Pizza (2012)
A rare Indian venture into the horror film, this is a haunted house film of modest effect that suddenly becomes a whole lot more watchable when it pulls a major M. Night Shyamalan-esque twist on us
Planet 51 (2009)
A one-gag animated film that essentially reverses the plot of E.T, and has a human astronaut stranded on a planet of aliens and adopted by one boy. More likeable than it has a right to be.
Planet Hulk (2010)
Animated adaptation of the one of the biggest Marvel Comics event storylines of the 2000s – the same one also used in Thor Ragnarok. Essentially Spartacus recast with The Incredible Hulk
Planet of the Apes (2001)
Tim Burton’s much disliked remake. Certainly, the ape makeups are superb. While Burton touches many points with the original, he has dropped the biting satire in favour of adventure, while the ending left everyone scratching their heads
Plus One (2013)
An interesting and unusual film where teens attending a house party find that it has been invaded by doppelgangers of themselves who are taking over their lives
Pokemon: The Power of One (1999)
The second of the animated films spun off around the Pokemon phenomenon and an altogether better film than its predecessor due to some imaginative animation
Pop Skull (2007)
Micro-budgeted early Adam Wingard film that delves into the disturbed mental spaces of a depressed man
Possessed (1999)
Early film from Danish director Anders Rønnow-Klarlund. This starts out as a plague outbreak drama and then does a bizarre mid-film twist to become a possession film
Power of Grayskull: The Definitive History of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2017)
A documentary about the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe phenomenon. This covers everything from the origins of the toys through the animated series to the live-action film
Predator 2 (1990)
Predator was one of the better Alien/Aliens copies of the 1980s. This sequel does little more than serve the same up all over again bar the substitution of a near-future L.A. for the jungle but manages to generate a reasonably intensive ride out of the action
The Predator (2018)
Shane Black, a writer-director with a reasonable cult following, makes the sixth Predator film (he also appeared as an actor in the original). Black shakes the series up, introduces a number of new ideas and makes an okay entry
Predator: Badlands (2025)
The ninth Predator film. This changes the mix quite considerably from the usual alien huntsman vs human prey formula we have had so far. It also offers a return to the Alien universe, although not quite what we expect
Premature Burial (1962)
The third of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe films, the only one without Vincent Price. Here Ray Milland develops a fearful obsession of being buried alive
The Presence (2010)
Ghost story that does an excellent job in creating an incredibly haunted and unusual atmosphere. On the other hand, the film falls apart during the second half where it heads in another direction altogether and leaves one entirely unclear what is going on
Presence (2024)
Steven Soderbergh is one of the foremost independent directors in the US. He has dipped into numerous different genres and here takes on the ghost story in a film shot from the ghost’s point-of-view
Prey (2004)
Obscure Australian film about people being hunted by a mythical creature known as The Yowie
Prison (1987)
An early film from Renny Harlin made for Charles Band concerning a haunted prison. Features an unknown Viggo Mortensen in one of his earliest roles
The Prodigies (2011)
French animated film about a group of kids with psychic powers going amok. Is okay at what it does but had much of its thunder stolen by the more recent and more spectacular Chronicle
The Prophecy II (1998)
An okay sequel to the angel wars film The Prophecy, the first of several. As in the previous film, a returning Christopher Walken steals the show and gets all the best lines
The Prophet’s Game (1999)
Dennis Hopper plays a retired detective brought in to hunt a serial killer who targets victims via a campus game
Psycho-Pass (2015)
Film spinoff of an anime series about a future police force that uses a system to monitor the brains of the populace for the potential to commit crime. Reminiscent of Minority Report, this is not uninteresting, although falls short of being another Appleseed or Ghost in the Shell
Psychonauts, The Forgotten Children (2015)
Strange, surrealist animation from Spain – the characters are the small, cute talking animals you might encounter in a standard piece of cutsie moppet animation but it exists in a disturbing world that is anything but where characters are plagued by drug addictions, mental illness and police brutality
Pterodactyl (2005)
Reasonable low-budget revived dinosaur film with not bad CGI effects and an often witty, genre savvy script
The Puppet Masters (1994)
This adaptation of the Robert Heinlein novel was not a success when it came out but is a modest addition to the alien body snatchers genre with some undeniably effective moments
Puss in Boots (2011)
Spinoff of the popular Antonio Banderas voiced character from the Shrek sequels, this is lightweight and amiable but can be quickly forgotten
The Pyramid (2014)
A monster movie where the major distinction is that the monster is drawn from Ancient Egyptian mythology and the locale is an unearthed pyramid. The film is too conceptually slim to do much with such an interesting background but it does deliver some solid jumps
Python (2000)
One of the more likeable among the 2000s fad for low-budget CGI monster movies, this is aided considerably by a sense of humour and a line-up of oddball characters
The Quick and the Undead (2006)
Exactly as the title suggests, a mash-up between the zombie film and a Western (albeit relocated to a post-apocalyptic future) – and one that plays itself surprisingly seriously
A Quiet Place Part II (2020)
The first A Quiet Place was No 1 on this site’s Best of 2018 list. John Krasinski still pulls off great set-pieces a second time but reveals the pitfalls of trying to extrude a premise to make a sequel
Rabid (2019)
The Soska Sisters take on remaking the classic David Cronenberg film about a woman with a blood-drinking skin graft who leaves a trail of rabid victims. The sisters smartly update the original, bringing a host of new ideas to bear
Rage (1972)
This directorial outing from actor George C. Scott is an interesting if not wholly successful film about one man’s anger over the military cover-up of a biospill
Rampage (2018)
The idea of Dwayne Johnson facing a giant gorilla in an adaptation of a 1980s arcade game doesn’t exactly shout out Academy Award material; on the other hand, appreciated as a zero expectation cartoon of a film and the mindless mass destruction spectacle it is, this works in a goofily entertaining way
Rampo (1994)
Beautifully made arthouse film about the real-life Japanese horror writer who becomes wound up in in enigmatic meta-fiction with his own creation
Rare Exports (2010)
A Finnish film that comes as appealing anathema to the rosy sentiments of most Christmas films – more like a monster movie where Santa is a monster that punishes bad children
Re/Member (2022)
A Japanese-made variant on the oft-used Groundhog Day timeloop theme. This pushes well into horror movie territory with a group of teenagers trapped in a typical school day and facing a monster figure pursuing them
Ready Player One (2018)
Steven Spielberg adapted Ernest Cline’s book about a massive virtual treasure hunt through 1980s pop culture trivia. The film winds up the pop culture references by a factor of ten, but misses the book’s compulsive readability
Real Steel (2011)
Film about robot boxing that leaves no sports movie cliche untouched, nevertheless works effectively on all the right emotional cues. Capably made, with good effects and the cute kid steals the show
Rebel Moon – A Child of Fire: Part One (2023)
Zack Snyder returns with a work that is all but a Star Wars film in name where he draws heavily on the basics of The Seven Samurai/The Magnificent Seven
Rebirth of Mothra II (1997)
After their successful revival of Godzilla in the 1990s, Toho revived Mothra for a series of standalone battles, albeit with a very juvenile focus made for children. This was the second and better of the three films
[Rec] 2 (2009)
![[Rec] 2 (2009) poster](https://moriareviews.com/rongulator/wp-content/uploads/rec-2-2009-poster-874x1280.jpg)
Lesser sequel to the Spanish Found Footage zombie film [Rec] that repeats the original to variable effect but needlessly breaks up the single camera point-of-view
[Rec]4: Apocalypse (2014)
![[Rec]4 Apocalypse (2014) poster](https://moriareviews.com/rongulator/wp-content/uploads/rec-4-apocalypse-2014-poster-896x1280.jpg)
The fourth film in the [Rec] series. This abandons the Found Footage look but without it, all we have is just another zombie film, nevertheless this builds to an intensively gore-drenched climax
Red Blooded American Girl (1990)
Heather Thomas starring film about the discovery of a laboratory that has created a vampire virus
Red Dragon (2002)
Following the success of the Hannibal Lecter films, Dino de Laurentiis smartly repackaged Thomas Harris’s earlier novel as a Hannibal Lecter prequel
Red Riding (2009)
Depending on how you saw this, this is either a UK tv mini-series or three separately released films. Taking place over a decade, the three stories have a common locale and overlapping characters in the story of the hunt for a serial killer and the battle against a corrupt police department in Yorkshire
Red Sands (2009)
Essentially a variation on The Keep updated to the contemporary US occupation of Afghanistan. A film that one watches with no high expectation but proves to be a slow burner that eventually develops an eerie atmosphere
The Red Shoes (2005)
South Korean horror film about a pair of high-heeled shoes that take over their owner. Some okay jumps in a standard K-horror ghost story
The Red Turtle (2016)
Studio Ghibli’s first ever international co-production. A desert island castaway fantasy, this makes interesting comparison to the recent Robinson Crusoe/The Wild Life, even if both films are poles apart in style. This is dialogueless, spare and contained with a minimalism of plot and drama
Redline (1997)
Standard action film made interesting by the choice of its setting in a post-Soviet Russia Cyberpunk future
The Reef: Stalked (2022)
Andrew Traucki, the director of the standout killer crocodile film Black Water, makes a sequel to his earlier grippingly intense work about people trapped in shark-infested waters
Reign of Fire (2002)
This has the interestingly original premise of being set in a post-apocalyptic world where revived dragons have eliminated most of humanity. The show is stolen by Matthew McConaughey in wild man mode
Reincarnation (2005)
Takashi Shimizu, creator of the Ju-on/The Grudge series, makes a film about an actress who becomes haunted after taking a role based on a true-life murder
The Relic (1997)
This is a copy of Alien with a monster hunting people through darkened corridors and is generic in all regards, although you have to admit that Stan Winston creates an original monster and the film generates reasonable suspense
Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016)
The Resident Evil films are designed for people who were introduced to drama via the Xbox, action sequences that can be assembled in random order and where it doesn’t matter what happens. I watched this, the sixth and final entry, with next-to-no enthusiasm but then quite unexpectedly it starts to work
Resurrected (2023)
This has a fascinating premise where the Catholic Church develops a resurrection process, before one priest starts to see a darker conspiracy beneath. Shot in the Screenlife process where the film screen becomes a computer screen
Retribution (1987)
Interestingly watchable 80s film where a man becomes possessed by a disembodied soul that sets out seeking revenge against its killers. With lots of entertainingly lurid despatches
The Return of Count Yorga (1971)
Count Yorga, Vampire was a minor success that started a spate of modern-day vampire films. This was a slightly lesser sequel that has the same droll wit but gets sidetracked in the middle sections
Return of Giant Majin (1966)
A Japanese monster movie with a difference. The second in a trilogy of films about a giant stone deity that awakens to defend villagers in trouble
The Return of the King (1980)
Way back before Peter Jackson, there was another whole era of Tolkien adaptations, including this animated adaptation of the third book, which is a peculiar oddity if nothing else
Return to Never Land (2002)
Among the cheap video-released sequels to their classics Disney made during the 00s, this Peter Pan sequel emerges as halfway reasonable
Return to Pontianak (2001)
Singaporean film about tourists experienced haunted spirits in the jungle, this owes much to The Blair Witch Project
The Rezort (2015)
This has the interesting idea of “what if we did Jurassic Park but with zombies instead of dinosaurs?” – a game resort where people can hunt zombies only for the security grids to go down. The result is a halfway reasonable effort.
Rich Flu (2024)
This comes with a wonderfully satiric idea of a plague that kills the world’s wealthiest people
Riders to the Stars (1954)
An film from the early days of the Space Age about the attempts to capture meteorites to use as building for rockets. The basic premise is scientifically preposterous but the film is not uninteresting
Right At Your Door (2006)
One of the fear-fraught films made in the aftermath of 9/11, a tense thriller concerning the detonation of a dirty bomb in L.A. and the panic that descends as one man tries to barricade his home
Rio 2 (2014)
I hate the utterly formulaic films of Blue Sky Studios, the ones behind the endless Ice Age sequels. That said, this is one of their more enjoyable – despite a plot that is amazingly busy trying to reintroduce characters from the first film, the screen overflows with colourful exuberance
Rio (2011)
A Blue Sky Studios animated film set around a talking macaw and his journey to the wilds of Brazil for the first time to mate and repopulate the species. Familiar cliched story arcs conducted with a good deal of colour
Road to Morocco (1942)
Road to Morocco was the third of the Bob Hope-Bing Crosby Road films and takes them on a parody of the Arabian Nights adventure
Road Train (2010)
Australian film that takes a big bite out of Duel with a group of people being pursued through the Outback by a truck-trailer that appears to be fueled by human blood
Roadflower (1993)
Psycho road movie in which Christopher Lambert must rescue his family after they are abducted by a gang. An amazing cast list deliver subtle and effective performances
Rock and Rule (1983)
Promisingly ambitious animated SF film that tries to catch some of the trippy qualities of Heavy Metal where the impressive quality of animation is let down by a juvenile story about a rock band in a post-holocaust future
Rollerball (1975)
Classic work of dystopian SF set in a future where an ultra-violent sport has been created to pacify the masses
Rollover (1981)
Jane Fonda and Kris Kristofferson star in a big-budget banking thriller where the US faces economic collapses
Romance Joe (2011)
South Korean film that takes delight in a series of interwoven tales, of stories being told by characters within stories. Has a wilful complexity to it, although the narrative game-playing essentially becomes the film more so than necessarily produces any absorbing individual stories
Rub Love (1998)
Stylish but not always coherent South Korean near-future thriller about a comic-book artist, a hit woman and an amnesia drug
Rules of Engagement (1989)
The last gasp of the mid-80s era of nuclear anxieties that brought Threads and The Day After, a tv mini-series about the imposition of martial law in a British city as US-Soviet nuclear war looms in Europe
Run. (2020)
Well constructed thriller where a wheelchair-confined teenager discovers that her mother is up to sinister purpose and attempts to escape despite her lack of mobility
Run Lola Run (1998)
Tom Tykwer’s visually inventive variant on the alternate timelines theme with Franka Potente trying to replay events to save her boyfriend’s life
Runaway (1984)
Michael Crichton’s books and films are always run through with a fear of technology run amok. Here Crichton makes an enjoyably straightforward directorial outing about a police squad set up to stop runaway robots,
Salvage (2009)
A modestly effective British variation on the mass insanity outbreak film. The film has one of the best out of the blue openings of any film one has seen in some time and is good at finding a kitchen sink realism, less so when it comes to explanations for what is happening
Sand Sharks (2012)
This was made just before Sharknado turned the killer shark film into something deliberately ridiculous and is an entertainingly tongue-in-cheek B movie that has a perfect sense of its own limitations
Santo in the Wax Museum (1963)
One of the films featuring the Mexican masked wrestler Santo. A rehash of Mystery of the Wax Museum/House of Wax with Santo facing a mad waxworks curator who is using human bodies as exhibits
Santo vs the Vampire Women (1962)
This is the most famous of the Santo films, one that evinces an often crudely effective poetry out of its assemblage of B movie elements as he goes up against a vampire priestess and her minions
Satan’s Slave (2017)
A horror film that was the biggest box-office hit ever in Indonesia as a family tragedy stirs up hauntings and the occult. A follow-up to an earlier 1970s film that has become a cult hit.
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
Saviour of the Soul 2 (1992)
Sequel to their earlier Wu Xia film, although having nothing in common with it. All the moves are pushed to a level of cartoonish absurdity that proves amazingly silly
Scared Stiff (1953)
Remake of the earlier Bob Hope Old Dark House comedy The Ghost Breakers now made as a vehicle for the duo of Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. Probably overly long and takes forever to arrive at the haunted house but has some occasionally amiable comedic moments
Scary Tales (2001)
A low-budget horror anthology that is rough around the edges but shows promise
Scary True Stories (1991-2)
A trio of Japanese tv movies that retell supposedly true life ghost stories
Scintilla (2014)
A modest effort that has studied well at the Ridley Scott school of people being stalked in the dark. The film produces a genuinely unearthly and alien creation. The main problem is that the film is severely underwritten and fails to do much after coming up with such an original creature
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)
An Edgar Wright directed comic-book adaptation made in a bewildering restless visual style that feels like two different films happening at once, one a sweet nerd romance and the other a completely gonzo superhero film
Scream 2 (1997)
Wes Craven’s Scream was a clever and witty homage to/deconstruction of the slasher film of the 1980s; for the sequel, he and Kevin Williamson naturally turn to deconstructing the slasher sequel
Scream Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street (2019)
A documentary that discusses the gay subtext in A Nightmare on Elm Street Part II: Freddy’s Revenge and how lead actor Mark Patton claims it ruined his career
Scrooge (1970)
Musical adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol starring Albert Finney as Scrooge, this is made on a big budget, leading to an extravagant and often over-produced film
The Secret of Crickley Hall (2012)
Ghost story BBC mini-series adapted from a novel by horror writer James Herbert that unfolds between two different eras. With an amazing cast of Before They Were Famous names.
Secret of the Telegian (1960)
Toho Films of the 1960s are best known for the Godzilla films and assorted monster bashes. This is one of their non-monster films, part of a spate of mutant supervillain films concerning a villain who has invented a teleportation machine and is using it to exact revenge
See No Evil 2 (2014)
The Soska Sisters make a sequel to the 2006 slasher film. You cannot help but think that a sequel to such an average film is the sisters batting well below their capabilities. The surprise is that in their hands the result follows such traditional genre patterns
Sella Turcica (2010)
Horror film about a soldier returned home from conflict strangely ‘changed’ reminiscent of the classic Dead of Night. From the director of August Underground films.
Serendipity (2001)
Romance film where John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale meet and leave their details on random items in the belief luck will bring them back together
A Serial Killer’s Guide to Life (2019)
Essentially a women’s version of Fight Club, a black comedy about a girl being dragged on a killing spree by a murderous life coach
Serpent (2017)
South African thriller that borrows much of its premise from Buried as a married couple camping in a remote gorge are trapped inside their tent with a deadly snake – only for secrets in the marriage to prove just as deadly