The Devil’s Wedding Night (1973)
One of the numerous European erotic vampire films made during the early 70s. This came out not long after The Exorcist and so the vampire countess is accompanied by a coven of Devil worshippers
The Most Assassinated Woman in the World (2018)
A biopic of Paula Maxa, the real-life star of Paris’s Grand Guignol Theatre. The Grand Guignol specialised in plays depicting gory on-stage deaths and she was killed on stage an estimated 10,000 times during her career. Here the biopic elements are blended with a mystery in which she is targeted by a serial killer
In the Shadow of the Moon (2019)
Jim Mickle film that starts out as though a police procedural, possibly a supernatural horror film, and then performs an astonishing series of twists to become something else altogether and an absolute must see
Rabid (2019)
The Soska Sisters take on remaking the classic David Cronenberg film about a woman with a blood-drinking skin graft who leaves a trail of rabid victims. The sisters smartly update the original, bringing a host of new ideas to bear
Little Monsters (2019)
The premise doesn’t much to enthuse – a hapless loser has to take care of a bunch of kids during a zombie outbreak. Sit past that and this is the funniest zombie comedy since Shaun of the Dead
Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks (1974)
A trashy European exploitation version of the Frankenstein story that involves Frankenstein reviving a cavemen, a perverted dwarf and plentiful nude bodies
Dracula III: Legacy (2005)
The second of two video-released sequels to Dracula 2000, this takes place with more of an action emphasis and features vampire hunters tracking Dracula across rebel-torn future Europe
May the Devil Take You (2018)
Indonesia’s Timo Tjahjanto has emerged as a Must Watch director on the basis of his jaw-dropping brutal action films plus assorted ventures into horror. Here he pays homage to the 1980s horror films in particular to The Evil Dead
3 from Hell (2019)
Rob Zombie is back,, making the third in his trilogy of Firefly films following House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects. It is all fairly much the same as before where Zombie’s sympathies are cleanly with the family of psychopaths and their murderous rampage.
The Lion King (2019)
Jon Favreau had success recreating The Jungle Book in live-action with CGI animals and does the same with The Lion King – only to produce an exacting, lifeless replication missing the charms of the original
In the Tall Grass (2019)
Vincenzo Natali, the director of Cube, adapts a novella by Stephen King and his son Joe Hill about people becoming lost in a topographically and temporally shifting sea of grass
The Last Seven (2010)
Seven people wake up in a deserted London with no memory of who they are only to find that something is stalking them. An intriguing hook let down by a tired and overused ending
Mimesis (2011)
This comes with an interestingly different premise wherein characters are abducted and wake up inside a simulation of Night of the Living Dead and realise they are meant to replay the roles of the people in the farmhouse at siege from the zombie onslaught
Amsterdamned (1988)
Fine thriller about the hunt for a frogman serial killer prowling the canals of Amsterdam. The police procedural plot is not so important as the entertaining dispatches and some of the finest action sequence of the 1980s
Wonder Woman: Bloodlines (2019)
The second of the DC Universe Animated Original Movies made as a standalone entry for Wonder Woman, clearly building on the success of the Gal Gadot film
Toy Story 4 (2019)
Pixar sequelise their very first film for a third time but the surprise is a film that creates a range of eccentric characters and finds the wit and warmth that has been missing through their last few films
Prey (2019)
Franck Khalfoun, a former Alexandre Aja associate, who has made the quite reasonable likes of P2 and the remake of Maniac, directs a desert island survival story where the jungle lurks with horrors
Hush (2008)
A British psycho-thriller that draws much from Steven Spielberg’s Duel with its story of a motorist trying to rescue his girlfriend after she is abducted by a never-seen truck driver
A Night in the Woods (2011)
The British equivalent of The Blair Witch Project, although this makes the title not strictly accurate – it should more correctly have been called A Night on the Moors. This conducts the build-up in an especially interesting way with much interplay between the trio of characters who all come holding secrets
Oƨombie (2012)
This surely takes the cake amid the fad for wacky zombie films in which Osama bin Laden is resurrected as a zombie. Imagine a mash-up between Zero Dark Thirty and a zombie film
House Shark (2017)
The gonzo killer shark film has gained its own genre in recent years, popularised by Sharknado. This concerns a shark that emerges out of toilets and prowls around suburban living rooms
Doom: Annihilation (2019)
This was the second film based based on the Doom game and actually does a far better job of getting the essence of the game and paying fanservice to its elements than the earlier 2005 film did
Midsommar (2019)
Ari Aster made a big word of mouth splash with his debut film Hereditary, which had him acclaimed a major new name. This was his follow-up, a fascinating dive into Folk Horror territory in the depiction of a pagan cult
Crawl (2019)
Alexandre Aja makes a based on true life film where Kaya Scodeario becomes trapped in the crawlspace under a house with alligators as floodwaters rise all around
The Loreley’s Grasp (1973)
Spanish director Amando De Ossorio gained a cult for his Blind Dead films. Here he makes a film about The Lorelei, a woman who sits on the banks of The Rhine tempting men to their deaths
Cassadaga (2011)
Director Anthony DiBlasi has become a rising name in the horror genre in recent years. Here he makes a film about a deaf woman who gains mediumistic abilities and her tracking a serial killer who turns his victims into living marionettes
The Rape of the Vampire (1968)
Director Jean Rollin gained a cult following with his erotically fetishised, strikingly poetic vampire films, of which this was the first. Viewing the film today, one has more than a few problems with the title
Party Bus to Hell (2017)
A party bus is stranded in the desert and surrounded by Satanists. At least this is a film that you cannot complain delivers exactly what it promises – plentiful toplessness, gore and cheesy creature effects
Depraved (2019)
Larry Fessenden has become a horror director who has made some fine work that remain under the commercial radar. This is his modernised take on the Frankenstein story
Spider-Man: Far from Home (2019)
Spider-Man: Homecoming was Sony’s Spider-Man reboot where the elements came together with winning regard and Tom Holland’s politely eager nervousness made for a fantastic Spider-Man. This was the first sequel.
Annabelle Comes Home (2019)
James Wan is one of the finest directors currently at work in the horror genre. The produced by James Wan credit is a less enthusiastic prospect and had consisted of total dogs spinning off more popular works.
Island Claws (1980)
Film about giant crabs amok that feels like a throwback to a certain kind of 1950s monster movie. This plays itself remarkably seriously for the most part only to fall apart right at the end
Saint Sinner (2002)
Clive Barker based work about a monk pursuing two demonic succubi through time to the present. Clive Barker watered down for the Sci-Fi Channel but worth watching for the imaginative creature effects
Coonskin (1975)
Ralph Bakshi’s satiric animated depiction of African-American life in 1970s conceived as a parody of Song of the South was greeted with such controversy that it nearly derailed his career
The Little Mermaid (2018)
Not the Disney film, but a live-action film only loosely based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale. Not much more than a nicely made average film but one conducted with evident care
Inside (2016)
The 2007 Inside in which a pregnant mother is pursued by a woman with a pair of scissors was one of the most brutal viewing experiences amid the French Extremism fad. This is the English-language remake
Yesterday (2019)
Feelgood Danny Boyle film that most audiences missed was also an alternate history film set in a world where The Beatles never existed and one sideslipped singer is able to claim their songs as his own
Child’s Play (2019)
The controversial remake of Child’s Play where Chucky is no longer possessed but become an artificially intelligent smart toy. This seems to misconstrues everything that the fanbase of the series celebrates by a mile
Growth (2010)
A surprisingly good little film about a group of friends being infected by parasites escaped from a laboratory. Confidant assured horror filmmaking with some way out effects.
The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia (2013)
The Haunting in Connecticut was a reasonable success in the claim to being a true story ghost story stakes. This is a sequel, seemingly unaware that Connecticut and Georgia are about a thousand miles apart
The Devil’s Carnival (2012)
Darren Lynn Bousman, the director best known for the Saw sequels, makes a musical about a circus set in Hell through which three damned souls pass, enacting updated versions of various of Aesop’s Fables
The Recall (2017)
A group of friends at a cabin in the woods are subject to alien abductions. Directed by a production illustrator on a number of high-profile films, this comes with some unique designs and effects
Hotel Artemis (2018)
This comes with the promising set-up of the setting of a socially collapsing near-future L.A. where Jodie Foster is a disgraced medic who runs an off-the books hospital that treats the criminal underworld.
The Dead Don’t Die (2019)
Jim Jarmusch is one of the foremost American independent directors and here makes his first zombie comedy. The question is is what can he bring to a genre that has been in full-on self-parody mode since Shaun of the Dead
Nightmare Cinema (2018)
A above average entry in the recent trend of horror anthologies featuring episodes from different directors, including Joe Dante and Mick Garris, featuring at least a couple of standout entries
The Orphan Killer (2011)
Modern-day run through of the slasher film with the heroine pursued through a school by an axe-wielding maniac. This leaps into the basics with a real brutality and wades in buckets of gore
Time Renegades (2016)
South Korean film that borrows the premise of the film Frequency in having two characters separated across twenty years have clairvoyant dreams of the other’s life and combining forces to stop a killer
Tender Dracula (1974)
An obscure French comedy in which Peter Cushing plays a vampire or more correctly plays a horror actor used to playing vampires. Assorted extremely unfunny shenanigans running around his castle ensue
Zombies Have Fallen: Vengeance Runs Deep (2017)
The title gives the impression this is intended as a zombie film take on the action film Olympus Has Fallen. The confusion you have in watching is that this is actually a film about a girl with psychic powers on the run. Brief zombie scenes turn up later in the show to justify the title but feel that they have strayed in from another film.
The Secret Life of Pets 2 (2019)
Illumination’s The Secret Life of Pets came with a winning concept – a Garfield like series of wry observations on humanity by pets – and this is one amongst the current plague of animated sequels that emerges equally likably
X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019)
Despite the bad press surroundings this, I failed to find it as bad as other reviewers. It’s a solid if not standout entry in the series with some fine superheroic action sequences
Ma (2019)
Blumhouse production with Octavia Spencer as a stalkery mad woman who befriends a group of teens in an elaborate revenge plot. Quite what people though they were making is a scratch of the head
Shadow People (2016)
Husband and wife find their new home in the countryside to be haunted. A ghost story that is not up to much before what has become one of the biggest cliche endings in the book
Slasher.com (2017)
The title is misleading – we expect some kind of internet based horror film but the show telescopes down to being no more than a Backwoods Brutality effort. On the other hand, it is not taking itself too seriously and some of the twists become entertainingly absurd
Paranormal Extremes: Text Messages from the Dead (2015)
The second-to-last film from legendary Z-budget filmmaker Ted V. Mikels. The title is a misnomer and the film is more about a woman discovering her abilities as a medium. Despite having been making films since the 1960s, Mikels has improved none in quality
The Fitzroy (2017)
Eccentric and unclassifiable British film that takes place in some kind of gonzo alternate reality aboard a submarine converted into a hotel. The nearest equivalent one can think of in comparison is Delicatessen
Jacob’s Ladder (2019)
Another remake that nobody asked for. The 1990 film is reworked in a script that ditches almost all of the afterlife themes and instead seems to want to be a film about veterans addicted to reality-blurring drugs
Don’t Speak (2015)
Spanish film that prefigures the subsequent A Quiet Place concerning an island where anybody who makes a noise is killed. This fails to use its premise in any interesting way.
Uncanny (2015)
This was made before Ex Machina and has a surprisingly similar plot – although takes it even further in many regards – where a woman journalist goes to interview a tech genius and ends up in a romantic triangle between him and his android creation
Bottom of the World (2017)
Indie film that channels a Lost Highway vibe in which Douglas Smith searches for a missing girlfriend Jena Malone and then wakes up in an entirely different life where he cannot be certain which life is real and which a dream
Godzilla, King of the Monsters (2019)
Follow-up to the 2014 US-made Godzilla. This introduces other monsters from the Japanese series and tries to create a shared universe. But when the film is all massively-scaled mass destruction, it seems hard to root for the monsters
Elizabeth Harvest (2018)
A novel take on the story of Bluebeard who forbids his wives to enter a room and kills them when they do. Here Bluebeard is a scientist who keeps cloning the same wife over. A sophisticated and intelligent film full of sharp and intriguing twists
Dead Season (2012)
One among the vast horde of zombie films that has deluged the genre since the mid-00s. An average entry in the field, competently made and with a plot that could have served as an entire season of The Walking Dead
Realms (2017)
Two Americans fleeing an armed bank robbery with hostages take refuge at a house that they discover it is haunted. A vy the numbers effort before arriving at a confused twist ending.
The Glow (2002)
This rehashes the basic set-up of Rosemary’s Baby but with a spin where a couple move into the perfect apartment only to find their neighbours are health obsessed seniors with a sinister agenda
The Legend of Zu (2018)
It is unclear if if this is a sequel or remake of Tsui Hark’s Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain, nevertheless this sits a confident stride between artful choreography and comedic interplay
The Bad Seed (2018)
The 1956 The Bad Seed is the original evil child film. All other psycho children films draw themselves from here. This is a remake directed by actor Rob Lowe who also plays the father. McKenna Grace gives a superbly chill performance as the child
Aladdin (2019)
As part of the ongoing firesale, Disney offer up a live-action remake of their animated hit. where a mismatched Guy Ritchie delivers a mediocre rehash of what was an overrated classic in the first place
Light of My Life (2019)
Casey Affleck directs, writes and stars in a surprisingly good film – a small, intimate tale of survival set in a world where a pandemic has wiped out all women but one man’s daughter
Paradox (2016)
There have been some ingenious time paradox films in recent years, this is a modest low-budget offering in which a scientist travels one hour into the future only to find everybody at the lab has been killed. Returning in time, he tries to stop everything from happening.
Jurassic School (2017)
The Asylum offer up their own mockbuster copy of the Jurassic World films, an amiable children’s film where a young boy hatches a dinosaur egg he finds
Chocky (1984)
Mini-series adaptation of a novel by John Wyndham, best known for The Day of the Triffids, concerning a young boy who develops an invisible alien companion. Imagine a version of Harvey retold by way of E.T.
Avengers: Endgame (2019)
Marvel conclude the cliffhanger they left Avengers: Infinity War on and offer up a bigger-than-big line-up, overspilling with just about every MCU character to ever appear on screen up to that point
Astronaut (2019)
Space movies were big following successes like Gravity and The Martian. At complete contrast, this is a genteel laidback film with Richard Dreyfuss as a senior obsessed with boarding a spaceflight
Teleios (2017)
An expedition is sent to Titan to investigate a ship that has failed to return and what has happened to its missing crew
Star Raiders: The Adventures of Saber Raine (2017)
Space opera (or more correctly planetary adventure) conducted on a low-budget where you can see the filmmakers are making a clear effort to go way above and beyond the resources to hand
Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! (2008)
Hilarious and entertaining documentary about the Australian exploitation film that flourished between the late 1970s and 80s. The film delves into an arena of forgotten films and tells their stories with a great deal of detail
The Collapsed (2011)
A family try to make it through the woods in the aftermath of a mysterious catastrophe while hunted by something unseen. Sort of a zombie apocalypse film without any zombies where the terrors are psychological
Sherlock Gnomes (2018)
Sequel to Gnomeo & Juliet, which retold Shakespeare with garden gnomes. This for some reason adds a garden gnome Sherlock Holmes to the mix. The high speed whirring you hear is probably Arthur Conan Doyle rotating in his grave,
Men in Black: International (2019)
The original Men in Black was a witty parody of alien coverup conspiracies; the sequels became slapstick films about pop-up aliens and gadgets hidden behind everyday things. This offers little that is new
Tolkien (2019)
Biopic of J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings. This covers many of the key areas of Tolkien’s early life but you also cannot help but notice what it leaves out
The Last Sentinel (2007)
Action film with Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson as a cyborg soldier fighting a one-man war against rogue police drones of the future. A fairly generic assemblage of cliches
The Gamma People (1956)
One of the early films from Anglo-horror director John Gilling, this takes place in a fictional Soviet republic and features experiments to create a race of super-children
The Lesson (2015)
A milquetoast teacher tires of disrespectful pupils and imprisons two of them with the intention of torturing them into learning. The idea of an intellectual Torture Porn film if such is not an oxymoron.
Housewife (2017)
Turkish director Con Evrenol made a splash with the horror film Baskin; this was his follow-up, an often head-scratching film about a housewife who is drawn into the mind-bending activities of a sinister cult
Requiem (2018)
This BBC tv mini-series starts out seeming a mystery about the disappearance of a child as the investigating heroine makes the jolt realisation that she is the missing child, before the show edges over into occult conspiracy. Very nicely written and beautifully directed with a line-up of standout performances
Missing Link (2019)
Amiable knockabout stop-motion animated film from Laika Entertainment, although the title is a misnomer and the film is actually about a Bigfoot rather than a Missing Link
Batman: Hush (2019)
Animated adaptation of the classic Batman comic-book story, this places the Batman/Cat Woman relationship centre stage to give her the most substantial workout of any film
Nazi Overlord (2018)
The Asylum’s mockbuster answer to the J.J. Abrams’ produced Overlord concerning GIs on a mission behind enemy lines encountering Nazi mad science. Passably well made for the most part
Moscow-Cassiopeia (1973)
Space exploration films from the Soviet Union about teenagers selected to go on a decades long journey to the stars, this has the same stolid drama of the other Soviet SF films but is better made than most of the others
The Last Child (1971)
TV movie set in a dystopian future where law mandates that couples can only have one child, concerning a couple who go on the run after becoming pregnant a second time
Feral (2017)
This makes a generic plot – friends trapped at a cabin in the woods by creatures outside – work by stripping things to the basics and generating a reasonable rollercoaster of suspense
The Most Dangerous Game (2017)
Remake of the oft-filmed story wherein a couple are forced to survive with their bare hands while hunted by a sportsman. This has been updated where hero John Hennigan is now a reality tv star
Alita: Battle Angel (2019)
What was once a planned James Cameron adaptation of a manga about a cyborg girl is now brought to the screen by Robert Rodriguez but it is hard to say what an underwhelming disappointment the result is
Hellboy (2019)
Reboot of the Hellboy series promisingly comes from Neil Marshall but is also made by Millennium Films who have a habit of buying up previously successful properties and churning out cheaper spinoffs
The Last Horror Movie (2003)
British effort from the early days of the Found Footage film that reminds of Man Bites Dog with a serial killer demonstrating his techniques to a videographer
I Was a Zombie for the FBI (1982)
Obscure title that when seen is revealed to be a surprisingly well-made (in places) homage to the 1950s alien invasion genre and replication of the era’s style of filmmaking
Nightmare (1964)
One of several psycho-thrillers made by Hammer Films soon after the success of Psycho. Despite a plot that collapses under its contrivances, Freddie Francis shoots amazing cinematographic compositions
Malicious (2018)
Another film with a sinister adjectives for titles we have had since Insidious. This concerns a pregnant woman finding that the fetus she is carrying has been replaced by an evil spirit.
Fuck You All: The Uwe Boll Story (2019)
Documentary about the so-called World’s Worst Director Uwe Boll. We get fascinating insight into Boll’s filmmaking methods, while the documentary fearlessly tackles the controversies associated with its subject