Better Watch Out (2016)
An extremely good film that starts out seeming like a standard stalked babysitter effort before everything gets turned on its head with most pleasing results
Cosmic Sin (2021)
Another among the shoddy last films Bruce Willis-made before retirement, an SF film about a rogue military team that decide to declare war on aliens. This is laughable in terms of military tactics
The Barge People (2019)
A surprisingly reasonable effort that relocates the Backwoods Brutality film to England with people menaced by mutant creatures emerged from the rural canals
Boss Level (2020)
You don’t think the mix of cartoonishly over-the-top action and a Groundhog Day timeloop scenario would work but this proves your assumptions wrong in highly entertaining ways
Wrong Turn (2021)
A reimagining of the long-running Wrong Turn series of Backwoods Brutality films, this does imaginative things with the set-up and emerges as the best of the series so far
The Next Voice You Hear … (1950)
A film that could have only been made in the 1950s where the voice of God suddenly appears on the radio around the world. Starring later-to-be US First Lady Nancy Reagan
Killer Pad (2008)
Directorial outing from Robert Englund who makes the horror equivalent of a frat comedy where three guys rent a palatial home and throw a party as a portal to Hell opens in the basement
Superman: Requiem (2011)
A feature-length Superman fan film made as homage to the Christopher Reeve films. You have to applaud the film for sterling effort even if it comes woefully short in trying to create its superheroics on a $20,000 budget
Post Apocalyptic Commando Shark (2018)
Gonzo killer shark film that gets full marks for an entertainingly ridiculous title but is real bad movie material on all accounts
Before the Fire (2020)
Released in March 2020 just before the arrival of Covid-19, this makes an uncanny prediction about the US being affected by a nationwide pandemic
Raya and the Last Dragon (2021)
The 59th animated film from Disney emerges as a modest effort with a cross-Asian cultural focus that eventually builds a strong character arc
Tom and Jerry (2021)
Tom and Jerry are revived in a part-animated, part-live action toon film although come missing the ultra-violence of the original cartoons
Dragonwasps (2012)
Typical Syfy Channel creature film with people encountering giant fire-breathing genetically-engineered wasps in the jungles of Belize
Rogue River (2012)
Imprisonment thriller where a woman finds herself confined by deranged husband and wife Bill Moseley and Lucinda Jenney
Age of Dinosaurs (2013)
A modestly effective Jurassic Park copy from The Asylum with genetically-revived dinosaurs loose in L.A. and featuring better than usual effects
Slaughterhouse Rulez (2018)
Simon Pegg produces/stars in a comedy spoofing the British boarding school tradition – but with the addition of monsters running around
I Trapped the Devil (2019)
Low-budget film that absorbs you in an intensive headspace as family members visit a reclusive brother who claims to have The Devil locked in the cellar
Lizzie (2018)
Strong and effective retelling of the Lizzie Borden story starring Chloe Sevigny that builds out a fascinating plausible scenario for how the murders might have happened
The Reckoning (2020)
A few years ago, Neil Marshall seemed a major genre director on the rise with The Descent. Here he returns with a film about the historic witch persecutions
The Deeper You Dig (2019)
Modest and quite well made film entirely shot, produced and acted by the Adams Family who have gone on to make a series of other striking horror films. This concerns a man haunted by a ghost after he kills a girl
Monster Hunter (2020)
Resident Evil series director Paul W.S. Anderson and star Milla Jovovich return with an adaptation of another popular videogame series
The Stand (2020-2021)
The Stand is in my opinion Stephen King’s greatest book. The question is whether this new mini-series version will improve on the laughably failed 1994 version
Among the Shadows (2019)
A film about the internecine in-fighting among werewolf clans and a werewolf P.I. in a near-future European Union. With Lindsay Lohan as the EU President’s wife!
Retribution (1987)
Interestingly watchable 80s film where a man becomes possessed by a disembodied soul that sets out seeking revenge against its killers. With lots of entertainingly lurid despatches
Mega Time Squad (2018)
There have been some very sophisticated time paradox films in recent years. At complete contrast, this is a comedy that has a great deal of fun with the premise of a guy and assorted temporal copies of himself running about
Dead Dicks (2019)
An off-the-wall film with a unique premise about an apartment where every time somebody is killed another copy of them emerges out of a hole in the wall
Villains (2019)
A film with a wonderfully eccentric and offbeat sense of humour where Bill Skarsgård and Maika Monroe are inept criminals fleeing after a robbery who end up prisoners of a psychopathic couple
Death of Me (2020)
Darren Lynn Bousman is a director that leaves me wondering why he keeps attracting money to make films. Here he makes a work about a couple caught up in sinister rituals while tourists in Thailand
The Wolf of Snow Hollow (2020)
A film directed by actor Jim Cummings about a small Utah town that is facing a series of werewolf attacks. This works surprisingly well due to a series of witty and well-rounded characterisations
Willy’s Wonderland (2021)
A horror film premised around Nicolas Cage beating the crap out of a series of possessed animatronic robots, a fairly blatant copy of the Five Nights at Freddy’s videogame
Archive (2020)
One of the better in the fad for Artificial Intelligence films we have had since the 2010s with Theo James trying to place his late wife’s consciousness into an android body
High School Girl Rika, Zombie Hunter (2008)
The Gonzo Japanese Splatter Film offers a wild array of splatter, bio-transformations and an obsession with schoolgirls’ panties. This is a low-budget entry that offers something akin to a zombie-hunting equivalent of Buffy
Chrysalis (2008)
An adaptation of a Ray Bradbury story set in an environmentally collapsed future as scientists at a research station debate over what to do when one of their colleagues transforms into a chrysalis
MPD Psycho (2000)
Takashi Miike tv mini-series with a mind-bogglingly confusing plot involving a split personalitied detective, possession, a terrorist pop star and barcodes imprinted in eyeballs
Hell Fest (2018)
We have had several horror films set around Halloween haunts in recent years. This effort produced by Gale Anne Hurd is well above average and generates quite a degree of tension
The Rental (2020)
James Franco’s younger brother Dave makes a very impressive directorial debut in a taut psycho-thriller of sharp adept twists about two couples whose weekend getaway is torn asunder by guilty secrets and a lurking psycho
Bliss (2021)
Quite an entertaining film based on the conspiracy theory that we are all living in The Matrix where Owen Wilson and Salma Hayek become wound up in virtual simulation
Greenland (2020)
There seems something redundant in 2021 with the world in the grip of a very real apocalypse about watching an old-fashioned mass destruction disaster movie about an oncoming comet impact
Starship Apocalypse (2014)
Sequel to Starship Rising, a space opera that does some amazing things with effects on a next-to-no budget
Starship Rising (2014)
Modest space opera from British director Neil Johnson that achieves things with its effects on a low-budget that easily rivals A-budget films
The Hound of the Baskervilles (1978)
Adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes novel made as a comedy vehicle for Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. Given the duo’s reputations as comics, the results are fairly excruciating
Monstrum (2018)
South Korean attempt to make a Wu Xia film with swordsmen up against a hulking monster
Sword Master (2016)
One of the lush, beautifully produced modern Wu Xia (flying swordsmen) films. Produced and written by the legendary Tsui Hark
Saint Maud (2019)
Highly acclaimed film about a nurse’s descent into madness and religious hallucinations
A-X-L (2018)
Outside of animation, there has never been a decent genre film about cute dogs. This film about a robot dog is no exception. The surprise is that this is produced by the normally respectable David S. Goyer
Shadow in the Cloud (2020)
Chloe Grace Moretz stars in a quite reasonable WWII-set story about gremlins amok aboard a plane
WolfWalkers (2020)
The third film from Irish animator Tomm Moore, a beautiful Princess Mononoke-like tale of a girl’s friendship with persecuted werewolves in the forest
Road Train (2010)
Australian film that takes a big bite out of Duel with a group of people being pursued through the Outback by a truck-trailer that appears to be fueled by human blood
Johnny English Strikes Again (2018)
Rowan Atkinson in his third outing as the inept spy. Atkinson is a talented comic but these Johnny English films, which are like less sophisticated versions of Peter Sellers’ Inspector Closeau, are the least of his comedy incarnations
Robert the Doll (2015)
A low-budget film about an evil doll that was made not long after Annabelle came out and boasting a similar Based on a True Story claim. Four sequels have followed
Tarzoon, Shame of the Jungle (1975)
Animated parody of the Tarzan films made with a very adult sense of humour that was banned in several countries as a result
Perfect Skin (2018)
Thriller in which a girl is abducted and imprisoned by a mad tattooist who wants to use her body as a work of art
Come Play (2020)
This is a surprisingly good film that generates quite a degree of spooky eeriness concerning a child on the autism spectrum and the sinister entity inside his tablet that just wants to be his friend
Outside the Wire (2021)
There have been some impressive works about A.I. in the last few years. This plays out as Ex Machina by way of Training Day and is only notable in its ridiculous implausibility
Sky Sharks (2020)
This has been conceived as the ultimate modern exploitation film featuring Nazi zombie piloting flying sharks. Think Iron Sky by way of Sharknado. The results are highly entertaining
The Lost World (2001)
A TV mini-series adaptation of the Arthur Conan Doyle lost world story, this has been produced by the BBC as a glorious period adventure with CGI dinosaurs
The Dark Sleep (2013)
A no expectation adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft’s Dreams of the Witch-House from a director down the low-budget end of the spectrum that does some surprisingly modest things
Bad Samaritan (2018)
Roland Emmerich’s former writer Dean Devlin makes a film where a burglar discovers that David Tennant is a serial killer holding a girl prisoner and sets out to rescue her. Tennant does an entertaining turn as a bad guy
Aniara (2018)
Film based on a full-length Swedish SF poem that concerns the despair, emptiness and strange societies that emerge among those aboard a spaceship that is thrown off course
Coma (2019)
An extraordinary Russian film that takes place in a uniquely designed dreamworld shared by people in comas. This has an imagination and conceptual grasp that rivals Inception
The Lurker (2019)
Scout Taylor-Compton stars in a slasher about a killer stalking the cast of a high school play. She plays with a professionalism but the rest feels like an amateur production
P.G. Psycho Goreman (2020)
The great and underrated Steven Kostanski makes another of his homages to the 1980s VHS era. This has a winning concept where kids befriend an intergalactic dark lord
#Alive (2020)
A charming and delightful South Korean zombie film about the friendship that grows across the gap separating them between a nerd trapped in an apartment and a girl in the building opposite during a zombie outbreak
Downrange (2017)
Japanese director Ryuhei Kitamura creates a gripping survival thriller about a group of friends driving home who become trapped on a small stretch of road by a sniper
Blue Remembered Hills (1979)
I have said it before and will say it again – Dennis Potter was the greatest writer to ever work in television. This is his classic work depicting childhood where all the roles of the children are played by adults
Bonnie & Clyde Vs. Dracula (2008)
This comes with the interestingly original idea of having the real-life outlaws Bonnie and Clyde come up against Count Dracula. The main thing against the film is a low budget
Ouija Shark (2020)
Another in the spate of deliberately ridiculous killer shark films concerning a ghost shark that emerges from an ouija board
Run. (2020)
Well constructed thriller where a wheelchair-confined teenager discovers that her mother is up to sinister purpose and attempts to escape despite her lack of mobility
Synchronic (2019)
Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead have become one of the most underrated indie genre voices. Here they make a film where Anthony Mackie discovers a drug that causes people to travel through time
Batman: Soul of the Dragon (2021)
An oddity among the animated Batman films. This seems less another Batman film – Bruce Wayne gets more screen time than Batman, for instance – than it does a homage to the 1970s martial arts film
Batman Unlimited: Animal Instincts (2015)
An animated Batman film that is essentially an extended commercial based on a line of toys wherein Batman fights super-villains that have an animal motif
The Shuttered Room (1967)
One of the more obscure H.P. Lovecraft adaptations based on an unfinished pastiche, not widely seen but well worth reconsideration
Monster Hunt 2 (2018)
Sequel to Monster Hunt, an audience pleasing comedy about a couple and a cute monster that became the biggest hit in Chinese box-office history. This offers more of the same
The Gift (1990)
A modestly made BBC mini-series concerning a boy who discovers he has the titular gift of clairvoyant visions and how those around him try to exploit this
Flashburn (2017)
Reality bending film where an amnesiac Sean Patrick Flanery wakes up in a warehouse and learns he is a scientist who holds the antidote to a pandemic. But all is not it seems.
Room for Rent (2019)
Modest and well-made film where Lin Shaye has the time of her life as an elderly widow who rents out her room and becomes attached to her tenant in disturbing ways
Betaal (2020)
Bollywood conducts a reasonable attempt to make its own equivalent of the zombie film in this mini-series about people at siege from undead British colonial soldiers awakened
The Craft: Legacy (2020)
Blumhouse revival of/sequel to The Craft, the film about a quartet of teenage witches. This updates the original to the modern era in ways the original never did
Rent-a-Pal (2020)
Horror film about a downtrodden man tending a dementia-ridden mother who encounters a video friendship service where Wil Wheaton proves a cheery but increasingly disturbing new best friend
The House on Sorority Row (1982)
A slasher film from the classic 1980s heyday set during a party at a sorority house. This has been praised as being one effort that is well above the rest of the genre.
Flying Disc Man from Mars (1950)
Twelve-chapter serial that offers one of the first ever depictions of an alien invader on screen. The results are oddly mundane in comparison to the onslaught of great 1950s alien invasion films that came only a couple of years later
Tyrannosaurus Azteca (2007)
This comes with an intriguingly original concept – that Spanish Conquistador Hernan Cortes during his conquest of Mexico came up against dinosaurs
Amityville Exorcism (2017)
Prolific Z-budget director Mark Polonia makes something like the 18th film with Amityville in its title. This one concerns possessed lumber (!) from the Amityville house
We Can Be Heroes (2020)
Robert Rodriguez appears to have gotten the oversized non-event that was Alita: Battle Angel out of his system by making another of his seat of the pants home movies – this is less Spy Kids than Superhero Kids – and brings back one element Alita forgot, a sense of fun
Soul (2020)
Pixar film with a head-scratchingly odd plot but also one of the better efforts of the divided post-2010 period that goes a long way towards recapturing the things they did so well in their heyday
The Midnight Sky (2020)
George Clooney starred in Gravity and now directs/stars in his own scientifically grounded space film about the last man trying to communicate with a surviving space mission following a catastrophe event on Earth
Bloody Moon (1981)
Jess Franco is a cult director, having mostly specialised in exploitation and horror. Here he turns his hand to the early 80s slasher film. The result was listed as a Video Nasty in the UK
The Dead Pit (1989)
A typical 80s film with a mad doctor resurrecting the dead in the abandoned wing of an asylum amid gory makeup effects. The first film from Brett Leonard who next went on to make The Lawnmower Man
Future Hunters (1986)
Undeniably entertaining Filipino action film that tries to throw in everything including time travel, post-holocaust action, adventure quests, magical artifacts, lost worlds, Nazis and dwarves
Revolt (2017)
Modestly effective film with an amnesiac soldier trying to make his way across Africa in the aftermath of an alien invasion. Featuring some fine and well staged effects
Satanic Panic (2019)
Rather funny comedy about Satanists and a virginal pizza girl who is chased as their intended victim. This comes with a bizarrely akilter sense of humour that reminds of Martin Scorsese’s After Hours
Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)
The much-anticipated sequel to the Gal Gadot starring Wonder Woman is a highly divided success, partly due to an inane plot centred around a magic wishing stone
Becky (2020)
Essentially Home Alone as a horror film where Lulu Wilson gives a standout performance as a child who fends off a home invasion by escaped criminals led by Kevin James in a surprisingly effective villainous turn
The Driver (2019)
Zombie action film that features Mark Dacascos driving through the post-apocalyptic landscape in a luxury car looking for a home for his daughter
We Hunt Together (2020)
BBC mini-series about two lovers on a killing spree that works through some great performance and engaging character arcs
Possum (2018)
British horror film that develops a sense of uncanniness that resembles an Eraserhead at times with a man haunted by a puppet and giant spiders. The mood is unsettling, least of all that we are never sure what is real or taking place in the character’s head
Tone-Deaf (2019)
Dark, sardonic comedy where Amanda Crew rents a house to get away for a weekend only to face a murderous Robert Patrick. The humour is barbed and quite hilarious
Subferatu (2020)
Comedy about a shipwrecked crew that are rescued by a German U-boat that is carrying a vampire on board
Rim of the World (2019)
McG, one of the more empty-headed of modern mainstream directors, makes a big effects-heavy, Young Adult alien invasion film, a genre that has never enjoyed any success. To no surprise, this did not either
A Christmas Carol (2019)
A tv mini-series that offers a dark, adult and definitely not family friendly version of the oft-filmed Charles Dickens tale that reinvents the original in quite astonishing ways