Carrie (2013)
Another pointless 70s remake that replicates the 1976 Carrie almost scene for scene but misconstrues the material by a mile. Crucially, it comes without the sensational casting that made the original, nor a Brian De Palma at the helm
Carriers (2009)
Set in the midst of a deadly infection that has wiped most of the country out, the film is extremely well written, focusing on harsh moral choices that the characters must make. Chris Pine is cast as a less-than-heroic lead
Carry On Screaming (1966)
Twelfth of the popular British comedy series, here the Carry On team conduct a bawdy farce on the Hammer horror film that was all the in-thing at the time
Carry On Spying (1964)
This was the eighth of the Carry On films. The popular British comedy series turn their bawdy sights to conducting a spoof the James Bond film during the height of the spy movie fad
Cars (2006)
Winning animated film from Pixar based around the appealingly original idea of vehicles having personalities. The idea is spun out with considerable wit and sophistication. Two sequels followed.
Cars 2 (2011)
Sequel to Pixar’s Cars. While the original was a cutely appealing concept with a gentle contemplative message, this plays as more of an out-and-out spy caper
Cars 3 (2017)
Another of the weaker Pixar sequels. This lacks the fun among the anthropomorphic vehicles that its predecessors had with a hardly inspiring story about its hero feeling old and over-the-hill
Carved: The Slit Mouthed Woman (2007)
J-horror film based on the Japanese urban legend of a boogeywoman with a face slit from ear to ear who appears to kill people
Case 39 (2009)
Unjustly slammed psycho-thriller with Renee Zellweger as a social worker dealing with an evil child. Comes with undeniable tensions and a superbly malevolent performance from Jodelle Ferland
Cashback (2006)
Quite magical debut film that showed great promise for director Sean Ellis in its unique premise about a bored supermarket employee on the night shift who appears able to freeze time
Casino Royale (1967)
During the James Bond craze of the 1960s, the only Ian Fleming novel not owned by Albert R. Broccoli was turned into a giant farce. The film has five directors, a host of stars (including three playing Bond) and is an incoherent mess
Casper (1995)
Film adaptation of the popular Casper the Friendly Ghost comic book ends up being like its title character – cute but insubstantial. Mostly this feels driven by slapstick scenes.
Casper Meets Wendy (1998)
The second of the video-released sequels to Casper where this time he crosses over to meet Wendy the Good Little Witch as played by Hilary Duff
Casper: A Spirited Beginning (1997)
The first of the video-released sequels to the Casper the Friendly Ghost film, this is played down to children and comes with much in the way of slapstick
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
Cassandra (1987)
An Australian clairvoyance thriller that seems to have substantially drawn its influence from Eyes of Laura Mars. The film was little seen when it came out and the uninvolved direction does little to draw us into what is taking place
Casshern (2004)
Live-action film based on an anime series where the original is built out with a series of of extraordinarily gorgeous over-ornamented visuals set in a strange retro-future world
Castle Freak (1995)
Stuart Gordon had a cult hit with Re-Animator and much of the rest of his career felt like his attempting to repeat that. Here he re-teams with many of the Re-Animator personnel for what is essentially a rehash of a 1960s Italian Gothic film
Castle in the Air (1952)
British quota quickie that is a likeable light fantasy comedy about a haunted Scottish castle and comes peopled with a cast of eccentrics
Castle of Blood (1964)
Classic work of 1960s Italian Gothic cinema. Director Antonio Margheriti rises above himself to create a vividly spooky atmosphere, while at the centre of the show is the haunted otherworldly looks of Barbara Steele
Castle of Evil (1966)
At initial face value, this appears to be a 1960s revival of the Old Dark House film with a hooded figure killing a cast assembled at gloomy old mansion, but then takes a turn for the bizarre with an unexpected science-fiction twist mid-film
Cat Girl (1957)
One of the better copies of Cat People, an Anglo-horror film with Barbara Shelley coming to believe that she is the inheritor of a family curse that causes her to turn into a big cat
Cat People (1942)
Val Lewton’s classic work of psychological ambiguity about a woman who believes she is turning into a panther. Lewton’s ingenuity was to leave the actuality of the monster one that was merely suggested
Cat People (1982)
The remake of Cat People. In the hands of Paul Schrader, all the ambiguity is made overt and the film becomes one of Schrader’s allegories for tormented sexuality. On its own terms, this is an often smoulderingly sensual work
Cat Swallows Parakeet and Speaks (1996)
Baffling and pretentious Canadian-made surrealist film with Scheherazade (from Arabian Nights) in a psychiatric asylum making up stories all derived from tabloid headlines
Cat’s Eye (1985)
An anthology of three Stephen King stories, this comes out with extremely variable results where what were originally a series of tight and mordant tales end up strangely overblown
Cat-Women of the Moon (1953)
Classic bad movie in which astronauts land on The Moon and encounter an all-female society. Some really datedly war of the sexes politics play out amid the laughably impoverished sets and effects
Catacombs (1988)
An almost quite good film from Charles and Albert Band’s Empire Productions about imprisoned evil stirring beneath a monastery. The build-up is well done and the film only falters at a weak ending
Category 6: Day of Destruction (2004)
A disaster tv mini-series about the most powerful storm in recorded history descending on Chicago just as a hacker disables the power grid. Most of this plays by the cliches of the genre.
Category 7: The End of the World (2005)
Sequel to the tv mini-series Category 6: Day of Destruction ups the scale of the super-storm but is also better constructed as a disaster movie
Cathy’s Curse (1977)
From the great era of Canuxploitation, an entertainingly ridiculous film about a possessed child wreaking psychic havoc and an often absurd series of deaths against those who are mean to her
Catnado (2022)
We’ve had Sharknado. Now comes Catnado, an anthology about storms of cats. This contains episodes so pitiful and ineptly made that this enters into the unwatchable
Cats & Dogs (2001)
Here the cutely appealing idea of a talking animals film conducted in live-action a la Babe has been blended with a tongue-in-cheek spy adventure. The results are enjoyably silly
Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore (2010)
Cats & Dogs was amiable but this sequel struggles against the irritatingly cutsie elements that have come to dominate this mini-genre of live-action talking animals films
Cats (2019)
The film version of the smash Andrew Lloyd Webber musical phenomenon was widely ridiculed. Seen, it is a colourful and absorbing entity and by no means as bad as its rap gives it
Cats Kill (2017)
Low-budget psycho film where Cat who lives in the Catskills decides she wants to hunt tourists from the big city
Catwoman (2004)
The long-planned Halle Berry-starring Catwoman movie proved a widely ridiculed bomb. The film throws out the comic-book Catwoman and instead opts for an approach the frequently collapses into the risible
Catwoman: Hunted (2022)
Animated adventure given over to Catwoman that comes with an appealing sense of humour that easily erases all memory of the Halle Berry film
Caved In (2006)
One of the spate of underground horror films that came out in 2005 including The Descent and The Cave. This is a B-budget wannabe obviously shot in a studio. The addition of giant beetles takes it into the cheesily ridiculous
Cavegirl (1985)
Witless and inane comedy in which nerdy high school student Daniel Roebuck is thrown back in time to the Stone Age where he romances cavegirl Cindy Ann Thompson
Caveman (1981)
A comedy spoof of One Million Years B.C. and the whole sub-genre of caveman vs dinosaurs films This proves amiably goofy where Ringo Starr seems perfectly cast as the lead caveman
Celestial Clockwork (1995)
Colourful and frothy whimsy from Fina Torres in the Magical Realist tradition about a woman engaged in a series of romantic mishaps in Paris
Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974)
Vastly over-praised French New Wave film that is a ghost story of sorts. Three hours plus of tediously protracted happenings that don’t seem to be about anything at all
Cell (2016)
Adaptation of the Stephen King novel about zombies created by a cellphone signal. Critically panned but this kicks in with a sensational opening scene and overspills with more fascinating ideas than it has room to deal with
Cell 213 (2011)
A muddled allegorical redemption drama with Eric Balfour sentenced to a maximum security prison where he is haunted by hallucinations
Cell Count (2012)
People are locked in a facility and undergoing biological meltdowns. A film that is driven by a series of wild effects at regular intervals but falls down when it comes to its poorly constructed mystery
Cello (2005)
The huge success of J-horror films like Ringu and Ju-on: The Grudge in the 2000s was copied right around the Asian region. This was one of several K-horror (South Korean) ghost stories produced during this period
Cells At Work (2024)
A rather hilarious live-action manga adaptation that depicts the inner workings of the human body in terms of a series of talking blood cells. Not dissimilar to the US-made Osmosis Jones
Cemetery of Splendor (2015)
Critical favourite that he is, I find Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s have some incredibly eerie, haunted moments. But these sit alongside banal, uneventful happenings that never seem to intersect in a plot
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
Cerberus (2005)
Cerberus, the three-headed dog that guards the entrance to Hades in Greek myth, is appropriated to become the focus of a standard md-00s CGI monster movie
Cerebrum (2022)
A young man recuperates from a brain injury while tended by his father. As he tries to piece together what happened, we discover we are in the midst of a Frankenstein-type film
Chain Letter (2010)
Ridiculous film that seems to want to say something about modern technological interconnectivity but has simply grafted it onto a slasher formula. while being bsurdly ill-informed about its subject
Chain of Command (2000)
Halfway reasonable action film in which US President Roy Scheider is taken hostage by Taiwanese terrorists who want to use the nuclear launch codes against China. The surprise about the film is how political it is willing to get
Chain Reaction (1996)
Thriller with Keanu Reeves wrongfully accused and on the run from authorities in the quest for a process that creates cheap energy from water. A rehash of director Andrew Davis’s The Fugitive mostly construed around its set-pieces
Chain Reactions (2024)
A documentary that interviews five people, including Stephen King and Takashi Miike, about the influence that The Texas Chain Saw Massacre had on their lives. The results are fascinating and illuminating
Chained (2012)
Jennifer Lynch, daughter of David, makes an extraordinary work about the relationship between a serial killer and his young male companion. A film that eschews big dramatics with startling effect. Vincent D’Onofrio gives one of his best performances
Chamber of Horrors (1966)
TV pilot about two waxworks curators tracking a mad killer, this was deemed too gruesome for audiences and released to theatres with the addition of a William Castle-like promotional gimmick
Chances Are (1989)
From the director of the hit Dirty Dancing, an inane romantic comedy in which Cybill Shepard thinks her daughter’s boyfriend Robert Downey Jr is her reincarnated husband
Chandu the Magician (1932)
The film adaptation of a popular radio series about a Westerner who has trained in the Eastern mystic arts and uses his powers to create illusions in the fight against crime. One of the first screen superheroes.
Chaos Walking (2021)
Doug Liman’s adaptation of a Young Adult series that was problem-ridden behind the scenes. This certainly creates an interesting scenario set on a planet where men’s thoughts are visibly manifest
Chappie (2015)
Neill Blomkamp’s film about A.I. turns into Short Circuit dropped into the militarised future of RoboCop. Of all the rich possibilities in the idea, all we get is a goofy comedy with a pimped-out carjacking robot
Chapter 27 (2007)
A True Crime film based on the shooting of John Lennon. This is anchored by a strong performance from Jared Leto as shooter Mark Chapman that draws you into a disturbed headspace
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
Chariots of the Gods (1970)
Documentary based on the book by Erich von Daniken and his much ridiculed theories that aliens visited Earth in the past and evidence of this can be found in ancient texts, inscriptions and monuments
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)
Tim Burton’s remake of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is a peculiarly lifeless confection that fails to find any of the zaniness of the original, something that one would have thought would have been Burton’s forte
Charlie Charlie (2016)
Charlie Charlie was supposedly an oracular game that made headlines when a satiric site claimed that teenagers were being killed playing it and some news sites took this seriously. This is a pathetic and feeble film made exploiting the game’s five minutes of notoriety
Charlie Says (2018)
Mary Harron directs a film about Charles Manson and his Family, taking the perspective of the Manson Girls. The best of several films about the Manson Killings. Former Doctor Who Matt Smith makes a hypnotically fascinating Manson
Charlie St. Cloud (2010)
A banal Zac Efron starring attempt to rewrite The Sixth Sense for the mopily sensitive teenage Gothic Chick Lit audience weaned on Twilight with Efron as a cemetery groundskeeper who talks to the dead
Charlie’s Angels (2019)
The second big screen revival of the hit 1970s tv series. Essentially a Girl Power version of one of the Mission: Impossible films, which turns what was originally a girl-fronted detective show into a spy caper featuring SF gadgetry
Charlotte’s Song (2015)
There is potential to the premise here – a dark horror riff of sorts on The Little Mermaid in a 1930s Depression era setting – but it is squandered by an unimaginative script and direction
Charlotte’s Web (1973)
A classic animated film. A delightful film about a young pig that seeks to change his fate and gets aid from a spider that can spell. A theatrical outing for Hanna-Barbera, creator of tv’s The Flintstones et al
Charlotte’s Web (2006)
Charlotte’s Web gets the Babe treatment and is turned into a live-action film with CGI barnyard animals and name actors. Here the enormous charms of the original are replaced by cute and mawkish cues
Charly (1968)
Adaptation of the classic story Flowers for Algernon with Cliff Robertson winning a Best Actor Oscar for his performance as an intellectually handicapped man who undergoes an experiment that turns him into a genius
Chatroom (2010)
English-language film from Ring director Hideo Nakata that finds a vibrant means to depict internet communication in a thriller about people meeting on a chatroom being wound into a series of psychological games
Cheap Thrills (2013)
A man offers two down-on-their-luck guys a series of increasingly more extreme bets for money. This sets out to defy taboos and good taste, largely succeeding by pushing into some alternately grotesquely funny and nauseating territories
Cheatin’ (2013)
The films of Bill Plympton have gained a cult following for their absurdist humour and surreal animation. This is Plympton’s take on relationships, a wild fantasia of imagery and transmogrifications that is a world away from Disney/Pixar offerings
Chemical Wedding (2008)
Ostensibly about occultist Aleister Crowley reincarnating in the present, this overflows with mad ideas involving quantum physics, VR, alternate worlds and a heap of classic references – and moreover, is written by the lead singer of Iron Maiden
Chernobyl Diaries (2012)
This has the fascinatingly original idea of setting a horror film inside the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear accident. The location is unique and the film generates a fair and reasonable tension
Cherry 2000 (1987)
Overlooked work of considerable charms, this mashes the setting of Mad Max 2 and the plot of The African Queen with a sense of oddball humour. The show is stolen by Melanie Griffith as a tough wasteland tracker
Cherry Falls (2000)
Witty and rather funny slasher film in which the killer targets virgins in a community. The genre’s usual tropes about the chaste girl surviving are turned on their head in rather hilarious ways
Cherry Tree (2015)
From David Keating who made Wake Wood, this falls into the Folk Horror genre and becomes a well-made variant on Rosemary’s Baby as a schoolgirl accepts a Devil’s Deal to save her father
Chicken Little (2005)
Head-scratching animated oddity from Disney that adapts the talking animal fairytale only to throw in a series of bizarre plot elements that end up as an alien invasion story
Chicken Run (2000)
The first full-length Claymation film from the UK’s Aardman Animations. With typical Aardman eccentricity, this is a parody of a WWII escape film conducted with talking chickens
Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget (2023)
After 23 years, Aardman Animation make a sequel to their first feature film. Another chicken caper film where they try to capture some of its dotty charms and largely succeed
Child 44 (2015)
This offers one of the most fascinating settings for a detective story – the Soviet Union at the height of Stalinist oppression – and borrows the story of true-life Soviet serial killer Andrei Chikatilo
Child of God (2013)
Actor James Franco directs an adaptation of a novel about a necrophile serial killer by Cormac McCarthy. Any McCarthy adaptation is doomed by an inability to visually replicate his incredible prose but Franco tries valiantly
Child’s Play (1972)
Not to be confused with the Chucky films, this is a little-seen film about a series of sadistic games played by pupils that targets other pupils in a Catholic boys’ boarding school
Child’s Play (1988)
The very first of the Chucky films. At the time, this seemed a very silly and at times ridiculous killer doll film and not the basis of an ongoing series of sequels that have lasted more than three decades
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
Child’s Play 2 (1990)
The first Child’s Play felt like an incredibly silly film. However, this first sequel takes the same elements and constructs them into a much tighter, better package
Child’s Play 3 (1991)
The third and probably the least regarded of the Chucky films. This for some reason takes place in a military academy. The outrageous black humour of the later entries is absent and in its place a mean-spirited sadism
Childhood’s End (2015)
Arthur C. Clarke’s book is one of the all-time SF classics; this mini-series adaptation counts as one of the biggest book-to-film abortions in the SF genre handled by people who know nothing about SF
Children of Dune (2003)
Follow-up to the 2000 tv mini-series adaptation of Dune, this adapts Frank Herbert’s two books sequels, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune. The production lacks the depth of its predecessor
Children of Men (2006)
Alfonso Cuaron film set in a near-future afflicted by an epidemic of infertility. Cuaron’s depiction of a dystopian world comes with a richness of casually layered detail that makes for a stark and powerful film
Children of the Corn (1984)
A fifteen page Stephen King story about a patricidal child cult has spawned this film, nine sequels and a remake. Not a very good film, this is stuck with padding a very slight original out to a full-length film
Children of the Corn (2009)
This remake of the Stephen King short story (this time with a script from King himself) is a much better film than the earlier 1984 version or any of its numerous sequels
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
Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice (1992)
The second of the films spun off from the Stephen King short story. This is better that its predecessor, premised around a series of novelty deaths and offering some explanations for what is happening
Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest (1995)
The third of the films based on the Stephen King short story, this moves the locale to the city but is otherwise based around a series of completely ridiculous makeup effects every few minutes