The Watch (2020)
Mini-series based on the works of Terry Pratchett that feels as though it is made, designed and cast by people who haven’t even read the books
Clown Motel (2019)
There have been a spate of killer clown films in the last few years almost none of which have escaped being cheap and crappy. This one is based around the real-life clown motel in Nevada
Mirrors 2 (2010)
A sequel to Alexandre Aja’s Mirrors that abandons most of the basics of the first film and strips everything down to a series of gory, novelty deaths
The Scenesters (2009)
A side-splittingly funny spoof of Found Footage films as a crime scene video crew uncover evidence of a serial killer and decide to make a documentary about it
A.I. Tales (2019)
An anthology of four SF tales, short films from various directors around the world, although surprisingly none that feature Artificial Intelligences
Proximity (2020)
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
The Green Knight (2021)
David Lowery has emerged as a director to watch in the last few years. Here he conducts a beautifully sparse and more ambiguous take on the legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins (2021)
Part of the attempt to reboot the G.I. Joe film series into a shared universe, this is a kinetically driven martial arts film
The Girl from Monday (2005)
Hal Hartley was one of the foremost independent directors of the 1990s. Here he makes a film set in satiric future dominated by the advertising industry featuring a visit from an alien girl
Battledogs (2013)
A halfway reasonable film from The Asylum with the military trying to appropriate werewolves for weapons purposes. A good premise despite so-so-effects work
Totem (2017)
I was very impressed with director Marcel Sarmiento on the basis of the perversely twisted Deadgirl. Here Sarminento turns his hand to making a ghost story
Beneath Us (2019)
This is a brutal and unnervingly effective film about Mexican illegal immigrant day labourers who are imprisoned and tortured by a wealthy entitled white couple
Alone (2020)
English-language version of the Korean zombie film #Alive about a guy stranded in an apartment during the zombie apocalypse trying to communicate with the girl across the street
Held (2020)
A bizarre thriller where a husband and wife are imprisoned in a luxury house and forced upon threat of torture to improve their marriage
The Lockdown Hauntings (2021)
A film shot during the Covid lockdown, following a police detective who conducts an investigation into deaths caused by supernatural entities unleashed amid the isolation
Rattlers (1976)
An entry in the 1970s Animals Attack cycle about a small desert town under attack by rattlesnakes
Infected (2013)
Forget about the ostensible explanation about outbreaks of Lyme Disease in the script, this is another zombie film in all but name even if the phrase is never mentioned
Outer Touch (1979)
Bizarre attempt to mix the 1970s SF film with the British sex comedy as a group of people are abducted by three alien women who are ignorant about sex
No Escape Room (2018)
Another in the fad for horror films about escape rooms we have had in the last few years, this concerns a possibly haunted venue and reaches an interestingly odd ending
The Blackout (2019)
An impressively large-scale SF film about a military sortie into an area of western Russian that is all that is left unaffected after aliens create a worldwide power cut
Seance (2021)
Adam Wingard’s regular scriptwriter Simon Barrett directs a revival of the girls’ boarding school ghost story. I had very high expectations of this
The Suicide Squad (2021)
James Gunn takes over the Suicide Squad franchise and welcomely rescues it from the dud first screen outing, giving it his characteristically irreverent sense of humour
Vivo (2021)
Animated film about a talking and singing monkey from Cuba that travels to the US on a quest
The Croods: A New Age (2020)
The sequel to DreamWorks’ animated prehistoric film. For a very low expectation effort – the modern animated sequel – this emerges as far more colourful and entertaining than one expects
Saga of the Phoenix (1990)
Sequel to the madcap Hong Kong fantasy Peacock King with Gloria Yip as a hell demon trying to adjust to living on Earth, which then turns into a comedy variant on Gremlins
The Climax (1944)
Made to exploit leftover sets from the 1943 Phantom of the Opera, this is a magnificent colour production that has Boris Karloff as an obsessive surgeon who fixates on a beautiful young opera singer
Summer of Fear (1978)
An early, little known Wes Craven film originally shot for tv in which Linda Blair believes that that cousin who comes to stay might be a witch
Jexi (2019)
Amiable comedy about an annoyingly intrusive artificially intelligent mobile assistant that wreaks havoc on its owner’s life
Lisey’s Story (2021)
Stephen King writes the script for a TV mini-series adaptation of what he considers to be his best book about a widow who discovers a secret parallel world
Dreamland (2019)
Bruce McDonald, who directed the standout Pontypool, makes a crime film where Stephen McHattie plays both a hitman and a heroin-addicted trumpet player. For head-scratching reasons, the film also includes a vampire
Jungle Cruise (2021)
The long-delayed film based on the Disney theme park ride is an assemblage of cliches from various adventure films but ends up being far more enjoyable than it has any right to be
Batman: The Long Halloween Part Two (2021)
The Long Halloween Part One was one of the best DC animated films in some time, now comes the concluding chapter, which alas fails to fulfill the promise that the first film showed
Countdown (2019)
This feels like the Final Destination franchise updated for the mobile user generation concerning a sinister app that predicts how long the user has to live
The Little Vampire (2017)
Animated film based on the popular series of children’s stories about a kid who befriends a vampire boy. The same stories had previously appeared as a live-action fllm
The Cross of the Devil (1975)
The little-seen final film from Hammer director John Gilling, an Anglo-horror styled work about resurrected Knights Templar
Rowing With the Wind (1988)
One of the better of several films depicting the famous meeting between Mary Shelley and Lord Byron at the Villa Diodati that led to her writing Frankenstein. Starring a then unknown Hugh Grant as Byron
She Never Died (2019)
Sequel to the modest He Never Died with Henry Rollins as an immortal. Women get equal time here in a ferocious performance from Olunike Adeliyi that quite takes you aback
Rogue (2020)
Megan Fox is the leader of a troupe of mercenaries (!) conducting a hostage extraction from rebel territory as they come under attack by a killer lion
Fear Street 1666 (2021)
The third of the Fear Street films, this takes the story back to a 17th Century filled with absurdly modern attitudes and offers an explanation that ties everything together
Fear Street 1978 (2021)
The second of the R.L. Stine adapted Fear Street films, this one takes the action back to 1978 where it then becomes a vigorous homage to the slasher film
Fear Street 1994 (2021)
The first of the Fear Street films, somewhat more adult than the usual R.L. Stine adaptations. This can be considered the first Woke era slasher film
The Ghastly Love of Johnny X (2012)
A beautifully shot b/w homage to exploitation films that feels like a 1950s rock‘n’roll musical injected with a host of gonzo elements including aliens, UFOs and the resurrected dead
Ricky 6 (2000)
True-life film based on a teenager who created a Satanist coven and led a group of friends to kill one of their group
The Ranger (2018)
Slasher film with a diabolically funny sense of humour as a psychopathic park ranger stalks a group of partying punks
Blood Vessel (2019)
Australian film set during World War II as a group of shipwreck survivors board a deserted Nazi ship only to then discover that it is inhabited by vampires
Save Yourselves! (2020)
Comedy that comes comes with a winning concept – clueless hipsters try to get away from their social media devices for a weekend only to find the Earth has been invaded by aliens
Space Jam: A New Legacy (2021)
For reasons not clear to me, Space Jam is considered a classic. Now we get a sequel that updates it to the present featuring a different NBA star LeBron James
The Forever Purge (2021)
In this, the fifth film in The Purge series, the scenario becomes even more interestingly political, becoming a satiric take on MAGA America and the Capitol Riots
Superman & Batman: Apocalypse (2010)
One of the best of the DC Universe Original Animated Movies under the greatly underrated Lauren Montgomery. This serves to introduce Supergirl and Jack Kirby’s Fourth World
Justice League vs the Fatal Five (2019)
A DC Universe Original Animated Movie that introduces the Legion of Superheroes, their nemeses The Fatal Five and an assortment of new Justice League members to widen diversity
Necronos (2010)
German low-budget film about a resurrected sorcerer, this goes out on a wild edge, winds everything up to 15 on the dial and positively wades in blood, gore and torture scenes
You Might Be the Killer (2018)
There have been some clever and witty deconstructions and parodies of the slasher film in recent years. This starts in with an immediately captivating hook where the title phrase is turned around on the protagonist
Ghost Stories (2020)
Another multi-director horror anthology – in this case a quartet of horror stories from Bollywood directors that comes with one standout episode in particular
Game Over (2019)
A reality bending Bollywood film in which a wheelchair-ridden woman videogame designer is haunted by mysterious events, although quite what is all about is a very good question
The Silencing (2020)
Thriller where Nikolaj Coster Waldau is the alcoholic manager of a game preserve who becomes drawn in to the search for a serial killer who hunts girls
Black Widow (2021)
The first MCU film to emerge since the Great Pause of the pandemic, the question is whether one of the least interesting characters in The Avengers can carry a film all by herself
The Tomorrow War (2021)
Chris Pratt is recruited to fight an alien invasion in a war across time in a big-budget film that flounders in its own ridiculousness
Zebraman 2: Attack on Zebra City (2010)
Takashi Miike makes a sequel to his earlier superhero film filled with his typically eccentric touches
616 Paranormal Incident (2013)
Low-budget film about a team of FBI ghost hunters investigating an abandoned prison where mysterious things are going on
In the Dark (2013)
A bland tv movie thriller in which a blinded woman Elisabeth Röhm finds that her homecare aid is an obsessive stalker who has fixated on her
Paranoiac (1963)
One of the psycho-thrillers made at Hammer Films by Freddie Francis, starring Oliver Reed at his bad boy best. Francis’s visual compositions are absolutely extraordinary
Mnemophrenia (2019)
Film that takes place across three future eras that questions what happens when Virtual Reality produces artificial memories more vivid than real world ones
Baba Yaga, Terror of the Dark Forest (2020)
A new Russian-made version of the Baba Yaga folktale where the old witch is rewritten as a seductive nanny stealing children and their parents’ memories of them
DragonHeart: Vengeance (2020)
Quite why the largely forgotten DragonHeart has produced four sequels is beyond me. Where does such a loyal fanbase come from that they keep churning out more of these films?
A Quiet Place Part II (2020)
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
Batman: The Long Halloween Part One (2021)
The first in a two-part adaptation of a classic Batman story, this shows great promise that lifts the DC Universe Original Animated Movies out of the comfortable middle ground they have been drifting through the last few years
Arthur & Merlin: Knights of Camelot (2020)
A B-budget venture into the Arthurian Legends that never much finds the rich myth of the cycle and emerges as just a routine fantasy adventure
Mold! (2012)
Very cheaply made film about a deadly mold going amok at a laboratory, which is only notable for some gory meltdown effects and the filmmaker’s laughable lack of knowledge about contamination procedures
Godzilla and Mothra: The Battle for Earth (1992)
The 19th Godzilla film, part of the 1990s revival where the series started to employ modern animatronics. This revives Mothra in quite beautiful ways and mounts to a rousing monster battle
Limbo (2019)
Film set in a police interrogation room in the afterlife where two attorneys argue over whether a dead man should be saved or damned
The Special (2020)
Film about a man who develops an obsession with a mysterious black box that gives him the best sex of his life
Son (2021)
This seems a variant on the plot about a cult pursuing a child for their purposes but expectations soon get twisted on their head in interesting ways
Bram Stoker’s Van Helsing (2021)
An adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula that comes with the oddity of featuring no Dracula. This is quite faithful to the book and the period setting looks not to bad on a low budget
I Am … Gabriel (2012)
Chuck Norris’s son Mike directs a laughably ridiculous faith-based film where a miraculous child appears, come to heal the people of an impoverished, drought-ridden town
Nails (2017)
Film that takes place with the heroine confined to a hospital bed unable to move as a malevolent ghost enters her room
Majin, Monster of Terror (1966)
One of the more unusual Japanese monster movies, one that operates just as much a samurai film, concerning the stone god of a mountain that awakens to defend downtrodden peasants
Snatchers (2019)
Really quite funny film in which a teenage girl becomes pregnant with a body-snatching parasite. Think Mean Girls meets The Hidden
The Banishing (2020)
Christopher Smith seemed one of the most promising genre directors of the 2000s with films like Triangle and Black Death. Here he returns with a venture into the English ghost story
Luca (2021)
A Pixar offering that is an enjoyable work about merpeople/human friendship but this also sits on the B-rung of their films along with Onward and The Good Dinosaur
Censor (2021)
A horror film set among the UK’s Video Nasties censorship controversy of the 1980s. Niamh Alger works for the censorship board and is drawn into a disturbed state of mind by material she uncovers
Dark Kingdom (2018)
This is a British-made fantasy film in the vein of Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones but conducted on a B-budget where it does seem to be making an effort
Death Tunnel (2005)
Horror film set in the haunted tunnels beneath an abandoned hospital that seems all horror posturing without the benefit of an actual plot
Luz (2018)
A unique film about a woman who is pursued by a demon that loves her. The film is made in a challenging style that requires considerable adeptness to follow but proves rewarding
Don’t Let Go (2019)
Blumhouse film that borrows the basics of Frequency where a detective starts receiving phone calls from his murdered niece from several days in the past and tries to prevent her murder
Markham (2020)
British-made homage to H.P. Lovecraft that has some of the most stunning black-and-white photography seen in some time but I am still trying to puzzle out what the film was actually about
Infinite (2021)
High concept action film not dissimilar to Highlander with Mark Wahlberg discovering that he is a reincarnated soul engaged in a secret war through the ages
Spontaneous (2020)
Witty and really hilarious film about a high school class where teens begin randomly exploding. With great performances and writing that is a delight to the ears
Hillside Cannibals (2006)
One of the early mockbusters from The Asylum about a in-bred family of cannibals that live in a cave. This was made to come out the same time as the remake of The Hills Have Eyes
No Maps for These Territories (2000)
Fascinating documentary that interviews cult Cyberpunk author William Gibson on his life and writing while being driven around in the backseat of a car
The Last Resort (2009)
This was made following the success of Hostel, a low-budget film concerning a group of girls abandoned at a deserted Mexican resort town that may be haunted
Cut Off (2018)
Gripping German forensic psychology thriller that starts with one of the most memorable hooks in recent years where a pathologist autopsies a body only to find his daughter’s name and cellphone number embedded in its head
Automation (2019)
Another among the recent spate of Artificial Intelligence film, the story of a secretary who befriends a robot. This is an A.I. film on a B-budget that you feel should have been made as a comedy
Life Like (2019)
There have been some extremely good films about androids and A.I. in the last few years. This one about an android manservant is so ridiculous it should have been played as a comedy
Deep Blue Sea 3 (2020)
After the genuinely terrible Deep Blue Sea 2, all it took to improve the Deep Blue Sea series was a better director. This no more than a B movie but is certainly halfway watchable
The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021)
The third of the Conjuring films, this lacks the presence of James Wan in the director’s seat while peddling an even more highly dubious Based on a True story claim regarding a demonic possession
Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021)
The Saw series is revived sort of, featuring the activities of a Jigsaw copycat, otherwise this offers up all the familiar essentials in all but name
The Son of Bigfoot (2017)
The title is misleading as this features no Bigfeet but is an animated film about a family that sprouts all-over body hair and big feet. This quickly falls into the usual formulaic inanities of the modern animated film
King Dinosaur (1955)
The first film from Bert I. Gordon, known for his cheap giant animal films through the 1950s. This concerns a space expedition to a planet inhabited by dinosaurs – cue Gordon’s usual cheap effects
Night of the Living Dead: Resurrection (2012)
This jumps aboard the zombie bandwagon borrowing the title of George Romero’s classic but has almost nothing in common with it
Monster Island (2019)
One of the better mockbusters from The Asylum, timed to come out at the same time as the US Godzilla, King of the Monsters and actually far more modestly enjoyable