A Guide to Dating at the End of the World (2022)
Australian film that is a romantic comedy take on The Quiet Earth, the classic work about three people who awake in an entirely deserted world
The Apocalypse (2007)
One of the bizarre early oddities from The Asylum, a disaster movie about an oncoming asteroid. This also try to jump aboard the mid-2000s fad for Biblical movies where faith elements are combined with the scenario in ways that are bizarre
When a Killer Calls (2006)
One of The Asylum’s first mockbusters, designed to popularise on the remake of When a Stranger Calls
Anthropophagus (1980)
From the notorious 1970s/80s period of Italian cinema, this was listed as one of the notorious Video Nasties. This features a lone cannibal killer amok on a Greek island amid plentiful gore
Highwaymen (2004)
Robert Harmon made the classic The Hitcher, but failed to ever follow up on it. This is the sole work that ever came close – a beautifully tense series of games between Jim Caviezel and a motorised killer on the backroads
Lynch (2007)
A documentary about David Lynch made by one of his assistants during the shooting of Inland Empire. Lynch tells assorted anecdotes from his childhood and we see him working on his artworks.
The Deliverance (2024)
Supposedly based on a true story, a possession and exorcism film from filmmaker Lee Daniels about an African-American family undergoing a supernatural assault
Star Trek: Section 31 (2025)
A Star Trek film spun off around Michelle Yeoh and the secret service that appears in the modern revival series
Moana 2 (2024)
Disney make a sequel to Moana, their venture into Pacific Island mythology
Piglady (2023)
A True Crime film where the story of a woman who killed two men and fed their remains to her pigs is essentially turned into a slasher movie
Cabin 28 (2017)
A true crime film based on an unsolved home invasion in California in 1981 that left four for dead. From prolific British director Andrew Jones
The Prophecy: Uprising (2005)
The fourth of The Prophecy films about war between angels, the first to be made without Christopher Walken with Sean Pertwee as a detective in Bucharest who is drawn in
Alien Conquest (2021)
The Asylum conduct a modernised remake of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds – for the second time. With resident mad scientist Joe Roche on script, the results are undeniably interesting
Shirley Thompson Versus the Aliens (1972)
One of the other films from Jim Sharman, director of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, a gonzo comedy where alien visitors bring a statue of the Duke of Edinburgh to life
The American Society of Magical Negroes (2024)
A satiric film based on Spike Lee’s idea of the Magical Negro, an African American who exists to deliver wisdom or magical influence to white people. This gets in some deftly amusing punches at US race relations
Nosferatu (2024)
Robert Eggers of The Witch fame conducts a remake of the classic silent Nosferatu. This comes drenched in mood and period detail but Eggers also substantially changes the original
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024)
Third of the Sonic the Hedgehog films and surprisingly far more entertaining than you expect from such a lightweight formulaic film
The Black Demon (2023)
Another killer shark survival piece with a family trapped aboard an abandoned oil rig under attack by a megalodon shark that may be the embodiment of an Aztec god
Shark Killer (2015)
This is one killer shark film of the 2010s that does not come in a deliberately ridiculous vein and concerns the hunt for a shark that has swallowed a valuable diamond
Noroi: The Curse (2005)
A Japanese Found Footage film made not long after The Blair Witch Project with a man investigating various paranormal incidents around Tokyo
Criminally Insane (1975)
From the Films That Could Never Get Made Today file – an exploitation classic about an obese woman who goes on a killing spree. This comes with a level of derangement that leaves you puzzled why this has never become a cult classic
Save the Green Planet (2003)
A bizarre South Korean comedy about a businessman who is imprisoned by a possibly crazed man who insists that he is an alien. Things sit in an absurdly funny ambiguity. Later remade by Yorgos Lanthimos as Bugonia
Night of the Hunted (2023)
From an Alexandre Aja associate, a reasonably tight thriller about a woman taking shelter in a gas station from a psycho sniper outside
Kraven the Hunter (2024)
Another of Sony’s films spun off from Spider-Man supporting characters. In the comics, Kraven is a Spider-Man super-villain with a big game hunter motif but here is turned into a superhero
Timestalker (2024)
Actress Alice Lowe directs/stars in a comedy about a woman who pursues the man she is infatuated with as both reincarnate through history
Accidental Exorcist (2016)
A low-budget but nevertheless at times quite funny version of an exorcism film, one that throws out all the tired clichés of the genre
Good Against Evil (1977)
From the great and underrated Paul Wendkos, a 1970s tv movie that taps the deviltry movie fads of the day and becomes a blatant copy of The Exorcist, albeit cleaned up for tv sensibilities
Night Life of the Gods (1935)
A 1930s screwball comedy about the invention of a ray that can petrify people that is then used to bring statues of Greek gods to life
Andromedia (1998)
An early Takashi Miike film where a teenage girl is killed and her personality uploaded to the internet, having been conveniently backed up by her father on three cd roms!
Turok: Son of Stone (2008)
Animated adaption of the comic-book about a Native American warrior stranded in a prehistoric lost world
The Vourdalak (2023)
Adaptation of a classic Aleksei Tolstoy story set in Eastern Europe as a family awaits the return of the patriarch who has been turned into a vampire
Earth Abides (2024)
Earth Abides is a classic novel that essentially defined the theme of survival in the aftermath of the collapse of civilisation. This is a TV mini-series adaptation of the book but badly fumbles it
George A. Romero’s Resident Evil (2025)
George A. Romero was hired to make the first Resident Evil film but was abruptly fired and we ended up with films we did. This is a documentary that sets out to find what happened
Arctic Hollow (2024)
A low-budget film about a venture into the Hollow Earth in search of a missing person and encounters with creatures there. So low budget the underground caves seem shot in a darkened room
The Strangeness (1985)
One of the first women-directed horror films. Also one of the first on the subject of people venturing underground and encountering cave monsters
The Order of the Black Eagle (1987)
A low-budget spy/action film with entertainingly bizarre elements including a cryogenically frozen Hitler and the hero going into action accompanied by a baboon
Santo vs Dr Death (1973)
Another of the films featuring Santo, the Mexican masked wrestler superhero. In one of the duller entries, Santo here travels to Spain and is pitted against a mad scientist operating an artworks theft operation
Weathering With You (2019)
From Makoto Shinkai who made Your Name., a lovely anime about a girl who can control the weather. An odd premise about orphans that soon develops unusual and unexpected depths
Lazareth (2024)
A film set in a post-pandemic future, this features Ashley Judd and daughters living in isolation on their own who are suddenly forced to welcome a stranger into their house
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
Nightbitch (2024)
This comes with the irresistible appeal of a premise where frustrated mother Amy Adams finds herself turning into a dog. A very interesting take on the problems of motherhood
Amityville Karen (2022)
The term Karen has come to mean an entitled woman who complains a great deal. This is a horror comedy about one such Karen who becomes possessed after drinking wine that comes from the Amityville house
Amityville Playhouse (2015)
One out of some thirty odd films using the Amityville name. This concerns a girl who inherits a haunted theatre in the town of Amityville
Zinda (2006)
A blatant Bollywood copy of Oldboy, often scene-for-scene
The Master of Disguise (2002)
Hardly anyone remembers Dana Carvey, Mike Myers’ co-star in Wayne’s World. This was Carvey’s attempt to copy the Austin Powers films and is regarded as a bad movie
Nitram (2021)
A true crime film based on Martin Bryant who went on a shooting spree, killing 35 people in Port Arthur, Australia in 1996
Oddity (2024)
An Irish film that develops an incredibly uncanny atmosphere as a blind clairvoyant turns up at the home where her sister was murder and deduces the truth about what happened
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024)
Aardman Animation give Wallace and Gromit their second film outing
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim (2024)
A spinoff prequel to the Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films that takes the option that several other film/videogame franchises have of Going Anime
Cyborg Cop II (1994)
From the height of the 90s RoboCop copycat video release, a sequel that this time pits DEA agent David Bradley up against an army of rogue cyborgs
Robowar (1988)
From Italy, a blatant copy of Predator – only where instead of a military unit being hunted through the jungle by an alien, they are hunted by a copycat of RoboCop
Bells of Innocence (2003)
Perhaps the strangest film on Chuck Norris’s cv – the film where Chuck plays an angel. A work of Christian horror where Chuck’s son Mike plays a decent man trapped in a sinister Western town of devil worshipping children
It Happened Tomorrow (1944)
A classic screwball comedy with Dick Powell as a journalist who becomes recipient of newspapers that predict tomorrow’s headlines. The same premise has appeared in a number of other works since.
Kung Fu Traveler (2017)
A Chinese version of The Terminator if you can imagine the android as the hero who travels back in time to learn a lost form of kung fu in order to prevent an alien invasion
Good Boy (2022)
A wonderfully disturbed film from Norway. A girl goes on a date with a man and discovers he has a roommate who wears a furrie suit and lives as a dog. And then things start to get really twisted
Flow (2024)
A delightful animated film from Latvia made entirely without dialogue, following a group of animals fleeing as their territory is flooded. The winner for my top film of 2024.
Red One (2024)
Essentially Christmas the Action Film featuring Dwayne Johnson as Santa’s bodyguard going into action accompanied by Chris Evans as a nerdy hacker when Santa is abducted
Gamera vs Gyaos (1967)
The third of Daiei’s 1960s Gamera films, this takes the series back into children’s movie territory. Some moments of goofy silliness and variable effects ensue in a likeable enough combination
A Christmas Carol (1984)
Well-made and extremely faithful adaptation of Charles Dickens’s perennial Christmas story starring George C. Scott as Scrooge. This brings out story elements other versions skip over
Mother Krampus (2017)
From the same people who made Demonic Christmas Tree, this is a supernatural retribution film that was sold as a Krampus film
The 12 Slays of Christmas (2016)
From Troma films, this is an anthology made up of twelve Christmas-themed short horror films for what supposed leading indie directors – so acclaimed I’ve only heard of two of them before
The Sacrifice Game (2023)
Jenn Wexler directs a film about thugs taking over a girls’ boarding school that pleasingly subverts your expectations of everything it is going to be at every turn
Venom: The Last Dance (2024)
The third of the Venom films, which has become one of the worst of the modern Marvel spinoffs. By this point any pretence that the films are taking themselves seriously has been long forgotten
Heretic (2024)
Standout film with a very creepy Hugh Grant making two Mormon missionary girls a prisoner in his home. The script for this is so playful and audaciously challenging in its ideas that it blows you away.
Xtro3 (1995)
Third of the Xtro films, none of which are related to one another, this features the discovery of aliens at an abandoned military base
Witchboard 2 (1993)
Way back before Blumhouse’s Ouija and the subsequent cheap ouija-titled films, there was the 80s horror Witchboard, which proved popular enough that it produced two sequels starting with this
Shadow Hunter (1993)
Directed by the underrated J.S. Cardone, this features Scott Glenn in a fine performance trying to track Indian sorcerer Benjamin Bratt
Flying Saucers Over Hollywood: The Plan 9 Companion (1992)
A documentary about the life of Edward D. Wood Jr and the making of Plan 9 from Outer Space. This was made before Tim Burton’s Ed Wood and manages to interview a number of Wood hangers-on while they were still alive
Fullmetal Alchemist: Final Transmutation (2022)
The concluding chapter of the trilogy of live-action Fullmetal Alchemist films, this follows the manga’s storyline closely and brings the series to an epic conclusion
Fullmetal Alchemist: The Revenge of Scar (2022)
The first of two sequels to the live-action Fullmetal Alchemist. The first felt uninspired but this and the third film expand the saga and its storyline out with considerable depth
Memoir of a Snail (2024)
The second Claymation film from Adam Elliot, who made the sublime Mary and Max, concerning the banally hilarious lives of weird, eccentric characters
Foe (2023)
From the pen of Iain Reid who wrote I’m Thinking of Ending Things, an SF film about a man recruited for a space mission and the training of his android replacement. Expectedly, what is going on is shifting and pulls expectation out from under us
Hard Rock Zombies (1985)
Deranged entry in the 80s fad for heavy metal horror films where a band are resurrected from the dead to play an all-important concert, while fighting off conservative townspeople and a very much alive Adolf Hitler
The Video Dead (1987)
An entry from the classic 1980s era of the zombie film about zombies that emerge from a cursed tv set
The Shadow (1940)
A serial adaptation of the popular radio superhero, which gets the look of the character perfect but drops all his mystical powers
Blood Red Sky (2021)
Train to Busan had zombies unleashed on a train, this German film is the same but with vampires loose on a plane. This comes with entertainingly full-tilt ferocity
Handling the Undead (2024)
A film adapted from a book by the writer of Let the Right One In concerning the resurrected dead, this goes some way to divorce itself from the zombie film and develops its horrors with striking slow burn effect
Here (2024)
A unique experimental film from Robert Zemeckis where the camera sits in a single spot in a room and tells is story, covers across history from the dinosaurs to the present day. Based on an acclaimed graphic novel
Watchmen: Chapter II (2024)
The second part of DC Universe Animated Original Movies’ adaptation of Alan Moore’s classic graphic novel, the most faithful screen adaptation yet
Bad Girl Island (2007)
A film that feels like it should be an erotic thriller but isn’t. Antonio Sabato Jr. rescues an amnesiac Annalynne McCord who proceeds to exert a fatal influence
Thy Neighbor’s Wife (2001)
One of the erotic thrillers made after Basic Instinct, essentially an ripoff of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle where a vengeful Kari Wuhrer becomes a nanny seeking vengeance for the death of her husband
Metropia (2009)
Animated film set in a dystopian near-future Europe of constant surveillance where even people’s heads are monitored
A Cat in the Brain (1990)
Cult Italian horror director Lucio Fulci plays himself, a horror director being driven to hallucinations and acts of murder by the violence he directs in his films
Satanic Hispanics (2022)
A multi-director horror anthology where all the directors are Latin American
Frankie Freako (2024)
Makeup effects artist Steven Kostanski has become a fine director in recent years. Here he makes a Gremlins-styled film about a 1-900 number that unleashes a mischievous goblin
Smile 2 (2024)
Smile was a sleeper hit about a viral curse and created a reasonable spooky atmosphere. The surprise is that this sequel manages to still deliver the goods too
Atlas (2024)
The idea of Jennifer Lopez in a transformer suit kicking robot ass has an outlandishness to it. The surprise is that this is a really good, well written SF film of planetary survival
Byte (2024)
This takes the award for bizarre concepts – a phone app that turns users into werewolves
Weredeer (2022)
Exactly as the title suggests, a film in which a girl is transformed into a weredeer after a bite from a deer. Surprisingly enough, the film plays itself seriously
A Thousand and One Nights (1945)
Part of the fad during the 1940s for swashbuckling Arabian Nights adventures, this tells the story of Aladdin and is more embracing of the fantasy elements than most of the other films of this period
Train (2008)
A blatant copy of Hostel featuring tourists caught aboard a train in Ukraine that runs an organ-harvesting operation
Slotherhouse (2023)
A sloth is adopted as the mascot of a sorority house and proceeds to go on a killing spree. This emerges as entertainingly tongue-in-cheek
H.P. Lovecraft’s The Old Ones (2024)
Another low-budget film that appropriates H.P. Lovecraft’s name above its title. From low-budget director Chad Ferrin who previously ventured into Lovecraft with The Deep Ones
Megalopolis (2024)
Francis Ford Coppola’s extraordinarily ambitious SF film about an architect’s vision of building a utopia. Hated by most audiences, this still contains some great if flawed film-making.
Slingshot (2024)
Quite a good film about a space expedition where the crew members on a mission to Saturn fall into an increasing paranoia and inability to tell what is real due to the drugs used in the hypersleep process
Mad About Men (1954)
A sequel to the charming British mermaid comedy Miranda with Glynis Johns again owning the show with her flirtatiously coy sparkle as she swaps places with a lookalike relative
Wyrmwood: Apocalypse (2021)
Sequel to the cult Australian zombie film, this refines the first film and exists as even more of a visual comic-book – all that seems missing is dialogue that comes in comic balloons
The Piper (2023)
One of the last films made by Julian Sands before his death, this concerns a cursed musical score that ties back to the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Sands plays an autocratic orchestra conductor
The Last Breath (2024)
A film about survival in shark-infested waters where a party diving on a wreck become trapped inside by sharks. Featuring the last performance of Julian Sands
The Platform 2 (2024)
The Platform offered a striking allegory with a prison where a banquet table of food moved down 300 levels each day. This is a sequel