous as the creator of the alien in Alien but has also created an extraordinary body of darkly beautiful art, even if we never gain much insight into who Giger was
Low-budget UFO/alien abduction film that mostly this just retreads familiar material, although it does evince a certain interesting state of rubber reality about what is happening
As far as one is aware, this British effort is the first Found Footage alien invasion film. Not outstanding but this conducts a halfway reasonable job on limited resources
An ambitious low-budget variant on 28 Days Later featuring some excellent effects, where a man wakes up with amnesia to find zombies have overrun society
An alien invasion film set in Moscow. This is nothing more than a special effects vehicle about how the culturally self-absorbed twentysomething computer geeks and party girls save the world
Adapted from a series of Young Adult books concerning a group of children with psychic powers on the run in a dystopian future, this failed to find the audience it sought
Sam Raimi created one of the few original screen superheroes with Darkman, essentially a superhero film where The Joker (by way of The Phantom of the Opera) is the hero of the piece
The first of two video-released sequels to Sam Raimi’s Darkman now starring Arnold Vosloo in the title role. This also brings back Larry Drake as the villain Durant
This was the second and better of the two video-released sequels to Sam Raimi’s Darkman starring Arnold Vosloo in the title role. This adds a much more interestingly complex plot to the mix
Anime where a mysterious other-dimensional stranger aids future rebels. This has a wonderfully ornate Gothic feel but an entirely confusing plot