The Last Exorcism (2010)
An exorcism film made Found Footage-style with Patrick Fabian as a conman exorcist. This is constantly confounding everything one expects of the genre with considerable cleverness
The Last Exorcism Part II (2013)
Sequel to the sleeper 2010 Found Footage hit. Alas, this is a sequel that understands almost nothing about what made the first film so original and is just a possession film that comes utterly by the numbers
The Last Heist (2016)
Mike Mendez film about a heist on a safety deposit company. Henry Rollins proves extremely entertaining as a serial killer come to retrieve his collection of eyeballs in the vault and caught in the midst
The Last Horror Film (1982)
This was made guerrilla-style during the Cannes festival with many scenes shot at press conferences and premieres as obsessed fan Joe Spinell stalks Caroline Munro’s actress
The Last Horror Movie (2003)
British effort from the early days of the Found Footage film that reminds of Man Bites Dog with a serial killer demonstrating his techniques to a videographer
The Last House (2026)
A real head-scratcher where all of humanity suddenly find that they are trapped inside their houses and cannot get out. While outside there lurk sea monsters!
The Last House on Cemetery Lane (2015)
A haunted house film from Andrew Jones, who makes an okay but very low key film – the spookiest it ever gets is a phantom record player. Things are lifted by a modest M. Shyamalan-esque twist
The Last House on Dead End Street (1977)
A work of exploitation notoriety about snuff movies. Seen in heavily cut and edited forms, the film holds an undeniably sordid and nasty charge but mostly comes across as amateurish
The Last House on the Left (1972)
Wes Craven’s first film, a savage shock to the system about a group of psychopaths that brutalise two girls. With this, Craven inaugurated the Backwoods Brutality film; this is still one of the best of the cycle
The Last House on the Left (2009)
A disappointing remake of the harrowing Wes Craven classic where the violence has been tamed down and the film is entirely missing the irony of the original’s savage ending
The Last Legion (2007)
A not uninteresting historical epic from Dino de Laurentiis that merges the tale of the deposed last emperor of Rome into the beginnings of the Arthurian legends
The Last Loner (2019)
A homage to Andrei Tarkovsky’s classic Stalker about people venturing into a mysterious alien zone. This is rather fascinatingly filmed inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone
The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulhu (2009)
A fitfully amusing H.P. Lovecraft fanboy comedy. Lovecraft, a noted conservative, would likely have deplored the idea of the nerd comedy but this gets the flavour of Lovecraft’s works down better than most
The Last Man on Earth (1964)
The first adaptation of Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend and the only one faithful to the novel with Vincent Price as the last man alive facing vampires outside his door
The Last Man(s) on Earth (2012)
Film spinoff from a YouTube channel that features two comedians giving absurdly over-the-top survivalist tips. What works as a series of short clips has difficulty extending the gags to a dramatic plot
The Last Mimzy (2007)
Adaptation of a classic SF short story about children’s toys from the future that give them expanded mental powers. Much of the story has been dropped in favour of banal New Age thinking
The Last Resort (2009)
This was made following the success of Hostel, a low-budget film concerning a group of girls abandoned at a deserted Mexican resort town that may be haunted
The Last Scout (2017)
British SF film about the last survivors of Earth on an expedition to find new planet to make home. This manages to do some reasonable things on a low budget
The Last Sentinel (2007)
Action film with Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson as a cyborg soldier fighting a one-man war against rogue police drones of the future. A fairly generic assemblage of cliches
The Last Seven (2010)
Seven people wake up in a deserted London with no memory of who they are only to find that something is stalking them. An intriguing hook let down by a tired and overused ending
The Last Shark (1981)
One of several Italian exploitation copycats of Jaws. This has the reputation as the film that was such a blatant ripoff that Universal sued to stop its release
The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time (2018)
The sixth of the Sharknado films, this has the usual crew fighting sharknados throughout history. With this comes the recognition there is nowhere more ridiculous and over-the-top for the series to go
The Last Starfighter (1984)
One of the sillier films made in the aftermath of Star Wars. It is recycling third hand cliches and reduces these to simplistic fantasies of military heroism for the videogame generation
The Last Thing Mary Saw (2021)
A strikingly directed film that conjures something of The Witch: A New-England Folktale in its depiction of the horrors present in a religiously oppressive household
The Last Train (1999)
A British tv mini-series where a group of people in a regular train carriage go into suspended animation and emerge fifty years later to find a devastated world
The Last Unicorn (1982)
Beautiful and underrated animated fantasy film about an apprentice magician who protects the last unicorn. This has a maturity that most animated fantasy lacks
The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023)
One of a spate of recent films that adapt characters or sections from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, this concerns the doomed ship voyage aboard which Dracula travels to England
The Last Warning (1929)
Paul Leni is one of the great unrecognised directors of silent cinema. Leni was clearly trying to replicate his earlier hit The Cat and the Canary. This is a lesser work but Leni’s visuals are incredible
The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh (2012)
Rue Morgue magazine editor Rodrigo Gudiño makes his directorial debut with an old-fashioned ghost story that is a slow, moody ambiguous single-person drama
The Last Winter (2006)
A strong and effective environmental horror film from Larry Fessenden in which the crew of an Alaskan drilling operation disturb something beneath the frozen ground
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 Lathe of Heaven (1980)
One of the most brilliant SF works conducted for television – the adaptation of an Ursula Le Guin book about a a man whose dreams change the world every time he wakes up
The Laughing Dead (1989)
A crazed Evil Dead-styled film directed by sf/horror writer S.P. Somtow about modern-day Aztec sacrifices, this makes a beeline for bizarrely over-the-top gore effects
The Laughing Policeman (1973)
A gritty US-made adaptation of a Swedish thriller with Walter Matthau and Bruce Dern as detectives investigating a machine-gun murder spree aboard a bus
The Lawnmower Man (1992)
This has nothing to do with the Stephen King story about a Pan-worshipping lawnmowing service and is a film about Virtual Reality. Harnessing some top-drawer CGI effects of the day, this was influential on subsequent VR films
The Lazarus Effect (2015)
The experiment to bring someone back from the dead has been trod many times before and this Blumhouse production only rehashes it in tired and unimaginative ways
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)
The much hated adaptation of the Alan Moore graphic novels. It is undeniable fun watching the crossover between various fictional Victorian characters, while the production design is amazing
The League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse (2005)
Film spinoff from the popular British comedy series sees the familiar characters entering the real world to meet their creators and deal with the cancellation of the show
The Ledge (2022)
A thriller that sells itself to you with its premise where a woman who witnesses a murder and then must face the killers while trapped on a tiny ledge on a mountainside
The Leech Woman (1960)
Disappointingly not a work about human-animal hybrids but about a woman who obtains a rejuvenation serum but finds it requires devouring male pineal glands. This comes with much amusingly dated sexism
The Legacy (1978)
One of the last gasps of the Anglo-horror cycle, this sets assorted deviltry in an English mansion along with a series of novelty deaths that trying to compete with The Omen
The Legacy of the Bones (2019)
The second of the films based on Dolores Redondo’s police procedurals, this heads into an admirably dark and perverse place with plenty of jolt twists
The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972)
One of the numerous Bigfoot films of the 1970s. This takes a quasi-documentary approach that never makes for a particularly interesting film and where the Bigfoot of the show gets to do very little
The Legend of Hell House (1973)
While holding similarities to The Haunting, this is a strong, intelligent film about parapsychologists investigating a haunted house. Filled with eerie scares and a standout Richard Matheson script
The Legend of Hercules (2014)
Renny Harlin, the director of a great many empty-headed action films, takes on the Greek myth and delivers a Hercules film that feels like it has been directed after too many watchings of 300
The Legend of Jack and Jill (2021)
From the people who made Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, a film where the nursery rhyme of Jack and Jill somehow morphs into a variant on The Hills Have Eyes
The Legend of Ochi (2025)
Quite a good A24 release that brings together an impressive cast as a young girl discovers and determines to protect a magical creature. This channels the essence of E.T. and tugs all the heartstrings it can
The Legend of Six Fingers (2013)
Sam Qualiana is a director who has made some incredibly bad films elsewhere. Here he takes on making a Found Footage film about the hunt for a Bigfoot-like creature
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1980)
A tv movie version of the classic ghost story by Washington Irving and the most faithful version of the story to date. With a young Jeff Goldblum as Ichabod Crane
The Legend of Tarzan (2016)
A reasonable attempt to revive Tarzan. Tthis could almost be a sequel to Greystoke with more of an emphasis on adventure. Alexander Skarsgård broods his way through the title role.
The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974)
The last of Hammer’s Dracula films made after Christopher Lee departed. A co-production with Hong Kong’s Shaw Brothers that shows Hammer trying to jump aboard the 1970s kung fu fad
The Legend of the Flying Swordsman (2000)
A forgettable entry in Hong Kong’s Wu Xia cycle that suffers from an overly confusing plot and crucially much in the way of flying swordplay
The Legend of Zu (2018)
It is unclear if if this is a sequel or remake of Tsui Hark’s Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain, nevertheless this sits a confident stride between artful choreography and comedic interplay
The Lego Batman Movie (2017)
Following the success of The Lego Movie, where he was a scene-stealing supporting character, Batman gets a whole Lego film to himself. Less a Batman film than it is a parody of Batman
The Lego Movie (2014)
How much fun can a film based around Lego characters be? A film that overflows with cleverness, wit and energy. The most fun is in the film’s creating a madcap mix-up of characters from different franchises
The Lego Movie 2 (2019)
Sequel to The Lego Movie. This time the idea of the Lego universe, the crossovers and fourth-wall breaking gags are not as fresh but this still gets good mileage out of them
The Lego Ninjago Movie (2017)
Third of the animated films based on the Lego toy line. This has the same fast-paced humour and witty fourth-wall breaking gags as its predecessors, even if you suspect the Lego Movie brand is starting to fade
The Lesson (2015)
A milquetoast teacher tires of disrespectful pupils and imprisons two of them with the intention of torturing them into learning. The idea of an intellectual Torture Porn film if such is not an oxymoron.
The Librarian: Quest for the Spear (2004)
The first of several tv movies and later tv series about a team that collect mythic artifacts. An unapologetic copy of the Indiana Jones films and surprisingly more fun than you expect
The Librarian: Return to King Solomon’s Mines (2006)
The second of The Librarian tv movies featuring Noah Wyle as an Indiana Jones-modelled adventurer in search of mythical artifacts – here a map to King Solomon’s Mines
The Life and Deaths of Christopher Lee (2024)
A documentary about horror legend Christopher Lee covering his life and principal films. Supposedly narrated by Lee who is represented by a voice imitator and animation
The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (1986)
An acclaimed mini-series about a frumpy woman taking gleeful revenge on the husband who abandoned her. Essentially Fatal Attraction rewritten with a feminist manifesto with hilariously barbed results
The Life of Chuck (2024)
A Mike Flanagan adaptation of a Stephen King story, this received a great deal of acclaim, but comes with a very peculiar story structure that opens out into a series of unfolding revelations
The Lift (1983)
A Dutch film about a killer elevator that gained some attention when it came out. This generates some reasonable suspense but it also has a plot that drags considerably
The Lighthouse (2019)
This was Robert Eggers’ second film, less a work of horror than a dive into a disturbed and fraying state of mind in the tensions between two men isolated at a lighthouse in the 19th Century
The Limehouse Golem (2016)
This comes with a captivating tagline “Before The Ripper, fear had another name” and misleadingly suggests it is based on another true-life Victorian serial killer. This refuses to be the police procedural you expect
The Limits of Control (2009)
Cryptic and baffling Jim Jarmusch film with Isaach De Bankole as a mysterious assassin who passes through a series of enigmatic and surreal conversations
The Lion King (1994)
One of the best films to come out of Disney’s animation renaissance during the 1990s, this uses all the studio as its disposal to create a work that is epic in its scope
The Lion King (2019)
Jon Favreau had success recreating The Jungle Book in live-action with CGI animals and does the same with The Lion King – only to produce an exacting, lifeless replication missing the charms of the original
The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride (1998)
Another of the interminable video sequels to their animated classics that Disney made throughout the 90s-00s. This is somewhat better than most of the others
The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe (1979)
Earlier less well known adaptation of the C.S. Lewis book made for tv. This is faithful to the book but is badly hampered by primitive animation and an exceedingly simplistic rendering of the story
The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1977)
A psycho-thriller with a difference where Jodie Foster plays a teenager with secrets who maintains the pretence of living with her late father while fending off a pedophile Martin Sheen
The Little Mermaid (1989)
The beginning of the big Disney renaissance of the 1990s. An adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale that is conducted with an enormous degree of energy, colour and good cheer
The Little Mermaid (2018)
Not the Disney film, but a live-action film only loosely based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale. Not much more than a nicely made average film but one conducted with evident care
The Little Mermaid (2023)
Disney’s original The Little Mermaid was an enormously fresh film. This is the live-action remake that came out amid much controversy and is inevitably a lesser shadow of the original.
The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea (2000)
One of the video-released sequels to their animated films that Disney made in the 90s/00s, this slavishly imitates its predecessor but does have a likeable line-up of supporting characters
The Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Beginning (2008)
One among the series of cheap video-released sequels to their classic animated films made during the 1990s/2000s, this is a prequel that offers up a Little Mermaid origin story
The Little Prince (1974)
Director Stanley Donen conducts a star-studded musical adaptation of Antoine De Saint-Exupéry’s children story about an innocent alien prince come to Earth but with ponderous results
The Little Prince (2015)
On its own terms, a frequently lovely film. The director made a big thing of how much he loved the Saint-Exupery original but makes a completely different story with only occasional Little Prince interludes
The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)
The original, Roger Corman’s zero budget film about a killer plant is an hilarious black comedy that has become a cult favourite and remains his most well remembered film
The Little Stranger (2018)
Adaptation of a ghost story from Sarah Waters, an author who usually specialises in literary Victorian lesbian bodice rippers. The ghost story is an overmined genre but this is a not uninteresting venture into the field
The Little Vampire (2000)
The film version of a popular series of German children’s books about a buy who befriends a young vampire kid. The proves lightweight and likeable enough
The Little Vampire (2017)
Animated film based on the popular series of children’s stories about a kid who befriends a vampire boy. The same stories had previously appeared as a live-action fllm
The Living and the Dead (2016)
One of the best and most original ghost stories in some time, a mini-series for the BBC set in the 1890s, this does remarkable things in entirely turning the genre on its head
The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue (1974)
One of the better copies of Night of the Living Dead, a Spanish film where an agricultural pesticide causes the dead to rise from their graves in rural England
The Living Dead Girl (1982)
Another entry from the oeuvre of cult French director Jean Rollin – a film about the bond between a girl and her zombified friend that sits between some gore amateurish effects and a poetic subtlety
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
The Locals (2003)
A New Zealand-made horror film in which two friends find themselves trapped in a small rural town where the dead keep returning to life
The Loch Ness Horror (1982)
Z-budget filmmaker Larry Buchanan makes a Loch Ness Monster film. As with Buchanan’s other films, this is so painfully cheap it is a Loch Ness monster films that never travels beyond California state
The Loch Ness Horror (2023)
A low-budget Loch Ness Monster film, this does capably well for the most part but then bizarrely enough turns into an Alien-copy part way through
The Lockdown Hauntings (2021)
A film shot during the Covid lockdown, following a police detective who conducts an investigation into deaths caused by supernatural entities unleashed amid the isolation
The Lodge (2019)
An entry from the revived Hammer Films directed by duo who made Goodnight Mommy. A slow burn of a film about cabin fever and fragmenting psychology often reminiscent of The Shining
The Lodger (1944)
Sound remake of the silent Alfred Hitchcock film starring big man Laird Cregar who gives a wonderfully melodramatic performance as the new lodger that a family believe might be Jack the Ripper
The Lodger (2009)
Fourth version of the tale about a family who believe their boarder might be Jack the Ripper. This is updated to the present and abandons most of the story for a mind-bending pretzel of identity speculations
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927)
Alfred Hitchcock’s third film about a family who believe their lodger might be a killer. Made during the silent era but Hitchcock uses extraordinary visual tricks that blow you away
The Lodgers (2017)
A beautifully shot period set Irish ghost story that does a superb job in building atmosphere but is all fascinating mystery that ends without explaining a single thing
The Lonely Man with the Ghost Machine (2024)
Graham Skipper directs/writes/stars in a film about the last man on Earth trying to bring his wife’s ghost back from the dead while beset by an entity that has devoured the rest of humanity and just wants to be his friend
The Long Night (2022)
A Folk Horror film where Scout Taylor-Compton visits the South in search of the parents she never knew only for cultists in black robes and animal masks to surround the house
The Long Shadow (2023)
An exhaustive and very accurately detailed tv mini-series based around the Yorkshire Ripper, a serial killer who targeted prostitutes in the north of England between 1975 and 1981
The Long Walk (2025)
An adaptation of Stephen King’s Richard Bachman novel set in a future where youths compete in a race where they must walk hundreds of miles without stopping or else be shot