Maid to Order (1987)
1980s light fantasy comedy where spoilt rich girl Ally Sheedy wakes up in a world where nobody recognises her and is forced to take a job as the maid
Schizoid (1980)
An early release from Cannon Films, a psycho film featuring a very weird Klaus Kinski as a sinister psychologist
Beauty Water (2020)
South Korean-made anime that takes a dive into horror grotesquerie in the story of a beauty product that offers to reshape flesh and a girl who becomes obsessed with it
Play Dead (2022)
Bailee Madison takes a drug that fakes death and wakes up at the morgue – only to discover that coroner Jerry O’Connell is running an organ harvesting operation
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023)
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
Hypersleep (2022)
A film of reality bending conceptual twists about a psychiatrist tending cryogenically frozen prisoners who then wakes to find that he has become one of the prisoners
Ms Cannibal Holocaust (2012)
An early film from Ron Bonk misleadingly sold with connection to the notorious Italian cannibal film, concerning the tenants of an apartment building under siege by a mysterious cult
The Brainiac (1962)
Bizarre Mexican film about a resurrected warlock who transforms into a bat creature to take retribution against the descendants of those who burned him at the stake
Nothing Underneath (1985)
A superior example of the giallo film. Not quite up with the works of Dario Argento, this still has considerable stylishness, along with a plot that borrows from Eyes of Laura Mars
Murder in an Etruscan Cemetery (1982)
A giallo film with occult overtones centred around the discovery of an Etruscan tomb. As a series of murders occur, the heroine may be the reincarnation of an ancient high priestess
The Atrocity Exhibition (1998)
Adaptation of the classic J.G. Ballard novel that deals with the surreal blurring and breakdown between media, architecture, celebrity and the protagonist’s disturbed state of mind
Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths Part One (2024)
An animated film adaptation of Crisis on Infinite Earths, one of the classic DC Comics titles of all time. With superhero films now obsessed with multiverses, this seems the perfect time to bring it to the screen
Wonka (2023)
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory has become a cult classic. This offers a Willy Wonka origin story but seems to be far too nice a work that is missing the dark bite of the original
Night Swim (2024)
A Blumhouse and James Wan co-production about a malevolent swimming pool
Just Another Pandora’s Box (2010)
A demented Jeffrey Lau comedy that seems to have no limits on how silly it is willing to be, while parodying just about every other film made around the same time
The Hybrids Family (2015)
From the director of Hellbound: Hellraiser II, this is an unfunny monster comedy that plays out like it is trying to be a live-action version of the Hotel Transylvania films
Peter Cushing: In His Own Words (2019)
Peter Cushing is one of cornerstone figures in the Hammer Films story. This is documentary based on interviews he made towards the end of his life
Blasted (2022)
Norwegian comedy where two friends who were a champion laser tag duo in their teens are now in adult life where they are forced to pair back up to fight off alien invaders
The Legend of Jack and Jill (2021)
From the people who made Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, a film where the nursery rhyme of Jack and Jill somehow morphs into a variant on The Hills Have Eyes
The Marvels (2023)
This ended up being the lowest rated of all MCU films. One wondered whether this was just fannish hyperbole but no what we end up with is the Batman & Robin of The MCU, the single worst film that franchise has produced
Brooklyn 45 (2023)
A film of electrifying tensions set just after World War II where a group of friends gather in an apartment and hold a séance that in turn brings out what they did during the War
Re/Member (2022)
A Japanese-made variant on the oft-used Groundhog Day timeloop theme. This pushes well into horror movie territory with a group of teenagers trapped in a typical school day and facing a monster figure pursuing them
Premonition (2004)
Japanese horror film about a professor who receives newspaper headlines that predict deaths before they occur
The Gendarme and the Extra-Terrestrials (1979)
An entry in a popular series of French slapstick comedies with Louis de Funes as a comic gendarme. In this, the series sole genre entry, he goes up against alien visitors
Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings (1994)
The Stan Winston directed Pumpkinhead was one of the genuinely original monster movies of the 1980s. This was the first of several video-released sequels
The Legacy of the Bones (2019)
The second of the films based on Dolores Redondo’s police procedurals, this heads into an admirably dark and perverse place with plenty of jolt twists
Slumber Party Massacre (2021)
The original feminist slasher film gets the remake treatment with interesting results
Dream Scenario (2023)
A film in which Nicolas Cage keeps appearing in other people’s dreams. This goes from an initial wild absurdism to something that becomes bitingly satiric as it takes on instant celebrity and Cancel Culture
Bodies (2023)
A smart, intelligent tv mini-series that conducts a murder mystery that ranges between the 1890s and 2050s, before arriving at an ingenious and clever SF explanation
Shark Attack 3: Megalodon (2002)
John Barrowman fights a giant prehistoric shark in a film that gained a certain reputation as a Bad Movie
Jurassic Shark (2012)
A killer shark film concerning a prehistoric megalodon prowling the waters of a lake. This once had the distinction of being the lowest rated film on the IMDB
Hell’s Ground (2007)
A Pakistani copy of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Backwoods Brutality film, all served up with reasonable vigour. It is fascinating seeing the genre tropes translated between different cultures
The Shaft (2001)
The English-language remake of the Dutch film The Lift about a killer elevator. Starring a then unknown Naomi Watts in a role that would probably embarrass her now
Teen Titans Go! vs Teen Titans (2019)
Here the less-than-serious Teen Titans Go! conduct an Into the Spider-Verse-type crossover with their serious counterparts from the multiverse
Moon Man (2022)
Comedy from China about a man abandoned on the Moon, the last person left alive in the aftermath of the destruction of the Earth
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023)
The Hunger Games was one of the biggest franchise of the 2010s. Here a number of the key talents return to make a prequel to the events, telling a story from the early days of the Hunger Games
It’s a Wonderful Knife (2023)
The last few years have seen the slasher film conduct some odd conceptual crosshatches – this offers a mash-up between a slasher film and It’s a Wonderful Life
Entrails of a Virgin (1986)
Welcome to the bizarre and decidedly politically incorrect world of the Japanese pinku film. Words fail me on this one, which concerns a demonic rapist that attacks a porn film shoot
Trilogy of Terror II (1996)
Sequel to the classic Karen Black-starring horror anthology tv movie with Lysette Anthony starring in a trio of horror tales
Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot (1976)
With the sensation of the Gimlin-Patterson film that supposedly depicted a Bigfoot, the 1970s gave us a spate of Bigfoot films. This was the most high-profile, a mockumentary about an expedition that sets out to find Sasquatch
The Long Night (2022)
A Folk Horror film where Scout Taylor-Compton visits the South in search of the parents she never knew only for cultists in black robes and animal masks to surround the house
Phenomena (2023)
In the same vein as The Conjuring films, a film about a true-life Spanish team of paranormal investigators
Rebel Moon – A Child of Fire: Part One (2023)
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
A Murder at the End of the World (2023)
Brit Marling is one of the most intelligent creative faces of the 2010s/20s. Here she co-writes, co-directs and stars in a fascinating murder mystery set in the tech world at a futuristic retreat
Home Sick (2007)
The first film from Adam Wingard from which it is hard to guess he would be a major director. This is a very amateurish work, nevertheless comes with an undeniable enthusiasm for the genre
Jack & Diane (2012)
An LGBT romance featuring fantastic performances from Juno Temple and Riley Keough before they became better known names. This also acts as an ambiguous monster movie
Creep 2 (2017)
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
The Devil Conspiracy (2022)
This has an insane plot about Satanists stealing the Shroud of Turin to clone a body to incarnate The Devil and a priest possessed by the archangel Michael wading into action with a glowing sword
Thanksgiving (2023)
Eli Roth’s homage to the slasher film that comes with a dark sense of humour and a series of novelty deaths that rival the best of the 80s slasher heyday
Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget (2023)
After 23 years, Aardman Animation make a sequel to their first feature film. Another chicken caper film where they try to capture some of its dotty charms and largely succeed
Leave the World Behind (2023)
A strong and dramatic work about a sudden catastrophe that occurs when the world’s internet and cellular system are shut off. Produced by no less than former US President Barack Obama
The Mad Monster (1942)
A poverty row mad scientist film where a magnificently sinister George Zucco turns his gardener into a werewolf. A copycat that was made not long after Universal’s The Wolf Man
The Bermuda Triangle (1978)
A film made to tap the 1970s fascination with the so-called Bermuda Triangle mystery with a name cast lost at sea on a ship as mysterious happenings start to occur
Nostradamus (2000)
A batshit crazy film involving Nostradamus who is a present-day cop, a time travelling assassin trying to bring about the Biblical Apocalypse at The Millennium, plus alternate timelines and a psychic FBI agent
Initiation: Silent Night, Deadly Night 4 (1990)
From regular horror director Brian Yuzna, a sequel to the Christmas slasher films series. This is quite possibly not only the weirdest Christmas film ever made but the weirdest Christmas horror film ever made
Merry Little Batman (2023)
A real head-scratching oddity, a Batman animated Christmas film
Slay Belles (2018)
A trio of alt girls do urban exploring and walk into a war between a grumpy, retired Santa and Krampus
Santa’s Slay (2005)
Christmas horror film with wrestler Bill Goldberg playing a demonic version of Santa Claus
Curse of the Forty Niner (2002)
Makeup effects man John Carl Buechler directs a film about a resurrected prospector come to enact vengeance against those seeking his gold claim
Jack the Reaper (2011)
Film with a class of teenagers a class of teenagers on a field trip is pursued through a haunted carnival by a mythical boogeyman
Nothing Left to Fear (2013)
A horror film produced by Slash of Guns’n’ Roses fame about a family moving to a new town only to find they have been brought there for a sinister purpose
Dr Jekyll and the Wolfman (1972)
The fifth film where cult Spanish horror actor Paul Naschy played the werewolf Waldermar Daninsky. Here Waldemar is pitted up against Dr Jekyll with Naschy playing both Waldemar and Mr Hyde
Moonshot (2022)
From Arrowverse producer Greg Berlanti, a film about a nerd who stows away on a voyage to Mars
The Offering (2022)
Undeniably reminiscent of the standout The Vigil, a horror film set around an Orthodox Jewish funeral home that creates great uncanny mood
Candy Cane Lane (2023)
Eddie Murphy – one of the funniest talents of the 1980s – has been largely absent for much of the 2010s. He returns here with a Christmas comedy in which he is the recipient of a curse given to him by an evil Santa elf
A Disturbance in the Force: How The Star Wars Holiday Special Happened (2023)
The Star Wars Holiday Special has a legendary awfulness in Star Wars fandom – least of all that George Lucas has done all in his power to quash its existence. This is a documentary about what happened
The Willies (1990)
A horror anthology that ostensibly tells a series of children’s tales but heads for an admirable grotesquerie
The House of the Dead (1978)
Not to be confused with the Uwe Boll videogame adaptation, this is an obscure but not entirely uninteresting horror anthology from the 1970s that tells several tales set around a funeral parlour
Simon, King of the Witches (1971)
Entry in the spate of 1970s occult films, purportedly written by a real witch, that offers a sometimes comical portrait of the everyday life of a warlock
In a Glass Cage (1986)
The original Apt Pupil, an extraordinary study in cruelty about a Nazi war criminal confined to an iron lung and the way his past cruelties influence a teenage boy reading his journals
Choose or Die (2022)
A British horror film in which people open an old 1980s videogame that is cursed and forces them to make horrible choices concerning the deaths of people around them
Resurrected (2023)
This has a fascinating premise where the Catholic Church develops a resurrection process, before one priest starts to see a darker conspiracy beneath. Shot in the Screenlife process where the film screen becomes a computer screen
The Wandering Earth II (2023)
Prequel to the Chinese spectacular about the construction of an engineering project to move the Earth, this comes with some epic-sized effects sequences
Suitable Flesh (2023)
An H.P. Lovecraft adaptation, this is a venture into bodyswap horror that proves immensely entertaining ride
FantastiCozzi (2016)
A documentary about Luigi Cozzi, director of Starcrash and Hercules, among others. Cozzi proves a highly enjoyable raconteur and often more entertaining than some of the films he has made
Wolves of Wall Street (2002)
Way before The Wolf of Wall Street, we had this David DeCoteau film about werewolf stockbrokers
Strange Holiday (1945)
Arch Oboler makes a film in which Claude Rains returns from a holiday to find a Nazi government has overtaken the USA
Drifting Home (2022)
Peculiar but very nicely made anime about a group of children who go on a fantastical journey in an abandoned apartment building that is washed away to sea
Bubble (2022)
Anime in which Tokyo is covered by a mysterious energy bubble of alien origin and of a group of defiant youths who live on in its midst until the appearance of a mystery girl
Last Sentinel (2023)
Film set in a Waterworld styled drowned future aboard a mid-ocean platform between two warring sides. A film that almost entirely exists in terms of finely tuned psychological tensions
The Eternal Daughter (2022)
This received acclaim on the arthouse circuit. Tilda Swinton plays both the daughter and her mother who go to stay a hotel that may be haunted. Everything hovers in a state of ambiguity
V/H/S/85 (2023)
The sixth entry among the popular multi-director anthology series, this includes episodes from Scott Derrickson among others but is also one of the weaker of the V/H/S films overall
Escape from Cannibal Farm (2017)
British director Charlie Steeds delivers a well tuned homage to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre that gets it right in ways that most of the Texas Chainsaw sequels don’t
Chop (2011)
A man is abducted by a stranger who proceeds to remove his limbs in an effort to make him remember the terrible crime he committed. This suggests an incredibly grim film. Surprisingly enough, it is a comedy
Mister Frost (1990)
Fine film that deserves wider recognition with Jeff Goldblum as a man in an asylum who claims to be The Devil
Off Season (2021)
From the increasingly underrated Mickey Keating, a film about a ghostly small town where Keating creates an incredibly eerie and haunted atmosphere
The Civil Dead (2022)
A laidback slacker comedy where a man is befriended by the ghost of a school friend who proves annoyingly needy and won’t go away
The Creator (2023)
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
Sister Death (2023)
Paco Plaza, co-director of the [Rec] films, shows James Wan how to do a nun horror film properly. This is a prequel to Plaza’s earlier Veronica, telling an origin story for Sister Death
The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher (1979)
A film from cult director Ray Dennis Steckler about psychos lurking around Hollywood Boulevard. Things get admirably twisted, while the work is a unique time capsule of the period
Mister Superinvisible (1970)
Antonio Margheriti, better known for his Gothic horror and giallo films, makes an invisible man comedy
The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960)
Hammer Films had great success with their revivals of Dracula and Frankenstein and went on to adapt other classic horror stories. Here they take on the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde story as a scientist unleashes his evil personality within
Eating Miss Campbell (2022)
The sight of the normally super-offensive and un-PC Troma Films trying to adjust to the post-#MeToo and Cancel Culture era while making a film about high school cannibalism is a bizarre one indeed
Deadstream (2022)
A rather funny horror comedy based around the concept of a livestream conducted from a haunted house – all of which proceeds to quite hilariously go wrong
The Fall of the House of Usher (2023)
Mike Flanagan mini-series that expands on the story to incorporate a host of other Poe stories. More like another of Mike Flanagan’s cross-generational ghost stories by way of tv’s Succession with a lot of Poe-esque margin notes
Heart of Stone (2023)
A spy action film starring Gal Gadot as a double agent. The film had its air stolen by Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning, nevertheless is filled with exhilarating action sequences and should have had a higher profile
Beyond Loch Ness (2008)
This offers the novelty of a Loch Ness monster film that takes place in Canada! This is otherwise a routine monster of the era made for the Syfy Channel
Death Spa (1988)
A 1980s VHS released horror about a series of novelty killings at a health spa. This contains some entertainingly bizarre death and a surprise number of later to be famous faces
H.P. Lovecraft’s The Deep Ones (2020)
A low-budget adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth. That is if you can imagine Lovecraft’s story about fish people mating with humans relocated to a California AirBNB
The Requin (2022)
Survival horror film where Alicia Silverstone and husband are stranded in shark-infested waters when a freak storm washes their beachside cabin out to sea