Happy Death Day 2U (2019)
Happy Death Day seemed a gimmicky marriage between Groundhog Day and a slasher film. This sequel is a far better film that places some funny and quite clever spins on the previous film
Bare Wench Project 2: Scared Topless (2000)
The Bare Wench Project was an inane softcore parody of The Blair Witch Project. This is the first of four sequels in which another troupe of girls go wandering in the woods while finding almost any opportunity to take their clothes off
The Werewolf vs the Vampire Woman (1971)
The third of Spanish star Paul Naschy’s films about the werewolf Waldemar Daninsky. This becomes a crossover where Daninsky meets up to fight Countess Bathory
Oblivion (1994)
One of the best films from Full Moon Productions that locates a Western on another planet and manages a perfectly pitched homage to either genre
Primal Rage (2018)
Strong and effective Bigfoot horror film from makeup effects artist Patrick Magee. The film is never better than when Magee is in his element, creating a uniquely designed Bigfoot that is capable of blending into its surroundings unnoticed
Descendants 2 (2017)
Sequel to the painfully bad Disney Channel film that copied the success of High School Musical and featured the teenage children of classic Disney animated villains. This is just as empty-headed and unwatchable
Shelley (2016)
Danish film about an immigrant agreeing to become a surrogate mother only to believe she is inhabited by something malevolent. This does well in the build-up but a crucial failure to put a finger on what is going on makes for a frustrating experience
The Haunting of M. (1979)
A dull and mannered ghost story that makes a good effort at period atmosphere but places almost nothing into attempting to produce anything spooky
Messiah of Evil (1973)
Film that has developed a cult reputation set in a seaside town where the dead are returning to life. The film has an unsettling nightmare ambience where things happen without any explanation
Orbiter 9 (2017)
Spanish film about a lone girl on a space mission who has never met another human being and her sudden awakening to the real nature of her world. To say more is to give the film’s on big surprise away. Alas after revealing this, the film seems at a loss what to do next
The First Purge (2018)
Blumhouse have handed the reigns of The Purge series to African-American filmmaker Gerard McMurray who takes the opportunity to get political and drag the series into the era of Black Lives Matter
The Lego Movie 2 (2019)
Sequel to The Lego Movie. This time the idea of the Lego universe, the crossovers and fourth-wall breaking gags are not as fresh but this still gets good mileage out of them
Mary Poppins Returns (2018)
Mary Poppins was one of the greatest of all Disney live-action films, made with nonsensical charm and has become a much loved favourite. As part of the ongoing firesale that involves resurrecting almost all of their properties, this is a sequel. Its an exacting replication/homage to the original but that is the problem – it is a recapturing rather than seems to create its own sparkle
13 Eerie (2013)
A zombie film from the director who subsequently went on to make the WolfCop films. The one thing this has going for it are some convincing zombie makeups and exxxxtremely gory splatter effects
The Bermuda Triangle (1979)
A documentary that purports to examine the mystery of the so-called Bermuda Triangle but soon dives off into an hilarious series of claims involving UFOs, Atlantis, time warps and The Philadelphia Experiment
Nightflyers (1987)
Dismissed at the time, I have always though this George R.R. Martin adaptation was an underappreciated work. Not without its problems, it creates a great sense of cosmological grandeur and has an interesting story that makes it different to the usual Alien clones of the day
The Darkest Dawn (2016)
As far as one is aware, this British effort is the first Found Footage alien invasion film. Not outstanding but this conducts a halfway reasonable job on limited resources
Replicas (2018)
Whatever you want to say about his acting ability, Keanu Reeves represents a cool and has smarts in the projects he takes on. So when he takes a producing role as here, you feel it is a project you should pay attention to. Instead, the cloning film that he makes is absolutely laughable and should contend for an award for the SF film with the least plausible science in it
Aquaman (2018)
A few years ago Aquaman was regarded as a joke among superheroes. James Wan dispels any notion of Aquaman’s wimpiness in a series of jaw-dropping effects sequences that propel this ahead of anything the MCU is doing at the moment
The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot (2018)
Full marks for one of the great deliberately ridiculous titles of all time. The film itself is an oddity that almost seems intended to confound your expectations of it
They Nest (2000)
Hordes of killer roaches overrun an island. A reasonable and not too bad run through of the formula of the bugs on the attack film that comes with the benefit of some convincing effects
Captive Wild Woman (1943)
Not long after RKO had a hit with Cat People, Universal responded with this in which the exotically beautiful Acquanetta turns into a gorilla (actually vice versa). The Jungle Woman went on to appear in two sequels
Blue Holocaust (1979)
Italian horror cinema of the 1970s/80s had some of the most extreme material put on screen. Here Joe D’Amato directs a film about a young man with a necrophile obsession and pushes the material to extremes that take you back
Pet (2016)
This seems to be shaping up to be a modern variant on The Collector in which Dominic Monaghan abducts the object of his desire and locks her in a cage beneath the dog shelter where he works. From there the film starts to twist expectations on their head
The House With a Clock in Its Walls (2018)
Eli Roth is a director associated with the Torture Porn cycle and one does a double-take at him making a family-friendly film. The results emerge somewhere between Harry Potter and a Goosebumps film
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Sony, the holders of the Spider-Man copyright, squeeze more out of the property with a madcap animated offering that mixes up a host of alternate takes on Spider-Man in what visually resembles an explosion at a pop art exhibition
Velvet Buzzsaw (2019)
This gets full marks for an eye-catching title, even if it is one that has next to no relevancy in the film. The film itself is set in the world of art dealership and concerns a series of cursed paintings that kill all who seek to acquire them
Terror-Creatures from the Grave (1965)
An entry in the Italian Gothic cycle featuring the great Barbara Steele, This comes with superbly eerie black-and-white mood but proves slow-paced when it comes to its supernatural retribution plot. It even manages to waste Steele in a nothing role.
The Invisible Maniac (1990)
Low-budget invisible man film that makes a beeline for the squalid – the invisible man is a nerd scientist and invisibility becomes an opportunity for him to wander into girl’s locker rooms, kill bullies and the like
Trees (2000)
One of the strangest film homages one has come across – an almost complete scene-for-scene remake of Jaws but with the shark substituted by a killer tree being hunted through a park by rangers
It Watches (2016)
This feels as though the director, frustrated with lack of financing, grabbed a camera and shot a film around his home. This generates a modest creepiness but falls apart at a credibiity-stretching ending
Future World (2018)
James Franco co-directed effort about an android on a quest across a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Franco draws on cliches established by the Mad Max films and only makes an Albert Pyun film with pretensions
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018)
The first Fantastic Beasts was a welcome opening up of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter universe and offered something fresh in the series. This is a more mixed bag where it feels like it is back to business as usual for Rowling
Overlord (2018)
J.J. Abrams’ produced film about soldiers encountering Nazi mad science experiments during WWII. Despite a decent budget thrown at it, this was a box-office failure. It may be that in a genre where we have gravitated to films about Nazi zombies and Nazi moonbases, this was just too tame
The Rejuvenator (1988)
This is essentially a 1940s mad scientist film having been given a workover with an arsenal of gory and gooey 1980s makeup effects. The plot concerns an aging movie star who obtains a rejuvenation serum
Alien Beach Party Massacre (1996)
This seems to be intended as a parody of a 1960s beach party film but with the addition of comic aliens. Well and truly a black star film, this is excruciating on every level
A Good Marriage (2014)
Stephen King writes a screen adaptation of his own story about a wife who discovers that her husband is a serial killer. A strong premise that oddly misses most of the opportunities.
Beyond the Gates (2016)
Horror film that has the interesting idea of paying homage to the 80s phenomenon of the video boardgame. A good idea given a so-so treatment
Mandy (2018)
Nicolas Cage goes all Death Wish and slaughters a cult that murdered his wife. A regular revenge film is transformed by director Panos Cosmatos into something bizarrely primal
Mortal Engines (2018)
Peter Jackson written-produced film that creates a fascinatingly original world. As always with a Jackson film, all the fun is in the massively scaled effects sequences and the design of the world. Alas, Jackson is not as well attuned in the story department, which often drags up corny cliched scenes
The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018)
Big, no-expense-spared Disney production of the fairytale. The film is stunning to look at it in terms of design and costuming but has a simplicity that leaves little for adults to engage with
PsychoCop (1989)
From the heyday of the 1980s VHS release, a slasher film with the requisite group of partying teens being stalked by a psychopathic, devil-worshipping police officer
The Werewolf of Woodstock (1975)
Another bizarre werewolf movie title collusion from the 1970s era that produced such as Werewolves on Wheels and The Boy Who Cried Werewolf. The film is never quite up to making the notion of hippies vs werewolves work with the amusement of its title
Night of Something Strange (2016)
Film about a zombie-creating sexually transmitted disease that feels like it was made by a bunch of drunken adolescents trying to out-gross each other after an all-weekend beer party. A film that is readily ventures into bad taste and is prepared to offend
Down a Dark Hall (2018)
Rodrigo Cortes, who made the fine Buried, directs a Young Adult horror, which is produced by no less than Twilight author Stephenie Meyer, concerning supernatural happenings at a girl’s boarding school.
Suspiria (2018)
Dario Argento’s original Suspiria was an almost entirely narrative-free work set around a series of extravagantly arty deaths; this remake could not be a more different film. Not to say it is uninteresting in what it does
Alpha (2018)
The prehistoric film seems a bit dated and hoary on screen these days. Albert Hughes solves the problem of revitalising the genre a series of jaw-droppingly kinetic action moves and stunning hyper-real landscapes
The Freeway Maniac (1989)
From the heyday of the 1980s VHS release, a cheap psycho film in which maniac James Courtney (later Michael Myers in the Halloween reboot) pursues a young actress around the desert
Surf II (1984)
Eccentric 80s frat rat/surfer comedy – part of the weird joke is that there never was a Surf I. Eddie Deezen is a mad scientist turning surfers into zombies with a soda made of industrial waste.
Dear Dead Delilah (1972)
A work of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? inspired Grand Dame Guignol with Agnes Moorehead as a Southern matriarch whose relatives are eliminating one another in the hunt for the family fortune
Psychopaths (2017)
From the increasingly rising genre name of Mickey Keating. This feels less like a film than a series of short films edited together (expertly so), all on the theme of people gleefully engaged in murder
6-Headed Shark Attack (2018)
The Asylum’s Multi-Headed Shark Attack series hasn’t quite hit the sense of delirious absurdism that their Sharknado films did – the only gimmick the series has is to keep adding heads to the shark. On the other hand, a scene where where the shark emerges onto land walking on two of its heads will have you rolling on the floor in laughter
Bird Box (2018)
Very similar to A Quiet Place from several months earlier where here people cannot look outdoors and must remain blindfolded. Hindered by a frustrating lack of any explanations as to what is happening
The House That Jack Built (2018)
Lars von Trier, who I would argue is the best director at work in the world, makes a film about a serial killer. The results, as you might expect from von Trier, are outrageous, blackly funny and challengingly provocative
The Tank (2017)
Thriller set around a NASA habitat built for future Mars exploration in the Arctic where the team is torn apart by the isolation and mental instability of team members. There is nothing here that holds you particularly gripped.
I Dismember Mama (1972)
From they heyday of 1970s exploitation cinema, this is a rather sick and nasty little psycho film. Its themes would never be able to play today without major protests.
Dark Intruder (1965)
Pilot for an unsold tv series that was later released theatrically produced by Alfred Hitchcock’s company. Leslie Nielsen plays an occult detective and the film proves surprisingly well-shot and atmospheric
Rupture (2016)
Puzzling and enigmatic film in which Noomi Rapace is a regular mom who is abducted and forced to take place in a series of experiments by a group of people who may not even be human
Scorpion King: Book of Souls (2018)
The Scorpion King films are such a low expectation series that it is hard to drum up enthusiasm for a fifth entry. The rehashes stock sword and sorcery cliches and passes its time forgettably
Incredibles 2 (2018)
Pixar’s venture into sequels has resulted in works playing off past successes that are lesser than their originals. This came with much anticipation but it too must be counted as another disappointment
Patient Zero (2018)
Former Doctor Who Matt Smith is absurdly miscast as someone who can speak the language of zombies. The film does nothing to make the premise believable.
The Unknown Terror (1957)
Forgotten and not terribly interesting B movie about an expedition to the Caribbean in search of a missing explorer encountering a mad scientist engaged in experiments involving native sacrifices and local fungi
The Dead Don’t Die (1975)
Largely forgotten tv movie from a Robert Bloch script. Curtis Harrington creates a fascinatingly creepy atmosphere that blends film noir with mysterious happenings involving voodoo and the resurrected dead
Devils of Darkness (1965)
British-made vampire film that very much trying to copy the style of Hammer Films. This has colour and moments of undeniable style that stand out but lacks it in other crucial areas.
Along With the Gods: The Two Worlds (2017)
A massive hit in South Korea about a firefighter’s journey through the afterlife and the trials he must undergo. On the other hand, the director seems to be trying to turn a moral redemption story into a superhero film
Slender Man (2018)
Slender Man is the fascinating idea of an internet meme that has crossed over to become an urban legend in the real world; this is the film version. This held the potential to be something very uncanny but chooses to play everything incredibly safe and middle-of-the-road
The Predator (2018)
Shane Black, a writer-director with a reasonable cult following, makes the sixth Predator film (he also appeared as an actor in the original). Black shakes the series up, introduces a number of new ideas and makes an okay entry
The Happytime Murders (2018)
Jim Henson’s son Brian trashes his father’s legacy, showing puppets getting up to very adult things we never saw on The Muppet Show. Peter Jackson did it even more outrageously in Meet the Feebles
The Beast of the Yellow Night (1971)
One of the films from the heyday of the Filipino exploitation cinema fad. John Ashley makes a pact with the Devil,up in another man’s body and periodically turns into what is a werewolf in all but name
The Spectre of Edgar Allan Poe (1974)
An obscure item among the fad for Edgar Allan Poe films during the 1960s, this threadbare production features Poe himself investigating sinister happenings at an asylum
Christopher Robin (2018)
A live-action adaptation of the Winnie the Pooh characters. This is a mix of Hook with Christopher grown up and having forgotten about the animals and the Paddington films with the animals conducting slapstick chaos in London
The Nun (2018)
Another spinoff from The Conjuring films. James Wan is one of the finest horror directors of the 2010s but has had difficulty imparting his skills to the directors of the films he has produced. This feels like a fairground haunted house show of tedious and repetitive pop-up shocks that runs free of any connection to a plot
The Meg (2018)
Big budget about a giant prehistoric killer shark film. This is like a Sharknado film with its sense of its own risibility perfectly under cap, played seriously and mounted as a series of spectacular shark attack sequences
Way … Way Out (1966)
Comedy in which Jerry Lewis and Connie Stevens are forced to marry to go to The Moon. The sexual politics play out pretty embarrassingly today
Screams of a Winter Night (1979)
Obscure horror anthology from the great era of regional drive-in cinema. The stories lose any potential due to incredibly dreary direction
Being There (1979)
The penultimate screen role of Peter Sellers, a sublimely deadpan satire in which he plays a gardener with the blank innocence of a child whose simple-minded utterances are taken as words of great profundity
Genesis (2018)
Apparently the first in a projected trilogy. The ambitiousness of this aside, the film only trades in unoriginal cliches of post-apocalyptic survival and android self-awareness
Constantine: City of Demons (2018)
The Dc Comics character John Constantine was made into an animated web series that was compiled as this film. One is quite taken aback at how much more edgy and adult this is than most of DC’s animated offerings
Halloween (2018)
40 years later, Jamie Lee Curtis returns to pay homage to Halloween in what is a direct sequel to the original, erasing the continuity of every other sequel. This fails to conjure what made the original a classic
Ghostland (2018)
Pascal Laugier emerged as a most promising director with Martyrs. All of his films hang on improbably contrived twists. This starts out as a home invasion film not unakin to The Strangers but nothing is as it seems
Nightmare Detective 2 (2008)
Nightmare Detective was Shinya Tsukamoto’s venture into the dreamscape theme of works like The Cell and the subsequent Inception. Many regard this sequel as a superior work.
The Last Warning (1929)
Paul Leni is one of the great unrecognised directors of silent cinema. Leni was clearly trying to replicate his earlier hit The Cat and the Canary. This is the lesser work but Leni’s visuals are incredible
Miracle Mile (1988)
Quirky offbeat comedy in which Anthony Edwards picks up a ringing phone at a diner and the call warns that a nuclear strike is about to hit L.A. in 50 minutes during which he tries to find his lady love as the city descends into chaos all around from what may have been a prank call
They’re Watching (2016)
The Found Footage genre has become fairly much strip-mined of all possibilities and I felt little enthusiasm for yet another. That said, this film about a reality tv crew in a heavily superstitious East European village, proves surprisingly well made and entirely wins you over with a bravura climax
Extinction (2018)
At first glance, this seems a routine alien invasion film. However, this becomes a whole lot more watchable with a mid-film twist that turns what is going on on its head
Venom (2018)
Anything with the Marvel Comics name on it is box-office gold. This spins a standalone film off from one of the main villains of the Spider-Man comic-book. This is watchable by several showstopping effects set-pieces.
Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle (2018)
The second of the anime Godzilla films and much more successful than its predecessor. The reconceptions of some of the classic monsters has a dazzling ambitiousness while Godzilla has all the ferocity it should have had in the first film
The Dinosaur and the Missing Link: A Prehistoric Tragedy (1915)
The very first film from stop-motion animator Willis O’Brien, the creator of King Kong. A rather slight piece about the comic shenanigans among a group of cave people but it was the first film to ever depict a dinosaur on screen.
The Remains (2016)
The haunted house genre is one that has become thoroughly exhausted by overuse in recent years. This puts the elements together with a professional assemblage but is essentially no different to the 347 other haunted house films that this site has seen in the last twelve months
Bunny the Killer Thing (2015)
Outrageous Finnish splatter comedy about a giant rampaging bunny creature. A film that in its better moments captures something of the sensibilities of early Peter Jackson films
The Town That Dreaded Sundown (2014)
Not a remake but a sequel to the cult true-crime film The Town That Dreaded Sundown with a series of copycat killings influenced by the film occurring in the present-day. Directed with a bravura stylishness that makes you jump out of your seat in joy
The Thousand Faces of Dunjia (2017)
One welcomes a collaboration between Tsui Hark, the godfather of Hong Kong fantasy cinema, and Yuen Wo Ping, fight choreographer for The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon but the the results are oddly disappointing, with Yuen’s talents seeming buried under the CGI
Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018)
The sixth of the Mission: Impossible films. Not the best of the series but Tom Cruise and associates have everything polished to an expertly honed formula by now and the film is a kinetic ride of intensive and often jaw-dropping action sequences
Thelma (2017)
Essentially a Norwegian version of Carrie. The ingenious spin it places on the Carrie story is to tell it as an LGBT story and have the psychically empowered heroine not bullied and tormented but struggling against a lesbian attraction to another girl.
Sweet Home (1989)
Japan’s Kiyoshi Kurosawa has developed a reputation for his intensely uncanny and deeply unfathomable horror films. This is one of his earlier works, a much more straightforward haunted house film that in its more bizarre moments attains the whacked-out dementia of the cult Japanese film House
Exorcist: House of Evil (2016)
The possession and exorcism genre has been recycling the same cliches ever since The Exorcist. Even this film’s bogus claim to be filmed in the house where the true-life event that inspired The Exorcist took place fails to make this stand out
Good Tidings (2016)
Another psycho Santa film – a genre that is almost gaining its own niche. This British entry fearlessly pushes its elements to an extreme that most of these other Christmas horrors balk at
Upgrade (2018)
Leigh Whannell, James Wan’s BFF and co-writer on the Saw and
The Haunting of Hill House (2018)
The original The Haunting is the finest ghost story ever made. One was sceptical that this remake as a tv mini-series of ten 50 minute episodes would come anywhere near that. Happily, Mike Flanagan proved me wrong.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1913)
The fourth film version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde starring King Baggot in the title roles. This is very faithful to the story, even if it reads as largely unremarkable today