10.5 (2004)
Disaster mini-series based around the great belief that a super-earthquake will come and pitch most of California into the ocean. Despite devoting some four hour of screen time to it, the drama feels painfully padded at times, while the special effects sequences come out as not very special
616 Paranormal Incident (2013)
Low-budget film about a team of FBI ghost hunters investigating an abandoned prison where mysterious things are going on
The 7 Adventures of Sinbad (2010)
Cheap mockbuster from The Asylum that was designed to exploit the success of the flop Prince of Persia. While ostensibly a Sinbad film, this confusingly abandons the Arabian Nights milieu and is set contemporary where Sinbad is not sailor but a corporate CEO stranded on a desert island
Adrenalin: Fear the Rush (1996)
An Albert Pyun action film with police officers Christopher Lambert and Natasha Henstridge pursuing an infected man through the sewers of a future quarantine zone
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
Alone in the Dark (2005)
Uwe Boll gained a reputation as the world’s worst director on the basis of his videogame adaptations. Prize exhibit was Alone in the Dark, which abandons the game and is a series of action scenes without explanatory rationale
Along With the Gods: The Two Worlds (2017)
A massive hit in South Korea about a firefighter’s journey through the afterlife and the trials he must undergo. On the other hand, the director seems to be trying to turn a moral redemption story into a superhero film
Amelia 2.0 (2017)
The theme of Mind Upload is waiting for the one film to come along and define its theme. This, in which a comatose wife’s body is loaded into an android body, is not that film and only reaches for cliches
American Conjuring (2016)
An undistinguished low-budget haunted house effort that was quickly retitled to jump aboard the bandwagon of James Wan’s The Conjuring films
The Amityville Asylum (2013)
Another of the unofficial sequels that bear slim to no resemblance to the Amityville Horror hoax. This is a cheaply made and not terribly scary British effort set in a asylum supposedly built on the site of 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
Ape vs Mecha Ape (2023)
Ape vs Monster was The Asylum’s mockbuster take on Godzilla vs Kong. This is a sequel that takes a few leaves from Godzilla’s Mechagodzilla and pits the giant ape up against a giant robotic ape
Aquamarine (2006)
Young Adult fantasy in which two girls befriend a mermaid. A film very much made for teenage girls, bubbly, silly and lightweight
The Atomic Kid (1954)
Perhaps the strangest film Mickey Rooney ever made, a comedy in which he is a prospector caught in an atomic explosion and afterwards gains the ability to cause things to explode
Attack of the Killer Donuts (2016)
There is a certain genus of films based around coming up with deliberately ridiculous titles. The filmmakers sell you instantly on the film from the title alone but have lavished little care or budget on the actual film
Backwater (2015)
For the most part a standard variant on the staple of people being stalked through the backwoods. Things are buoyed up by an effective twist but that fails to excuse the fact that almost nothing happens
Bad Milo! (2013)
A comedy about a demon that appears out of a man’s ass!!! This has the dementia to be a potential midnight cult hit but misses the mark by a wide mile and stumbles around obvious targets in predictable ways
Batman Ninja vs Yakuza League (2025)
A sequel to Batman Ninja, which offered an anime treatment of Batman. This gives us a bizarre alternate Yakuza-ruled Japan with versions of the Justice League working for them
Be Afraid (2017)
When Rodney Ascher’s incredibly uncanny documentary The Nightmare came out, I predicted sleep paralysis would become a new theme for horror. This starts as a sleep paralysis film but veers off to become something else
The Bell Witch Haunting (2013)
Following Paranormal Activity, The Asylum made a series of Found Footage films with the novelty selling point of claiming the films were taking place on the sites of famous murders or haunted locations
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
Beowulf (1999)
An adaptation of the classic epic legend Beowulf that bizarrely recasts the story as a Christopher Lambert-starring action movie and sets it in a post-apocalyptic future
Bethany (2017)
Low-budget film where a couple move into her family home and she is haunted by childhood imaginary companion that may or not be real
The Black Cat (1990)
This has next-to-nothing to do with Edgar Allan Poe. Instead, Luigi Cozzi makes a giallo thriller that makes claims to be the unofficial third chapter of Dario Argento’s at that point unfinished Three Mothers trilogy.
The Black Waters of Echo’s Pond (2009)
Horror film with an interesting cast line-up about a group on a weekend getaway who play a boardgame that serves to bring out secrets and hidden desires
The Black Widow (1947)
A rather dull fifteen-chapter serial about the efforts a detective who sets out to stop Sombra, an Asian spy intent on stealing US atomic rocket secrets
The Blob (1958)
Film about a monstrous blob that devours everything in its path. This has become a 1950s B movie classic more through its chessiness value, not to mention theme of teenage rebellion, than necessarily being a great film
Boo! A Madea Halloween (2016)
I don’t dislike the Tyler Perry film – the performances are skillfully accomplished. Here however Perry attempts to make a Halloween comedy while displaying almost zero interest in any of the genre elements
The Borrower (1991)
The film that Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer director John McNaughton chose to make next – about an an alien criminal sentenced to Earth who is forced to ‘borrow’ people’s heads to replace its own
Brain Dead (2007)
Not to be confused with the Peter Jackson Braindead, although the similarity of titles only emphasizes how weak and unfunny this 1980s splatter homage comedy is in comparison
Bugsy Malone (1976)
The first film from the great Alan Parker, a 1920s gangster film but where the entire show is played out with kids, which include a young Jodie Foster. Regarded as a classic by many, this is a one-gimmick film dependent on kids (not) being able to play a complex range of adult emotions
Casper: A Spirited Beginning (1997)
The first of the video-released sequels to the Casper the Friendly Ghost film, this is played down to children and comes with much in the way of slapstick
Caved In (2006)
One of the spate of underground horror films that came out in 2005 including The Descent and The Cave. This is a B-budget wannabe obviously shot in a studio. The addition of giant beetles takes it into the cheesily ridiculous
Cerberus (2005)
Cerberus, the three-headed dog that guards the entrance to Hades in Greek myth, is appropriated to become the focus of a standard md-00s CGI monster movie
Chicken Little (2005)
Head-scratching animated oddity from Disney that adapts the talking animal fairytale only to throw in a series of bizarre plot elements that end up as an alien invasion story
Chupacabra Terror (2005)
A monster movie that is entirely by the book and undistinguished in any way except for its eye-raisingly gimmicky capsule premise ‘Chupacabra Loose on a Cruise Liner’
Cinderella III: A Twist in Time (2007)
Another cheap Disney made-for-video-release sequel. This at least offers the novelty of an alternate retelling of Cinderella but everything transpires predictably
Class of 1999 (1990)
Mark L. Lester’s follow-up to his earlier The Class of 1982 about a teacher forced to adopt vigilante actions in a lawless classroom. In the interim, The Terminator came out and this now has killer android schoolteachers
Cloak and Dagger (1984)
Henry Thomas, then riding on the success of E.T., is cast as a kid with a love of spy games who, accompanied by his imaginary companion, is plunged into the midst of a real spy caper.
Clown Motel (2019)
There have been a spate of killer clown films in the last few years almost none of which have escaped being cheap and crappy. This one is based around the real-life clown motel in Nevada
Come True (2020)
A Canadian-made horror film about a teenage runaway who signs into a mysterious dream institute that conduct experiments that open up something disturbing inside her
The Crimson Ghost (1946)
A rather dull twelve-chapter serial in which a criminologist tries to stop the titular criminal mastermind tries to steal a device that can block electrical transmissions
Cryo (2022)
This has an intriguing premise where a group awake from cryogenic suspension with their memories blank as someone among their number now begins killing them
Damsel (2024)
A dragon fantasy where Stranger Things’ Millie Bobby Brown plays the damsel who sets out to save herself. A fantasy film made for people who don’t like fantasy films
Darken (2017)
A film that comes with an interesting sounding premise where a woman ventures through a doorway into a labyrinth world of interconnected rooms and ends up in a fight against the ruling theocracy
The Darkness (2016)
Greg McLean has made an impressive name with the Wolf Creek films and Rogue. In his first US film, he delivers a disappointing and utterly generic haunted suburban house film
The Day of the Triffids (1962)
The first film version of John Wyndham’s novel about a catastrophe that renders most of the population blind and leaves them prey to lethal plants. This is killed by variable effects and the abandonment of much of the book
The Day the World Ended (2001)
One of a series of films that borrow their titles from old 1950s films, this abandons any connection to the original end of the world film and concerns a boy who may be causing an alien monster to appear
Death Race 3: Inferno (2012)
By tthis third film, the Death Race series is straining trying to find something original to do with a ry limited premise. The Death Race now takes place in the South African desert but the action scenes prove monotonous
The Demented (2013)
Another in the vast horde of zombie films of the 2010s concerning a group of friends gathered for a party as a terrorist biowarfare attack turns the locals into zombies
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
Demonic (2021)
Neill Blomkamp, the director of District 9, returns with a possession film that uniquely takes places in Virtual Reality as Carly Pope must use a device that enters her comatose mother’s dreamspace
Doomsdayer (2000)
A low-budget video-released action effort that attempts to copy the James Bond films featuring the hunt for a device that can trigger all nuclear reactors
Dr Dolittle: Tail to the Chief (2008)
The second of the video-released Dr Dolittle films featuring his teenage daughter Kyla Pratt. This is marginally better and less excruciating in its humour than its predecessor Dr. Dolittle 3 was
Earthquake (1974)
Disaster movie in which Los Angeles is devastated by an earthquake Size 7 on the Richter scale. Despite a script by Mario Puzo, author of The Godfather, this is the usual soap opera melodramatics
Evangeline (2013)
This rehashes I Spit on Your Grave by way of The Crow with a heroine who is raped and killed and then becomes resurrected as a supernatural avenger
Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)
This is regarded as one of the worst sequels ever made, featuring many of the actors but with John Boorman stepping in as director. It’s an incomprehensible mishmash of ideas but not without some laudable elements
Exorcist: The Beginning (2004)
Prequel to The Exorcist concerning the young Father Merrin. Production company Morgan Creek dumped Paul Schrader’s original version of the film and brought in the perpetually terrible Renny Harlin to make something scarier but Harlin’s pop-effects remain tepid
Fading of the Cries (2011)
Low-budget ingenue effort with pretensions to being more, this produces some occasionally nifty effects that quickly weary and only seem to hold up a thoroughly hackneyed B horror movie plot
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
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 (2025)
Five Nights at Freddy’s, adapted from the popular videogame and featuring Josh Hutcherson fighting off killer animatronics, was a runaway success for Blumhouse. This is a sequel
Friday the 13th (2009)
Another 1980s horror remake that had much potential. However, this proves to be just another Friday the 13th film by the numbers, albeit with a bigger budget, and widely misses the mark
Futuresport (1998)
This borrows the basics of Rollerball and concerns a futuristic sports game played aboard hoverboards. Cocky player Dean Cain decides a showdown with terrorists must be settled over the outcome of a game
Geostorm (2017)
Directorial debut of Roland Emmerich’s regular screenwriter Dean Devlin who has clearly been given orders to make another Emmerich film. Thus we get all the same effects-driven mass destruction spectacle, absurd science and pro-environmental messages
Get Smart (2008)
There seems something crushingly redundant about conducting a big screen revival of tv’s Get Smart in the era after Austin Powers. The film is a middle-of-the-road comedy that never finds the zaniness of the original
Graduation Day (1981)
Another entry from the slasher heyday, appropriating a holiday as title. This is fairly tatty as the lowered standards of the slasher genre go, although the cast contains some interesting names in retrospect
H.P. Lovecraft’s Monster Portal (2022)
Low-budget film about a woman who inherits a British country estate to find someone has opened a portal to unleash entities. One of several low-budget films of late to appropriate Lovecraft’s name
H.P. Lovecraft’s The Deep Ones (2020)
A low-budget adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth. That is if you can imagine Lovecraft’s story about fish people mating with humans relocated to a California AirBNB
Halloween 5 (1989)
The fourth of the Halloween sequels where the series is by now is no more than a crudely directed slasher film, a far cry from John Carpenter’s eerily suspenseful original
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)
Following John Carpenter’s departure from the Halloween series, the sequels begin their progression into a series of interchangeable slasher films in which Michael Myers is inevitably released to kill anew
The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (2025)
A remake of the 1992 film that starred Rebecca De Mornay as a psychopathic babysitter who enters a household seeking revenge. This updates the story for the 2020s, although is no less a conservative version than the original
A Haunted House (2013)
Marlon Wayans treads the same territory as the Scary Movie films in this parody take on Paranormal Activity. Most of the film is pitched as a series of crude lowest common denominator gags
The Haunted Mansion (2003)
Lightweight film based around the Disney theme park attraction that becomes a Eddie Murphy comedy where he and his family enter a big old mansion that proves to be haunted
The Heavenly Kid (1985)
Lightweight fantasy film with Lewis Smith as a 1950s rocker who is sent back from the afterlife to act as a guardian angel to help a nerdy Jason Gedrick stand up for himself
Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005)
This was a revival of Disney’s Herbie the Love Bug films. Here it becomes a vehicle for Lindsay Lohan who is cast as a racing driver but is missing all the cute charms the original films had
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
Hero and the Terror (1988)
One of Chuck Norris’s action films made for Cannon Films during his 1980s heyday. This is a rather forgettable police procedural where Chuck is cast as a detective hunting an escaped serial killer
The Hive (2014)
This comes with an interesting idea about an infection that links all the infectees together into a gestalt of shared memories even if the delivery is uneven
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)
The Hobbit became Peter Jackson’s equivalent of the Star Wars prequels and this is the weakest work he has produced under the J.R.R. Tolkien banner. Five picaresque chapters of the book are extruded into bloated set-pieces
Hocus Pocus 2 (2022)
As part of their attempt to sell everything including the family silver, Disney make a sequel to their witch comedy, bringing back the three original actresses who are now looking a lot longer in the tooth
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
House of the Dead (2003)
The first of Uwe Boll’s videogame adaptations and the beginning of his bad director reputation. This is a zombie film by the numbers but it was at the forefront of zombie film revival of the 2000s
Hunk (1987)
A lightweight comedy in which nerd Steve Levitt makes a pact with The Devil to have the perfect male body but soon comes to regret his decision
Ice Soldiers (2013)
This Canadian effort about Soviet super-soldiers unfrozen in the present-day feels like one of a bunch of cheap direct-to-video copies of Universal Soldier that came out in the late 1990s
The Illusionauts (2012)
A Peruvian children’s animated film about a device that allows people to enter an author’s imagination. This mostly has children having adventures in a facsimile of Jules Verne
Imaginary (2024)
A largely routine Blumhouse film where a woman’s return to her childhood home ends up awakening her imaginary companion who has now turned sinister
The In Crowd (2000)
This is sold with the appealing idea of someone slaughtering their way through a bitchy teen clique. However, the film on show is far tamer than anything that it is promises to be
In the Dark (2013)
A bland tv movie thriller in which a blinded woman Elisabeth Röhm finds that her homecare aid is an obsessive stalker who has fixated on her
Independence Day: Resurgence (2016)
Roland Emmerich returns with more of the same. The problem is how to top the first film and here everything is so big and with so much happening that it cannot be taken in and slips into tedium
Instinct (1999)
This sell itself as Anthony Hopkins in another Hannibal Lecter-like role. Rather than Silence of the Lambs, this emerges more as The Shawshank Redemption by way of Gorillas in the Mist
It Lives Inside (2023)
A US-made film from an East Indian director who draws on his cultural background in the story of a girl haunted by a demon from Hindu myth
Johnny English Reborn (2011)
Rowan Atkinson is a very funny man but try as I might I cannot get into these Johnny English films – they seem at best lame Austin Powers castoffs with gags designed for the single digit age range
The Jungle Book 2 (2003)
From the late 90s/early 00s period where Disney were churning out cheap sequels to their animated classics of yesteryear, a wholly unnecessary continuation of The Jungle Book
Jungle Boy (1996)
A fairly blatant copy of Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book stories – even more so of the then recent 1994 live-action Disney remake – all having been conducted on a B-budget
King Dinosaur (1955)
The first film from Bert I. Gordon, known for his cheap giant animal films through the 1950s. This concerns a space expedition to a planet inhabited by dinosaurs – cue Gordon’s usual cheap effects
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 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
Leatherface (2017)
Supposedly a The Texas Chain Saw Massacre prequel that offers us a Leatherface origin story. The least Texas Chain Saw-like of the sequels and eventually a far cry from the original
Leprechaun: Origins (2014)
The Leprechaun films were a cheap ripoff of the Freddy Krueger films. This supposed revival bears nothing whatsoever to do with the originals and doesn’t even seem the same type of film anymore
Like Mike (2002)
Utterly insipid family film about an orphan kid who is given a magical set of sneakers that turn him into a basketball star who is “like Mike [Jordan].” Little more than a glorified commercial for the NBA