The Night Watchmen (2017)
Horror comedy set in an office building as a group of inept security guards fight off a vampire outbreak among the staff. Very similar to the earlier Bloodsucking Bastards, this balances comedy and horror but director Mitchell Altieri demonstrates comedy is not his strong point
Big Bad (2016)
An affectionate recreation of 80s-type kids-on-an-adventure films like The Goonies as kids come up against a creature that may be a werewolf or a Bigfoot. Made with humour and a liking for its characters while not forgetting to be scary
Mega Python vs. Gatoroid (2011)
The Asylum had hits with Mega Python vs Giant Shark and Mega Piranha, both featuring former teen pop stars Debbie Gibson and Tiffany as the leads. This pits both Tiffany and Debbie together in an epic bitch-fight against the backdrop of clashing giant animals with rather entertaining results
The Devil’s Candy (2015)
From Australian director Sean Byrne who made the splendidly twisted The Loved Ones, this starts out a heavy metal horror film that broods with occult imagery and a sense of bad things about to explode
Veronica (2017)
Paco Plaza has become one of the premiere names in Spanish horror due to the [Rec] films. Here he attempts to follow in the footsteps of The Conjuring with a film based on a supposedly true supernatural incident in 90s Madrid but fails to make a terribly interesting work
The Man From Earth: Holocene (2017)
The Man from Earth built up a reasonable reputation with a simple concept – a 14,000 year old man tells his life story that comes with a killer of a twist. This sequel far less interestingly becomes a detective story about a group of students trying to find if their professor is the same character
Goodbye Christopher Robin (2017)
Biopic of A.A. Milne that tells the story of how he came up with his most famous creation Winnie the Pooh. The film takes some time to warm to, but eventually opens up with some heartwarming charms
Aliens vs Titanic (2017)
Full marks for the title. Rather than any spacegoing version of Titanic, we have a spaceship named Titan1-C, which is soon abandoned and thereafter a cheesily ridiculous film about alien chestbusters
Antibirth (2016)
This has cult midnight hit written over it. It’s a loopy trip into people doing drugs, alien impregnation and government conspiracy that should have been quirky and funny but sort of goes asleep at the wheel
Viy (2014)
Russian-made adaptation of a classic horror story that takes place as an exquisitely stylised 19th Century Gothic fantasy world but is a head-scratchingly incoherent mishmash on a plotting level
The Northlander (2016)
Post-holocaust film made by and starring Canadian First Nations people. While the film uses the aftermath of a civilisation as a setting, it never seems that interested in exploring it. The film peters out in an uninteresting resoution and features some appallingly pretentious dialogue
Werewolves of the Third Reich (2017)
I was hooked into watching the film from the sensationalism from the title but this is a disappointment due to the attempts to provide World War II setting and werewolf transformation effects on a low budget
Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (2017)
Biopic about William Moulton Marston, the creator of Wonder Woman This covers the key aspects of Marston’s life and how it influenced the comic-book and delves into the highly unconventional lifestyle he led in a polyamorous relationship and exploring BDSM
Jigsaw (2017)
Whether we asked for it or not, this is a revival of the Saw series. The upside is that unlike the other sequels it comes from a duo of directors who have made some quite good films elsewhere
Dementia 13 (2017)
Dementia 13 was a routine psycho-thriller elevated by the hand of a young Francis Ford Coppola. This remake adds ghosts and a home invasion to the mundane original, but fails to come anywhere near Coppola’s style
The Hungover Games (2014)
In the vein of the Scary Movies films, this offers the amusing idea of a mash-up between The Hunger Games and The Hangover where the characters are forced into a death match against characters from other media franchises
War of the Worlds 2: The Next Wave (2008)
Sequel to The Asylum mockbuster version. Sequelising H.G. Wells is a daunting prospect and not too surprisingly this throws much of Wells out and creates its own film, which is undercut by a typical Asylum low budget
Reality (2014)
A film from Quentin Dupieux that comes in a series of quirky intersecting stories where the dreams and films different characters are watching/making keeping blurring together in mind-boggling ways
OtherLife (2017)
Australian SF film about the development of a set of eyedrops that allow the recipient to experience a set of preprogrammed virtual memories. The film does nothing with the idea beyond rehashing Total Recall-like reality games
SS-GB (2017)
The alternate history has never fared well on film but this British mini-series is an excellent variant on the Nazis Win World War II scenario. As opposed to the similar but tedious The Man in the High Castle series, this is marvellously understated and written with superb tension
The Shape of Water (2017)
Guillermo Del Toro makes monster movies with sympathy for the monster. This is his take onThe Creature from the Black Lagoon where the romance between creature and heroine is brought out to centre stage
5 Headed Shark Attack (2017)
The Asylum, the company behind the Sharknado phenomenon, made 2 Headed Shark Attack. Figuring the only way to top that was to keep adding more heads we had 3 and now 5 Headed Shark Attack
Restoration (2016)
A film directed by actor Zack Ward – his best known role was probably as Postal Dude in Uwe Boll’s Postal. Not a terribly interesting film – it starts as a ghost story before this proves to be a red herring and then meanders around without much direction
Ibiza Undead (2016)
British lad culture take on the zombie film. Think a version of Shaun of the Dead inhabited by guys around the age of 20 whose only real concerns is getting laid and wasted. The constant vulgarity becomes tiresome
Sleeping Beauties (2017)
A softcore erotic version of the popular fairytale. Largely the film gets the fairytale over and done with in the first eight minutes and thereafter focuses on the erotic tumblings of Beauty awakened in the present-day
Hangman (2017)
A dreary revival of the 1990s serial killer thriller. The surprise for a work that has no ambition beyond cable filler is that it has attracted a name like Al Pacino who mugs and showboats through the worst performance of his career
Beyond Skyline (2017)
Skyline was a modest alien invasion film; this is a long-planned sequel. The new director has simply turned it into an action film and tediously deals with every alien encounter with gunfire, stunts and explosions
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Blade Runner is a landmark classic but this is well worthwhile sequel from Denis Villeneuve that recreates the fascinating Cyberpunk world in more detail and expands out on the themes laid down in the original. Made with impeccably beautiful detail
Serpent (2017)
South African thriller that borrows much of its premise from Buried as a married couple camping in a remote gorge are trapped inside their tent with a deadly snake – only for secrets in the marriage to prove just as deadly
Metegol (2013)
Spanish-Argentinean animated film about the miniature players of a table football game come to life. The animation is not the high-end quality of most theatrical releases but passable; everything plays out to to fairly predictable sports movies cliches
San Andreas Quake (2015)
The Asylum’s cheap mockbuster version of the big-budget Dwaye Johnson-starring disaster movie spectacle San Andreas. Passable as general fare from The Asylum, about the level of the average filler tv movie and with effects to a not-too-bad standard
The Emeryville Experiments (2016)
The premise of a small town inhabited by the former inmates of an asylum, suggests a variant on Poe’s The System of Dr Tarr and Professor Fether. The execution is complete amateurism on every level
Bright (2017)
Set in an alternate version of the present where fantasy creatures – orcs, elves, fairies – live alongside humans, this comes with a cleverness, while being played as a buddy cop drama that anchors it with a realism
The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)
Yorgos Lanthimos trains his a bizarrely deadpan black humour to make a horror film where surgeon Colin Farrell finds a strange malady has afflicted his family unless he kills one of them in sacrifice
Justice League (2017)
Zack Snyder completes his run through DC superheroes with mixed results. The introduction of the characters works well but Snyder too readily throws established continuity out the window, while the visual dourness becomes tedious
90210 Shark Attack (2014)
This has to be the single worst killer shark film ever made and quite possibly the worst film of the 2010s. A shark film set in a Beverly Hills mansion where the nearest body of water is a swimming pool and where the appearance of the shark will reduce you to tears of laughter
The Poltergeist of Borley Forest (2013)
A film that sat on the shelf and was then retitled to capitalise on the release of the Poltergeist remake despite featuring no poltergeists … A routine run through the well and truly worn modern ghost story cliches with no originality and little atmosphere
Edgar Allan Poe’s Lighthouse Keeper (2016)
Adaptation of a story fragment that Edgar Allan Poe left unfinished upon his death. The original (only two pages long) gives little more than a setting but this builds out into an okay period ghost story
Zombie Fight Club (2014)
It is mind-boggling to think how you could combine zombies with Fight Club, the classic anti-capitalist manifesto about brawling clubs and split personality … Such an idea proves too challenging for this Taiwanese effort but we do get a solid zombie version of The Raid
Krampus: The Christmas Devil (2013)
Krampus, Santa’s evil brother, was an obscure piece of Germanic folklore until repurposed for the Christmas horror film in the mid-2010s and. This, while not very good, was the first of these
The Snowman (2017)
International production based on a series of books about a Norwegian detective. This flopped badly and was called confusing. Mostly, it is a serial killer thriller that fails to hold you gripped with its unfoldings
Flatliners (2017)
Another remake we never asked for. Considering that this had the entire CGI revolution to conceive of the afterlife journey and merely has to top Joel Schumacher, it is amazing how dull and uninteresting this emerges as
Late Night Double Feature (2016)
In the same vein as Grindhouse, an anthology that consists of two longer stories set around the gimmick of a tv horror host playing a double-bill, along with several mocked-up parody trailers
Demon Tongue (2016)
One hoped this might have taken the approach of featuring a demonically possessed tongue but more mundanely uses tongue as meaning language. In reality, this is a poorly made film about a team of ghostbusters searching a haunted bar
Ordet (1955)
Carl Dreyer, the Danish director of Vampyr and The Passion of Joan of Arc, is one of the least well-known great directors. This, his second-to-last film, concerns itself with the nature of religion and miracles. A very weighty Bergman-esque piece, it arrives at an astonishing ending
The Hatching (2016)
There feels like there should be something tongue-in-cheek about the idea of a killer crocodile film set in the British lakelands. Surprisingly, this plays itself seriously
Fear, Inc. (2016)
A variant on The Game where Michael Douglas had his life turned into a nightmare series of rubber reality games that were being staged for his amusement. This spins the same idea through a witty series of horror movie homages
Jeepers Creepers 3 (2017)
Having been promised for a long time, this is the third of Victor Salva’s Jeepers Creepers films. Filled with some unworldly jumps, this is also the slightest of the Jeepers Creepers trilogy
Mother! (2017)
Darren Aronofsky’s surreal drama wildly divided critics and was a box-office flop with general audiences. Naturally, what I thought the film was about was completely different to what Aronofsky stated it was about
American Hero (2015)
Tired of the bombast of Marvel/DC Comics superheroics overunning screens? This is a superhero film for you – one welcomely brought down to Earth set in working class neighbouhoods and with a focus on real-life problems. The results are surprising and refreshing
Alien Implant (2017)
A film about a former alien abductee pottering endlessly about a cabin in order to lure the aliens who took her and take revenge. A film that is about as close to total amateurism as possible to get
Clown Kill (2016)
A British effort where a girl working late in an office building who is stalked by a creepy clown. Made with an incredibly amateurism, this is possibly the worst entry in the killer clown genre
Deadman Apocalypse (2016)
Despite the hope that this might have been an adaptation of DC’s disembodied superhero, this is no more than a post-apocalyptic adventure that takes place in tunnels only about three feet high, including the car chases
Kuso (2017)
A surrealist film from the rapper known as Flying Lotus that consists of random plotless weirdness without any coherent rationale beyond serving up one gross-out effect after another
The Blackcoat’s Daughter (2015)
Fascinatingly cryptic debut film from Osgood Perkins. Perkins avoids cliche jumpshocks and proves a master of the slow burn film, focusing on small detail before throwing in something wild and outre
Zoom (2015)
This nominally tells three slice-of-life tales but in each the principal character is creating a book or film about one of the other characters. This becomes a meta-fiction of considerable cleverness as we see how the problems of one character end up reflected in the other character’s story
Teen Titans: The Judas Contract (2017)
The Teen Titans get their first solo film in the DC Universe Original Animated Movies. A reasonable adventure based on a classic comic title that works with a good story and characterisation, even if some of it has an adult flavour that makes you wonder who the audience is
Justice League vs Teen Titans (2016)
Though sold as a Justice League film, this DC Universe Original Animated Movie serves to introduce the Teen Titans to the animated universe
Andron (2015)
A group of people whose memories have been blanked wake up in a mysterious labyrinth and have to survive death traps and each other. A promising mix of Cube and The Hunger Games killed by clumsy storytelling
Bigfoot vs Zombies (2016)
Mark Polonia has been producing ultra-cheap horror films since the 1980s and developed a reputation as the worst directors currently working. This does not disappoint on what you expect
Robot Wars (2016)
The title is a massive cheat as there is only a single robot that turns up in a single fight scene. The film has the distinction of being the world’s first Found Footage Cyberpunk film about a mystery box that creates mass insanity when opened
The Emoji Movie (2017)
An animated film that bizarrely speculates that the emojis in your text messages are actually living entities that have lives inside the phone. A not-too-well-thought out concept that leaves you with strange questions about its world
Geostorm (2017)
Directorial debut of Roland Emmerich’s regular screenwriter Dean Devlin who has clearly been given orders to make another Emmerich film. Thus we get all the same effects-driven mass destruction spectacle, absurd science and pro-environmental messages
Making Contact (1986)
Roland Emmerich’s second film, a confused oddity that seems to be trying to model itself as a Spielberg film about a kid who gains psychic powers and whose toys come to life
Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017)
Kingsman with its parody of gentlemanliness and action movie sensibilities, was the smartest of the modern spy movie parodies. This sequel has gone to the excesses of the Roger Moore Bond films in the space of one film
Zoombies (2016)
From The Asylum, the company that brought the world Sharknado and 2-Headed Shark Attack, a film about a zoo filled with zombie animals. Played more seriously than you might expect, this falls just between The Asylum’s usual corner cutting and the odd moment of effectiveness
The Last House on Cemetery Lane (2015)
A haunted house film from Andrew Jones, who makes an okay but very low key film – the spookiest it ever gets is a phantom record player. Things are lifted by a modest M. Shyamalan-esque twist
Let Her Out (2016)
From Cody Calahan who made Antisocial, a reasonable modernisation of the Jekyll and Hyde story with a girl at war for ownership of her own body with an evil alter ego
The Devil Complex (2016)
Found Footage horror that unimaginatively rehashes The Blair Witch Project with a trio of people equipped with videocameras wandering around a supposedly haunted forest in Romania
Tom and Jerry: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (2017)
The Tom and Jerry cartoons have the distinction of being considered the most violent ever. The question is why anybody considered why we needed an animated remake of Willy Wonka but with the addition of Tom and Jerry
Singularity (2017)
John Cusack as a super-villain unleashing an army of giant robots against humanity – what’s not to like? Well maybe the entire film, which fails to leave no Machines Amok cliche unturned. Cusack gives a performance through gritted teeth no doubt at the atrocious dialogue he has to utter
Mayhem (2017)
A cross between The Belko Experiment with its murderous elimination game in an office and George Romero’s The Crazies as workers in an office is infected by a virus that causes them to lose their inhibitions. Made with dark relish
Starship Troopers: Traitor of Mars (2017)
The fifth of the films in the series begun with Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers. The best of the series was the previous entry Starship Troopers: Invasion where they turned it over to anime director Shinji Aramaki. This is a sequel to that, although the same mix fails to work again
She Wolf Rising (2016)
There is a good idea for a film in here somewhere where a fan joins Scream Queen Tiffany Shepis playing a Scream Queen tracking down the print of her werewolf movie before finding she is a real werewolf. But the presentation is an utterly confused mishmash
Lady of Csejte (2015)
Another film about Countess Bathory, although this returns to the historical record rather than makes her as a vampire. Killed by being told through the eyes of two kids and a ridiculously tame account of Bathory’s activities
Girl in Woods (2016)
For a reasonable part of the runtime, this plays as a wilderness survival drama about a woman abandoned in the woods. Somewhat directionless before being redeemed by its twist ending
The Gracefield Incident (2017)
We have had a few UFO Found Footage films, most of which are rehashes on The Blair Witch Project with aliens instead of backwoods hauntings. This is one entry that produces a series of eerie jumps
Blade of the Immortal (2017)
Takashi Miike’s 100th film, the adaptation of a manga about an immortal samurai. Miike bookends the film with awesome sequences with his hero battling hundreds of opponents but the film in between drags
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)
It was a box-office bomb but this is one of the most breathtaking and completely designed SF work to ever cross the screen. In terms of effects, sets and costuming, Luc Besson gives us a work that is an overwhelming treat for the eyes
Lumberjack Man (2015)
An hilarious parody of the slasher film in which an undead lumberjack invades a Bible camp, slaughtering the teens in a series of over-the-top deaths to use their blood as syrup on his pancakes
The Conduit (2016)
Modest film about a man who becomes involved with a woman who increasingly appears to be responsible for a series of murders. The director and lead actress create a sense of mystery and fascination about what is happening
Robot World (2015)
British-made film about an astronaut stranded on a world of robots. Made by a team of three people, this produces effects that rival Hollywood productions but is also a solid work of planetary survival that comes with some jaw-dropping mid-film twists
Kill Command (2016)
Modest British film about a unit of soldiers on an exercise who become hunted by killer robots. With effects that easily rival those of bigger-budgeted Hollywood films, this produces a very intensive little film
Exit 14 (2015)
Friends on Springbreak break down after taking a detour where they encounter creepy towtruck driver Tom Sizemore and drunkenly summon the spirit of a murdered woman
Bleed (2016)
This feels like mostly a series of horror tropes – ghost hunters with cameras in an abandoned building, backwoods occultists wanting the heroine’s baby – shuffled without originality
Awakening the Zodiac (2017)
This comes with a great hook – a couple buy up the contents of a defaulted storage locker only to find film reels taken by The Zodiac Killer, leading them on a pursuit of his identity
1922 (2017)
A Stephen King adaptation, this is less the jumpshocks of It than a work of dark brooding psychology as a farmer contemplates the murder of his wife. Think Days of Heaven by way of Grant Wood’s American Gothic
Cars 3 (2017)
Another of the weaker sequels that Pixar seem determined to churn out. 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
Marjorie Prime (2017)
From the always interesting Michael Almereyda, an adaptation of a Pulitzer-nominated play set in a future where people replace their departed loved ones with holograms
A Room to Die For (2017)
London couple find the perfect room to rent in the home of a very strange aging husband and wife. What starts out seeming an oddball comedy gradually slides over into horror movie territory but in truth this is not a very well made film on all fronts
End of Days, Inc. (2015)
A comedy in which office staff working overtime gradually realise their efforts are in preparation for the end of the world. This needed more of a dark bite to fully work but has occasional amusement
Backtrack (2015)
Beautifully made Australian ghost story that creates a strong sense of eerie disquiet as psychologist Adrien Brody realises that all of his patients are dead and is prompted to go on a journey to uncover forgotten things from his past
Apparition (2015)
This seems a generic ghost story. The second half has the protagonist’s dead girlfriend trying to stop him seeing another woman and becomes a descent into obsession that works rather well
200 Degrees (2017)
A thriller in the vein of films such as Phone Booth and especially Buried with Eric Balfour locked in a room in a warehouse with heat lamps that are slowly turning the temperature up to the title level. This ratchets suspense well, Balfour is good but things fall apart at the denouement
Happy Death Day (2017)
A Christopher Landon film released by Blumhouse. This has been conceived as a mash-up between Groundhog Day and a slasher film with a girl who wakes up every day to be pursued by a masked killer
It (2017)
I far preferred the 1990 mini-series to the cinematic remake of the Stephen King book. This emerges as a lesser copy of tv’s Stranger Things, which did the whole 80s nostalgia/horror story far better
Dragonheart: Battle for the Heartfire (2017)
The fourth film in the Dragonheart franchise. Is there truly anybody out there who was begging for this? Cheaply made in Romania where it seems to be straining to drag the original premise out for another film
Aaron’s Blood (2016)
The vampire film is looking rather anemic in the post-Twilight era. This is one decent effort about a father trying to save his son who has received a blood transfusion from a vampire
The Discovery (2017)
Robert Redford plays a scientist who finds proof of the existence of the afterlife only to then face a worldwide rash of suicides. From the director of the fascinatingly weird The One I Love
Amityville: The Awakening (2017)
No less than the twentieth film spun out around The Amityville Horror. This Blumhouse revival emerges as marginally better than most films with Amityville in the name