Shark Bait (2022)
Another horror film about survival in shark-infested waters where a group of partying teens on Spring Break are left clinging to a damaged jet ski as sharks circle and pick them off
War of the Worlds: The Attack (2023)
The idea of H.G. Wells’ classic alien invasion novel rewritten with a Young Adult focus makes you cringe but the idea works in its own way
Five Nights at Freddy’s (2023)
A Blumhouse film adaptation of the videogame that was a considerable hit at the box-office. Josh Hutcherson plays a security guard at a pizza parlour who faces killer animatronics come to life
Stryker (1983)
A vigorous copy of the Mad Max post-apocalyptic action film made by the underrated Cirio H. Santiago
Bounty Killer (2013)
A film about post-apocalyptic bounty hunters pursuing bankers, this was an Occupy Movement era film and hits a deliriously unserious comic-book tone
Bridge of the Doomed (2022)
This is in essence a zombie film version of the classic historical film Zulu with a small group of soldiers tasked with protecting a bridge against a zombie horde
Resident Evil: Damnation (2012)
The second of the Resident Evil anime films. This is set before the release of the T-Virus and focuses on origin stories for some of the characters
Blank (2022)
A film about a writer who retreats to a fully automated smarthome in order to complete a novel only to end up imprisoned by a malfunctioning A.I.
Dark Cloud (2022)
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
Stan Lee (2023)
The late Stan Lee needs no introduction as the most influential figure over the comic-book in the 20th Century. This is a documentary about his life
The Exorcist: Believer (2023)
In much the same way as they did with Halloween, Blumhouse and director David Gordon Green offer up a sequel to The Exorcist on the original’s fiftieth anniversary. The results are a bizarre scratch of the head
Saw X (2023)
The Saw series is back and this has been getting some of the best reviews of any entries in the series
Love (2011)
Melancholy film that does some ambitious things on a low-budget about a lone astronaut stranded aboard the International Space Station after contact with Earth goes dead
One Under the Sun (2017)
Strange film in which a woman astronaut returns from a Mars mission somehow ‘changed’
The Last Heist (2016)
Mike Mendez film about a heist on a safety deposit company. Henry Rollins proves extremely entertaining as a serial killer come to retrieve his collection of eyeballs in the vault and caught in the midst
Blood Relatives (2022)
An appealingly eccentric indie comedy directed by and starring Noah Segan as a vampire who suddenly discovers he has fathered a kid
There’s No Such Thing as Vampires (2020)
A modestly effective indie film with two people fleeing through the desert backroads pursued by a vampire
Consecration (2023)
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
What to Do With the Dead Kaiju? (2022)
An amusing take on the Japanese Monster Movie that takes place in the aftermath of a monster battle as various government agencies debate what do with the carcass of a giant monster lying in the countryside
Haunted Mansion (2023)
The second attempt to spin a film off from the Disney theme park ride, this comes in a more serious tone than the prior Eddie Murphy film but still emerges as lightweight in terms of horror
Birth/Rebirth (2023)
A standout modern variant on the Frankenstein film where two women conspire to cross waaay over medical ethic lines to revive a child from the dead
Homunculus (2021)
Takashi Shimizu, the director of the Ju-on/The Grudge films, conducts an adaptation of a manga about a man who undergoes a trepanning operation and emerges able to see people’s inner traumas given symbolic expression
The Cosmic Man (1959)
A low-budget 1950s SF film with John Carradine as a mysterious, shadowy alien visitor. This borrows a good many of its ideas from The Day the Earth Stood Still
100 Bloody Acres (2012)
An Australian Backwoods Brutality comedy, which amusingly inverts the genre’s clichés, not dissimilar to Tucker and Dale vs Evil
She Will (2021)
A Folk Horror film where aging Alice Krige becomes rejuvenated and discovers the ability to enact vengeance against her abusers from the woods
A Wounded Fawn (2022)
This starts with a woman going on a date with a man she does not realise is a serial killer, before things go off at a very strange tangent
The Time Capsule (2022)
This has an interesting premise where a middle-aged man suddenly faces his teenage girlfriend returned unaged from a relativistic space voyage
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)
The seventh of Mission: Impossible films with Tom Cruise still on great form at age 61. He and the team raise the bar for the series to a new high
Pet Sematary: Bloodlines (2023)
A sequel, or more correctly, prequel to the recent remake of the Stephen King novel. This has some legitimacy in that it is adapted from a story recounted in the book
Terror (1978)
A key work of British exploitation director Norman J. Warren centred a series of supernatural novelty deaths
The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave (1971)
A giallo film with Anthony Steffen as an aristocrat who likes to pick up red-haired girls and kill them in the dungeon in his villa, who then becomes haunted by the ghost of his late wife
Dracula: The Dark Prince (2013)
A medium-budget Dracula film that draws much on its cinematic predecessors and comes filled with Underworld-like brooding Gothic poses. Plus the oddity of a blonde Dracula
Prey for the Devil (2022)
Daniel Stamm, the director who made the standout
Smoking Causes Coughing (2022)
Another of Quentin Dupieux’s hilariously gonzo comedies made up a series of deadpan surreal vignettes, including a witty parody of the modern superhero film
Mandibles (2020)
Another of Quentin Dupieux’s bizarrely surreal deadpan comedies in which two amiable idiots discover a fly that is about the size of a dog and believe they could tame it
Totally Killer (2023)
A Blumhouse production that ends up being a smart conceptual mash-up between Back to the Future and Halloween
The Nun II (2023)
More from James Wan’s The Conjuring Universe, this places more focus on mood and atmosphere than The Nun’s ludicrous jump effects
Freeway (1988)
Thriller where widow Darlanne Fluegel and radio talkback host Richard Belzer team up to hunt a serial killer shooting people on the L.A. freeways
BattleBots (2018)
Prolific bad movie director Mark Polonia offers his own no-budget take on the Transformers films where the Transformers are two men in bulky costume who wrestle one another
Piercing (2018)
An interestingly strange film with Mia Wasikowska as a disturbed hooker and Christopher Abbott as a man who plans to kill her
Midnight (2021)
A standout South Korean film about a deaf girl pursued through the streets by a serial killer
Children of the Corn (2020)
The Stephen King short story only runs to 16 pages. This is the eleventh film spinoff to date (which runs at about one film per 1.4 pages of story). Unlike the other sequels, this claims to be an origin story
Spy Kids: Armageddon (2023)
Robert Rodriguez revisits his juvenile spy capers franchise after a twelve year absence. Not perfect but it improves over the last couple of sequels
Cobweb (2023)
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
Dark Nature (2022)
A horror film made by Canada’s indigenous Metis people that concerns a group of women on a therapeutic wilderness trek are stalked and attacked by a monster
Don’t Fuck in the Woods 2 (2022)
Don’t Fuck in the Woods was a reasonably smart slasher film that came with an attention-grabbing title. This is a sequel that introduces body-snatching parasites to the mix
The Dude in Me (2019)
A South Korean film where a tough gangster and a bullied teenager end up swapping bodies whereupon the gangster ends up transforming the teen’s life by employing gangland tactics in the school playground
Gentlemen Explorers (2013)
This advertises itself as the first live-action Steampunk film. What we get is like a Victorian version of The Librarians with two adventurers hunting mythical artifacts while armed with steam weapons
Speak No Evil (2022)
A darkly funny Danish film about a couple who accept an invite to visit another couple who seem to have no boundaries, before everything gets nasty
Significant Other (2022)
An alien body snatchers film conducted with a series of smart whiplash twists and turns – even surprisingly a sense of humour
Blue Beetle (2023)
The DC Comics superhero Blue Beetle, one of the Teen Titans, is given his own film. One of the more quickly forgettable entries among DC Comics’ attempts to compete with the MCU
The Boogeyman (2023)
British director Rob Savage made a great splash in the early 2020s with Host and Dashcam. Here he turns his attentions to the adaptation of a Stephen King short story
Chariot (2022)
A very strange surrealist film about the strange characters that populate a rundown hotel. Includes reincarnation, alien bug people and John Malkovich as a psychiatrist with red hair in a bow
The People (1972)
Quite magical Francis Ford Coppola produced film about a schoolteacher who discovers she had taken a position in a town of alien refugees
The Babysitter (2017)
McG has now become the new inheritor of the title of worst director currently at work in Hollywood, as amply evidenced in this ridiculous film starring Samara Weaving as a Satanist babysitter
Old People (2022)
German film in which the elderly abruptly turn and begin attacking the young en masse
Project Wolf Hunting (2022)
The most violent, brutal, blood-drenched films one has seen in recent memory, a South Korean entry about a monster loose aboard a prison ship
Barbie (2023)
Less a film than a phenomenon, there is something ironic about a doll that is accused of promoting negative body standards ending up leading a women’s movement. Moria has just one or two issues with this.
Talk to Me (2022)
An Australian film has been getting some great word of mouth, a teen horror that stands it head and shoulders above its contemporaries
Submersion of Japan (1973)
A thinking person’s disaster movie depicting Japan’s sinking into the ocean
Curse II: The Bite (1988)
A sequel entirely unrelated to The Curse only worth seeing for a series of entertaining entertainingly ridiculous effects where a man’s arm transforms into a mutant snake
The Year of the Sex Olympics (1968)
Film from Quatermass creator Nigel Kneale well ahead of its time in its prediction of a populace controlled by television
Devil’s Workshop (2022)
This comes with an intriguing premise in which a struggling actor consults a demonologist to prepare for a role and agrees to spend a weekend with her during which she decides to exorcise him
Chupa (2023)
A directorial outing from Alfonso Cuaron’s son Jonas. This is essentially E.T. but with children befriended a cute baby chupacabra instead of a stranded alien
The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023)
One of a spate of recent films that adapt characters or sections from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, this concerns the doomed ship voyage aboard which Dracula travels to England
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023)
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were the pop culture phenomenon of the 1980s. They have not fared so well in the 2000s but this new animated film written by Seth Rogen is a promising start
Neon Maniacs (1986)
Very typical 1980s horror film steeped in an enthusiasm for the genre that makes a beeline for cheesy mutant monster effects
Dr Jekyll’s Dungeon of Death (1979)
Not a Jekyll and Hyde film but instead about Jekyll’s grandson who conducts a series of experiments in harnessing aggression. An almost sordid exploitation film
Malevil (1981)
An entry in the spate of early 1980s nuclear war films about the residents of a French village who are sheltered in a wine cellar when the bomb drops and their efforts to survive in the aftermath
The Cellar (2022)
An Irish horror film that generates undeniably mysterious atmosphere after a family move into a new house and the teenage daughter disappears after going down into the cellar
Crater (2023)
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
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)
At age 80, Harrison Ford returns for what looks like being the last ever Indiana Jones film. It’s not perfect but when you compare to all the other contemporary franchises, this still has the good old adventure spirit
Beau is Afraid (2023)
Ari Aster’s third film had many audiences scratching their heads. It follows Joaquin Phoenix on an allegorical journey that becomes a dark comedy and an entirely surreal Freudian nightmare
The Last Thing Mary Saw (2021)
A strikingly directed film that conjures something of The Witch: A New-England Folktale in its depiction of the horrors present in a religiously oppressive household
4 Horsemen: Apocalypse (2022)
The Asylum build a disaster movie around the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse who are causing various volcanoes eruptions, locust swarms and other worldwide disasters
Age of Ice (2014)
Low-budget disaster movie from The Asylum where the Middle East is covered in a sudden Arctic conditions with the onset of a new Ice Age
Andrey Tarkovsky. A Cinema Prayer (2019)
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
The Pink Cloud (2021)
Brazilian film that becomes an allegory for Covid lockdown as a toxic cloud forces people to remain indoors for years at a time
Unwelcome (2022)
Irish horror about a couple who inherit a house with faerie creatures at the end of the garden
Meg 2: The Trench (2023)
The sequel to the Jason Statham starring killer shark film, bigger and more over the top than before. The surprise is seeing cult director Ben Wheatley turning to making a big, dumb film
Viking (2022)
A sublimely funny comedy about a group in a habitat who have been selected to roleplay the astronauts on a Mars mission
Girl at the Window (2022)
From Mark Hartley, known for his documentaries about cult cinema, a film that borrows the premise of Disturbia where a teenage girl thinks her neighbour is a serial killer
Run Rabbit Run (2023)
Sarah Snook stars in an Australian ghost story in which her daughter seems to become possessed by the sister who went missing years ago
Hello Down There (1969)
Director Jack Arnold was one of the great voices of 1950s SF cinema. Here he turns to making a none-too-funny comedy set in an underwater habitat. Featuring a teenage Richard Dreyfuss
The Dyatlov Pass Incident (2013)
The Dyatlov Pass Incident has gained a fascination as an unexplained mystery. Here Renny Harlin makes a Found Footage film that heads for full on conspiracy theory explanations
Moloch (2022)
Folk Horror about the discovery of a witch’s body in a bog, this is a slow burn film that falls together with great subtlety
Warriors of Future (2022)
One of the most intensive and exciting action films of recent with humanity engaged in a furious battle with plants and killer robots
Elemental (2023)
Pixar release that received uneven box-office and a critical drubbing. Despite being lumbered with a weak premise – talking elements! – it is not entirely unwatchable
Mad Heidi (2022)
The famous Swiss children’s character gets a sarcastic puncturing in this amusingly gonzo OTT exploitation take where she becomes an armed revolutionary against a cruel dictator
Astronaut: The Last Push (2012)
Gravity presaged a big upsurge about scientifically realistic space films. Coming out only a few months before, this concerns a lone astronaut on a space mission to Europa that goes wrong
Strip Nude for Your Killer (1975)
A giallo film about a masked man killing models. This comes with an attention-grabbing title that proves more sensational than most of what happens in the film
Black As Night (2021)
One of the post-Twilight vampire films that have transplanted the basics into different locales – in this, a rundown inner-city New Orleans ghetto neighbourhood
Slayers (2022)
A group of social media influencers fall prey to a vampire and are required to call on the help of grizzled vampire hunter Thomas Jane
A Banquet (2021)
A fascinatingly enigmatic and beautifully made film where Sienna Guillory becomes concerned when her daughter is mysteriously affected by something that causes her to stop eating
Unhuman (2022)
From writers of several Saw films and The Collector, a film about teens under attack in the woods where it is unclear what is going on oe who they are facing for most of the film
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)
The animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse proved an unexpected success. This sequel builds on that ups the artistic quality of the original to something quite extraordinary
Enys Men (2022)
Fascinating film about a woman isolated on an island off the Cornish coast who is haunted by cryptic mystery figures, who are possibly all in her imagination, possibly not. A film that creates a fascinating enigma
Francis Goes to the Races (1951)
The second in a surprisingly popular series of comedies about Francis the talking mule, this involves Donald O’Connor and Francis in a series of hijinks set around horse racing track
2020: Texas Gladiators (1983)
One of the numerous Mad Max imitators made in Italy. Directed by notorious adult director Joe D’Amato who pushes the material further than the other entries do
Omega Cop (1990)
A low-budget post-apocalyptic action film featuring the almost completely forgotten martial arts and (non)-actor Ron Marchini who must venture out into the ruined city to rescue three girls