The Boy and the World (2013)
Brazilian animated film that comes with a lovely simplicity – all jagged washes of colour, characters as simple lines, endless patterns and a minimalist plot – out of which it manages to weave an incredibly pretty eye candy
The Editor (2014)
A witty parody of the giallo film from members of Canada’s Astron-6 collective who are proving themselves the masters of a certain type of movie spoof
The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013)
Studio Ghibli adaptation of a classic Japanese folktale from Hayao Hiyazaki’s mentor Isao Takahata. This is a slower, very different film than Hayao Miyazaki’s, the animation designed like a traditional Japanese woodprint. Never quite soars like Miyazaki’s films do but not without its charms
Field of Dogs (2014)
From Lech Majewski, the Polish director of The Mill and the Cross, comes this supposed modern version of Dante’s The Divine Comedy. Alas, the film never amounts to anything more than a series of almost entirely plotless surrealist visions
It Follows (2014)
Undeniably effective horror about a deadly shapeshifting phantom that gets passed by sexual contact. Imagine Ring by way of a Larry Clark film. This creates rather good unsettlingly uncanny atmosphere
Freefall (2014)
György Pálfi, the Hungarian director of the wonderfully twisted Taxidermia, returns with a series of Buñuel-esque vignettes that sometimes hit a darkly absurdist note
Exhibit A (2007)
A Found Footage film from the early days before Paranormal Activity went big. This unnervingly charts the psychological disintegration of an ordinary English family under economic pressure
The Maze Runner (2014)
One of the better among the current fad for Young Adult dystopian SF works post-The Hunger Games. This dispenses with dystopian Coming of Age stories and gives us a fascinating conceptual mystery even if the answers prove underwhelming
Outpost (2007)
Above average revival of the Nazi zombie concept in a film that has spawned two sequels. The plot of soldiers venturing into an old bunker is conducted with tight, lean suspense and some undeniably gory dispatches
House of Mortal Sin (1976)
From British director Pete Walker who specialised in films about insane authority figures slaughtering Swinging Sixties youth – in this case, he caused a considerable stir with a film featuring a psychopathic Catholic priest
Dead End (2003)
This starts out seeming like a Backroads Brutality film with an innocent family being attacked after taking a side road detour, only to end in increasingly stranger supernatural territory
Isolation (2005)
Irish horror film about a series of deadly parasites amok on a rural farm. Playing like a serious version of the NZ comedy Black Sheep (but with cows), this has a grim, grimy atmosphere to it that does produce some undeniable effect
Thirteen Erotic Ghosts (2002)
Softcore version of Thir13en Ghosts with ghosts hunters wandering through a house and seeing various girls making out. The various encounters seem to lack even the basic conviction from those involved
Strangers on a Train (1951)
One of the most darkly engrossing of Alfred Hitchcock’s thrillers, a classic about two strangers who make a murder pact after meeting on a train. Where any other director would have made a straight thriller, Hitchcock lingers on the mordant humour with unnerving effect
Next Door (2005)
Brilliantly twisted Norwegian film in the vein of Roman Polanski’s Repulsion and The Tenant about a man whose dealings with two girls living in the apartment next door starts blurring and shifting into some genuinely surreal and out there, not to mention perverse, territory
Coherence (2013)
Fascinating conceptual SF film about a dinner party where people find they are dealing with multiple alternate versions of themselves where minute choices have been made differently. The film twists and turns into an immensely satisfyingly pretzel
The Calling (2014)
Modest serial killer thriller – imagine one of the numerous Silence of the Lambs copies crossbred with Fargo. The film’s quiet pace soon segues into an absorbing thriller plot, while Christopher Heyerdahl gives a fine performance as the killer
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
The Day the Earth Stopped (2008)
A mockbuster from The Asylum that was released three days before the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. While some of The Asylum’s mockbusters have their amusements, this is cheaply and indifferently made
Silent But Deadly (2011)
Jason Mewes of Jay and Silent Bob fame is cast as a rarely speaking, goat-loving hick psycho. The film comes with a number of other offfbeat characterisations that you feel should have made for an amusing horror comedy but instead everything slips into a shrill one-note pitch
Alyce (2011)
The director of Zombie Strippers! offers up Alice in Wonderland as a modern urban tale that becomes an allegory for a drug-induced journey into a disturbed headspace
All Cheerleaders Die (2013)
Directors Lucky McKee and Chris Sivertson conduct a remake of their earlier film about resurrected cheerleaders. The question might be why – both have demonstrated they can do far better than this
Doc of the Dead (2014)
Documentary about the popularity of zombie films, this covers the history of the genre in reasonable depth, even examines the historical origins and provides an amusing glimpse into the zombie’s pervasion of popular culture
Witching and Bitching (2013)
Spanish director Alex de la Iglesia makes what is essentially a comedy version of From Dusk Till Dawn albeit with witches instead of vampires. This has one of the funniest openings I’ve seen in some time but thereafter dissipates into broadly farcical and overlong runnings around
Bloody Murder (1999)
A modern slasher film that slavishly rehashes Friday the 13th. Routine on most counts, excepting perhaps the oddity of it being made by a director/producer of Christian films
The Giant Claw (1957)
1950s monster movie about a giant alien bird. A standard B movie of the era that is shot down by one of the most pathetic and ridiculous looking monsters ever put on screen
Gacy House (2010)
This has the great idea of paranormal investigators investigating the home of real-life serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Alas, Gacy is of zero relevance and the film no more that a tatty Found Footage effort
The Monkey King (2014)
Enjoyably colourful and silly retelling of the classic Chinese legend. This is one Wu Xia film that leaps aboard the CGI and 3D bandwagon to create a wildly fantastical airbrushed world that comes out resembling a flying swordsman film by way of Avatar
The Signal (2014)
A film ostensibly about alien abductees that has rather pleasurably been construed as a series of wild head-spinning twists that are constantly pulling everything we think we know is going on from under the audience, even if it eventually provides more questions than it ever does answers
Life After Beth (2014)
Billed as a ‘zom-rom-com’, Dane DeHaan deals with girlfriend Aubrey Plaza who has returned from the dead. The film has a quirky appeal even if it is never quite as funny as it promises to be
Sparks (2013)
Low-budget superhero that co-opts the cod-film noir look from Sin City. Alas the film has an excessively sprawling and complicated plot, while the film noir style looks like no more than cheap pastiche reduced to cliche poses by well-meaning amateurs
Phobia (1980)
The great John Huston, the director of The Maltese Falcon, The African Queen and other classics, directs a psychotherapy psycho-thriller. Alas the thriller essentials slip entirely through his hands
2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams (2010)
Sequel to the outrageously gory 2001 Maniacs, although here the horror comedy balance spills over into absurd farce and cheap gore effects. Crucially, the film seems cheaper and less polished, more messy and random in terms of its arrangements
Let There Be Light: The Odyssey of Dark Star (2010)
Documentary about the making of Dark Star, depicting its’ journey from student film to cult film. The only disappointment is the absence of key players John Carpenter and Dan O’Bannon
Atom Age Vampire (1960)
Despite the possibilities set up by the title, this features no vampires nor atomic monsters but is an Italian film influenced by Eyes Without a Face about a mad surgeon trying to restore a woman’s disfigured face
Dread (2009)
Clive Barker adaptation about a disturbed university researcher who pushes an experiment into people’s fears to extremes. This takes some time to start going anywhere but does eventually deliver the horrific goods
As Above So Below (2014)
The Brothers Dowdle made the standout The Poughkeepsie Tapes but this is a sub-Da Vinci Code archaeological mystery that is little more than a Halloween haunted house attraction in the Paris catacombs
Terror Train (1980)
One of the better entries among the 1980s slasher film cycle – and even featuring the era’s quintessential heroine Jamie Lee Curtis. Essentially Halloween aboard a train, at which the film does the basics of the genre with perfect competence and undeniably stylish photography
The Unbroken (2012)
Film about a woman who moves into a new apartment and is haunted by a little ghost boy. Follows the plotting for the ghost story genre to a completely tried and true formula and with wholly unremarkable results
The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! (1972)
Maybe one of the great exploitation titles of all time quickly telescopes down to a near-unwatchable film from Andy Milligan. A Victorian-set werewolf film with rats thrown in to capitalise on the success of Willard
Sinking of Japan (2006)
Big-budget modern Japanese remake of a 1970s disaster movie in which Japan starts to catastrophically sink into the ocean. Despite revisiting the original with CGI spectacle, this is a film in which hardly anything interesting happens
Valley of the Dragons (1961)
Among the 1950s/60s spate of Jules Verne films, this was an adaptation of one of Vernr’s lesser-known works Hector Servadac/Off on a Comet. That said, all the but the notion of people swept up on a comet is thrown out and the rest played as a prehistoric lost world adventure
The Bates Haunting (2012)
Despite the title, this is no relation to tv’s Bates Motel or the Psycho franchise but a slasher film set around a famous Pennsylvania Halloween haunted house attraction. The film otherwise displays a general but unremarkable competence
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014)
Robert Rodriguez makes his return to Frank Miller’s classic film noir-styled graphic novels. You keep expecting this to hit in with the astonishing freshness the first film did. Rodriguez and Miller give us more of the same amazing visuals but there is the feeling it is no longer original and new
Dark Touch (2013)
In her first English-language debut, French director/writer/actress Marina de Van delivers a variant on Carrie, albeit rewritten as a tale about child abuse. Oblique, quiet but undeniably effective when de Van pulls her punches
Around the World in 80 Days (2004)
Jules Verne’s classic adventure novel is turned into a comedy vehicle for Jackie Chan. One of Chan’s biggest flops, an overblown turkey packed with celebrity cameos and replacing Verne’s adventure with incredibly unfunny slapstick
The Antichrist (1974)
An Italian-made ripoff of The Exorcist. Probably the most lavishly produced of all Exorcist ripoffs, this soon slips into lurid shock theatrics. Star Carla Gravina should get full marks for going beyond the call of duty
Real (2013)
A Japanese-made variant on the dream incursion theme of Inception. Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa is noted for his bafflingly surrealistic horror films but in working in a genre like science-fiction that requires an implied explainability, he makes a far less interesting film
Dracula 3000 (2004)
There is undeniable interest to the idea of Dracula in the future but all we get is a standard Alien copy with Dracula on a spaceship. The acting and dialogue frequently enters into the absurd
Sharknado 2: The Second One (2014)
Sequel to the bad movie phenomenon Sharknado Accompanied by a host of celebrity cameos, there is less the cheerful absurdity of the original than a film that is trying to recapture a spontaneously generated fad
The Giver (2014)
Another adaptation of a classic Young Adult book, this merely substitutes well-worn dystopian tropes and comes out feeling like Divergent by way of Pleasantville
Ghost Bride (2013)
New Zealand director David Blyth directs a ghost story that draws on Chinese supernatural. Blyth seems to be straining to generate anything vaguely spooky
Dead Air (2009)
Madness/zombie outbreak film set in a radio station as a talkback host watches the catastrophe unfurl outside. This only cheaply goes where the far superior Pontypool did first
Humongous (1982)
Canadian-made slasher film from the director of the original Prom Night. This mixes slasher standard with a variant on the Mad/Deformed Relative in the Attic plot but mostly seems terminally dull
Begotten (1990)
The first film from E. Elias Merhige, subsequent director of Shadow of the Vampire. An unfathomably strange film in the Eraserhead vein about gods disemboweling themselves, rebirthing and being beset upon by nomads.
Son of Batman (2014)
Another of the DC Universe Original Animated Movies, this devoted to the character of Batman’s son Damian. Solid action, a well moving plot that makes good use of its characters, adding to a decent entry even if it is not up among the best of these animated DC films
Patrick (2013)
This remake of the Australian classic about a coma patient with psychokinetic powers is astonishingly bad. Richard Franklin’s stylish scares are replaced by laughably overwrought sequences
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)
This reboot of the pop culture icons of 80s/90s is an ugly failure on almost every level. The Turtles I remember were hip, funky and bubbled with boyish enthusiasm; these Turtles seem sinister oversized creations, while the film’s adrenalised over-production and emphasis on grit seems to have missed the essential element of fun
In Your Eyes (2014)
Based on an old Joss Whedon script about two people who discover they can see through the other’s eyes and talk mentally. A low-key film that acts as a bare stage allowing the two characters to interact
Nightmare City (1980)
One of the numerous gore-drenched Italian zombie films of the 1980s copying George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. The film is like the kid in class who doesn’t have much skill but who throws himself into what he does with wholehearted abandon
Good Boy! (2003)
An infuriatingly inane film about a boy discovering that all dogs can talk and are alien visitors from Jim Henson Pictures. No sooner is the dog talking that it is tossing off smartass one-liners
Sleeping Beauty (1987)
One of the cheap fairytale adaptations made by Cannon Films in the 1980s. A dreary impoverished run through by the numbers with Morgan Fairchild as the Wicked Stepmother and Tahnee Welch in the title role
Cabin Fever: Patient Zero (2014)
Eli Roth’s Cabin Fever had a surefire premise – a series of gory meltdowns with tongue planted in cheek. It is a puzzle then why two sequels, despite reasonable directors at the wheel, have managed to completely miss these basics
The Zero Theorem (2013)
This is Terry Gilliam largely going back to revisit Brazil, albeit having been updated to the 2010s and the era of the internet. A renaissance of many Gilliam themes, nevertheless this feels like one of his slighter works
Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
A triumphal Marvel Comics adaptations that manages to mainline the spirit of the original Star Wars, while in in its wryly, self-deflating culture savvy suggesting a Star Wars rewritten by a 14 year-old Quentin Tarantino
Tarzan (2013)
An animated version of the Tarzan story shot in the motion capture process. Some of the modernisations might have Edgar Rice Burroughs turning in his grave, nevertheless the animation is excellent and the film works well as a technologically upgraded version of the Disney film
The Turn of the Screw (2009)
A BBC adaptation of the classic oft-filmed Henry James ghost story in which we cannot be sure whether the ghosts are real or exist inside the heroine’s imagination. This treats some aspects of the story liberally but gets the essence of the story right
Magic in the Moonlight (2014)
One of Woody Allen’s slighter films about rationalist Colin Firth who is debunking medium Emma Stone but becomes convinced of her powers as romance sparkles
The Cat Creature (1973)
TV movie about an Ancient Egyptian cat vengeance curse. The cast was culled from 1940s genre films and the material feels just as old despite a script from Psycho author Robert Bloch
I Origins (2014)
Mike Cahill’s follow-up to Another Earth, an intriguingly different work about how research into the human eye leads to a very unusual discovery. As much a relationship drama as SF
Lucy (2014)
Luc Besson makes a preposterously entertaining work where drug mule Scarlett Johansson develops superhuman mental capabilities – sort of if you imagine Limitless reconceived as an action film
Hercules (2014)
Dwayne Johnson starring Hercules film that just wants to be a big dumb cartoon without a brain cell in its body. This takes the interesting approach that Hercules was an ordinary man whose exploits were all down to PR
Blood Glacier (2013)
Austrian-made film about people being attacked by mutant creatures on a mountainside. This has the cheesily absurd feel of a 1980s B movie and has some fun producing creature effects
Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever (2009)
The first sequel to Eli Roth’s film, directed by a then unknown Ti West who subsequently tried to have his name removed. The gore effects look cheap and cheesy and the film misses the comedic angle of the original
Tales from the Hood (1995)
Horror anthology with a specific focus around African-American issues. This conducts a fine revival of the anthology genre and delivers a series of episodes that are all solid and well above-average horror tales
Nosferatu vs Father Pipecock & Sister Funk (2014)
Tony Watt, who gets my nomination as the world’s worst filmmaker, does the laughtrack trick of taking a film – in this case, the original Nosferatu – and running his usual inane sound effects and excruciating bad acting over the top
The Dance of Reality (2013)
The first film in 24 years from Alejandro Jodorowsky, a surreal journey through his own childhood. Gone is Jodorowsky, the mad prophet of El Topo, replaced by a warm, wryly self-reflexive Jodorowsky looking back in on his own life
Planes: Fire & Rescue (2014)
The second of Disney’s spinoffs from Pixar’s Cars films featuring talking anthropomorphic planes. Like the first film, this is amiable and occasionally cute but lightweight. This is beginning to feel like a franchise that is spinning out thinning ideas solely for its own sake
Snowpiercer (2013)
One of the most original science-fiction films of recent years. Set aboard a train where the last survivors of humanity circle a frozen globe, this is less an action film than something like Runaway Train turned into a unique conceptual breakthrough story, all rent through with a fierce parable about social revolution
The Purge: Anarchy (2014)
Slightly more interesting than its predecessor in that it takes the action out from gated communities into the streets, otherwise this offers just the same as The Purge – much in the way of heavy artillery and a patina of contemporary politics that have all the depth of a protest placard
Tomie (1999)
Another Japanese horror film that stands heavily in the shadow of Ringu. Directed without much style and often uninteresting to the point of being dull, it is hard to tell from this that you are watching a film that inspired eight sequels
Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (1971)
Giallo thriller from Lucio Fulci who gained a cult following in the 1980s for his gore-drenched films. This comes with more style than all of Fulci’s other unadulterated hackwork put together
The Fantasticks (2000)
This film version of the massively popular Broadway musical was a miserable flop. The musical is a minimalist one but the film has replaced all of that with literalisations that kill the effect
The Black Dahlia Haunting (2012)
For the stew of elements this throws together – a famous unsolved murder case, ghosts, a blind psychic killer, possession, a sinister psychiatrist – it is surprising how dull the film that emerges is
Exam (2009)
An existential puzzlebox of a film where a group of job interviewees are locked in a room and asked to work out what the question is. A fascinating conceptual film that falls somewhere between Cube and Saw
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)
The Planet of the Apes series excels itself and stages a massively exciting inter-species war. The CGI/mocap apes come with an extraordinary range of nuance – quite whether it is performance or animation is up for debate but the results are outstanding
The Last Days (2013)
A fascinating Spanish film about a worldwide apocalypse created by a plague that makes the entire population mortally afraid of going out of doors
The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin (1965)
Soviet film about the invention of a death ray. The first half is a spy thriller, which is fascinating to see from the other side of the fence to James Bond while the second half concerns a great engineering discovery
Grave Encounters 2 (2012)
Grave Encounters was an unremarkable Found Footage film. This much smarter sequel takes its lead from Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 in being a meta-fiction that investigates the phenomenon of the first film
Lightfields (2013)
British tv mini-series ghost story that takes place across three different eras – in 1944, 1975 and 2012. More of a mystery than a scare show but drawn with a beautifully wistful feel for place and time
Deliver Us From Evil (2014)
Scott Derrickson’s supposed true-life account of a NYPD cop turned exorcist rehashes every hackneyed possession cliche the horror genre has, yet there comes a point where the film attains an odd conviction
Space Adventure Cobra (1982)
The great Osamu Dezai makes a colourful anime that jumps aboard the Stars Wars space opera fad
Wolf Creek 2 (2013)
Greg McLean and John Jarratt return to the Australian Backwood Brutality saga of Wolf Creek for a second outing that is just as effective as the first. McLean often pushes the material into black humour and creates at least one sequence that makes for genuinely uncomfortable watching
Stuff (1999)
Canadian-made black comedy about a ring that can revive the dead
The Rover (2014)
Impressive Australian film that recalls the Mad Max films. Rather than action spectacle, this feels like Mad Max as rewritten by Cormac McCarthy wherein a collapsed future echoes a beautifully written exploration of the soul of a man in a violent world
Earth to Echo (2014)
Found Footage film that nostalgically homages, if not outrightly borrows, from E.T.. It does build a sense of wonder well but then dissolves into far too much near-identical running around
Alien Origin (2012)
The Asylum’s mockbuster version of Prometheus where they have settled for giving us Predator as a Found Footage film (with a good few doses of Ancient Astronauts nuttinesss)
Earth Star Voyager (1988)
TV mini-series that came out hoping to ride the coattails of Star Trek: The Next Generation but looks dated barely ten years later. Somehow the idea of teenagers on a space mission didn’t get many audiences enthused
The Uninvited (2003)
One of the spate of South Korean ghost stories that came out in 2000s. While made with undeniable directorial style, the two hour running time drags and the plot is often unclear what is happening
I’ll Follow You Down (2013)
A time travel that has the near-soporific pace of a Lifetime tv movie. Here Haley Joel Osment discovers that his father built a stable wormhole that allowed him to travel back in time to 1947