Childhood’s End (2015)
Arthur C. Clarke’s book is one of the all-time SF classics; this mini-series adaptation counts as one of the biggest book-to-film abortions in the SF genre handled by people who know nothing about SF
The Forest (2016)
Film about Japan’s legendary Suicide Forest that comes rich in a sense of original mythology. All possibilities are wrung out by incredibly tepid direction that fails to deliver anything remotely scary
Dark Summer (2015)
Director Paul Solet made an incredibly creepy debut film Grace. His follow-up has Keir Gilchrist imprisoned on home detention with an ankle bracelet only to find the house is haunted
100° Below 0 (2013)
Syfy Channel disaster movie about a mass volcanic eruption plunging Europe into an instant Ice Age. All the usual potted formulaic drama and cheap effects – the absurdity of the film is surely demonstrated by the fact that people wander about in the midst of -100 degree temperatures in t-shirts
Vampire Diary (2006)
Not to be confused with tv’s i>The Vampire Diaries, this is a British film that sets out to reconstruct the lesbian vampire film within the frame of modern LGBT relationships. It is also Found Footage, an early and rather amateurish variant, but not without some effect
Killer Mountain (2011)
You would not be mistaken for thinking this a regular mountaineering drama – and that’s how half of the film transpires. Then it gets weird and introduces everything from monsters to Ancient Astronauts
Fire City: End of Days (2015)
A fascinatingly original film about an apartment building of demons who live amongst humans and feed on their miseries. Directed by makeup effects man Tom Woodruff, Jr and featuring some extraordinary creature designs
Hellions (2015)
The return of director of Pontypool should be anticipated. But this kills a near-foolproof premise – masked children come after a heroine on Halloween night wanting her unborn baby – with a pink lighting scheme
Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension (2015)
For supposedly the Paranormal Activity series final entry, this offer the novelty of the first Found Footage film in 3D – a gimmick that signals the series is out of fresh ideas. Moreover, the series’ look via watching security cameras has been de-emphasised in favour of another CGI driven ghost story
Martian Land (2015)
The Asylum’s response to the box-office success of The Martian. The script has only made minimal effort to research the science but this works somewhat better than their usual fare
Womaneater (1957)
Behind the lurid title, this concerns a mad scientist sacrificing women to a plant in his basement … This came out the same year as Hammer Films burst onto the English horror scene and by comparison is a plodding affair with no greater ambition than being a 1940s Bela Lugosi cheapie
Parts: The Clonus Horror (1979)
This had its entire plot ripped off as Michael Bay’s The Island. Without Bay’s action overkill, this is by far the better film, working as a fascinating mystery set-up that leads to an ingenious twist
The House That Screamed (1969)
From the almost unknown Narciso Ibañez Serrador, this is essentially a giallo thriller made with the lush sensibilities of a Hammer film. Set in a girl’s boarding school, this substantially prefigures Suspiria
Girlhouse (2014)
Slasher film that comes with the interestingly original setting of a college dorm webcam porn site. Unfortunately, the film takes an awfully safe and tasteful route in delivering it
Landmine Goes Click (2015)
A film that sells its premise in three words. Essentially a variant on Phone Booth, this keeps a character trapped on a landmine unable to move and keeps piling on torturous twists from there
Planet Earth (1974)
The second of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry’s unsold Genesis II pilots. While you can see the series had some potential, the plot about the venture to a society where women keep men as slaves has a giggly silliness that feels like a throwback to 50s films like Queen of Outer Space
Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses (2006)
Another animated Barbie film that leaves you quite certain that every problem in life can be solved with a positive upbeat ditty
Library Wars (2013)
Set in a future where libraries have armies fighting against the militarised forces of censorship. The social scenario strains credibility but this Japanese Young Adult film works well
Nightmare in Wax (1969)
Undeniably influenced by the classic Mystery of the Wax Museum, an entertainingly lurid film with Cameron Mitchell as a mad waxworks curator taking revenge on a Hollywood studio by encasing the bodies of its’ stars in wax
Robot Overlords (2014)
While the title sounds like a cheesy faux B movie, this a surprisingly serious work. Taking undeniable influence from tv’s The Tripods , it is a YA work about the fight to free Earth following a machine invasion that proves far more entertaining than anything one expects of it
Descendants (2015)
This has an appealing premise – the children of all the Disney villains have grown up and go to school together. This is promptly killed by the awfulness of the film itself, which is essentially High School Musical set in the Disney universe
Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
It’s not another Empire Strikes Back but it makes up for the prequels. A good part fanservice to the original – if overly reliant on rehashing elements from Star Wars – this also does many things right
A Christmas Horror Story (2015)
An anthology that offers a quartet of Christmas horror stories, including ones of zombified elves and a Krampus monster. Hosted by William Shatner who plays a radio talkshow host in the wraparound
The Deadly Spawn (1982)
Fan filmmaking back from the day when filmmakers struggled with technologies like Super 8, a film driven by its makers’ immense enthusiasm and some surprisingly good creature effects, making one of the few highly original variations on the Alien alien
The Devil in Miss Jones (1973)
Classic 1970s porn film about a spinster condemned to Hell who is sent back to the world to experience the lusts of the flesh. Made back at a time when the people involved seemed to care about making a good film as well
Phantom of the Rue Morgue (1954)
A version of Edgar Allan Poe’s Murders in the Rue Morgue that was made for the original 3D fad. That is to say, it is more a case of some elements of the story having been shuffled around into a new story with Karl Malden as a mad zookeeper using a hypnotised ape to kill women
The Children (2008)
Rather well-made British entry where two families at a Christmas get-together find their respective children have inexplicably turned against them with murderous results. This draws the tensions out to a sustained siege with undeniably effective results
I Spit on Your Grave III: Vengeance is Mine (2015)
These I Spit on Your Grave films have considerable brutal effect. On the other hand, by the time of this second sequel to a remake, it does seem exploitative watching the heroine being abused again because the previous films made money
Bone Tomahawk (2015)
This is like a Western version of The Hills Have Eyes. Exceptionally written – slow, sombre and character-driven, containing one of Kurt Russell’s best performances, before emerging into a brutal horror survival story
Chosen Survivors (1974)
Largely remembered now for its premise – survivors in a nuclear fallout shelter find they have been trapped with a horde of vampire bats. Sort of a conceptual collision between The Birds and The Andromeda Strain
The Love War (1970)
Unusually effective tv movie about two warring alien species fighting for the fate of the Earth. An early effort from producer Aaron Spelling with an eye-opening cast of before they were famous names
Gargoyles (1972)
A fascinating tv movie about the discovery of a race of demons. This has gained a cult reputation because of its uncanny atmosphere and the eerily unworldly title characters
The Man Who Changed His Mind (1936)
Classic Boris Karloff mad scientist effort in which he plays a scientist who invents a device that allows him to swap minds into different bodies. All the usual Gothic fear-filled view of science from this era, but rather well made and with Karloff on fine form
Tales of Halloween (2015)
An anthology of Halloween-themed horror tales, all from different genre directors, including some interesting high-profile names. The results are uneven with the film providing a couple of amusing segments but nothing truly standout
Back in Time (2015)
Fan-produced documentary about the making of the Back to the Future trilogy. The filmmakers get face time with almost everybody involved. Far less interesting are the scenes dealing with DeLorean restoration
Krampus (2015)
Drawing on the Teutonic traditions of the anti-Santa, this gleefully wades into anti-Christmas spirit. Although never as much as it promises to be, it does astonish at a major studio releasing such a dark film right on Christmas season
Deep Dark (2015)
A weird and twisted film about a failed artist who develops a relationship with a hole in a wall. Imagine something that falls between Barton Fink and the Radiator Girl sequences from Eraserhead
Nemesis 4: Death Angel (1996)
Another of the string of cyborg action films that low-budget director Albert Pyun made in the 1990s. This has a head-scratching fascination, featuring very weird cyborg sex scenes, the unearthly bodybuilder heroine Sue Price and a series of strange philosophical ruminations
Transmorphers (2007)
The Asylum’s answer to Michael Bay’s Transformers. Bay had a $150 million budget; they try to copy it for $250,000. To its credit, the film flies valiantly to deliver a watchable show in the face of inadequate effects
The Warrior and the Sorceress (1984)
One of the spate of sword and sorcery films that came out during this period, marginally better than most. The plot is a blatant copy of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo where a swordsman (David Carradine) sets two rival gang factions in a town against one another
Wrecker (2015)
I have to search my memory to think of another film that is so openly plagiaristic – this is almost a scene-for-scene remake of Steven Spielberg’s Duel about a man facing a killer truck on a highway. This misses the subtlety of the original so widely you could run a highway through it
The Good Dinosaur (2015)
Pixar have never been the same since they slipped into the easy familiarity of sequelitis. This is essentially a boy and his dog story but played out with a dinosaur and a caveboy, but also an alternate history tale
Victor Frankenstein (2015)
An madcap new version of the Mary Shelley story where everything is turned up to an overwrought 11 on the dial. How more nutzoid can you get than a version where Igor the hunchback (a completely miscast Daniel Radcliffe) is the main character?
The Vatican Tapes (2015)
The exorcism film has made a big comeback in the 00s. From one of the co-directors of the Crank films, this only offers up the same mix of cliches as usual – indeed, often seems like a series of random jump scares without any rationale as to why they would be happening
Demonic Toys (1992)
An entertaining B-budget film about malevolent toys from low-budget producer Charles Band, known for the Ghoulies and Puppetmaster films. One of the first works from screenwriter David S. Goyer
Raise the Titanic (1980)
Massively ambitious Clive Cussler adaptation about the attempts to raise the wreck of the Titanic, which became one of the most over-budgeted flops of its day. The actual raising of the Titanic looks utterly magnificent but the rest of the film remains sunken amid murky underwater photography that looks like children’s toys shot in a bathtub
Santo in “Killers From Other Worlds” (1971)
In something like his 30th film and amid the tatty production values of a Edward D. Wood Jr film, El Santo fight mobsters who have employed alien monsters that look like giant ambulatory bean bags
Lavalantula (2015)
A film about giant fire-breathing spiders. This is lifted from formula by a sense of humour and even peculiarly brings many of the cast of the Police Academy series out of retirement
Attack on Titan (2015)
The live-action adaptation of a popular manga series, this comes with a completely WTF premise about humanity defending itself from an invasion by a horde of misshapen giants that like to bite people’s heads off
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 (2015)
The finale of the saga comes with a tough, gritty edge that make it the best directed of the series. On the other hand, it builds well only to arrive at an ending that goes oddly sideways and throws sympathies to the wind
Haunt (2014)
A modern ghost story that aims for a slow, delicate atmosphere. Noble ambitions but what we end up with is a film that fails to produce any boo moment that makes us leap out of our seats
The Cyclops (1957)
This has the clever idea of updating the Cyclops from The Odyssey to the era of the atomic monster movie. Director Bert I. Gordon is otherwise back at his usual tricks of serving up optically enlarged insects and animals
X the Unknown (1956)
An early Hammer film, an attempt to exploit the success of their Quatermass films. This prefigures the menace of The Blob by a couple of years (while adding a few dashes of the atomic monster fad) but comes with a stark b/w urgency that makes this by far the better film
Now You See It (2005)
Not to be confused with Now You See Me, the one about the bank-robbing magicians, this is a surprisingly good film for the usual creative wasteland that is the Disney Channel about a reality show for illusionists who discovers a teen whose powers would appear to be real
Air (2015)
This comes with a great premise – two men are woken from cryogenic suspension only to find one of their cryo-tubes broken and they discover their purpose there may not be what they were told
Eliza Graves (2014)
Brad Anderson adapts an Edgar Allan Poe story about an asylum where the inmates are posing as the staff. This is lush period piece with an amazing cast line-up – the only surprise is that it did no box-office
The Green Inferno (2013)
Eli Roth pays homage to the Italian cannibal films of the 70/80s, the most extreme genre ever put on film. While not uninteresting, rendered on a studio budget and passed uncut by the MPAA, this never touches the raw savagery of the originals
Demonic (2015)
James Wan has an exemplary track record in one’s opinion, you think this would extend to anything he produces. Here all we get are series of tired haunted house cliches before a twist ending that makes no real sense
Joker (2012)
Bollywood SF film that is like a version of Shyamalan’s aliens film Signs with a few dashes of The Mouse That Roared, all played as a comic farce with much singing and dancing
Chemical Wedding (2008)
Ostensibly about occultist Aleister Crowley reincarnating in the present, this overflows with mad ideas involving quantum physics, VR, alternate worlds and a heap of classic references – and moreover, is written by the lead singer of Iron Maiden
Stonados (2013)
Another cheap Syfy Channel disaster movie – this one featuring a tornado that rains boulders that explode upon landing. Everything runs to the usual formula plotting and cheap CGI effects of these types of movies
The Visitation (2006)
The novelty of the first Christian horror film. As opposed to much of the message-heavy tripe that usually gets peddled in this niche market, this is actually well structured with a number of interesting ambiguities and engaging as a story for the better part
The Final Girls (2015)
A wittily clever deconstruction of the slasher film where a bunch of contemporary characters are transported inside a 1980s slasher movie where their modern ways proceed to hilariously upset the cliches
Spectre (2015)
The fourth Daniel Craig James Bond film welcomely resurrects one of the great nemeses from the series past – only to fall flat on its face. This is a Bond film severely hampered by a director unattuned to the classical elements of the series and the need to cripple everything by giving Bond backstory and character development
3 Headed Shark Attack (2015)
With the Mega Shark and especially the Sharknado films, The Asylum played the killer shark film as ridiculously as possible with delirious results. In this sequel to 2-Headed Shark Attack, they get the blend of the tongue-in-cheek absurdity to a point of near-perfection
Killer Motel (2012)
An obscure Japanese film with quite a WTF element about a backwoods motel where things get very strange – the hosts slaughtering the guests, a zombie wandering around
Orgy of the Dead (1965)
Thought to be a long-lost Edward D. Wood, Jr film for many years. Although only written by Wood, this has all the bad acting and hilarious purple prose of a Wood film. The film consists of strippers doing routines in a graveyard
Gamera: Super Monster (1980)
Possibly the worst Kaiju film ever made – produced by a bankrupt studio in order to recoup losses and cheaply slung together by rehashing footage from the other Gamera films
Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (2015)
There is something appealing to the film’s premise – of boyscouts with their knowhow and do-gooder mentality being the best equipped to survive the zombie apocalypse.But this a film not nearly as clever as it thinks it is being
The Death of “Superman Lives”: What Happened? (2015)
Fascinating documentary examining the proposed Superman Lives film from Tim Burton starring Nicolas Cage that never ended up going ahead. The competing personalities make for compulsive watching
The Last Witch Hunter (2015)
This seemed to promise something of tv’s late lamented Constantine or the first Warlock. Instead what we end up with has been turned into a ponderous effects vehicle for Vin Diesel
The Boy and the Beast (2015)
If Hayao Miyazaki ever follows through on his threat to retire, the one most likely inheritor would be Mamoru Hosoda. This is a perfectly enjoyably film that is sort of The Karate Kid by way of Disney’s The Jungle Book
Asterix: The Mansion of the Gods (2014)
The best among the films made from the Asterix comics. This delivers the characters and the visual humour the way they should be, plus leaves the sly satiric wit of the originals intact with side-splitting results
Extraordinary Tales (2015)
An anthology of Edgar Allan Poe tales narrated by Christopher Lee, Bela Lugosi and others. Each episode is in a different style, where the succinctness allows the stories to be told as written
April and the Extraordinary World (2015)
Animated film that takes place in a Steampunk alternate history. This brims over with an extraordinary degree of visual invention from the amazingly detailed vistas of the world to a script tossing in quirky twists and wacky inventions
Goodnight Mommy (2014)
Effective and disturbing work about two boys who begin to think that someone else might have taken their mother’s place after she returns in bandages. The film reaches a particularly chill and nasty climax
Pan (2015)
Ostensibly a Peter Pan prequel and origin story, this is a massively over-produced turkey – colossally scaled effects set-pieces, everything obtrusively arranged to pop out at us in 3D – that seems to completely miss the innocent charms that the original story had
Crimson Peak (2015)
Guillermo Del Toro takes on the Victorian ghost story. What we get is the most gorgeously designed and costumed haunted house film ever but where the excess scenography actually distracts from producing any boo moment
The Scorch Trials (2015)
The Maze Runner was one of the better Young Adult films, creating an intriguing conceptual mystery; this sequel ignores all of that, even throws the book out and is essentially a jumble of random sf tropes that amount to no more than running, shooting and things exploding
Age of Tomorrow (2014)
The Asylum’s mockbuster answer to the Tom Cruise film Edge of Tomorrow, which has very little to do with it other than both featuring an alien invasion. A film created with more ambition than budget to convey it
Without Warning (1980)
One of the first copies of Alien, this essentially acts as a slasher movie but with an alien instead of a hockey-masked killer. It also manages to predict the essentials of Predator in many ways. A B-movie but the cast list makes for eye-opening reading today
Paranormal Asylum (2013)
Loosely set around the legend of Typhoid Mary with ghostbusters investigating an abandoned asylum. One of a host of films that automatically relegate themselves to B movies by borrowing the prefix ‘Paranormal’, this sits between the amateurish and occasionally interesting
Knock Knock (2015)
Eli Roth home invasion thriller where two malicious girls turn family man Keanu Reeves’ life upside down. Roth creates a strong opening but hits the peak of the film not too far in and thereafter loses direction
Goosebumps (2015)
A film based on the hugely popular children’s horror series. The film creates a story where the creatures from all the books are unleashed. This is fun to watch, yet what we ultimately have is easy, undemanding horror for family audiences
The Martian (2015)
This year’s Gravity. A film that has worked out the science to the nth degree (and made it digestible for mass audiences). Ridley Scott rides the drama like a pro and makes one of his most enjoyable films in some time
Turbo Kid (2015)
There is a fantastically witty idea here – a low-tech parody of the 1980s post-holocaust film – but one that seems in search of an accompanying film. The film overspills with retro ephemera and stylistic jokes but I wish there had been more to it beyond the hook of the initial joke
The Similars (2015)
Isaac Ezban makes another conceptually out there film about people trapped in a bus station who all start transforming into the likeness of the same man. Much has been modelled on The Twilight Zone and this has a fascinating weirdness
Into the Forest (2015)
Modest story about a catastrophic countrywide powercut – rather than depicting a widespread apocalypse, the film is a character-driven piece focused around two sisters living on their own at a cabin in the woods
Cemetery of Splendor (2015)
Critical favourite that he is, I find Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s have some incredibly eerie, haunted moments. But these sit alongside banal, uneventful happenings that never seem to intersect in a plot
London Road (2015)
Film based on the true-life Suffolk Strangler. The filmmakers have uniquely interviewed the residents of the community affected and composed these into a musical, not to mention a quasi-mockumentary
Deathgasm (2015)
Outrageous New Zealand-made effort that fondly recalls the 1980s splatter comedies of Sam Raimi, Peter Jackson et al. This often feels like former teen metalheads looking back and puncturing the pretensions of their youth
High-Rise (2015)
Ben Wheatley’s adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s novel about the residents of a high-rise apartment block and their descent into barbarism. The film is rich with biting social allegory and is Wheatley’s most accomplished to date
The Devout (2015)
The bizarre story of a man who believes his young daughter is the reincarnation of a NASA astronaut. The film makes great claim that it is based on a true story but fails to make a compelling argument for its case
The Demolisher (2015)
This starts as a Death Wish-styled vigilante film of interesting ambiguities, before abruptly turning into a psycho film. The latter half generates some undeniable tension but the film feels it needed more than that
One Missed Call 2 (2005)
Sequel to the Japanese original, not the English-language remake. This quickly forgets about haunted phonecalls and becomes even more of a copy of Ring, the inspiration of the original, and fails at generating spooky atmosphere
No Men Beyond This Point (2015)
Film that depicts an alternate world where women have gained the upper-hand and men are a disappearing minority. This proved an unexpected delight, a mockumentary that comes in perfect and side-splitting deadpan, not to mention explores its premise with absolutely logical regard
Der Nachtmahr (2015)
This creates an intriguingly uncanny atmosphere in the story of a teenage girl who keeps seeing a strange goblin creature but nobody will believe her. The last half far less interestingly turns into a variant on E.T. with her racing to protect the creature
Aaaaaaaah! (2015)
A bizarre directorial debut from actor Steve Oram that takes place in an alternate world of sorts that operates on pre-verbal grunts and ape-like displays of dominance behaviour
The Lobster (2015)
Yorgos Lanthimos makes a deadpan black humour SF film set in a future where one is forced to find their perfect romantic partner or else be turned into an animal
Charlotte’s Song (2015)
There is potential to the premise here – a dark horror riff of sorts on The Little Mermaid in a 1930s Depression era setting – but it is squandered by an unimaginative script and direction