Leatherface (2017)
Supposedly a The Texas Chain Saw Massacre prequel that offers us a Leatherface origin story. The least Texas Chain Saw-like of the sequels and eventually a far cry from the original
Batman vs. Two-Face (2017)
Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders, an animated homage to the 1960s Batman tv series reuniting Adam West and Burt Ward, was a quirky delight. This is a sequel in the same vein, although more a case of a joke that tires in the retelling
Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman (2003)
One of the better films spun off from the 1990s animated Batman tv series, introducing the character of Batwoman (although a different one to the comic-book incarnation).
Time Toys (2016)
Children’s film with the promising idea of kids finding a bunch of toys from the future that grant them amazing abilities unaware they have world-destroying potential.; The idea is alas watered down to the blandness of family formula and the limited conceptual horizons of a low budget
Doomsday (2015)
Not to be confused with Neil Marshall’s Doomsday. This is a surprisingly good, low-budget British SF film that serves up the essential plot of The Terminator but with a number of clever touches of its own
Pandemic (2016)
While the title leads you to expect a plague outbreak film, you soon discover this is a zombie film. What it is is a Found Footage film mounted as a First Person Shooter film at which you have to admit that it launches into action with considerable gusto and ferocity
Bunker of the Dead (2015)
A revival of the Nazi zombie fad, which essentially becomes a First Person Shooter film as someone wearing a GoPro camera runs through a bunker dispatching zombies
Ominous (2015)
Another of the films with sinister-sounding adjectives that sprung up in the wake of Insidious, this is a cut price copy of The Omen about a child resurrected from the dead who causes a series of deaths
Spielberg (2017)
Documentary made for HBO about director Steven Spielberg in which he reflects on his life and films. The documentary tends to focus more on his major hits and skips his minor films but does give worthwhile insight into Spielberg, his life and formative years
The Lego Ninjago Movie (2017)
Third of the animated films based on the Lego toy line. This has the same fast-paced humour and witty fourth-wall breaking gags as its predecessors, even if you suspect the Lego Movie brand is starting to fade
The Dark Tower (2017)
Screenwriter Akiva Goldsman gives us an utterly mangled version of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series that has little resemblance to the books, yet makes little sense if you haven’t read them
ARQ (2016)
Another variant on the Groundhog Day theme with characters trapped in a timeloop. This come with an SF rationale and contains the plot in a single location while spinning each repeat through some smart twists
Violent Shit: The Movie (2015)
The original i>Violent Shit films were a series of plotless, gore-drenched German films of the 80-90s. This is a very loose Italian-made remake that is more about the activities of an occult serial killer. Not very well made but there are a lot of homages to classic giallo cinema
Estranged (2015)
An amnesiac girl returns home to a large estate in the English countryside only to be made prisoner by her family. Reminiscent of one of the 1960s Hammer psycho-thriller, this is well-made and builds out a fine sense of alienation
Awaiting (2015)
This is the British equivalent of a Backwoods Brutality film in which Tony Curran is a towtruck driver who traps and kills motorists to salvage their belongings
Peelers (2016)
There have been a surprising number of films in recent years offering up the combination of zombies and strippers. Although what we have is never quite specified as zombies, this offers up strippers kicking zombie ass with a great deal of gore-drenched relish
The Crucifixion (2017)
Xavier Gens film from the screenwriters of The Conjuring films based on a supposedly true-life exorcism. One was hoping that Gens would do amazing things with the exorcism genre but he only rehashes the same cliches
Gerald’s Game (2017)
Mike Flanagan tackles one of the most difficult Stephen King books from a logistics perspective – the book has only one character who is handcuffed naked to a bed for the duration – but pulls it off with great faithfulness
War of the Planet of the Apes (2017)
The third film in the rebooted Planet of the Apes series. The motion capture effects are at an absolute peak of the art and the motion capture performances astonishing. The whole film almost seems to consist of heart-tugging moments to make you go “aww”
The Houses October Built 2 (2017)
Sequel to The Houses October Built with the same group touring Halloween haunts encountered sinister figures beneath the masquerade as everything starts happening all over again
Hollow Creek (2016)
Although effort is made to sell this as a horror film and there are some ghosts, this is far more of a missing woman thriller. A directing/writing debut for Guisela Moro who plays the abducted woman
Here Alone (2016)
Beautifully filmed, intimate work about a woman’s attempts to eke out survival in the woods in the aftermath of an unspecified apocalypse
Unhallowed Ground (2015)
Set in a British boarding school/military academy, this starts out seeming like a ghost story but does a mid-film flip to reveal something else altogether is going on. I held out promise but between a low budget and a contrived end explanation this fails to work
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
Cult of Chucky (2017)
The seventh of the Child’s Play films with the killer doll Chucky. I never much cared for the original series but the modern films – those with Chucky’s name in the title – have become a lot wittier and playful, constantly making jokes back to the rest of the series
The Beguiled (2017)
Sofia Coppola’s remake of the 1971 Clint Eastwood film. The original was a work of brooding Southern Gothic of repressed sexual tensions; Sofia seems more interested in making a costume drama that is a stretch to call a horror story any longer
Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Sony’s reboot of the Spider-Man franchise bursts with a freshness and creative energy. This is also a Spider-Man that has integrated with the MCU with the script kowtowing to Marvel at every point
The Call Up (2016)
This has the interesting idea of a group of people selected to take place in a live-action videogame only to find themselves trapped in a The Belko Experiment scenario.
The Brain (1988)
Mad psychologist creates a giant brain about the size of a small car that controls minds and is hungry to devour people. A deliriously entertaining film that seems to embody the essence of the cheesy makeup effects driven 1980s horror film
The House By the Cemetery (1981)
One of the key films in the cult of Lucio Fulci. Imagine a version of The Amityville Horror with the addition of zombies, mad scientists and a gore-drenched death every few minutes
The Last Man(s) on Earth (2012)
Film spinoff from a YouTube channel that features two comedians giving absurdly over-the-top survivalist tips. What works as a series of short clips has difficulty extending the gags to a dramatic plot
The Warriors Gate (2016)
Luc Besson written/produced effort where a videogamer kid is transported to Ancient China. A blatant copy of The Forbidden Kingdom that manages to be fundamentally implausible on every level and one of the worst attempts to pander to the Chinese box-office
It Stains the Sand Red (2016)
The most original treatment of the zombie film in some time. Rather hilariously, what we get is a film about a girl being pursued by a single zombie (at a walking pace) and the slow relationship she develops with it
A Ghost Story (2017)
A ghost story in which the ghost is played by someone beneath a sheet with two eyeholes. It’s an idea that seems too goofy to work outside of an episode of Scooby Doo. I do like being proved wrong and this ended up my Best Film of 2017
Science Fiction Volume One: The Osiris Child (2016)
A film naming itself after an entire genre either has massive ambition or huge pretensions. Beyond the grandiose title, this is not much more than a better budgeted version of an 80s planetary adventure
Playing With Dolls (2015)
Slasher film where a girl is hired as a housekeeper in a remote location only to find she is being stalked by a masked killer and forced to survive with her bare hands. Two sequels followed.
Darkweb (2016)
This exploits the topical fascination with the darknet in a story ostensibly about making snuff videos for sale there. In actuality, this telescopes down to being no more a variant on The Most Dangerous Game
The Spongebob Squarepants Movie (2004)
Spongebob Squarepants was a sleeper hit on the Nickelodeon Channel that crossed over to find an adult following; this is the first of the film spinoffs. The film comes with a zanily surreal sense of humour that ran through the series that is frequently downright hilarious
Don’t Fuck in the Woods (2016)
This gets the award for the ballsiest title of any horror film of recent While the slasher film of the 00s has become much more chaste, this doesn’t let down on the plentiful nudity. At the same time, it is also a smartly self-aware horror film
Animal (2014)
Film about a group of friends lost in the woods who take refuge in a cabin while being hunted by a creature. This is generic, produces some jumps but is dogged by unconvincing creature effects
The Limehouse Golem (2016)
This comes with a captivating tagline “Before The Ripper, fear had another name” and misleadingly suggests it is based on another true-life Victorian serial killer. This refuses to be the police procedural you expect
Annabelle: Creation (2017)
Audiences and critics alike hated the first Annabelle – I went into this prequel with little enthusiasm but ended up pleasantly surprised. All it takes is a change of director to David F. Sandberg who provides a series of genuinely eerie jumps
Transformers: The Last Knight (2017)
The fifth of Michael Bay’s Transformers films. This comes with more of an outright comedy focus than any of the other films where Bay seems to be second-guessing his critics and spoofing his own peccadilloes in quote marks, only to produce the silliest entry in the series yet
2:22 (2017)
Michiel Huisman is an air traffic controller who discovers that small inconsequential things are repeating themselves every day and that he is being drawn to reenact a fatal incident. A beautifully made film that arrives at an ending that leaves you scratching your head in puzzlement
Taking Earth (2017)
Alien invasion film made by industry outsiders from South Africa. The plot is like a much better version of I Am Number Four but played out on a much more ambitious scale where the novice filmmakers do sensational things in the visual effects department on a minuscule budget
Alienate (2016)
An alien invasion film with a more character driven focus than most, telling the story through the eyes of a husband and wife separated across different states as he tries to get back home
The Man in the Shadows (2017)
At the time of reviewing Rodney Ascher’s sleep paralysis documentary The Nightmare, I commented it would make fascinating material for a horror film. This Canadian micro-budgeted feature is one of the first to try and is interesting, even if it never truly grapples with its ideas
Alp (2016)
Another venture into the sleep paralysis theme. A film that has an amateurism on every level and looks as though it made by people who failed the first year of a film school program
Door to the Other Side (2016)
Haunted house story that is not substantially different from the 7000 on this site. This has some novel twists in that it focuses on an old man afraid to go out of doors who appears to open up a supernatural doorway as he sleeps
Luciferous (2015)
A ghost story that is directed by a married couple who shoot the film in their own apartment and also play a family as they start to be affected by a malign presence
Rememory (2017)
Film about a device that can record and play back memory. This comes with a reasonable cast but the great disappointment is the idea is never used for anything more than a mundane murder mystery
The Ghoul (2016)
Ben Wheatley produced film that soon becomes a first order mindfuck. An detective undercover in therapy could just be a mentally ill man with delusions of being a detective or just as equally be having his reality manipulated
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017)
After the two last lacklustre entries, the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise starts to recover where the two new directors pull off some spectacular comedy-action sequences that go a long way towards recapturing what the series used to be
Pool Party Massacre (2017)
Possibly the most entertaining no-budget movie ever made. Essentially shot around the director’s own home for a bunch of traded favours, this is a slasher film where the cast have been encouraged to plant tongue-in-cheek and go over the top with frequently sidesplitting results
Convergence (2015)
This has an interesting set-up concerning mysterious happenings in a hospital where it is gradually revealed the characters exist in a limbo caught between Heaven and Hell even if it never does the idea justice
The Hound of the Baskervilles (1983)
Given lavish period settings and featuring a sterling cast line-up of British talent from the day, this is probably the most faithful film adaptation of the Conan Doyle story
Lake Fear (2014)
A cabin in the woods horror made with an ineptitude of execution. This sets out to rip off The Evil Dead but becomes one shock effect after another that runs into an incomprehensible mass like a bad nightmare
Lazer Team (2015)
A film from the comedy collective Rooster Teeth about four screw-ups who pick up power suit items from an alien spaceship only to find they are to defend Earth in a tournament
It Comes At Night (2017)
Audiences were confused by a title and promotion that led them to expect a horror film. This isn’t a horror film but a plague outbreak/fallout shelter drama – at which it is an okay offering but nothing standout
Despicable Me 3 (2017)
Despicable Me was a delightful debut for Illumination Entertainment but has come close to making the studio a one-hit wonder they have milked that one hit for all they can
Road Games (2015)
While the title suggests something of the classic The Hitcher, this reminds more of And Soon the Darkness with its image of tourists being stalked in the pastoral French countryside. Ravishingly photographed, creating a strong sense of dis-ease to arrive at a great twist ending
Hulk Vs (2009)
An animated Marvel Comics adaptation that is actually two separate stories involving The Incredible Hulk, who battles respectively Wolverine and Thor
Lemora: A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural (1973)
A vampire film that has gained a cult reputation. This nominally falls into the lesbian vampire fad but mostly takes place on a level of dreamy suggestiveness. Not fully successful but certainly something unique
Welp (2014)
Belgian Backwoods Brutality effort concerning a boy scout troupe who run afoul of a mysterious feral child and hunter in the woods near their campsite. Defying many of the expectation of the genre, this provides a series of often unearthly images
Naked (2017)
Comedic variant on Groundhog Day where Marlon Wayans wakes up naked in an elevator on his wedding day and is forced to repeat the same hour over and over as he tries to get to the church
What Happened to Monday (2017)
From Tommy Wirkola, director of Dead Snow and Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, a film where Noomi Rapace plays seven identical sisters hiding their existence in an overpopulated dystopian future, A film where neither the scenario nor the central characters end up convincing in any way
Death Note (2017)
The English-language remake of the popular Japanese franchise from Adam Wingard. This essentially remakes the first film and is adequate in its own right but no patch on either of the original Japanese films
The Replacement (2017)
Mini-series made for the BBC that seems to have closely studied the late 80s/90s psycho-thriller – Fatal Attraction, Single White Female. Morven Christie is a pregnant mother who takes a leave of absence from work only to discover that her replacement appears to be plotting to kill her
The Phoenix Project (2015)
Film contained in the single location of a house as a team of four scientists struggle to perfect a process that will resurrect the dead. Normally, you would expect this is to come out as a horror film but the approach here is more akin to a film like Primer
Mercy (2014)
Modestly creepy adaptation of a Stephen King short story about a boy who realises that his grandmother is a witch who made a deal with a backwoods entity
The Encounter (2015)
Found Footage film about various people in the woods in the aftermath of a UFO crash. Essentially The Blair Witch Project with UFOs instead of a backwoods haunting
The Treatment (2014)
The police procedural has vanished from cinema screens this side of the 00s, although this is one Belgian example. This ventures into some very dark territory in its story of a detective who ventures into underground paedophile rings in search of a child-abducting serial killer
Dave Made a Maze (2017)
A man builds a cardboard maze in his living room only for he and others to become lost in it. This has a wonderfully inventive scrappy handmade eccentricity. Imagine Cube remade as one of Michel Gondry’s sweded films
Batman and Harley Quinn (2017)
Building on the popularity of the character in Suicide Squad, an animated film that gives to Harley Quinn, and lets loose with a sense of humour far more adult than the other animated Batman films
The Pack (2015)
Rather effective Australian killer dog film. The film streamlines anything extraneous in the plot and gets down to the business at hand of a family living in the Outback being terrorised by a pack of wild dogs, at which you have to admit it generates a reasonable hand of tension
Come Back to Me (2014)
At the outset, this seems to be either a routine stalker or a clairvoyance film. On the other hand, it is driven by an undeniable WTF component and definitely arrives at bizarrely left field explanation
The Cobbler (2014)
Adam Sandler does more acting than usual in the story of a shoemaker who transforms into the wearer whenever he puts on a pair of shoes. A throwaway premise that attracts a surprisingly high-profile cast
Trick or Treats (1982)
From the heyday of the slasher film, an effort about a babysitter stalked by an escaped maniac on Halloween Night, which draws great influence from classics of the era such as Halloween and When a Stranger Calls. Nothing standout but what a great supporting cast
Mythica: The Necromancer (2015)
The third of the surprisingly good Kickstarter financed Mythica films. This marks a changeover of directors in the series and is slightly the lesser but still does highly imaginative things with a low-budget
The Transfiguration (2016)
The vampire film is looking a little anemic in the post-Twilight era. Here is what is easily one of the best vampire films of the 2010s, a combination of Martin and the relationship in Let the Right One In (sort of), all transplanted into a harsh inner city environment
Sharknado 5: Global Swarming (2017)
By this point, the Sharknado series has gone from an amusingly tongue-in-cheek original to a series that is widely signalling that it is not taking anything that happens remotely seriously
Terminus (2015)
Australian SF film about a man’s discovery of an alien artifact that helps regenerate body parts and gives him prophetic dream warnings of a coming nuclear war. An odd little film more than it is necessarily one that keeps you interested or dramatically engaged
Altergeist (2014)
Film about ghosthunters investigating a reputedly haunted California winery. The scares are about as generic and forgettable as they come, although the end takes a very strange left field turn
Spasms (1983)
A 1980s film that was sold around a single air bladder makeup effects scene where a man swells up and explodes from a snakebite. That and the entirely risible premise of Oliver Reed as a billionaire who has a psychic link with a giant snake
Fat Albert (2004)
One of a spate of films of the 90s/00s that adapted animated tv series in live-action – in this case Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids. Here all we get is the animated characters emerging into the real world for slapstick inanity
The Follower (2016)
A blatant copy of Misery where Erika Christensen is a popular singer who is abducted and made a prisoner by deranged fan Bethany Lauren James who wants her to write more songs in the style she used to
Jeruzalem (2015)
A unique Israeli Found Footage film shot from the perspective of a pair of internet-enabled glasses as two US tourists are visiting Jerusalem as it is overrun by possessed demon figures
Superbob (2015)
An amusing superhero spoof from the UK, a mockumentary following the everyday Bob, who is rather of a twit, as he goes on a date and his frustrations dealing with the bureaucracy required to go into action
Bloodsucking Bastards (2015)
Comedy that resembles something of tv’s The Office where Fran Kranz discovers that management is turning his co-workers into vampires as an efficiency measure
Wheels of Terror (1990)
A blatant copy of Steven Spielberg’s Duel in which school bus driver Joanna Cassidy pursues a muscle car with never-seen driver who has abducted her daughter. Two-thirds of the film is taken up by an extended car chase scene where the stunt people seem to be having a field day
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
L.A. Slasher (2015)
The idea of a killer targeting all that is talentless in Hollywood has some satiric amusement but this is an incoherent film delivered in a series of MTV visuals by what feels a coke-addled director
Bound to Vengeance (2015)
From the generic title, this seems no more than another film about a girl seeking revenge for years of captivity a la I Spit on Your Grave. On the other hand, things are quickly turned on their head in unexpected ways
Sleight (2016)
We’ve had films about stage magicians in the last few years from The Prestige to Now You See Me; this has the novelty of focusing on a young street magician against the backdrop of L.A.’s drug culture. The film takes a very strange leap off the deep end into SF territory in the last quarter
The Phoenix Incident (2015)
An earlier treatment of the Phoenix Lights incidents, also a Found Footage film and with an almost identical plot to Phoenix Forgotten. The Found Footage has delved into the alien abduction theme before and this is an average treatment without any notable distinction
Phoenix Forgotten (2017)
Film set around the Phoenix Lights, one of the most well-documented modern UFO sightings. Despite being co-produced by Ridley Scott and receiving a theatrical release, this does not seem too different from the standard Found Footage film that novices make for about $2000
Cruel Summer (2016)
Making claim to being based on a true story, this recounts the brutal beating and killing of a handicapped boy by three youths. More social horror than genre horror, this culminates in a horrible and not easy to watch scene
The Sector (2016)
Variant on the alternate world hopping theme where a bounty hunter finds the person he is pursuing is an alternate world criminal. The film’s budget is way too low to do any justice to either the theme or the setting after the collapse of civilisation
The Stranger (1973)
Essentially a tv movie version of the Gerry Anderson film Doppelganger in which an astronaut comes around to find he is on a Counter Earth. The premise, an alternate history of sorts, is nonsensical and even then the film abandons it soon in to become a variant on The Fugitive
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927)
Alfred Hitchcock’s third film about a family who believe their lodger might be a killer. This was made during the silent era but Hitchcock uses extraordinary visual tricks that blow you away