Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994)
Seventh of the A Nightmare on Elm Street films where Wes Craven returns to direct the most remarkable of all the sequels, an extraordinary meta-fiction that takes place in the real world
West of Hell (2018)
A strong and imaginative horror/Western hybrid set aboard a train before the realisation that it is travelling to Hell. Deft characterisations and some tight, electric confrontations make this work well
Westworld (1973)
A hit for novelist Michael Crichton who made his directorial debut here. Themes of machines going amok run throughout Crichton’s work and here he comes up with the ingenious idea of a Western simulation playground using androids that proceed to turn against the humans
Whale Rider (2002)
Magical Realist tale set among New Zealand’s native Maori peoples concerning a young girl’s cautious defiance of traditions
Wham Bam Thank You Spaceman (1975)
An adult film about aliens that visit Earth to repopulate their own species and abduct women during sex whereupon they stimulate them with the penises that come out of their mouths
What Dreams May Come (1998)
Vincent Ward is one of the least recognised great directors in the world. Here he creates an extraordinary vision of the afterlife in which he employs CGI to create a world that resembles classic artworks brought to life
What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? (1969)
Robert Aldrich had massive success with What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and later produced another Grand Dame Guignol film here with Geraldine Page and Ruth Gordon playing psychological games with one another
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)
Psycho-thriller featuring a mad Bette Davis torturing her sister Joan Crawford. This held considerable shock at the time for seeing two former glamorous Hollywood stars beyond their glory days and going nuts. The film’s success inspired a whole fad of imitators
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
What Have You Done to Solange? (1972)
One of the standout entries in the giallo film and certainly one of the best plotted of the genre, concerning a series of murders at a Catholic girls school
What Josiah Saw (2021)
This is a superbly written and directed work of Southern Gothic that consists of three interwoven tales that gradually expose dark family secrets
What Keeps You Alive (2018)
Colin Minihan is an up and rising genre directors well worth keeping an eye. Here he makes a taut and effective survival story where a woman is hunted by her wife who turns psychopathic after a getaway to a cabin in the woods
What Lies Beneath (2000)
Robert Zemeckis takes on the ghost story with uncommon effectiveness. While this is average on a story level, Zemeckis’s directorial approach pushes it to the unnervingly spooky, with the last fifteen minutes being one of the most suspense-filled sequences in recent memory
What Men Want (2019)
A gender-swapped remake of What Women Want in which Taraji P. Henson gets the ability to read men’s thoughts. Henson displays no talent for comedy and this is a spectacularly unfunny film
What Planet Are You From? (2000)
A sex-changed version of My Stepmother is an Alien in which Garry Shandling is an alien come to Earth to breed with a woman. Despite being directed by Mike Nichols this is as lame as it sounds and stumbles through tired routines that were not even funny the first time around
What to Do With the Dead Kaiju? (2022)
An amusing take on the Japanese Monster Movie that takes place in the aftermath of a monster battle as various government agencies debate what do with the carcass of a giant monster lying in the countryside
What We Do in the Shadows (2014)
Hands down, this is the best vampire comedy ever made. An incredibly witty effort that contrasts the cliches of the genre with the mundane business of a group of vampires flatting together in New Zealand. A film that comes with sly deadpan gags packed into the corner of every frame
What Women Want (2000)
Amiable romantic comedy in which Mel Gibson comes round after an accident in the shower to find he now has the ability to read women’s thoughts.
What Women Want (2011)
Chinese remake of the romcom where Mel Gibson was suddenly able to hear women’s thoughts. A second time over, the premise seems slight while the film crucially fails to create much passion between its two stars
What’s So Bad About Feeling Good? (1968)
Mary Tyler Moore stars as a beatnik in a bizarre comedy where people are infected with a virus that makes them happy
Whatever Happened to Harold Smith? (1999)
Eccentric Coming of Age story set during the 1970s punk era where, among the usual other funny travails, the protagonist’s father starts demonstrating psychic abilities
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
When a Killer Calls (2006)
One of The Asylum’s first mockbusters, designed to popularise on the remake of When a Stranger Calls
When a Stranger Calls (1979)
The original babysitter stalker film based on a short film that was then expanded out to feature-length following the success of Halloween
When a Stranger Calls (2006)
Passable remake of the 1979 slasher film that streamlines the original and sets it all in amazing designer dream home
When a Stranger Calls Back (1993)
When a Strange Calls is one of the overlooked entries of the original slasher fad but was quite a hit in its day. This is a forgotten sequel that does some undeniably interesting things with the basics.
When Animals Dream (2014)
Beautifully low key Danish werewolf film (even if the term is never mentioned throughout) that takes place in a tiny seaside village as a girl tries to understand her transformations, the film is quiet and often takes place in silences rather than dialogue, its horror understated with striking effect
When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970)
After the success of their earlier caveman vs stop-motion animated dinosaurs epic One Million Years B.C., Hammer made several other prehistoric films, including this effort that purportedly had a script by an uncredited J.G. Ballard
When Good Ghouls Go Bad (2001)
Halloween film for children from the pen of horror author R.L. Stine of Goosebumps fame. The children’s horror story (and tv movie) is filled with many insipid and formulaic entries but this is a decent one that is not unafraid to scare people
When I Consume You (2021)
The massively underrated Perry Blackshear makes another of his kitchen sink works about a handicapped brother and his sister’s possible ghost fighting a demonic figure
When in Rome (2010)
Agonisingly awful romantic comedy about a Fountain of Love. The plot is utterly vapid, its resolution never in the slightest doubt, while director Mark Steven (Daredevil, Ghost Rider) Johnson sets the entire film up around a series of painfully unfunny slapstick routines
When Marnie Was There (2014)
A ghost story from Studio Ghibli – although rather than any Western equivalent that sets out to scare the pants off us, this is a sweetly tender story of friendship between two girls. The result more than capably approaches some of Hayao Miyazaki’s best
When Michael Calls (1972)
TV movie that comes with a great opening hook – a family receive phone calls from a brother who died 15 years earlier
When Night Falls (2007)
New Zealand-made horror film about two nurses being stalked at a remote hopsital
When Pigs Fly (1993)
Peculiar film where Alfred Molina is the landlord of a pub who is visited by two ghosts appearing out of a rocking chair
When Strangers Appear (2001)
Excellent thriller set around a roadside diner where Radha Mitchell becomes caught between parties hunting the other where seems to be who they appear
When the Bough Breaks (1994)
Strong and absorbing serial killer thriller with Ally Walker tracking a killer who severs children’s hands
When the Bough Breaks (2016)
A throwback to the 1980s/90s psycho-thriller that came out after Fatal Attraction featuring a surrogate mother who develops a stalkerish fixation on a husband. The crucial difference is that this is played with an all-Black cast but in a way that sends out weirdly uncomfortable racial messages
When the Whales Came (1989)
This is what might result if Greenpeace were allowed to take over the BBC arts division. Nicely made but not necessarily a great period drama about a whale curse
When the Wind Blows (1986)
Powerful and biting animated film from a Raymond Briggs book focused on an elderly couple and their wholly inadequate attempts to cope with the outbreak of nuclear war
When Time Becomes a Woman (2012)
How interesting can a film be that consists of nothing more than two people talking? The answer is surprisingly good. Boasting that it is Jordan’s first SF film, this produces an extraordinary series of conceptual reversal twists while never venturing beyond being a man and a woman talking on a beach
When Worlds Collide (1951)
Classic George Pal produced effects spectacular where Earth faces destruction in the face of collision with an oncoming planet and the efforts to build an ark so that some might survive
Where Have All the People Gone (1974)
One of the first films about a mysterious catastrophe that empties the world of all but a handful of survivors that formed the template of later films like The Quiet Earth
Where is Anne Frank (2021)
Beautifully affecting animated film from Ari Folman in which the imaginary companion in Anne Frank’s diary comes to life in the present day
Where the Devil Hides (2014)
This is a modestly effective effort that sits just on the dividing line between interesting and cliched – the undeniably captivating premise involves an Amish-like cult dealing with a series of prophecies about devil children and killings of their number
Where the Devil Roams (2023)
The Adams Family have made a series of striking horror films in recent years. This is an impressive work set around a circus, a cross-country murder spree and dark magic
Where the Wild Things Are (2009)
Spike Jonze conducts his own unique and individualistic adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book about a young boy who sails away to an island of friendly monsters
Whispers (1990)
Dean R. Koontz adaptation in which Victoria Tennant kills an attacker only for him to be found alive again and return to attack her, involving her in a complex web involving Satanism, vampirism and twins
Whispers in the Dark (1992)
Smart and tightly wound psycho-thriller as psychotherapist Annabella Sciorra is wound into the murder of a patient
White (2011)
Another South Korean copy of Ring with haunted pop songs instead of tv broadcasts. This offers interesting insight into the K-pop phenomenon but nothing particularly standout in the way of scares
White Dog (1982)
A controversial film at the time it came out where Kristy MacNichol adopts a stray dog she accidentally runs down only to find it has been trained by racists to kill African-Americans
White Light (1991)
Cheap badly directed film starring Martin Kove as detective who is shot but comes back haunted by visions of the afterlife
White Man’s Burden (1995)
Potent and effective take on race relations that imagines an alternate world where Blacks are a majority and white people live as a disadvantaged minority
White Noise (2005)
Ghost story about so-called Electronic Voice Phenomenon with Michael Keaton as a widower being contacted from beyond by his late wife. A film that achieves some quite reasonable spooky effect
White Noise (2022)
Noah Baumbach makes a bitingly satiric adaptation of a Don DeLillo novel about the panic caused by a toxic cloud
White Noise: The Light (2007)
A sSequel in name only to White Noise, this is a very silly film with Nathan Fillion returning from a near-death experience able to see the auras of those about to die
White of the Eye (1987)
Dazzlingly stylish psycho-thriller from the underrated Donald Cammell with David Keith as a serial killer in a small Arizona town
Whitechapel (2009)
Fascinating British mini-series about a series of modern-day Jack the Ripper copycat killings, one where the writers have clearly done their research
Who Can Kill a Child? (1976)
Fine Spanish-made killer children film inspired by The Birds where children inexplicably turn and kill adults. This has developed a modest cult and works with frequently unsettling effect
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988)
Groundbreaking film that hilariously imagines an alternate world where cartoon characters live alongside humans. The energy and creativity of the film is superlative
Who Invited Them (2022)
A very different type of home invasion film where two mysterious and charming party guests succeed in turning the hosts against each other
Who is Bill Rebane? (2021)
A fascinating documentary devoted to a largely forgotten B-budget sf/horror director and his body of films
Who is Running? (1997)
Debut feature from Oxide Pang of the Pang Brothers fame. A variant on the tv series Early Edition in which a man receives newspapers that foretell the future and must race to prevent fates from occurring in order to earn karmic salvation for his girlfriend
Who Killed Doc Robbin (1948)
Typical Old Dark House comedy of the 1940s, which has been welded to the formula of the Our Gang comedies with a bunch of kids engaged in a comedic antics in a scary mansion peopled by apes, dead bodies and a sinister scientist
Who Wants to Kill Jessie? (1966)
Zany Czech film where a scientist invents a device that can cause dream to manifest only to cause the sexy comic-book heroine her husband is dreaming about to appear
Who’s Watching Oliver (2017)
Low-budget psycho film that bursts with a freshness and originality, not to mention an incredibly perverse kick, featuring an excellent performance from Russell Geoffrey Banks as a mother-dominated killer
Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? (1972)
From the great and overlooked Curtis Harrington, a Grand Old Dames film with Shelley Winters going mad in the Baby Jane vein. This also becomes a modernised retelling of Hansel and Gretel
Wicked City (1987)
Anime from Yoshiaki Kawajiri about a war with a demon dimension that falls halfway between H.P. Lovecraft and a hard-boiled detective thriller and brims over wit fascinatingly pathological sexual imagery
Wicked City (1993)
Live-action version of a manga that was previously made as an anime. This Hong Kong-made version lacks the perverse sexual imagery of the anime but does feature the wildly fantastical action scenes of HK fantasy
Wicked Little Things (2006)
Despite being pitched as a zombie film, this is more of a ghost story featuring undead children who were killed in a mine disaster. Director J.S. Cardone does well with the horror elements
Wicked Stepmother (1989)
The worst film from the usually great Larry Cohen, an unfunny comedy in which a household is taken over by a witch. Bette Davis quit soon into shooting and is replaced partway through by Barbara Carrera
Wicked, Wicked (1973)
Very unique psycho film that takes place in split screen with the killer seen on one side of the screen and the victims and pursuing detective on the other
Wicked: For Good (2025)
The second half of the film adaptation of the musical Wicked. This essentially operates as Wizard of Oz fanfiction and substantially wrenches the characters and backstories from the 1939 film out of shape to write its own story
Wicked: Part 1 (2024)
The first half of a two-part adaptation of the hit Broadway musical that is a prequel to The Wizard of Oz, showing The Wicked Witch’s origin story
Wifelike (2022)
This is like a version of The Stepford Wives updated to the era of Ex Machina and the modern A.I./android film
Wild at Heart (1990)
One of David Lynch’s finest films, with lovers Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern on the run in a road movie that travels through deranged places of the mind and explodes with crazy energy
Wild in the Streets (1968)
Satiric 1960s Youth Revolution film where a rock star becomes US President, reduces the voting age and everyone over thirty is placed in a concentration camp
Wild Wild West (1999)
The big screen remake of the 1960s Western/spy mashup tv series is transformed into an overblown and painfully unfunny Will Smith vehicle that loudly signals it is taking none of itself seriously
Wilder Napalm (1993)
Quirkily eccentric comedy written by Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan about two feuding brothers with pyrokinetic abilities
Wilderness (2006)
Tough brutal British film where a group of youth offenders are hunted while on a wilderness survival course on an island
Wildling (2018)
Bel Powley gives a great performance as a wild child introduced to civilisation for the first time before it is discovered she is a wildling creature
Willard (1971)
Fine little tale of an introverted man who befriends a horde of rats and uses these to gain comeuppance. A hit that presaged a host of Animals Attack films throughout the 1970s.
Willard (2003)
James Wong and Glen Morgan, the duo behind Final Destination, remake the 1971 film about a man and his rats. However, this is set in a stylised 1940s world with a caricatured performance from Crispin Glover that causes the film to lack any credibility
Willow (1988)
Outside of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones films, not much else that George Lucas has made has been a success. This Ron Howard-directed epic fantasy proved to be a big flop where Howard’s lightweight touch fails to make a one-dimensional plot fly
Willow Creek (2013)
Not at all the film you’d expect for a film directed by stand-up comedian Bobcat Goldthwait – a Found Footage film about Bigfoot. Based on Goldthwait’s record as an actor, you expect this to get batshit crazy, but it instead heads into Blair Witch territory with rather effective results
Willy McBean and His Magic Machine (1965)
Likeable puppet animated film about a time-travelling boy and his monkey companion
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)
A Roald Dahl children’s film that has become a cult classic, set in a deliriously nonsensical world with Gene Wilder give a sinisterly threatening performance in the title role
Willy’s Wonderland (2021)
A horror film premised around Nicolas Cage beating the crap out of a series of possessed animatronic robots, a fairly blatant copy of the Five Nights at Freddy’s videogame
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
Wind Chill (2007)
The novelty of a ghost story that all takes place within the confines of a car stalled on the roadside – all with modestly effective results
Wing Commander (1999)
Star Wars meets Top Gun – a concept it is surprising no one has thought of before – but alas this film adaptation of the popular videogame only regurgitates the cliches of either film
Wings of Desire (1987)
Wim Wenders’ exquisitely lovely film about angels that hover over West Berlin invisibly observing the human condition. One of the most beautiful of all paeans to the human condition.
Winnie the Pooh (2011)
On the slight side as a Disney theatrical film, nevertheless this keeps to the essence of the original tales and comes with some appealingly playful fourth-wall breaking visuals
Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey (2023)
Yes, someone made a horror version of the much loved children’s character. Imagine The Texas Chain Saw Massacre where Leatherface has been replaced by Winnie-the-Pooh
Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey II (2024)
Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey offered a horror version of the much loved children’s character. This is more of the same with a bigger budget
Winter’s Tale (2014)
Akiva Goldsman, a screenwriter who has laid a trail of devastation through the genre, attempts to film a classic fantasy novel that has aptly described as unfilmable, resulting in a curtailed story that works in individual scenes but is mostly a spawling patchwork of fantasy elements and a romance that never seems to spark
Wired (1989)
Flop and muchly hated biopic of John Belushi that turns his life into a bad farce. Included here for the presence of an angel that guides Belushi through his life
Wishmaster (1997)
Rather enjoyable effort about an evil djinn that grants cursed wishes. Directed by makeup effects artist Robert Kurtzman, this has been designed to highlight various effects. Three sequels followed.
Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies (1999)
The first of the sequels to Wishmaster and better than the ones that would follow, although still not a patch on the imaginative makeup effects in the original
Wishmaster 3: Beyond the Gates of Hell (2001)
The Wishmaster series was a franchise based around a series of novelty effects wherein a malevolent djinn turned wishes against the wisher. This third entry is the utter nadir of the series