The Girl from Monday (2005)
Hal Hartley was one of the foremost independent directors of the 1990s. Here he makes a film set in satiric future dominated by the advertising industry featuring a visit from an alien girl
The Girl in the Photographs (2015)
The last film that Wes Craven is credited with (as producer) – a slasher film more that is interesting than most. Not to mention features an outrageously obnoxious performance from Kal Penn
Girlhouse (2014)
Slasher film that comes with the interestingly original setting of a college dorm webcam porn site. Unfortunately, the film takes an awfully safe and tasteful route in delivering it
Girls Against Boys (2012)
In the vein of films like I Spit on Your Grave and especially Baise-Moi, two girls go on a killing spree against rapists and asshole men. Undeniably interesting but this gets sabotaged by the film’s gaping moral blindspots
Girls School Screamers (1985)
Catholic schoolgirls are being killed in a big old haunted house. This was unable to find a release in its original form whereupon it was bought up by Troma, given a much more sensationalistic title and released with extra gore scenes
The Giver (2014)
Another adaptation of a classic Young Adult book, this merely substitutes well-worn dystopian tropes and comes out feeling like Divergent by way of Pleasantville
Glass (2019)
Unbreakable was M. Night Shyamalan’s everyday superhero film. Here he merges the characters from Unbreakable and Split to create his own shared universe. This could in effect be the kitchen sink version of The Avengers
The Glass Bottom Boat (1966)
Comedy where Doris Day is a NASA employee drawn into spy shenanigans. It feels as though Day has been cast in a Jerry Lewis role and the whole film is nothing more than a series of slapstick set-pieces
Glass House: The Good Mother (2006)
A sequel to The Glass House, this time with different cast or orphaned kids and different evil step-parents. This has the bland feel of a tv movie
The Glass Slipper (1955)
A live-action version of Cinderella starring Leslie Caron. This is a rather staid version with ballet sequences where the magic and romance never much ignites
The Glow (2002)
This rehashes the basic set-up of Rosemary’s Baby but with a spin where a couple move into the perfect apartment only to find their neighbours are health obsessed seniors with a sinister agenda
Gnomeo & Juliet (2011)
Surely the most outlandish film premise ever slung together for an animated film – a version of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet conducted between talking garden gnomes in rival backyards
Godkiller: Walk Among Us (2010)
An ‘illustrated film’ – essentially comic-book panels with voiceover narration. The story about gods inhabiting a burned-out future is far more ambitious than can be crammed into the film
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
Godzilla, King of the Monsters (2019)
Follow-up to the 2014 US-made Godzilla. This introduces other monsters from the Japanese series and tries to create a shared universe. But when the film is all massively-scaled mass destruction, it seems hard to root for the monsters
Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters (2017)
The 30th Japanese Godzilla film, this is the first anime Godzilla film and the first in a trilogy. More disappointingly, it is more a space opera and planetary adventure than it is ever a Godzilla film
Godzilla: The Planet Eater (2018)
The concluding chapter in the trilogy of Godzilla anime films. This reintroduces two familiar monsters but takes a long time to build to the monster bash we have come to see
Godzilla vs. Biollante (1989)
The 17th Godzilla film and the second of the modern era where Toho started to employ top drawer effects. Toho created a new nemesis, the plant monster Biollante, although this was not popular with the public
Godzilla vs Megaguirus (2000)
The 24th Godzilla film where Godzilla faces a giant prehistoric dragonfly. While the modern Godzilla films have readily adopted CGI and animatronics, the effects here are much more variable
Godzilla vs Space Godzilla (1994)
Space Godzilla is one the strangest nemeses to turn up in these kaiju films – a blue counterpart of the Big G with a giant glowing mass of crystal on its shoulders. One of the more routine entries in the modern Godzilla series
Going Postal (2010)
A disappointing tv mini-series adaptation of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novel, which has been (largely) played as a straight adventure with the usual Pratchett comedy taking a backseat
Gold (1934)
A work from the great era of German Expressionism. This concerns an engineering process that can turn lead to gold and contains some amazing effects, as well as Brigitte Helm from Metropolis as a seductress
The Golden Compass (2007)
The attempt to create another Lord of the Rings went astray with this adaptation of Philip Pulllman’s fantasy series, which cut many of the core elements of the books so as not to offend religious conservatives
Goldilocks and the Three Bears (1995)
A modernised version of the Goldilocks fairytale, which now comes with the addition of an environmentalist subplot and where the bears are made into an endangered species
Goldilocks and the Three Bears: Death & Porridge (2024)
Another in the spate of horror versions of fairytales and children’s stories, this is essentially The Strangers played out with people terrorised by a group dressed as Goldilocks and the Three Bears
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
Gone (2012)
This feels like a post-Silence of the Lambs thriller with Amanda Seyfried as an abduction survivor trying to find her missing sister. The film never rises above the cliches 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
Good Fortune (2025)
The film where Keanu Reeves plays an angel. Directed/written by and starring Aziz Ansari as a hapless gig worker who Keanu’s angel’s tries to help only to accidentally swap the lives of Ansari and tech bro Seth Rogen
A Good Marriage (2014)
Stephen King writes a screen adaptation of his own story about a wife who discovers that her husband is a serial killer. A strong premise that oddly misses most of the opportunities.
The Good Son (1993)
A variant on the evil child psycho-thriller, this seems set up specifically to allow Macaulay Culkin, the obnoxious cute kid from Home Alone, to trash his wholesome image
Goodnight Mommy (2022)
The Austrian Goodnight Mommy was one of the most effective horror films of recent years. This is the toned-down English-language remake starring Naomi Watts as the mother
Goosebumps 2 (2018)
The second film spun off from R.L. Stine’s popular horror stories promotes the wonderfully evil ventriloquist’s dummy Slappy to principal nemesis. The rest of the film is predictable but Slappy deserves his own series
Goosebumps (2015)
A film based on the hugely popular children’s horror series. The film creates a story where the creatures from all the books are unleashed. This is fun to watch, yet what we ultimately have is easy, undemanding horror for family audiences
Gor (1987)
Cannon Films adaptation of John Norman’s series of books. The books come with heavy BDSM content but this is a planetary adventure about a professor transported to become a hero on a barbarian planet
The Gorilla (1939)
The Old Dark House film hit a peak in the late 1930s. This was a comedy variant featuring the entirely forgotten comedy act The Ritz Brothers stumbling around an old mansion
Gormenghast (2000)
I enjoyed Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast books far more than J.R.R. Tolkien. Alas, the sublime texture and eccentricity is completely missing in this BBC tv version, which aims for colourful silliness
Gothic (1986)
There is a good idea here, exploring what happened in the meeting between Lord Byron, Mary Shelley et al at the Villa Diodati in 1816. However this is hijacked by Ken Russell in lunatically over-the-top-mode
Gothic & Lolita Psycho (2010)
Another in the spate of gonzo Japanese splatter films. A cartoony OTT vigilante film with a Gothic schoolgirl avenger, featuring ridiculous action and splatter set-pieces
Gothika (2003)
Halle Berry is a psychiatrist who comes around to find she has been incarcerated in her own asylum only to then find it is haunted. An improbably contrived set up with some jumps
Grave Encounters (2011)
Another Found Footage horror film with a reality tv ghostbusting team investigating a haunted asylum. The Found Footage genre quickly became exhausted and this only treads where others have gone before
The Gravedancers (2006)
Mike Mendez has gained a reasonable name as a genre director since the early 2000s. This is one of his earlier works, a venture into the ghost story where three friends are haunted after drunkenly dancing on a grave
Graveyard Shift (1987)
Stylish New Wave film about an existential vampire taxi driver meeting a woman film director who has received a terminal diagnosis. From the underrated Gerard Ciccoritti
Graveyard Shift (1990)
From a Stephen King short story about mill workers facing a giant rat, this has become one of the most ridiculed of all King adaptations. Everything takes place with absurdly over-the-top melodrama
Greaser’s Palace (1972)
An Acid Western was a Western made with a psychedelic trippiness. Directed by Robert Downey Jr’s father, this is a surreal work about a Christ-like visitor in a zoot suit who turns up in a Western town
The Great Wall (2016)
Matt Damon helps defend the Great Wall of China against invading monsters. Directed by Zhang Yimou, this should be seen for its breathtaking visuals – vast battle scenes, lavish costumes – but you wish there had been more than that
Great White (2021)
An Australian-made survival drama with a group of people who become stranded at sea aboard a life raft while trying to fight off a killer shark that is lurking
The Green Hornet (1974)
The Green Hornet was a tv series based on the radio and serial masked hero. Following Bruce Lee’s ascent to superstardom, three episodes of the series were re-edited as a feature film
Green Lantern: Beware My Power (2022)
Green Lantern is a classic comic-book character but his screen presence were damaged by the Ryan Reynolds film. This conducts a severe reset of the character’s continuity
The Green Mile (1999)
Frank Darabont had a hit with the Stephen King adaptation The Shawshank Redemption. Here he makes another King adaptation about a Death Row inmate with healing powers
The Green Slime (1968)
Cheesily entertaining film about a crew aboard a space station fighting off an alien monster. Cited as one of the films that influenced Alien. With a screenplay co-written by Batman co-creator Bill Finger
Greenland (2020)
There seems something redundant in 2021 with the world in the grip of a very real apocalypse about watching an old-fashioned mass destruction disaster movie about an oncoming comet impact
Gremlin (2017)
Technically not actually a film about gremlins but about a goblin creature that emerges from a box where it will kill a person unless they pass it on to someone they love
Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)
A far less successful sequel to the mega-hit of Gremlins where director Joe Dante brings the gremlins to Manhattan and allows the silliness to go completely over-the-top and into orbit, even breaking the fourth wall
Greystone Park (2012)
Oliver Stone’s son Sean makes a Found Footage horror film. The haunted asylum has become a thoroughly overused cliche. That said, Sean Stone wrings some undeniably spooky jumps out of the material
Grimcutty (2022)
A film about Grimcutty, a boogeyman that lurks inside an internet meme and thrives on causing parental fears. This sits on the edge of being almost interesting
Grimm’s Fairy Tales for Adults (1970)
A X-rated, West German-made film that blends together several fairytales in a very adult adaptation. The result should be seen for its sheer bizarreness
Grimm’s Snow White (2012)
Another entry among 2012’s spate of Snow White films following Mirror Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman. this was a low-budget mockbuster copycat from The Asylum
The Grinch (2018)
After Ron Howard’s over-produced version of the Dr Seuss story, one looked to Illumination Entertainment, the animation company behind the Despicable Me films, to do the story right
The Grudge 2 (2006)
Follow-up to The Grudge, the English-language remake of the Japanese horror film. Although original Japanese director Takashi Shimizu is present, this is one of the weaker Ju-on/Grudge films
The Grudge 3 (2009)
The Ju-on/The Grudge series has spawned thirteen films to date. This was the second sequel to the English-language remake but by this point everything disappears into formulaic scares
The Gruesome Death of Tommy Pistol (2011)
Aramis Sartorio (aka porn actor Tommy Pistol) directs/stars in this anthology, a trio of Hollywood horror tales where everything is aimed at the farcical bad taste level of a Troma film
The Guardian (1990)
William Friedkin film with Jenny Seagrove as a sinister nanny who is really a baby-snatching druidic tree spirit. Friedkin and all concerned play a B movie idea in remarkably straight face
Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2 (2017)
Guardians of the Galaxy was an audience winner with its eccentric humour and effortless charm; this sequel feels buried under bloated production overkill where the charms of the original remain thinly drawn
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.
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
Guilty as Charged (1991)
Black comedy in which Rod Steiger sets up a private prison to execute the guilty that get away. Halfway between a vigilante film and a gonzo comedy, this never settles on what it wants to be and only comes out a frenetic farce
Gulliver’s Travels (2010)
Jonathan Swift’s classic tale of a man in a land of miniature people is turned into a comedy vehicle for Jack Black and outfitted with a series of vulgar and pop culture gags
Gunheavy (2008)
Ingenue effort from debuting director Angelo Lopes depicting soldiers in combat in the ruins of civilisation
Gurozuka (2005)
Japanese horror film that only treads tepidly where the Ring and Ju-on/The Grudgefilms have gone before. Shot in a plain, ordinary manner that bleeds the J-horror film of atmosphere
The Guyver (1991)
US-made live-action adaptation of a popular manga/anime about a power-suit superhero. Directed by two makeup effects artists mostly as a vehicle for their creature creations
Guyver: Dark Hero (1994)
Sequel to the live-action US-made adaptation of the manga about a power-suit superhero. As with the first film, there are lots of rubbery aliens and martial arts fights
Gwendoline (1984)
From the director of Emmanuelle, this is an adaptation of an adult comic-book that replays the lost city adventure with the addition of a mind-boggling softcore fetishism
H (2002)
A South Korean copy of The Silence of the Lambs where detectives find that a serial killer imprisoned in a cell is somehow causing others to continue his trail of killings
H & G (2013)
This Canadian film is a modernised telling of Hansel and Gretel where the witch becomes a man with possibly paedophile intent. A film seems to want to go into dark places but gives them an utterly tepid treatment
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
H.P. Lovecraft’s Witch House (2021)
A low-budget adaptation of the H.P. Lovecraft story Dreams in the Witch House about a student who moves into a house with occult geometry and stirs dark forces
Hack House (2017)
Not a film about computer hackers living together as you initially think but a slasher film set in a halfway house for violent offenders. An original setting but the film does nothing terribly interesting
Hackers (1995)
Film that wants to be an expose of the lives of hackers but seems an absurd agglomeration of cliches that stumbles over its own feet trying to establish its counter-culture cool
Halley (2012)
A zombie film (of sorts) from Mexico, although it could just as easily be about a man infected with a flesh-eating bacteria. A zombie film in which almost nothing happens, we just sit watching a man getting ill
Halloween (2007)
Another inferior entry in the mid-00s fad remake of 70s/80s horror films. Whereas John Carpenter gave us Michael Myers as evil incarnate, Rob Zombie gives us Michael Myers as a misunderstood and unloved kid
Halloween (2018)
40 years later, Jamie Lee Curtis returns to pay homage to Halloween in what is a direct sequel to the original, erasing the continuity of every other sequel. This fails to conjure what made the original a classic
Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (1998)
The seventh Halloween film, made for the original’s twentieth anniversary. This erases continuity to the other sequels and has Jamie Lee Curtis alive and pursued by Michael Myers again. Better than most of the other sequels.
Halloween Kills (2021)
Sequel to the 2018 reboot/sequel to Halloween from David Gordon Greene, this is more scrupulous about paying homage to the original and recapturing something of John Carpenter’s original stylism
Halloween: Resurrection (2002)
The eighth Halloween film. This tries to throw in some novelty by combining Michael Myers with a reality tv show being filmed in his family home but is still the same uninspired thrills of the other sequels
Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn (2012)
Web-series, later released as a film, based on the Halo 4 videogame. While the games have a massively detailed backhistory of the universe, this is disappointingly only a low-budget military recruits in training scenario
Hamlet (2011)
After some 150 other films, you have to wonder what another version of Hamlet has to offer. This Canadian adaptation does little other than updating the setting to the 1940s
Hammersmith is Out (1972)
One of the few flops that Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor made, a broad satire where Burton is a Devil figure who escape from an asylum, leaving a trail of bodiesas he makes his way up to control the presidency
Hancock (2008)
This offers the appealing idea of Will Smith as a cynical burned out superhero. The film tells a comic tale of his redemption before suddenly losing the plot altogether in its second half
The Hand (1981)
In his second film as director, Oliver Stone ventures into the disembodied hand theme. An amazingly OTT Michael Caine plays a cartoonist who believes the hand he lost in an accident is exacting vengeance against his enemies
The Handmaid’s Tale (1990)
The original version of the Margaret Atwood novel made way before the tv series. This aims in the general direction but is more a film that achieves a sense of disquiet rather than the true horror of its’ heroine’s situation in this world
Hands of a Stranger (1962)
Fourth film version of The Hands of Orlac about a pianist who receives hand transplants from a murderer and believes they are possessing him. Compared to the first two versions, this is dull and prosaic
Hangar 18 (1980)
In the aftermath of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, this was made by a company specialising in sensationalistic tabloid documentaries. Spielberg’s light show is dropped in favour of conspiratorial government coverup view of UFOs
Hangman (2000)
A serial killer thriller with Lou Diamond Phillips as a detective investigating a killer who challenges the police to games of hangman
Hanky Panky (2023)
A gonzo comedy about an alien invasion that takes place during a getaway at a remote cabin by assorted comically dysfunctional characters including a man who is accompanied by a talking handkerchief
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
Hannibal (2001)
The immediate sequel to The Silence of the Lambs. Anthony Hopkins is back but Jodie Foster is not. Ridley Scott takes the director’s chair and creates a slick film but it lacks the compulsive grip the original held
Hannibal Rising (2007)
Building on the successes of the Hannibal Lecter films, this is a prequel that goes back sets out to tell an origin story of how the young teenage Hannibal came to be who he was during World War II
Hansel and Gretel (2007)
Confusingly, despite the title, this is not an adaptation of the Brothers Grimm fairytale but a cryptic and often baffling South Korean horror film about people trapped by children at a sinister house in the forest
The Happening (2008)
M. Night Shyamalan came majorly unstuck with this catastrophe film where humanity is driven to mass suicide by plant pollens. The idea is interesting but Shyamalan gets lost in vagueness and loopy mysticism