Phantasm: Ravager (2016)
Phantasm was a cult hit with its eerie otherworldly dream horrors. It spawned four sequels of which this is probably the last given that Angus Scrimm died earlier this year. The series peaked a couple of films ago and here the regulars pander to a comfortable familiarity without adding anything new to the mix
Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016)
Blumhouse’s Ouija didn’t get many good reviews but they proceeded with a prequel here. This is automatically the better film from the outset by employing Mike Flanagan, behind amazing works like Absentia, Hush and The Haunting of Hill House, as director, even if it comes out as one of Flanagan’s lesser works
Don’t Kill It (2016)
An enthusiastically full-tilt horror comedy. This draws from the classic The Hidden in its premise of a demon that hops between bodies, possessing the person that kills its previous host. Dolph Lundgren has the time of his life
Rock’n’Roll Nightmare (1987)
A bad movie classic. A vanity project for Canadian heavy metal star/bodybuilder Jon-Mikl Thor who plays a heavy metal star who takes frequently his shirt off to pose while his band are killed by demonic forces (represented by the screen’s maybe worst ever puppet effects) as they try to record an album
Man Made Monster (1941)
An overlooked latter day Universal monster movie with Lionel Atwill on wonderfully demented form as a mad scientist who turns Lon Chaney, Jr. into an electrified human dynamo
Branded (2012)
An ambitious film in its depiction of a near-future Russia and satire on the media. The latter half has the hero undergo a mystical experience and discover that advertising brands are living entities that feed on human need
Freshwater (2016)
The killer crocodile/alligator film has not had a great track record (with only a couple of exceptions). This is not one of those exceptions and quickly sinks into risibility
I Am Not a Serial Killer (2016)
Unique and quite remarkable film about a teen in a nowhere town who recognises the traits of a serial killer in himself and then discovers that aging neighbour Christopher Lloyd is actually a shapechanging monster
The Greasy Strangler (2016)
The most likely response to this is going to be “WHAT THE $%@^* AM I WATCHING?” – a film so far removed from the average experience, so located in its own unique, utterly eccentric universe it has instant cult classic written all over it
Prevenge (2016)
Directed by and starring actress Alice Lowe, this comes in a blackly funny vein. Lowe plays a pregnant woman driven by the voice of her baby as she starts dispatching everything from sleazy men to those who annoy her
Psychonauts, The Forgotten Children (2015)
Strange, surrealist animation from Spain – the characters are the small, cute talking animals you might encounter in a standard piece of cutsie moppet animation but it exists in a disturbing world that is anything but where characters are plagued by drug addictions, mental illness and police brutality
Quatermass 2 (1957)
The second of the Quatermass films. An alien body snatchers tale that suggests even the British government has been infiltrated. This is regarded by many as the best of the series
Dofus – Book 1: Julith (2015)
Animated film spun off from a popular French online gameworld, which had also previously spawned an animated tv series. The results are amiably engaging with a sense of humour that makes the show
Harmony (2015)
Anime set in a disquiet utopia where the populace is monitored by cyber implants. Almost completely eschewing the usual action scenes of sf anime, this tells a strong, intelligent and character-driven story
Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV (2016)
Anime film released to accompany the computer game. Dazzling, epic-sized animation, mocapped in photorealistic detail that wows the eye on a scale that Western animators never come near
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2016)
Tim Burton used to be the great hope of fantastic cinema but his efforts since 2000 have been greeted with general disappointment. This Young Adult adaptation plays out like a fantasy version of the X-Men
Desecrated (2015)
Yet another effort about teens running around the backwoods being stalked by a madman. This does better than most with the psycho of the show being an original character, given an intense, domineering performance from Gonzalo Menendez
We Are the Flesh (2016)
There are few films that you can accuse of crossing over taboo lines and keeping going without compromise. This Mexican film has been construed as a catalogue of depravities; on the other hand, the lack of even a nominal plot soon causes this to lapse into repetitive tedium
The Eyes of My Mother (2016)
An extraordinary film, the story of a disturbed woman who keeps people prisoners in her barn. The stark effectiveness of the film all comes in the brooding black-and-white photography
River of Fables (2015)
An anthology of regional folktales from the author who would appear to be India’s equivalent of the Brothers Grimm. After a slow start, the four interwoven tales rather pleasingly segue into horror territory and the film works with some undeniable effect
Kantemir (2015)
Interesting effort about actors putting on a cursed play that starts taking over the actors to replay events. With Robert Englund in a rare non-villainous, non-over-acted lead role
Operation Avalanche (2016)
This takes the old conspiracy theory about the Moon Landing being faked by tv and rather hilariously is a Found Footage film being shot by two filmmakers who have been tasked with fabricating the Moon Landing
The Girl With All the Gifts (2016)
The zombie film has become a creatively exhausted genre in recent years. This is an effort that completely changes the game with fiercely original effect, anchored by one of the best child performances in some time
Ghost in the Shell (2015)
Another anime film in the Ghost in the Shell franchise. This was the fifth episode of the Ghost in the Shell: Arise reboot series that received a theatrical release
Burke & Hare (1972)
One of several film versions of the story of the 19th Century grave robbers Burke and Hare, made at the height of the Anglo-horror cycle. While reasonably accurate to the facts, the story is sidetracked by softcore happenings at a brothel
Darwin (2016)
This imagines a future where people have become so absorbed in online communication that they live in isolated cubicles. An interesting idea that the film does zero to make believable
Lavender (2016)
From the director of The Last Exorcism Part II, a title that does nothing to suggest a horror film. All we get is a ghost story that does an M. Night Shyamalan shift into an improbably contrived fugue state drama
The Unseen (2016)
Modestly effective effort about a man whose body is slowly fading away and becoming invisible. A film carried by some fine effects sequences, this derives its frisson from the gradual revelation of what is happening but loses it when the mundane subplots take over in the second half
Personal Shopper (2016)
Olivier Assayas’s high-profile but wildly critically divided work feels as though it has several competing plots circling around Kristen Stewart – a ghost story, one about a mystery texter and briefly a murder mystery – which feel incomplete and unfinished and only maybe intersecting with one another
Endless Poetry (2016)
At the age of 87, Alejandro Jodorowsky makes second of his autobiographical films following The Dance of Reality. In Jodorowsky’s hands, the story of his adolescence is turned into a gaudy and gloriously surreal mardi gras
Cadence (2016)
For a long time, this effort about a girl experiencing nightmare visions on her family farm doesn’t seem to be doing anything – then gets interesting as it switches to a parallel reality where what happens is mirrored slightly different
Life After Life (2016)
Chinese film in which a dead wife comes back to inhabit the body of her son to get her husband to move a tree before their village is redeveloped
Dolores (2016)
A model maker is hired to build a miniature of a famous actress’s house but then finds the model is capable of influencing reality. An ingenious premise that plays out with near-perfection
Another Evil (2016)
Comedy about a man with ghosts in his home who invites in a so-called ‘ghost assassin’ before it becomes increasingly apparent he is completely nuts. Less a horror comedy than an eccentric bromance gone wrong
The Red Turtle (2016)
Studio Ghibli’s first ever international co-production. A desert island castaway fantasy, this makes interesting comparison to the recent Robinson Crusoe/The Wild Life, even if both films are poles apart in style. This is dialogueless, spare and contained with a minimalism of plot and drama
The Atticus Institute (2015)
The rarity of a really good Found Footage film. Designed to look like lost footage from 1970s psychic experiments, this concerns a scientific team who discover they are dealing with a woman who is demonically possessed
Automata (2014)
This Blade Runner-influenced work about robots that develop artificial intelligence is exceptional, featuring a particularly captivating last half with Antonio Banderas journeying with strangely alive robots
Under the Shadow (2016)
I was intrigued a few years ago about whether such a thing as the Islamic horror film existed and shortly after we had A Girl Walks Alone at Night. This could be considered an Iranian version of The Babadook and is a spooky and well made show about a woman slowly descending into fear and superstition
The Giant (2016)
For the most part, this plays out as a mundane drama about someone with a terrible deformity – similar to The Elephant Man or Mask – but who also has daydreams in which he is a giant
The Earth Dies Screaming (1964)
Terence Fisher was a cornerstone figures at Hammer Films. Less well-regarded is his 1960s trilogy of science-fiction films. This is an alien invasion film that is a model of economy, told with a stark effective tension
Mongolian Death Worm (2010)
Another low-budget monster movie for the Syfy Channel. Between Sean Patrick Flanery’s unconvincing adventurer hero and the filmmaker’s failure to even vaguely approximate what Mongolia or its locals look like, this quickly slides down into a tatty, indifferently made copy of Tremors
The Enfield Haunting (2015)
The Enfield Haunting is a supposedly true-life haunting that most audiences are familiar with from The Conjuring 2; this is an earlier tv mini-series treatment that offers a more realistically grounded telling
De Palma (2015)
Brian De Palma is one of the most stylish directors in the world. In this documentary, he candidly reflects on his career, wryly accepts his flops and recounts the witty anecdotes from behind the scenes
Swiss Army Man (2016)
A ridiculously off the wall and heartwarming film. Imagine a crosshatch between Weekend at Bernie’s and Cast Away – where Wilson the beachball is replaced by Daniel Radcliffe as a farting talking corpse
Before I Wake (2016)
An overlooked Mike Flanagan film about a kid with the ability to bring his dreams to life, this reads like a cross between an A Nightmare on Elm Street copy and the Joe Dante Twilight Zone – The Movie episode
Die Cheerleader Die (2008)
Hands down, this is the worst slasher film ever made. Seemingly shot by amateurs who have never held a video camera before and acted by those who have no prior experience, this is a painful viewing experience
Death Takes a Holiday (1934)
Classic fantasy film in which Death takes human form to visit a party and experience the human condition. Frederic March gives us Death as a comically eccentric outsider and the film has some great moments of imagination
Cat Girl (1957)
One of the better copies of Cat People, an Anglo-horror film with Barbara Shelley coming to believe that she is the inheritor of a family curse that causes her to turn into a big cat
Approaching the Unknown (2016)
This comes with the clear influence of The Martian, telling a similar but more low-key story of a lone astronaut having problems on the way to Mars. This is less about science ingenuity that his fracturing mental state
31 (2016)
Rob Zombie featuring people abducted and forced to play in a deathsport game. This is largely a re-run of House of 1000 Corpses, while both films in turn draw heavily on The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. As always, Rob Zombie has a following but also switches large swathes of his audience off
Blair Witch (2016)
The Blair Witch Project was genuinely innovative. It is a surprise that we never saw a string of sequels. Adam Wingard finally does here but at a time when the Found Footage genre feels played out of moves
Future Shock! The Story of 2000AD (2014)
A documentary about 2000AD, a weekly British comic-book that gave birth to Judge Dredd and featured some of the earliest works from names like Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman, among others
The Child’s Eye (2010)
The Pang Brothers were for a time some the best directors in the horror genre. This is one of their slighter efforts, a misguided venture into 3D. Seen flat, it still holds an undeniable amount of the eerie atmosphere they specialise in
Nothing But Trouble (1991)
The only film ever directed by Dan Aykroyd, a bizarre oddity that was a huge flop on its initial release. The film is a strange comedy set in an American Gothic junkyard town where even the smallest legal infractions are punished by death. Aykroyd can’t seem to decide it the tone is comedy or horror
Brotherhood of Blood (2007)
Vampire hunter film made by two Uwe Boll associates that plays out like a low-budget version of Blade II – it is passably well put together but the scope of action appears constricted to a single warehouse
Robinson Crusoe (2016)
Robinson Crusoe is a classic adventure story about a man shipwrecked on a desert island. It has no fantastic content but this is a bizarre animated version where Crusoe is aided by the talking animals that inhabits the island amid much slapstick shenanigans
For the Love of Spock (2016)
Documentary about the life of Leonard Nimoy made for the 50th Anniversary of Star Trek. Directed by Nimoy’s son Adam, this is mostly a biography tracing Nimoy’s life with some fascinating material showing the evolution of Spock
Train to Busan (2016)
The zombie film has become an overworked vein in the last few years. This South Korean film does nothing to reinvent it, just contains the drama aboard a train but manages to create a grippingly intense epic of the genre
Mythica: The Darkspore (2015)
Mythica: A Quest for Heroes was a fan-made epic fantasy film made with a high degree of creativity and professionalism; this sequel is slightly the lesser but still maintains the high degree of quality
A Tale from the East (1990)
A wannabe entry aboard the HK supernatural fantasy fad of the late 80s/early 90s sparked by the likes of the Mr Vampire and A Chinese Ghost Story films … This, which involves a time travel plot, is crippled by a pandering to a slapstick inanity that makes it a painful watching experience
The Human Duplicators (1965)
This is regarded as a bad movie classic. An alien invasion tale, it was the first film on the theme of humans being replaced by androids. No worse than any other B movie of the era, it does suffer from a dullness
The Child (1977)
Forgotten effort from the heyday of devil children films (The Exorcist, The Omen et al). This takes place in a backwoods setting and has a director who is determined to pile on atmosphere frequently to the point of overkill
Darling (2015)
One of the films from the most promising Mickey Keating. Darling owes a great deal of debt to Roman Polanski’s Repulsion but Keating very effectively drags us into a disturbed mental space
Solace (2015)
This was intriguingly once planned as a Se7en sequel but I felt uninspired as it seems just another clairvoyant murder mystery. On the other hand, it is grippingly well written and has some great performances. With the introduction of a rival clairvoyant halfway through, it however becomes something amazing
Morgan (2016)
A.I. film directed by Ridley Scott’s son. The set-up seems awfully similar to Ex Machina – unfortunately, this sidesteps any of that fascinating questions about A.I. that film dealt in, while the latter half just becomes The Terminator before reaching a frankly unbelievable twist ending that sinks the film
Ice Age: Collision Course (2016)
I hate the Ice Age films and their tediously extruded adventures. The opening sequence here and its ignorance of even basic science is the most inane thing in the entire series
Night of the Scarecrow (1995)
Film concerning a warlock resurrected in the body of a scarecrow seeking revenge. This is conceived around a series of novelty makeup effects but director Jeff Burr treats the material seriously and with reasonable results
Dr. Jekyll & Mistress Hyde (2003)
Softcore all-girl take on the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde story concerning a formula that brings out repressed sexuality. The expected tumblings are handled with an arty flair that makes for an undeniably interesting watch
Space Milkshake (2012)
The title and the description of a space station crew dealing with a mutating runner duck gives the expectation of something wacky – what we get is more like a variant on Dark Star, a comedy set around the boredom of life on a space station and a 1970s era episode of Doctor Who
Elstree 1976 (2015)
A documentary devoted to the extras and bit players who appeared in Star Wars. Gently affectionate, it tells the story of people who never much else notable and how being part of such a cultural landmark impacted their lives
The Mermaid (2016)
Stephen Chow has proven himself a comic genius in his directorial works of the 90s/00s. Unfortunately, as he has gained mainstream acclaim, his films have started to disappear under their big-budgets. This is sort of a version of Splash! by way of the fad for madcap Hong Kong slapstick
Don’t Breathe (2016)
This, which is sort of The People Under the Stairs by way of Wait Until Dark, was greeted with terms like ‘an instant classic’. It is a well-oiled machine that produces some undeniable jumps but little remains in memory after it is over
Howl (2015)
We had Snakes of a Plane; by the same token, this could have titled ‘Werewolf on a Train’, although plays itself seriously the whole way. This is a model of effectiveness that delivers constant contained tension
The Unquiet (2008)
There is a certain potential to the concept of two rival teams, parapsychological debunkers and a tabloid tv crew, researching a reputedly haunted prison. Only a couple of years later, this would have been mandatorily made as a Found Footage film but suffers from a director with no aptitude for atmosphere
The Cape Canaveral Monsters (1960)
The one other SF film made by Phil Tucker, the director of Robot Monster. An alien invader effort made to capitalise on the Space Race with aliens trying to sabotage rocket launches
Dead Friend (2004)
South Korean ghost story that has borrowed most of its moves from the J-horror cycle – Ring, The Grudge et al. A relatively anodyne treatment is enlivened by a twist ending that draws heavily on The Sixth Sense
Cyborg X (2016)
From Arrowstorm Entertainment, a low-budget company that make highly professional films. Here they have even roped Danny Trejo into playing a role in a passable attempt to replicate a 1990s Albert Pyun post-holocaust cyborg film
Baskin (2015)
Balls-to-the-wall horror from Turkey. It is not clear what is going on for much of the film about police investigating a house filled with Devil worshippers but you cannot deny that it pulls out all stops
Pete’s Dragon (2016)
Another Disney remake that hardly resemble its source – the original was light slapstick with a big cartoon dragon, this is a sober wild child story where the dragon is now an endangered species
The Dead Room (2015)
New Zealand-made film about a trio of parapsychologists investigating a reputedly haunted farmhouse. This treads very familiar ground and ultimately suffers from a sedate approach
The Valley of the Rats (2016)
There is considerable conceptual ambition to this – a giallo homage, most of which takes place inside a limo. Charitably, you call it is a micro-budgeted collision between Cosmopolis and The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears, alas the film lets narrative fragment into incoherence in the latter half
The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (1975)
High-profile film of its era that was mounted with an A-budget sheen. Beyond that, the film is made with the sedate predictability of a tv movie – it takes the hero half the film to work out what the title tells us
The Clinic (2010)
This Australian thriller has a captivating premise – pregnant women are abducted, C-sectioned and imprisoned where they must fight to the death to get their children back
Goal of the Dead (2014)
Zombies and soccer! Ok? From co-director of the ferocious French zombie film The Horde, a rather entertaining effort that resembles something of Shaun of the Dead in its comedy approach
The Brand New Testament (2015)
A wickedly irreverent and even occasionally blasphemous comedy in which God is a scruffy, bad-tempered man living in Brussels who spends all his time devising ways to make humans miserable
Sausage Party (2016)
The most demented premise of the year – an animated film about the lives of the talking produce in a supermarket. This is crude, rude and guaranteed to offend (as might be expected from a Seth Rogen penned vehicle); it is also one of the funniest and cleverest films of the year
Sleeping Beauty (2014)
In the early 2010s, we had a series of fairytales rewritten as dark adult fantasies; The Asylum served up their own cheap copies – this was their version of Maleficent. Directed by actor Casper Van Dien, this not uninterestingly plays out as a fantasy adventure that follows the prince’s attempts to enter the castle
Revenge of Billy the Kid (1992)
A British entry in the 1980s splatter comedy. An aimless comedy about idiotic hayseed yokels with occasional moments of bloodletting and a half-human, half-goat creature running about
The Sheriff and the Satellite Kid (1979)
The late Bud Spencer and his compatriot Terence Hill appeared in seventeen badly dubbed, slapstick comedies in the 1970s/80s … Spencer went it alone for this excruciating slapstick take on Close Encounters of the Third Kind in which that film’s kid Cary Guffey is an alien found by Spencer’s sheriff
Bloody Birthday (1981)
The evil child film has a long history. This is essentially a slasher movie variation where instead of a hockey-masked killer we have a trio of malevolent children devising a series of entertaining dispatches for grown-ups
Space Pirate Captain Harlock (2013)
The brooding space pirate Captain Harlock is one of the famous anti-heroes in manga and anime. Harlock gets a big screen revamp here from Shinji (Appleseed) Aramaki, one of the most amazing of modern anime directors, who delivers a series of epic space battles with a breathtaking beauty
Sharknado: The 4th Awakens (2016)
The bad movie hit of Sharknado was a surprise to everyone and spawned sequels. By this point, creativity appears to have dried up – essentially, the Sharknado series has jumped the shark
Suicide Squad (2016)
This team-up of C-list DC super-villains proved a surprise hit. The script is all over the place but Margot Robbie owns the screen as the gleefully insane Kewpie Doll gone wrong Harley Quinn
Debug (2014)
Actor David Hewlett directs a B-budget film where a team of convicted hackers are sent to clean out the computers on a spaceship only to come up against a malevolent A.I.
Dark Remains (2005)
A low-budget independent film that is making a clear effort to spook an audience. On the other side, it is also mining the ghost story, a genre that feels like it has run out of anything original in its tired and formulaic plot possibilities
The Caller (2011)
A horror version of Frequency where Rachelle Lefevre has phone conversations across time with a disturbed woman who then starts causing people to disappear and altering the timeline. Cleverly told and with some chilling twists
Sorority House Massacre (1986)
A Roger Corman produced slasher film, which spawned two sequels. The plot draws heavily on Halloween and comes with all the usual scenes of co-eds being stalked by a maniac escaped from an asylum
Arabian Nights (2015)
This is not an adaptation of the Arabian Nights but the title has been appropriated for a collection of quasi-fantastical tales and even documentaries about the Portuguese Austerity Crisis over six hours in length
Holidays (2016)
Another in the spate of multi-director horror anthologies with each episode here being set around a holiday. As with these films, some of the episodes work well, some end with a puzzled WTF and most fall somewhere in between
Batman: The Killing Joke (2016)
Adaptation of the Alan Moore graphic novel, one of the most famous comic-book titles of all time. The notoriously cranky Moore need have no reason to shun this film version, which recreates his work right down to preserving his dialogue and replicating the set-up of individual panels