Stephanie (2017)
Akiva Goldsman is the single worst screenwriter in Hollywood with a line of genre atrocities to his name. In his second directorial outing, blow me down if Goldsman doesn’t make a halfway decent film, a cryptic film about a young girl facing unseen monsters amid a possible invasion
Lake Eerie (2016)
This seems to be shaping up to be another entry in the over-saturated low-budget haunted house film. While never straying too far from this, this does throw in some interestingly strange twists
American Conjuring (2016)
An undistinguished low-budget haunted house effort that was quickly retitled to jump aboard the bandwagon of James Wan’s The Conjuring films
Dr Mabuse, The Gambler (1922)
Dr Mabuse is one of the great villains of cinema. Fritz Lang was one of the greatest directors of the silent era and his first Mabuse film is extraordinary where Lang indulges in visual tricks that still look sensational today
The Curse of King Tut’s Tomb (1980)
TV movie about the historical discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb by Howard Carter that inflates the tabloid notion there was a curse and so distorts the historical record that it more properly enters the realm of fantasy
Tormented (2009)
The first film from Irish director Jon Wright who subsequently made films Grabbers and Robot Overlords concerning a bullied schoolkid who comes back from the grave to kill his tormentors,. Not as polished but what a cast of unknowns
Batman Ninja (2018)
This gets full marks for a WTF set-up, an anime that imagines Batman and most of the villains transplanted back to feudal Japan. There is fun to seeing the familiar characters reinterpreted in terms of Japanese imagery
Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018)
Pacific Rim wasn’t Guillermo Del Toro’s best film but it was a fun attempt to imagine giant Japanese mecha robots battling giant monsters. This is a sequel but without Del Toro it is reduced to no more than one of Michael Bay’s Transformers films
Selfie from Hell (2018)
The selfie is such a concept of the moment that I suppose someone had to make the first selfie horror film. The film suffers conceptual confusions and what starts out akin to something like Ring slides into more of a variant on The Den with sinister strangers stalking the heroine online
Hidden in the Woods (2012)
Backwoods Brutality Chilean style. This has the look and feel of a lost 1970s film that some people insist on calling grindhouse. Not the most polished work but this does deliver assorted brutality, gore and cannibalism
Terror of Dracula (2012)
An obscure Canadian film that ambitiously attempts to adapt Bram Stoker’s Dracula on a low-budget. This introduces some elements of the story that other versions ignore and is not uninteresting
In Search of Dracula (1975)
A documentary that explores Bram Stoker and the creation of Dracula, Transylvania and Vlad the Impaler. Narrated by Christopher Lee, who we see playing both Dracula and Vlad the Impaler
Children of the Corn: The Gathering (1996)
The popularity of the Children of the Corn franchise – eleven films spun out of a sixteen page Stephen King story – baffles one. This is the fourth film, its greatest distinction being that it stars a then unknown Naomi Watts
Werewolf Woman (1976)
A classic from 70s Euro trash cinema. The title is misleading as this is not about a female werewolf but more akin to Cat People about a disturbed woman who thinks she has turned into a werewolf at the thought of sex
Peter Rabbit (2018)
Beatrix Potter wrote genteel stories of talking animals in the English countryside. This is a film so astonishingly awful in its treatment of the source material – it feels like someone drunkenly urinating on Beatrix Potter’s gravestone for lulz. The No 1 contender for Worst Film of 2018
Winchester (2018)
Winchester House with its eccentric designs and strange history is reputedly one of America’s most haunted locales. From Australia’s Spierig Brothers who made the likes of Daybreakers and Predestination, this attempts to tell its story but emerges as far less than it could have been
2 Lava 2 Lantula (2016)
Lavalantula with Steve Guttenberg facing giant fire-breathing spiders was a modestly enjoyable creature feature. This sequel feels like a Sharknado wannabe with shittier effects and an unfunny sense of humour
Quarantine 2: Terminal (2011)
A sequel to Quarantine, the English-language remake of [Rec]. Abandoning the Found Footage concept, and indeed much continuity, to the other films, this is nothing more than a standard zombie film set inside an airport terminal
Sorceress (1995)
Jim Wynorski is a B-budget director whose films feature women with massively oversized breasts. Beyond epic-sized mammaries, this softcore tale about housewives engaged in witchcraft that makes no sense on a plot level
Black Road (2016)
Near future set science-fiction noir as a cyborg-enhanced hero is drawn in to conduct an investigation on behalf of a morally ambiguous femme fatale. Despite a reasonable effort made, this is a little too low key
Secrets of a Psychopath (2015)
Director Bert I. Gordon was at his heyday in the 1950s, making cheap giant monster films like The Amazing Colossal Man and Earth vs the Spider. Gordon returns here at the age of 93 (making him one of the world’s oldest directors) with this rather sordid little psycho film
Mary and the Witch’s Flower (2017)
The third film from former Studio Ghibli employee Hiromasa Yonebayashi. Yonebayashi is seen as the carrier of Hayao Miyazaki’s mantle, so much do his films look like lost Miyazaki works. This is sweet and amiable, even if it never hits the emotional heights Miyazaki does
The Death Cure (2018)
The Maze Runner was a solid Young Adult effort that built out an effective Conceptual Breakthrough story; this, the second of two sequels, feeld like a series of canned action scenes in search of a purpose
Kill Switch (2017)
Dutch film involving action between this and a parallel Earth. Much of this is shot First Person Shooter perspective, while the director provides an accomplished level of mass destruction CGI effects all by himself
Chupacabra Terror (2005)
A monster movie that is entirely by the book and undistinguished in any way except for its eye-raisingly gimmicky capsule premise ‘Chupacabra Loose on a Cruise Liner’
Gamera vs Barugon (1966)
The 1960s Gamera films were always a copy of the Godzilla films, aimed at a more juvenile level and with crappier effects. This was the second of them, somewhat better produced than the others and taking proceedings seriously
The Stranger (2014)
Eli Roth produced film made in Chile, this concerns a mysterious stranger to town who turns out to be a vampire that is soon sought and hunted by everybody. A promising premise given a not terribly interesting handling
The Monkey King 3 (2018)
The Monkey King films are a series of extraordinary works that exists somewhere between CGI and live-action and have a lushness of design. That is balanced against a dated plot that basically rehashes Cat Women of the Moon
Heartthrob (2017)
Film about a high-school stalker from Chris Sivertson, who breathes life into the cliches and has good central performances on hand to make the familiar plot seem fresh
Broken Vows (2016)
Jaimie Alexander has an affair with barman Wes Bentley whereafter he stalks her and throws her wedding plans awry. Wes Bentley plays with a darkly magnetic intensity but the film slides into the tamely PG-rated Fatal Attraction cliches
The Titan (2018)
Conceptually highly ambitious SF film about humans being biologically modified in order to be able to live on Saturn’s moon Titan. After a highly promising beginning, the film falls apart in a badly cliched unethical scientist and lab experiment amok ending
Cross Wars (2017)
Cross was a low-budget attempt to copy The Expendables, featuring a C-list team of action stars (plus some fantasy elements). This is a sequel you doubt many people were burning to see
Gangsters, Guns and Zombies (2012)
This has the amusing idea of mashing the zombie film up with the Guy Ritchie gangster film, although never quite hits the comic-bookishly over-the-top posturing of Ritchie’s films
Meeting Evil (2012)
A surprisingly good variant on The Hitcher (albeit set in urban environs) where Samuel L. Jackson does the unique Samuel L. Jackson sarcastic badassery with demoniac results as a psychopathic stranger who takes hapless family man Luke Wilson for a ride leaving a trail of bodies
Secret of the Telegian (1960)
Toho Films of the 1960s are best known for the Godzilla films and assorted monster bashes. This is one of their non-monster films, part of a spate of mutant supervillain films concerning a villain who has invented a teleportation machine and is using it to exact revenge
Bloody Chainsaw Girl (2016)
Another of the gonzo Japanese splatter films about a schoolgirl who tries to go about her schoolday while fighting off mutant cyborgs with the chainsaw she carries
Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay (2018)
A DC Universe Original Animated Movie given over to Suicide Squad. Clearly inspired by the live-action film, this goes overboard on the super-villains present, having three entire teams running around to general confusion, while striking a very odd tone in its pitch for an R-rating
Death Race: Beyond Anarchy (2018)
The third sequel to Death Race and the most interesting of the series. This sets up an Escape from New York scenario and has fun with bad-ass posturing in depicting the interior of the prison as a open air biker bar
The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 2: From Vaux to the Sea (2004)
The second part of Peter Greenaway’s massive multi-media installation, a surreal mock biography dominated by Greenaway’s fascination with nonsense lists. Gorgeous to look it but does it make for a dramatically engaging a film?
Jack’s Back (1988)
This comes with a fantastic pitch – it was released on the centenary of the Jack the Ripper killings and features a Ripper copycat operating in the present. Alas, this becomes a massive wasted opportunity
Doomsday Book (2012)
South Korean anthology containing a trio of tales on the theme of the end of the world. The standout is the middle segment, a very Asimovian tale wherein a robot claims to have logically attained Buddhist enlightenment
I Kill Giants (2017)
The title leads you to expect a variation on Jack the Giant Slayer but instead we get a very good story about a troubled girl who believes in giants. Very similar to A Monster Calls, this is carried by a fantastic performance from 15 year old Madison Wolfe
Insidious: The Last Key (2018)
After two fairly good initial entries, the Insidious series began its downward slide. Here new director Adam Robitel’s clumsy jumpshocks are a far cry from the eerie effects James Wan pulled off
The Lodgers (2017)
A beautifully shot period set Irish ghost story that does a superb job in building atmosphere but is all fascinating mystery that ends without explaining a single thing
Dark Signal (2016)
The intriguing idea of a haunted radio signal. A ghost story that does something different telling an ambitious double-stranded story even if it fails to pull it off with complete satisfaction
Brainstorm (1983)
Highly ambitious film for its day, this concerns a memory-recording device that manages to accidentally record the experience of someone dying. Well worth seeing today, including being one of the first films to depict the internet
Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell (1968)
A thoroughly demented Japanese sf/horror film about passengers of a crashed plane being menaced by a body-snatching alien vampire. Quite unlike any other Japanese monster movie, the colour schemes alone leave you giddy
The Changeover (2017)
Adaptation of a book by NZ author Margaret Mahy. Mahy has a sublimely poetic turn of phrase in the writing but the film strips the book down to the point we get no more than a by-the-numbers Young Adult work
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)
A revival of Jumanji. The original’s boardgame is now a videogame that sucks the players inside. The adventure elements are routine but the film’s has comedic fun with its bodyswapped characters
Annihilation (2018)
Alex Garland’s second directorial effort after Ex Machina. Clearly influenced by Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, this features a group venturing into an alien-affected zone where Garland does a fine job of creating a sense of the otherworldly
The Gateway (2018)
The parallel worlds/alternate timelines theme is one rich in possibilities but this Australian film is one of the least imaginative treatments, serving up only tired good/bad double plots
The Offering (2016)
Singaporean film that offers an assemblage of cliches elements from various horror films in a mishmash of hauntings, possession, occult happenings and ominous Biblical portents that make little sense in terms of explanatory rationale
Sleeping With the Enemy (1991)
Julia Roberts plays a wife fleeing from an abusive and psychopathic husband (a darkly urbane Patrick Bergin in a quite demoniac performance) in this psycho-thriller that was a considerable hit in its day. Slick and beautifully photographed, this sustains a commendable head of tension
The Incident (2011)
From an early script by S. Craig Zahler, this is an incredibly brutal and harrowing work about a group of cooks trapped inside an asylum for the criminally insane during a power cut
Troy: The Odyssey (2017)
The Asylum takes on Homer. One is tempted to say Homer loses to The Asylum but this freely rearranges the basics and The Asylum deliver a solid effort that rises above the mediocrity they usually aim for
Paddington 2 (2017)
Sequel to the 2014 film based on the much loved children’s books … This comes with exactly the same mix of silliness, overblown slapstick and sweetness that made the first film work – albeit on a more elaborate budget – and succeeds with the same winning charms
Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017)
I’m not one of the haters on this. It’s the first Star Wars sequel since the 1980s to invigorate the series with fresh action sequences and place more focus on the characters instead of the action
The Vault (2017)
A film with a captivatingly original idea – bank robbers break into a bank vault, only to find they have stirred something supernatural imprisoned there. A film that builds a more than reasonable head of tension before losing it with a weak payoff
The Ouija Exorcism (2015)
Another title jumping on the fad for ouija board films we’ve had since Blumhouse’s Ouija series, this concerning an ouija board that has a malevolent spirit trapped inside it. Routine tension by the numbers – possessed people with glowing eyes are just not that scary
They Look Like People (2015)
Man meets a childhood friend only to find the friend is suffering from possible hallucinations telling him to kill demons. Similar to Take Shelter in leaving you uncertain whether the central character is sane or not, this comes with an extraordinarily fresh indie sensibility
The Curse of Sleeping Beauty (2016)
This offers the promising idea of Sleeping Beauty reworked as a horror film (and set in the modern day). Never as interesting as it sounds in synopsis, this becomes more a Sleeping Beauty-themed haunted house ride
Scorched Earth (2018)
This looked promising but is no more than an unoriginal rehash of the cliches of the Mad Max film – at heart a Western with only token effort made to rewrite the elements in SF terms – and no greater ambition beyond being cable filler
Cold Skin (2017)
While The Shape of Water took attention, there was 2017’s other film about sex between human and fish people. From Xavier Gens, a a Lovecraftian tale about men in a lighthouse engaged in a fierce battle against amphibians
Fullmetal Alchemist (2017)
Live-action adaptation of the popular manga and anime series. Despite having a reasonable budget thrown at it and treating the source material with fathfulness, this looks awkward on the screen
Radius (2017)
This comes with a fascinatingly original premise – man wakes up with complete amnesia and finds that he has the ability to kill anyone within thirty feet of him. The case of a film that holds attention with a captivating and unusual plot and a series of constant whiplash reversals
Severed (2005)
A Canadian entry made soon into the zombie movie revival of the mid-00s and before the copycats started to become tediously familiar and the genre turned to self-parody. This delivers a solid rehash of the essentials – IMHO a better job that Zack Snyder did in Dawn of the Dead
Belladonna of Sadness (1973)
Osama Tezuka is a cult figure in anime and manga – what is less well known is that he also made adult animation. This, about a woman’s temptation by The Devil in mediaeval France, is a mind-boggling array of psychedelia and eroticism
Independents’ Day (2016)
The Asylum’s mockbuster answer to Independence Day: Resurgence, a rehash of Independence Day on a cheaper budget. The desire to copy the title has forced some plotting oddities onto the film
The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017)
Among the fad for biopics about writers and the origins of famous stories, this, about Charles Dickens and the creation of A Christmas Carol, is the most lunatic – and that’s not counting the blatant lie of the title
Mom & Dad (2017)
A captivating variant on the mass insanity film where parents are frenziedly driven to kill their children. As the murderous father, Nicolas Cage gives a performance where he lets all stops go, while director Brian Taylor, formerly one half of Neveldine/Taylor, makes a rather watchable film
Mute (2018)
Duncan Jones has become a director of promise in the last few years. Here he appropriates the Blade Runner look to make a futuristic neo-noir but the result never quite works. The noir plot never sufficiently keys in, while the derivative future setting is of no real relevance to the story
The Ritual (2017)
The first feature film from David Bruckner who has been doing strong work in various anthologies. This is like The Blair Witch Project with regular camerawork and an actual witch where Bruckner creates a strong and effective sense of foreboding and accumulating mood
Don’t Go in the House (1979)
A film from the slasher era – the scenes of the psycho of the show incinerating victims with a flamethrower were the cause of censorship controversy. Less a slasher film and more a psycho film, this pushes into some disturbing headspace
Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks (1976)
The first of the sequels to the notorious Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS. The dispenses with the first film’s unpleasant use of the Nazi concentration camps as a source of exploitation grist and is an altogether better film
I Survived a Zombie Holocaust (2014)
A New Zealand-made entry into the zombie comedy stakes. This has the amusing idea of having a zombie outbreak occur during the shooting of a zombie film
My Friend Dahmer (2017)
A film based on serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer that focuses not on his crimes but his last year of high school before he began his killing spree. Based on a graphic novel written by Dahmer’s best friend, this is a surprisingly sympathetic portrait of the extremes of social isolation
78/52 (2017)
The shower scene in Psycho is probably the most famous single scene in cinema history. The idea of an entire documentary devoted to analysing a single scene is a bit of a head scratcher at first but quickly the analysis of film’s context and the hidden meaning of shots proves completely fascinating
Hellraiser: Judgment (2018)
The ninth Hellraiser sequel. Most of the others are a far call from Clive Barker’s original. This demonstrates that all hope is not lost in a wild and imaginative opening sequence
The Truth is in the Stars (2017)
The William Shatner documentary is a fascinatingly bizarre beast. This involves Shatner talking to a bunch of scientists and celebrities, before meeting with Stephen Hawking but peculiarly enough seems to have no central thesis or idea about what it is setting out to prove
A Chinese Tall Story (2005)
Another adaptation of Journey to the West. Coming from Jeffrey Lau, a director who specialises in rowdy, slapstick films, this is the most nutso adaptation of the story ever, winding in everything from alien visitors and Transformers
The Hole (2009)
One of the less known films of Joe Dante. A 3D work that just predates Avatar, it is a YA horror story in the vein of The Goonies or Dante’s own Explorers crafted with care and an affection for the characters
House of VHS (2016)
Group of backpackers at a chateau find an old VCR that mashes up genres and sucks them inside. There’s a good idea for a horror film somewhere here but it ends up with terrible execution
Victor Crowley (2017)
Adam Green has enjoyed some success with the Hatchet films; this is the fourth entry in the series … Most of the other films have consisted of not much more than buckets of gore and a host of genre cameos – here though, Green adds a considerable sense of humour to the mix
Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters (2017)
The 30th Japanese Godzilla film, this is the first anime Godzilla film and the first in a trilogy. More disappointingly, it is more a space opera and planetary adventure than it is ever a Godzilla film
The Cloverfield Paradox (2018)
The third of J.J. Abrams’ Cloverfield films. This is set on a space station thing and has an alternate timeline plot but seems disinterested in little more than creating a bizarre effect every few minutes
Vampire Cleanup Department (2017)
Revival of the Hong Kong hopping vampire film phenomenon of the late 80s as personified by the Mr Vampire films. This lacks the slapstick silliness of the originals but settles in with a goofy nuttiness, getting some winning charms out of the romance between mortal and hopping vampire girl
Zombieworld (2015)
A multi-director anthology of zombie-themed short films. As always in an anthology, the episodes vary but these are generally good with the standout being the side-splitting episode where Jesus faces a zombie horde
Tekken: A Man Called X (2014)
Nobody seemed to care about Tekken, the 2010 film based on the popular videogame. Despite that, this is a sequel – albeit one that has almost nothing to do with the first film. This consists of nothing more than a series of efficiently unmemorable action scenes and a plot that makes no real sense
The Sleeper (2012)
Not to be confused with the Woody Allen film, this is a modern slasher film that pays homage to its 1980s counterparts – in particular, the sorority house slasher as a maniac who deep-breathes down the phone stalks assorted co-eds. Unexceptional in all regards
The Humanity Bureau (2017)
Nicolas Cage is a lawman of the future who rebels against the system to protect a woman and child. Essentially a copy of the basics of Logan’s Run, this manages to be uninteresting in every way
Batman: Gotham By Gaslight (2018)
Adaptation of a classic graphic novel that imagines Batman back in the late 19th Century as he fights Jack the Ripper. This works rather well – in fact, better than the graphic novel it is based on
Coco (2017)
Pixar’s 19th film. Set on the Mexican Day of the Dead and then venturing into the afterlife, this is a celebration of all things Mexican, which Pixar conduct without any wrong steps. A film made in vibrant colours
Bloodrunners (2017)
The idea of a vampire set in the Prohibition era among the speakeasies and bootlegging rackets sounds intriguing. This is weakened by a low-budget and the simple fact that the vampire has become de-fanged post-Twilight
The 7th Dwarf (2014)
German animated film about the adventures of Snow White’s Seven Dwarves. Lightweight and trivial, this feels like it has come along ten years too late to the fad for fairytale parodies and mash-ups we had in the mid-2000s with films like Shrek and Hoodwinked!
Space Cop (2016)
Comedy about a cop from the future who joins the present-day force where he is partnered with a cop thawed out from the 1960s. This is a premise that should have been funny but emerges as something like Sledge Hammer cast with the characters from Dumb and Dumber
Merlin and the Book of Beasts (2008)
A work of Arthurian sequelia made for the Syfy Channeal featuring Arthur’s daughter inheriting the sword. This has the feel more of a series of B-budgeted D&D wilderness encounters churned out without much effort rather than being a fantasy work that soars
King Arthur: Excalibur Rising (2017)
A passable B-budget film that came out in anticipation of Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. This is actually an Arthurian sequel, featuring Arthur’s son inheriting the sword.
Day of the Dead: Bloodline (2018)
One of a growing industry of zombie films that leech off the George Romero name. This remakes Romero’s Day of the Dead, which means it cherry picks key elements and rearranges them in a different way but lacks everything else that Romero offered
Downsizing (2017)
Matt Damon gets shrunken to five inches tall in this effort from Alexander Payne, an award-winning director who usually makes films about men undergoing mid-life crises. The film has a cleverness but Payne often misses the possibilities raised
Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
The third of the MCU’s Thor films. This time Kiwi director Taikia Waititi gives much more of a comedic emphasis where you get the impression the intention has been to push the film in the direction of Guardians of the Galaxy. On the other hand, the superheroics are routine