Trap (2024)
M. Night Shyamalan film with Josh Hartnett as a serial killer caught up in a police sting being held at a rock concert
Doctor Jekyll (2023)
The revived Hammer Films takes on adapting Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde with Eddie Izzard playing the role as a trans woman. This offers some amusing modernisations of the familiar, oft-filmed story
Guardians of the Tomb (2018)
A tomb raiding adventure about the venture into a tomb filled with deadly spiders in search of an immortality serum. A Chinese-Australian-co-production.
The Curse of the Mayans (2017)
Film about an expedition through the jungles of the Yucatan to investigate a Mayan pyramid that is revealed to contain alien artefacts. This ventures well inside wacky fringe science theories
Live Animals (2008)
A film made not long after the advent of the Torture Porn fad in which a group of friends are imprisoned on a farm to be broken and sold into slavery
Stripped (2013)
A Found Footage film where a group on a party weekend to Las Vegas call a brothel that promises to do anything – only to enter into full Hostel territory
Sole Survivor (1970)
One of the most original variants on the deathdream film where pilots crashed in the desert come to the realisation they are dead
Disquiet (2023)
Jonathan Rhys Meyers wakes up in a hospital as strange hallucinatory and nightmarish things start to happen. The fact that this is a deathdream film becomes very obvious
The Breach (2022)
Rodrigo Gudiño, editor of Rue Morgue magazine, directs a horror film with strong Lovecraftian overtones about a portal opened at a mysterious cabin in the woods
Lord of Misrule (2023)
William Brent Bell, director of The Devil Inside and The Boy, makes a Folk Horror film. This borrows much from The Wicker Man and only seems Folk Horror by cliche
Inside Out 2 (2024)
Inside Out, set around the personified emotions in a girl’s head, was one of the breaths of fresh air among Pixar’s slip into terminal sequelitis during the 2010s. Now it gets its own sequel
Longlegs (2024)
Osgood Perkins has been a director on the rise in recent years. This was his fourth film where he makes a serial killer thriller featuring a verrrry weird Nicolas Cage in the title role
Space Wars: Quest for the Deepstar (2022)
An enjoyable low-budget modern space opera that ably conjures the knockabout spirit of a host of low-budget 1980s Star Wars knockoffs
The Galaxy Destroyer (1986)
An ultra low-budget film about a man on a space journey returning to Earth to find it invaded by aliens. This tries to do Mad Max and Star Wars on the budget of about $1.99
Watchers II (1990)
The first of three sequels to the Dean R. Koontz adaptation about an intelligent dog, although for each sequel producer Roger Corman has just remade the book
The Man Who Stole the Sun (1979)
An anarchic Japanese film where a school teacher builds an atomic bomb and then begins blackmailing the authorities with his demands
The History of Metal and Horror (2022)
A documentary that explores the intersection between heavy metal music and horror and the frequently intertwined relationship of the two
Hundreds of Beavers (2022)
A completely madcap gonzo comedy that all takes place without dialogue, the live-action equivalent of a Looney Tunes cartoon. One of the most unique and creative films I have seen in some time
Twisters (2024)
Sequel to Twister, the Michael Crichton written film about tornado chasers, this updates the story to the 21st Century and aims for much more in the way of mass destruction spectacle
Watchmen: Chapter I (2024)
An animated adaptation of Alan Moore’s classic, genre defining comic-book, this is the most faithful treatment to date
Dorian (2003)
A modernised version of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray where a male model transfers his image to a photograph that ages while he remains immortal
Golem (1980)
Not an adaptation of the oft-filmed story from Jewish legend about the creation of a creature of clay but a Polish SF film set in a slightly dystopian future featuring the possible creation of artificial people
Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan (2011)
A documentary devoted to the life and films of stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen whose films, which include the Sinbad films and Jason and the Argonauts, have gained a cult following
Babycall (2011)
Pål Sletaune is a Norwegian director who deserves more attention for his reality-bending surrealism. Here mother Noomi Rapace moves into new apartment where ghostly screams come through the baby monitor and she soon finds that she cannot be sure what is real
Exhuma (2024)
A completely wild South Korean film set among the rituals of Confucian shamanism during the attempts to relocate a coffin and exorcise a troublesome spirit
MaXXXine (2024)
Ti West and Mia Goth round out their trilogy of films that consisted of X and Pearl. This time they make a psycho film that takes Goth’s starlet to 1980s Hollywood
Despicable Me 4 (2024)
More from the world’s cuddliest super-villain and those manic ritalin-deprived kids that are the Minions. Is there are life and creativity left in a franchise that has been milked for six films now?
Unmasked Part 25 (1988)
A parody of the slasher film with an amusing central idea – what if a slasher maniac found a love interest and wanted to give up hacking and slashing to be with them?
The Demon (1981)
A South African-made copycat of Halloween with a figure in a black mask stalking women. Cameron Mitchell turns up as a weird clairvoyant hired to find one of the missing girls
By Dawn’s Early Light (1990)
The last gasp of the Cold War nuclear film. A tv movie that features Martin Landau is the US President who tries to stop an accidental Russian nuclear release escalating into full-out war
The Hound of the Baskervilles (1929)
An incredibly good adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes story. Thought lost for many years, this was made at the height of German Expressionism and has a vividness that other adaptations lack
Sharksploitation (2023)
A documentary about the shark film phenomenon, covering all the way from Jaws to the deliberately ridiculous killer shark film with illuminating insight
Destroy All Neighbors (2024)
A black comedy that comes in a very broad tone concerning an ordinary man trying to record an album who accidentally kills people around him only for them to refuse to stay dead
A Quiet Place: Day One (2024)
The third in the trilogy of A Quiet Place films, this is a prequel that takes us back to the start of the invasion
The Black Mass (2023)
Actress Devanny Pinn makes a fine directorial debut with this True Crime film based on Ted Bundy and the incident where he went on a killing spree at a Florida sorority house
The Colony (2021)
A Roland Emmerich-produced film about a space expedition returned to a post-apocalyptic Earth to find a very changed world
Colonials (2023)
A low-budget film with some very accomplished effects that takes place in a devastated future as a Martian colonist returns to find what has happened to Earth
The Reconstruction of William Zero (2014)
A low key but modestly effective film where an amnesiac man comes to the gradual realisation that he is a clone
Penelope (2006)
This has the feel of a fairytale where Christina Ricci plays a girl who suffers from a hereditary curse that has left her with a pig-like snout
Gods of the Deep (2023)
Charlie Steeds is a low-budget British director who has shown reasonable promise. Here he makes an H.P. Lovecraft homage about a submarine expedition that awakens Cthulhu on the ocean floor
Suzume (2022)
Beautifully made anime from Makoto Shinkai about a young girl and a three-legged chair on a quest to close a series of portals across Japan and prevent unimaginable chaos emerging
Arcadian (2024)
A post-apocalyptic film that seems a conceptual merging of I Am Legend and A Quiet Place where Nicolas Cage and sons are at siege from monsters that surround their farmhouse every night
Festival of the Living Dead (2024)
The Soska Sisters made a splash on the genre scene a few years ago. Here they make a tribute/follow-up to Night of the Living Dead but produce an utterly safe work that is the antithesis of the edginess that gained them a name
Koi … Mil Gaya (2003)
This is the Bollywood version of E.T.. That is if one can imagine an E.T. with singing, dancing and romantic scenes. A simplistic but popular hit that spawned several sequels
Teri Baaton Mein Aisa Uljha Jiya (2024)
A Bollywood take on the android/A.I. themes, where a roboticist falls for an android girl and tries to have her accepted by his family
Pajama Party (1964)
One of the popular Beach Party comedies of the 1960s. Tommy Kirk turns up as a bumbling Martian to romance Annette Funicello
Messiah (2001)
A strong and worthwhile serial killer thriller mini-series from the BBC with a killer targeting victims with the names and professions of the apostles
Night Game (1989)
Police procedural with Roy Scheider as a detective tracking a serial killer who strikes on the nights of big baseball games
Fast & Furious 9 (2021)
The Fast and the Furious series has escalated from films about illegal street racing to essentially superhero films involving ridiculous stunt work that defies the laws of physics. This takes the characters into orbit
Infested (2023)
A French film that ratchets up quite a reasonable degree of scary tension in taking a kitchen sink view as spiders overrun a low-income Paris apartment building
Boy Kills World (2023)
A film where you are struggling to find any easy labelling. What it is is an hilariously ultra-violent and over-the-top parody of an action movie that will have your sides splitting
Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths Part Three (2024)
The third and final part of the adaptation of DC Comics’ classic title Crisis on Infinite Earths featuring an epic battle to prevent the destruction of the multiverse
Hannah, Queen of the Vampires (1973)
A Euro vampire film that exists under several different titles. Andrew Prine goes to an island after the death of his father only to disturb the tomb of a vampire queen
The Unborn (1991)
Roger Corman produced film where Brooke Adams realises that something sinister might be happening with her pregnancy
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
Terror Train 2 (2022)
Sequel to the remake of the 1980s horror classic, shot back-to-back with its predecessor, this is a better film than the remake was
Terror Train (2022)
Terror Train starring Jamie Lee Curtis was one of the classics of the original slasher film fad. This is a remake
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024)
A fourth entry in the Planet of the Apes reboot saga. The previous two entries hit incredible heights in terms of motion capture performances but this still a solid entry that holds up well
The Exorcism (2024)
Joshua John Miller, the son of The Exorcist’s star Jason Miller, makes a film where an actor cast as the priest in a remake of The Exorcist becomes possessed. A witty and clever blend of meta reference and autobiography
The Horde (2016)
A Backwoods Brutality film that becomes quite gore-drenched. Written by its leading man Paul Logan who casts himself as a perfect action hero wading in to kick hillbilly ass
Mr Vampire 1992 (1992)
The last of the popular Hong Kong comedy series about hopping vampires. While the other sequels became very silly, this goes out on an inspired final note
The Queen of Spades (1949)
Classic British adaptation of the Alexander Pushkin’s story about a soldier who seeks the secret of selling one’s soul for a winning hand at cards
Cold Heaven (1991)
Nicolas Roeg was one of the great directors of the 1970s, making works like Performance and Don’t Look Now. This was one of Roeg’s last films where Mark Harmon is killed in an accident but makes a miraculous resurrection
The Wrath of Becky (2023)
Becky was a modest effort with Lulu Wilson as a thirteen year-old violently fighting off home invaders. This is a sequel with her up against white supremacists
The Watchers (2024)
M. Night Shyamalan’s daughter Ishana directs a film of her own. Say what you will about nepotism, it is a really good film
Under Paris (2024)
Xavier Gens makes an undeniably entertaining big-budget film about killer shark amok in the Seine
Deep Space (1988)
An enterprising B-budget copy of Alien from prolific director Fred Olen Ray, this amusingly transfers the basics of Alien down to Earth and replaces the crew of the Nostromo with Charles Napier as a tough, grizzled LAPD cop
Bullets, Fangs and Dinner at 8 (2015)
A low-budget independent film about a group of vampire hunters trying to bring down the master vampire – the local Catholic priest
The Black Room (1935)
A stylishly made historical horror where Boris Karloff plays an evil heir to a European province who seeks to gain power by masquerading as his good twin brother
Marrowbone (2017)
Film about children hiding in big old house of secrets following the death of their mother. Filled with all manner of fascinating secrets and twist revelations
Zombie Town (2023)
An adaptation of an R.L. Stine book, a work of safe anodyne horror about zombies trapped inside a film made by director Dan Aykroyd getting loose and overrunning a town
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)
45 years on, George Miller returns with a fifth entry in his Mad Max saga, a prequel to Fury Road. As to be expected from Miller, this an exhilarating action piece and makes a welcome return to his post-apocalyptic junkyard world
The Boy and the Heron (2023)
The twelfth film from Hayao Miyzaki at age 82, a quasi-autobiographical if a slightly less classic work. A renaissance of many Miyazaki themes as a boy follows a heron though into a strange fantasy otherworld
Barbarian Queen (1985)
One of a series of low-budget sword-and-sorcery films of the 1980s. This predates both Red Sonja and Xena with its depiction of a fierce warrior woman. Produced by Roger Corman
Dragon Knight (2022)
Quite a decent low-budget epic fantasy film from promising Scottish director Lawrie Brewster. This manages to create a reasonable suspension of disbelief on modest resources
Otis (2008)
Film about a big overweight psycho who abducts girls and makes them enact a fantasy of being a cheerleader. Produced by one of the directors of The Blair Witch Project
Asteroid (2021)
We have had numerous films about asteroids and meteors about to strike the Earth. This is played as a comedy where a man buys his dream home only to find it is ground zero for an oncoming comet strike
Meteor (2009)
Disaster TV mini-series where assorted well-known faces fight through the chaos to prevent an impending meteor strike
Azur and Asmar (2006)
Next to Hayao Miyazaki, Michel Ocelot is the greatest animators of all time but one of the least widely recognised. Here he conducts a beautifully made Arabian fairytale
Blackout (2023)
Larry Fessenden is a strong genre force as director, producer and sometimes actor. He has covered most major horror themes in his films. Blackout was his take on the werewolf film
IF (2024)
Ryan Reynolds and director John Krasinski combine to make a film about imaginary companions, an appealingly quirky effort where a young girl befriends a large furry invisible creature
The Primevals (2023)
A fascinating lost world/alien lizard people stop-motion animated film that has been in production for a record 56 years, eventually pieced together and released by Charles Band several years after its creator’s death
The Happy Ghost (1984)
A popular Hong Kong hit in its day where a schoolgirl gains a ghostly scholar as an invisible companion, resulting in a series of slapstick sequences. Several sequels followed
Pretty Ghost (1991)
One of a popular spate of 80s/90s Hong Kong ghost comedies where a man gets the aid of an annoying ghost girl as he pursues the woman of his dreams
The Return of Chandu (1934)
A serial based on Chandu the Magician, a popular radio superhero who wielded magical and mystical powers. Featuring Bela Lugosi in the title role
Ten Little Indians (1989)
An adaptation of Agatha Christie’s novel/play And Then There Were None that relocates the story to an African safari and takes more of a horror movie focus
Slaughtered Vomit Dolls (2006)
A hardcore and irredeemably nasty film, this has the aesthetic of a snuff movie and features lots of scenes of victims tortured and vomiting
Murder-Set-Pieces (2004)
A psycho film about a serial killing photographer that stalks Las Vegas, this collapses under its determination to be edgy
I Saw the TV Glow (2024)
An almost unclassifiably strange film about fandom for a weird 1990s tv show, this seems to be heading for David Lynch territory and becomes an allegory for trans identity
Sasquatch Sunset (2024)
A sublimely eccentric concept for a film that follows a family of Bigfeet in the wild over the course of a year. There are no humans in the film, not even any dialogue. One of my Top 10 of the year
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
Don’t Look Away (2023)
Horror film from regular Canadian genre director Micheal Bafaro about a group of friends who enact a curse in which they are pursued and killed by a mannequin come to life
Brain Freeze (2021)
A Quebecois (French Canadian) zombie film about the residents of an island being turned into zombies by a fertiliser used on the golf course
Cafe Flesh (1982)
An adult film that gained a critical respectability when it came out, an avant garde work set in a future where the populace has become impotent and the handful unaffected perform sex in clubs for paying audiences
Ghostwatch (1992)
Classic BBC live broadcast tv special where a camera crew investigate a haunted house. Cited as one of the first Found Footage films, this does some ingenious things blending fact and fiction and messing with its audience
Corrective Measures (2022)
Another of the last films made by Bruce Willis before his retirement. This one has a watchable central idea and is set around the idea of a prison for super-villains even if Bruce is not up to much
The Strangers: Chapter 1 (2024)
The Strangers was one the sleeper hits of the 2000s. This is the first chapter in a three film reboot. On the minus side, it has been handed over to Renny Harlin, who should be on any worst directors list
Tarot (2024)
A horror film based around the phenomenon of tarot cards, a surprise that nobody has done so before
Hornet (2018)
An Asylum mockbuster aimed to exploit the release of the Transformers spinoff BumbleBee. This has the unique distinction of being a Transformers-type film shot as Found Footage
Robot Revolution (2015)
Micro-budgeted SF film where a nanoswarm is accidentally released, taking over an apartment building and reprogramming technology