Mansion of the Doomed (1976)
This first film from B-budget producer Charles Band, a blatant copy of Eyes Without a Face with mad surgeon Richard Basehart abducting women and transplanting their eyeballs into his blind daughter
The Flying Serpent (1946)
Mad scientist cheapie from poverty row studio PRC in which George Zucco has found an Aztec Quetzalcoatl bird and kills his enemies by placing one of its feathers on their person
The Strangers: Prey At Night (2018)
The Strangers has been cited as one of the best horror films of the 2000s. This sequel emerges as a by-the-numbers entry that plays out no differently than a generic teen slasher film
Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)
Ant-Man was a lightweight but perfectly enjoyable entry in the horde of Marvel Comics adaptations. This sequel has amplified the comedy element, seemingly with the intent of being the joker among the MCU pack
The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time (2018)
The sixth of the Sharknado films, this has the usual crew fighting sharknados throughout history. With this comes the recognition there is nowhere more ridiculous and over-the-top for the series to go
If There Be Thorns (2015)
The third of the Lifetime Channel’s films based on the Gothic incest melodramas of Virginia C. Andrews that began with Flowers in the Attic. The plotting is absurd and the film feels uninhabited by human beings
Escape Room (2017)
One of at least three identically titled films coming out around the same time based around the popularity of escape rooms. This has a group trapped in a room with an unleashed demonic force
Murder By Television (1935)
The novelty of a film that was science-fiction at the time it was made but no longer is today – namely concerning the invention of a television. This is rather dull Bela Lugosi starring murder mystery but what makes it fascinating is watching what people thought television would be vs the reality today
Circus Kane (2017)
Film from Fred Olen Ray’s son Christopher where a group of people have to survive the death traps in the house of a circus master. Christopher reveals himself as a Rob Zombie wannabe on an impoverished budget
Higher Power (2018)
A screw-up finds he has an implant in his head threatening dire things if he does not follow instructions, resulting in his gaining godlike powers
Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)
The second of the Stars Wars spinoff films tells a Han Solo origin story. After a change of directors, it emerges in the hands of Ron Howard who has spent four decades being the world’s most ploddingly sedate director
The City & The City (2018)
The first of China Mieville’s works to be adapted to the screen, a detective story set in two cities that exist in the same geographic space but where each act as their own country. This misses as much as it succeeds
Pizza (2012)
A rare Indian venture into the horror film, this is a haunted house film of modest effect that suddenly becomes a whole lot more watchable when it pulls a major M. Night Shyamalan-esque twist on us
Scalps (1983)
Fred Olen Ray is one of the most prolific genre directors. This film about a cursed Indian graveyard was made earlier in his career. Olen Ray hasn’t exactly become a good filmmaker since but his subsequent films are at least made with a overall competence and a sense of humour, which this lacks
Nurse Sherri (1978)
Al Adamson was a director whose output closely resembled that of Edward D. Wood, Jr. This was Adamson’s contribution to the 1970s fad for possession and exorcism films, although is a dull film lacking even in many of the shock tropes that the other Exorcist copies pulled off
Jackals (2017)
One of the directors of the Saw sequels surprises with this film where a family’s attempts to conduct a cult deprogramming as masked cultists surround the house prepared to do anything to get their recruit back
The Death of Superman (2018)
The Death of Superman is still is the top-selling comic-book title of all-time after 25 years. This was the first half of a two-part animated adaptation of the storyline, which brings it to life with a fair and reasonable telling
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)
Fifth of the Jurassic Park films. Industrial Light and Magic do their usual excellent job but this time the film is just recycling the same thing as before with minimal change
Tau (2018)
This comes with an intriguing central premise – a woman is imprisoned in the house of a mad tech genius where her only hope of escape is befriending his home security A.I. that is hungry for input about the world. An interesting idea alas doesn’t carry it past an ill-informed idea of how an A.I. would behave
The Curse of the Aztec Mummy (1957)
The second of the Mexican-made Aztec Mummy films. The film has cheap, dreary set-ups and the running time is padded by footage from the first film. This does have the novelty of being one of the first Mexican films to feature a masked wrestler hero
Xtro II: The Second Encounter (1991)
Xtro was cheesily ridiculous Alien copy. This is a sequel that bears nothing in common with the original beyond the title. In between the two films, we had Aliens so there is now a plot about soldiers hunting the creature with biiig guns. Nothing bad, just an uninspired rehash of the standard Alien copy
The Spirit (1987)
Few people today have an idea of what a huge name comic-book creator Will Eisner was. This was an unsold tv pilot adaptation of Eisner’s most famous creation, the masked hero The Spirit. The pilot is not a very successful effort but at least it makes an effort to get many of the details and zany spirit of the comic right
The Boy (2015)
Not to be confused with the more profile film of the same name around the same time, this is a standout work about a psychopathic child. A real slow burn film that comes so understated that it can leave you gasping
Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation (2018)
I’m not a fan of the Hotel Transylvania films and their reduction of the Famous Monsters to slapstick yocks. This is exactly the same as the preceding films, no better, no worse and with only minute plotting difference
Hereditary (2018)
Word of mouth hit that has in its fingertips the capacity to be a great horror film. Moments of intense spookiness and an awards-worthy performance from Toni Colette but Ari Aster has an unfocused script
5ive Days to Midnight (2004)
Mini-series with the intriguing premise of Timothy Hutton receiving a briefcase from the future with clues that foretells his death in five days time. This befalls utterly predictable handling and is padded out to fill a five-hour slot
The Endless (2017)
Nominally a sequel to Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s first film Resolution, this concerns a strange cult but expands outwards to involve a mind-boggling array of backwoods timeloops and reality blurrings
Isle of Dogs (2018)
Wes Anderson is at his best when he does stop-motion animation as in Fantastic Mr. Fox and here. Essentially a Disney talking animals animated film where the animals talk like real people, this comes with considerable charm
How It Ends (2018)
Concerning a catastrophe of never-explained nature, this follows two men – Theo James and a bad-ass Forest Whitaker – across a landscape where society is visibly collapsing
Creature with the Atom Brain (1955)
Atomic became the explain-all buzzword for almost every monster movie of the 1950s.This is the novelty of the one and only atomic zombie film, although at heart is no more than a 1940s mad scientist film
Psychos (2017)
Three abduction survivors seek out the house where they were imprisoned years before. A cheaply made revenge film is turned on its head in an improbable M. Night Shyamalan-esque conceptual reversal
Prehistoric Women (1950)
Laughable prehistoric drama about cave women searching for mates – too cheap to afford stop-motion animated dinosaurs and filled with ridiculous dialogue howlers
Snow Shark: Ancient Snow Beast (2011)
Amidst the spate of modern gonzo killer shark films, this is one of the worst – terrible acting, pitiful effects – but the saddest thing is that it isn’t there are worse entries than this
Dead Shack (2017)
The zombie film is feeling very played out these days. This is a no expectation entry (even the title seems utterly generic) that proves an unexpected delight, filled with endearing characterisations
Deadpool 2 (2018)
Deadpool was an hilarious breath of fresh air amid the Marvel Comics adaptations. This sequel is even better, with the self-deflating, fourth-wall breaking humour even funnier and more slickly polished action
Mary Shelley (2017)
Biopic of Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. This is a women-written and directed work so the film places an interesting feminist slant on her story meaning that she wrote the book less to address themes about science and hubris than because she was in an unhappy marriage
Blood River (2009)
An interesting little film from Adam Mason that starts out seeming a variant on The Hitcher with Andrew Howard as a drifter taunting a couple on a desert highway before morphing into something very strange
The White Buffalo (1977)
Probably the strangest film that Charles Bronson ever made – a retelling of Moby Dick where he plays the real-life figure of Wild Bill Hickok hunting a mythic white buffalo instead of a whale. This was a big financial flop but is a not unworthwhile film
The Hollow (2015)
One doesn’t have high expectations of a Syfy Channel film. On the other hand, director Sheldon Wilson surprises and creates a highly original monster and moments of considerable tension
The Student of Prague (1926)
A classic of the German Expressionist era about a poor student who sells his shadow to The Devil, only to have it become a malevolent doppelganger. As with much of the work to emerge from this era, the film manages directorial effects that still look amazing today
Hover (2018)
From the title and poster, you get the impression this is a future-set film about hoverboards or drones. Instead we have a near-future film involving agri-business conspiracy where euthanasia is dispatched by corporate lackeys
Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
Marvel’s third Avengers film, uniting almost every superhero under their roof, resulting in some thirty characters on screen and a plot that becomes a blur of changing locations and superheroic punch-ups
Tremors: A Cold Day in Hell (2018)
For an original that was only a modest box-office hit, it is surprising how long the Tremors series has kept going – five sequels, plus a tv series. This is the sixth film in the series and despite a limited and repetitive premise, characters running about hunting underground-burrowing monsters, it pulls off another enjoyable entry and fails to set a foot wrong
Curse of the Swamp Creature (1966)
Larry Buchanan was a director whose output rivalled Edward D. Wood Jr in quality. This film about an expedition into the bayous encountering a mad scientist creating human-crocodile hybrids registers fairly poorly on most counts
Svengali (1931)
Classic from the Golden Age of Horror with John Barrymore as a malevolent hypnotist who places a young model under his control. he film’s design scheme draws heavily from German Expressionism and comes with some amazingly inventive directorial effects
Ditch Day Massacre (2016)
Passable low-budget slasher film that looks as though it is was shot in the director’s home. Somehow the title, which refers to a day when a group of teens decide to ditch school, fails to stand among the great holiday-titled slashers
The Blackburn Asylum (2015)
Despite the title, this is a horror film that takes place in a mine (albeit one where the former inmates of an asylum lurk). This plays out fairly well by a set of familiar genre tropes and delivers a solid degree of tension
Snake Outta Compton (2018)
As with numerous examples in the zombie and killer shark film of recent, the idea has been to parody an existing title with the addition of a monster and a pun on the original’s title. Essentially what we have is a Scary Movie-like parody of the true-life rapper tale Straight Outta Compton but with the addition of a giant snake
Rampage (2018)
The idea of Dwayne Johnson facing a giant gorilla in an adaptation of a 1980s arcade game doesn’t exactly shout out Academy Award material; on the other hand, appreciated as a zero expectation cartoon of a film and the mindless mass destruction spectacle it is, this works in a goofily entertaining way
Black Hollow Cage (2017)
Cryptic Spanish film that eventually coalesces into a unique time travel story, like a more enigmatic version of Timecrimes as we watch pieces of a beautifully wrought temporal jigsaw puzzle slot into place
Progeny (1998)
Horror director Brian Yuzna jumps aboard the alien abduction and impregnation theme that was popular at the time thanks to tv’s The X Files. All of Yuzna’s films have a fascination with sexual perversity so here the emphasis is placed on the impregnation
The Man Without a Body (1957)
This came out two weeks before Hammer Films had their first success with The Curse of Frankenstein. Where Hammer discovered the future of British horror, this is no more than a dreary quota quickie that has possibly the most lunatic scheme of any British horror film involving the revival of Nostradamus’s severed head
The Dead Next Door (1989)
Sam Raimi gave some money to independent filmmaker J.R. Bookwalter to see what he would do. The result is a modest and gory if amateurish copy of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead
Abominable (2006)
This offers the novelty of a Bigfoot film by way of Hitchcock’s Rear Window where wheelchair-ridden witnesses Bigfoot preying on a house of girls. This generates a reasonable degree of tension
Black Butterfly (2017)
Antonio Banderas is a writer with a block, Jonathan Rhys Meyers a sinister stranger who moves in. Lots of tense psychological games between the two begin only for the film to almost immediately blow the premise
Picnic at Hanging Rock (2018)
The Picnic at Hanging Rock with its hauntingly unsolved mystery is considered one of the greatest Australian films of all time; this mini-series in six one-hour parts drags every beat of the story out and pads the slim original with so many other character mini-dramas and backstories that the mystery is drowned out
Eyeball (1975)
A giallo film from Umberto Lenzi, best known for creating the Italian cannibal film but Lenzi’s direction is crude and lacking style in comparison to the others working in this genre
Barbie Mermaidia (2006)
Seventh of the animated Barbie films, spinoff of the earlier Barbie Fairytopia, all delivered in sugary upbeat sentiments amid pastel colour schemes that would look eye-poppingly psychedelic if one were high
Raaz Reboot (2016)
For some reason, The Exorcist is hugely popular in Bollywood horror – this is the fourth in a series of otherwise unrelated films about possession. The film conducts its borrowings not unentertainingly and is boosted by a script that turns what we think is happening on its head with quite a degree of dexterity
The Frankenstein Syndrome (2010)
The greatly underrated Sean Tretta makes a Frankenstein film – a modernised one that place in a research laboratory where the monster is resurrected with expanded mental abilities
The Alchemist Cookbook (2016)
A micro-budgeted production shot in a trailer in the woods with a cast of two that sits in a fascinatingly ambiguous place about whether the central character has sold his soul or gone off his psychiatric meds
A Quiet Place (2018)
An uncommonly effective film that takes place in the aftermath of an invasion by creatures with ultra-sensitive hearing where the survivors must maintain an existence that requires not making the slightest sound. Director (also lead actor) John Krasinski uses the set-up to create unbearable tension
Unsane (2018)
Steven Soderbergh shoots a film on an iPhone. Claire Foy is wrongly incarcerated in an asylum only to be followed by a stalker posing as an orderly where her pleas for help taken as evidence of delusion
Harold’s Going Stiff (2011)
Amid the plethora of zombie parodies and gonzo title mash-ups, this British comedy is appealing. Rather than grim battles for survival, this is down-to-earth in its humour and quite affecting by the end
Darkening Sky (2010)
Low-budget UFO/alien abduction film that mostly this just retreads familiar material, although it does evince a certain interesting state of rubber reality about what is happening
Attack of the Beast Creatures (1985)
A forgotten curiosity from the 1980s VHS era where shipwreck survivors wash up on an island where they are attacked by malevolent dolls. A film deservous of a no star rating if there ever was one
Somnus (2016)
This low-budget British effort seems to be making a good start as a film that deals with space travel realistically only to bog down in one of the most incomprehensible plots one has ever sat through
The Cured (2017)
One of the most original takes yet on the creatively exhausted zombie film that asks what would happen if a cure were found but the zombies returned to life with full memory of everything they had done
Tomb Raider (2018)
This reboot of the film series based on the videogame franchise is a mixed affair. Certainly, the perpetually non-acting Angelina Jolie is replaced by Alicia Vikander who gives Lara Croft living, breathing emotions
Deep Blue Sea 2 (2018)
For some reason, nineteen years years later, someone has decided to produce a sequel to Renny Harlin’s unintentionally funny killer shark film only to give it a pitiful budget that causes it to sink well into bad movie stakes
Goddess of Love (2015)
Imagine a version of Fatal Attraction where the Glenn Close character is the protagonist, this also has an unnerving Repulsion-like quality where what we think is happening keeps blurring and shifting
A Chinese Ghost Story: A Tsui Hark Animation (1997)
A Chinese Ghost Story was a classic in Hong Kong cinema, followed by two sequels and then animated spinoff sold in the West under the name of series producer and cult director Tsui Hark
Satanic (2016)
Two couples on a road trip start to experience sinister happenings after witnessing a devil worship ceremony. Essentially Kalifornia meets Race with the Devil, this develops some modestly creepy effect
Excess Flesh (2015)
A strong portrait of disturbed psychology – imagine a mash-up between The Neon Demon and its delve into the dark side of the modeling world and Single White Female about a woman and her disturbed roommate
Attack of the Southern Fried Zombies (2017)
Seemingly another ridiculously titled zombie movie but in actuality this is no more than a regular zombie film played straight that has been slapped with a gonzo title as a selling point
Ready Player One (2018)
Steven Spielberg adapted Ernest Cline’s book about a massive virtual treasure hunt through 1980s pop culture trivia. The film winds up the pop culture references by a factor of ten, but misses the book’s compulsive readability
How to Talk to Girls at Parties (2017)
Though the title seems more suitable to a book of pick-up lines, this is about a romance with an alien visitor set during the punk era. John Cameron Mitchell adapts a Neil Gaiman story but seems to have forgotten the comedy elements
Dead of the Nite (2013)
Another variant on the set-up of the team of ghostsbusters investigating a haunted locale with videocameras that has been done to death in recent years
Deadgirl (2008)
Amid the overused zombie genre, this hits in with a considerable originality. The story of teenagers who find a zombie girl and keep her imprisoned for sexual purposes soon enters a disturbing headspace
Son of Darkness: To Die For II (1991)
To Die For was a forgettable effort, most notably as one of the first films to feature the darkly romantic vampire. This sequel recasts the part with the impossibly handsome Michael Praed and is a far more successful assemblage of the elements
Who’s Watching Oliver (2017)
Low-budget psycho film that bursts with a freshness and originality, not to mention an incredibly perverse kick, featuring an excellent performance from Russell Geoffrey Banks as a mother-dominated killer
A Wrinkle in Time (2018)
High-profile adaptation of the classic children’s work by Madeline L’Engle that has been entirely wrenched out of shape by its director to become a heavy-handed message about diversity. It is SF made by people who think the genre is just eye candy and absurdly over-the-top costumes
Death Wish (2018)
Eli Roth’s remake of the classic Charles Bronson vigilante film is an ugly affair. In an era where school shooting are a weekly scourge in the US, do we really need another fantasy about one man becoming empowered and sorting things out with a gun?
Capsule (2016)
Buried in a space capsule. A one-man show that takes place entirely in an orbiting space capsule with the stranded British astronaut alternately seeking aid and about to be shot down by both the US and Soviets
The Dark Stranger (2015)
This comes with an original idea where a troubled girl starts drawing a graphic novel that mirrors her own life only for the characters to emerge into the real world. Less horror than a dark allegorical fantasy
Cargo (2017)
An Australian effort that feels like a zombie movie version of Walkabout with an infected Martin Freeman wandering the Outback searching for someone to care for his infant daughter before he succumbs
Fahrenheit 451 (2018)
This had one simple job – adapt a book by one of the great SF writers. Instead, we go from a work set in a book-burning future to The Firemen on reality tv shows competing for Likes on social media
Zombie Nation (2004)
Not to be confused with tv’s Z Nation, this for a time ranked on the IMDB’s Worst Films of All-Time list . It’s been called the Worst Zombie Film Ever made, although I’d suggest other contenders
Maximum Ride (2016)
In between the hugely successful Young Adult adaptations of the 00s/10s there has been another trail of YA adaptations that never made it beyond one film. Adapted from a YA series by crime writer James Patterson about a group of kids with wings, this is an exceedingly lacklustre production
The Green Man (1990)
Adapted from a Kingsley Amis novel, this BBC mini-series is a ghost story for arts audiences. Albert Finney is great as a philandering hotelier who must deal with the appearances of an 18th Century sorcerer
Happy Birthday! (2016)
Two guys’ trip across the border into Mexico goes wrong as they end up imprisoned and tortured by cartel. This dives into a dangerous world with an askew sense of humour and becomes more bizarrely twisted as it goes on
Amerigeddon (2016)
Chuck Norris’s son directs spectacularly bad film that acts as a fantasy for every lunatic right wing conspiracy where the UN wants to overthrow the US government and confiscate everybody’s guns
Early Man (2018)
Claymation film from Aardman Animations that is in effect a prehistoric comedy like The Flintstones or The Croods mixed up with a sports film, but is Aardman’s slightest work so far
Muse (2017)
Jaume Balaguero has become one of the most promising of modern Spanish genre directors, principally on the basis of the [Rec] films. However, this supernatural mystery that resembles one of Dario Argento’s Three Mothers films fails to quite come together
Exorcism: The Possession of Gail Bowers (2006)
The Asylum’s mockbuster response to the hit of The Exorcism of Emily Rose and actually a far more interesting film. This discovers itself with a go-for-broke trashiness that the horde of Emily Rose imitators balked at
Watermelon Man (1970)
From Melvin Van Peebles who made the first Blaxploitation film, a satire in which a white man wakes up to find he has turned black. This takes a savage bite out of race relations but ends up without teeth in being distracted by Godfrey Cambridge’s raucous loudmouth performance
Heart of America: Home Room (2002)
One thing you don’t associate with Uwe Boll is a concern for social issues. Made in the aftermath of Columbine, this is an early Boll film that is a surprisingly solid attempt to address the scourge of US school shootings
Zombiechrist (2010)
Bill Zebub is a micro-budgeted filmmaker who contends to be the most offensive filmmaker of all time. Yes, the film features a zombie Jesus who spends his time violating women who parade in a state of undress
Anon (2018)
Andrew Niccol is one of the consistently intelligent and original directors out there. This, set in a world where mass surveillance has erased the concept of anonymity, is the most fascinating and original depiction of a future in some time
Black Panther (2018)
The most successful Marvel Comics adaptation of all-time up to that point. Enjoyable if I fall short of calling it the best Marvel film ever and its receiving a nomination for a Best Picture Academy Award