Megalodon Rising (2021)
The Asylum make a sequel to their earlier giant prehistoric shark film Megalodon
Megalodon: The Frenzy (2023)
The third of The Asylum’s trilogy of films about giant prehistoric sharks
Mekong Hotel (2012)
Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a festival favourite and one genre director whose work is least categorised as such. As with any of Weerasethakul’s films, this has some intensely haunted moments but is severely lacking in plot or any kind of dramatic inertia
Memoria (2021)
Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a darling of the arthouse and makes bafflingly cryptic films with a very haunted mood. This features Tilda Swinton in search of a series of mysterious sounds
Men (2022)
Alex Garland has become a must watch name since Ex Machina and Devs. Here he ventures into an intriguing mix of folk horror and gender politics
Men in Black 3 (2012)
One hardly greets the attempt to generate another entry out of this franchise with any enthusiasm. This mostly consists of tired and familiar gags, where maybe the most generous compliment you can pay is that it is better than Men in Black II was
The Mercury Project (2000)
Film with Ryan Merriman as a teen who rebuilds an old Mercury rocket as a school science project and then has to save a NASA mission
Mercy (2026)
Director Timur Bekmambetov makes a film in the Screenlife process where the screen becomes a computer screen. Set a near future L.A. where the judicial system has been replaced by an A.I
Merlin and the Book of Beasts (2008)
A work of Arthurian sequelia made for the Syfy Channeal featuring Arthur’s daughter inheriting the sword. This has the feel more of a series of B-budgeted D&D wilderness encounters churned out without much effort rather than being a fantasy work that soars
Merlin’s Apprentice (2006)
Sequel to Hallmark’s earlier tv mini-series Merlin featuring a return performance from Sam Neill in the title role, this is otherwise a generic and unmemorable work of Arthurian fantasy
The Mermaid (2016)
Stephen Chow has proven himself a comic genius in his directorial works of the 90s/00s. Unfortunately, as he has gained mainstream acclaim, his films have started to disappear under their big-budgets. This is sort of a version of Splash! by way of the fad for madcap Hong Kong slapstick
Mermaid Down (2019)
The mermaid film used to be the stuff of light fantasy but in recent years has become something much darker. This comes with the promising premise of a mermaid having her tail hacked off with an axe then being placed in an asylum where she tries to convince the other patients of who she is
The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999)
Luc Besson takes on the Joan of Arc story with then wife Milla Jovovich in the title role but in Besson’s hands it becomes a crazed historical action film that unquestioningly accepts Joan’s visions as real
The Messengers (2007)
The Pang Brothers, two of the most exciting genre directors in the world, have their distinctive style swallowed up in their bland US mainstream debut produced by Sam Raimi
Metegol (2013)
Spanish-Argentinean animated film about the miniature players of a table football game come to life. The animation is not the high-end quality of most theatrical releases but passable; everything plays out to to fairly predictable sports movies cliches
Meteor (1979)
An effort from the heyday of the 1970s disaster movie that was a big flop when it came out. Widely ridiculed for its bad special effects, it is a film I am partially prepared to defend, it setting aside the usual soap opera dramatics of these films to make an interesting parable about Cold War tensions. It also prefigures Armageddon with its plot of trying to divert a meteor on a collision course with Earth
Meteor (2009)
Disaster TV mini-series where assorted well-known faces fight through the chaos to prevent an impending meteor strike
The Mexican (2001)
Romantic comedy pairing Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts as separated lovers in a plot involving Mob shenanigans and a cursed pistol. The two never click and give unmemorable performances
Michael (1996)
Nora Ephron romantic comedy with John Travolta cast as angel who is a slob. A rather aimless shapeless comedy that thinks it is funnier than it is
The Midnight After (2014)
Reminiscent of The Quiet Earth, this concerns a bus of people who end up in a deserted Hong Kong, The film seems unsure whether it is comedy or drama, while it creates an intriguing mystery about what is happening only to leave it unanswered in a frustratingly abrupt ending
The Midnight Hour (1985)
Classic Halloween tv special. As with most of its ilk, it places the focus on a light-hearted treatment where the monsters are no more serious than Halloween revelers
Midnight Movie (2008)
A horror film about the screening of a lost horror film whose director is reputed to have killed people for real. Now the killer emerges from the screen to slaughter the attendees in the theatre
Mikey (1992)
Routine psycho-thriller with Brian Bonsall as a child who murders his adopted families when they fail to meet his expectation. An amusing idea plays out with comic-bookish set-ups and a cliched plot
Millennium (1989)
Film adaptation of a time travel novel by John Varley, one of the finest SF writers in the world, that ends up bluntening and dumbing the story down
Millennium Actress (2001)
An anime from Satoshi Kon that tells the story of an actress and become a surreal journey through Japanese cinematic history
The Million Dollar Duck (1971)
Disney live-action comedy where Dean Jones accidentally creates a duck that lays golden eggs
The Million Dollar Hotel (2000)
Wim Wenders film from a story idea by U2’s Bono set around the down-and-outs at a fleapit hotel slightly into the future. The film circles around a cast of eccentrics without ever really coming together
The Million Eyes of Sumuru (1967)
Sax Rohmer created the super-villain Fu Manchu, less well-known was his character of the female super-villain Sumuru who leads an all-woman army in a world domination plot. This was one of two Sumuru films
Mimesis (2011)
This comes with an interestingly different premise wherein characters are abducted and wake up inside a simulation of Night of the Living Dead and realise they are meant to replay the roles of the people in the farmhouse at siege from the zombie onslaught
Mimesis: Nosferatu (2018)
Sequel to Mimesis, which had people trapped in a simulation of Night of the Living Dead, where this time people are trapped in a recreation of Nosferatu
Mimic 2 (2001)
This was the first of two sequels to Guillermo Del Toro’s intelligent insect film Mimic, although this has now becomes more of a regular and unexceptional monster movie
The Mind of Mr. Soames (1969)
This comes with a great premise – a man is woken from a coma for the first time and is forced to deal with the world with the mind of a newborn infant. A clear attempt to copy Charly, this would be a great vehicle for a modern character actor but suffers from stodgy unimaginative handling
Mind Ripper (1995)
Produced by Wes Craven and his son, this started as a third Hills Have Eyes film but ends up a generic Alien copy with a mutant monster hunting people in a desert laboratory
Mindgame (2004)
Anime based on an autobiographical manga that leaps off into a variety of styles and comes filled with madcap surrealistic visuals
The Mind’s Eye (2015)
Homage to David Cronenberg’s Scanners, albeit produced on an even cheaper budget than any of the sequels. Where the film almost redeems itself is when it goes to town with the various head-exploding effects
Mindscape (2013)
It would be safe to say that without Inception there would be no Mindscape, which involves people entering memories rather than dreams but is similar in many other ways. Where this fails is in having no interest in the sf potential of the idea beyond using it as springboard for a thriller plot
Mindwarp (1992)
One of three films produced by Fangoria magazine, this takes place in a post-holocaust wasteland of crazies and is certainly gore-drenched but unfortunately only churns cliches
A Minecraft Movie (2025)
A live-action film based on the popular
The Minion (1998)
Low-budget action film with Dolph Lundgren as a modern-day Knights Templar tasked with preventing The Devil returning to Earth at the millennium
Minions (2015)
The incomprehensibly manic antics of the Minions have a cuteness appeal that has overspilled the Despicable Me films and seemed like it is in danger of taking over pop culture in the last couple of years; here they get a film all to themselves with amiably lightweight results
Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022)
The cutely nonsensical Minions have become a pop culture phenomenon. Here we get more of them, although this is more as a Gru origin story
Minutemen (2008)
Disney Channel film about a trio of kids who build a time machine and use it to help people around the school
Miracle in the Rain (1956)
One of a spate of miracle films during this period, Catholic nonsense with Jane Wyman and Van Johnson finding love that transcends death
Mirror Mirror (1990)
A 1990s video release, a variant on Carrie where a bullied teen girl enacts vengeance against tormentors with the aid of a cursed mirror
Mirror Mirror (2012)
Tarsem Singh makes a Snow White film. Tarsem’s sets, costumes and visuals are expectedly exquisite and extravagant but all is unwound by a campy, unserious approach
Mirrors (2008)
Alexandre Aja film about haunted mirrors. Aja is more a director of physical horror and seems less attuned to the supernatural mood
Miss Potter (2006)
Renee Zellweger stars in a biopic of children’s author Beatrix Potter from Babe director Chris Noonan
Missile to the Moon (1958)
A remake of the classic bad movie Cat-Women of the Moon in which explorers to the Moon encounter an all-women society. Things do not improve in the bad movie stakes here
The Missing (2003)
Ron Howard makes a Western that has some horror overtones featuring an evil Indian sorcerer. In the hands of a classic director like John Ford this could have been an epic work but Howard’s plodding predictability kills interest
Mississippi River Sharks (2017)
An appealingly tongue-in-cheek killer shark film with sharks attacking along the Mississippi
The Mistress of Spices (2005)
Magical Realist film with Aishwarya Rai running a spice bazaar where she is able to tell fortunes
Mnemophrenia (2019)
Film that takes place across three future eras that questions what happens when Virtual Reality produces artificial memories more vivid than real world ones
Moana (2016)
Despite being a huge box-office and critical success and being nominated for an Academy Award, I am in a minority in disliking this. Maybe it’s something to do with the fact that it appropriates the culture from my neck of the woods and only spins it out as a series of glib jokes and one-liners
Mockingbird (2014)
Bryan Bertino who made the impressive home invasion thriller The Strangers and this was his follow-up. This was held up so long in release that its originality has been rendered everyday by others milking the Found Footage genre
Modern Vampires (1998)
Richard Elfman film about chic vampires who have become an elite living in Hollywood. Despite promise and some interesting ideas, this is ruined by an atrociously overacting cast
Mom and Dad Save the World (1992)
Films about stupid people are rarely funny – this concerns a whole planet of stupid people. Despite reasonable production values, there is little that raises even a mild smile in this comedic take on Flash Gordon
The Moment After (1999)
One of a cluster of faith-based films made around the turn of the millennium dealing with the biblical apocalypse and The Rapture, this has not dated well
Mommy (1995)
Patty McCormack played a psychopathic child in The Bad Seed. This is essentially a sequel where McCormack has grown up and become a mother
Mommy’s Day (1996)
Sequel to Mommy, which featured Patty McCormack as a psychopathic mother
The Monitors (1969)
Comedy about aliens who have invaded Earth and keep broadcasting commercials to tell how wonderful life is. You feel like this should be great satire but instead the film flounders about without any plot tapping a 60s counter-culture vibe before finding it doesn’t have anything to say
The Monk (2011)
The Monk is a sordid classic of 18th Century Gothic literature, filled with crazed lusts and Catholic guilt and damnation. However, in the hands of French director Dominik Moll, all the tortured sexuality has been watered down and the story stuffed as a costume drama
The Monkey (2025)
Osgood Perkins adapts a Stephen King story about a toy monkey that causes deaths whenever it is wound, which becomes the opportunity for Perkins to go into full-on Final Destination territory with bizarre deaths
Monkey Business (1952)
The only film that Marilyn Monroe will be written about for on this site. A classic screwball comedy about the accidental discovery of a formula that causes all who take it to revert to adolescence. Much madcap malarkey ensues but it does get very silly
The Monkey King 3 (2018)
The Monkey King films are a series of extraordinary works that exists somewhere between CGI and live-action and have a lushness of design. That is balanced against a dated plot that basically rehashes Cat Women of the Moon
Monkey King: Hero is Back (2015)
An animated version of the epic Chinese legend Journey to the West that was overshadowed by the hit live-action film that came out some months earlier that retold the tale with CGI
Monkey Shines (1988)
Disappointing George Romero film about a paraplegic man’s psychic link with his monkey that then comes to enact his suppressed anger. A fine idea drowns in shrill moral characterisations.
The Monkey’s Uncle (1965)
One of the wacky inventor live-action comedies Disney made in the 1960s, a sequel to The Misadventures of Merlin Jones where Tommy Kirk variously adopts a chimpanzee and tries to sleep-coach football jocks
The Monster and the Girl (1941)
Mad scientist film in which George Zucco transplants an executed man’s brain into a gorilla’s body whereupon the ape-man proceeds to exact revenge against those who wrongly convicted him
The Monster Club (1980)
Following the collapse of Amicus Films, producer Milton Subotsky went on on his own to make this horror anthology, the bread and butter of Amicus in their heyday. Though he brings in some major horror names – Vincent Price, John Carradine – the jokey tone failed to find any success
Monster from the Ocean Floor (1954)
One of the first films produced by Roger Corman, a routine B monster movie that has mostly been made around obtaining the use of a one-man submersible
Monster Hunt (2015)
Apparently the biggest grossing film in China ever. What we get is not much more than a rehash of E.T. with the addition of flying swordsmen. What kills the film is an emphasis of excrutiating slapstick and low-res CGI that makes the various creatures resemble versions of Mr Blobby
Monster in the Closet (1986)
Monster movie parody that spoofs a number of classic films, including King Kong where it takes the title literally and the monster makes off with the hero giving the film a certain LGBT community relevance in its day. Contains quite an impressive cast list, including featuring both Paul Walker and singer Fergie as kids
The Monster Maker (1944)
Mad scientist film from poverty row studio PRC with George Zucco in a Bela Lugosi role as a madman injecting his enemies with doses of acromegaly
The Monster of Piedras Blancas (1959)
Minor and largely undistinguished 1950s monster movie. The monster is a blatant copy of The Creature of the Black Lagoon and similarly has biologically improbable designs on the heroine. Routine on all accounts
Monster on the Campus (1958)
One of Jack Arnold’s lesser films, a Jekyll and Hyde story where a scientist finds himself reveting to a caveman after scraping his hand on a prehistoric coelacanth
Monster Party (2018)
This has an interesting premise where a trio of house burglars break into a mansion during a dinner party only to stumble into a support group for serial killers
The Monster That Challenged the World (1957)
Average entry in the atomically enlarged animal cycle of the 1950s concerning a giant mutated mollusc on the attack
The Monster Walks (1932)
This was misleadingly sold as a monster movie and is otherwise an Old Dark House thriller, most of which is blatantly borrowed from The Cat and the Canary
Monsters University (2013)
Pixar’s creative decline has been the point they started making these sequels to their hits. This is a disappointing prequel to Monsters, Inc. that largely recycles the cliches of the Revenge of the Nerds films and seems lacking in any of the wacky humour or moments of cuteness we expect of a Pixar film
Monstrosity (1964)
An amusingly lurid Z budget film with a widow using an atomic reactor to transfer her mind into a younger body
Monstrum (2018)
South Korean attempt to make a Wu Xia film with swordsmen up against a hulking monster
Moon 44 (1990)
Early Roland Emmerich film with Michael Paré investigating pirates targeting a mining moon. As usual with Emmerich, the focus is on action while neglecting the plausibility of the scenario
Moonfall (2022)
Roland Emmerich returns to mass destruction with a film about The Moon on a collision course with Earth, which heads in some conceptually challenging directions
Moonshot (2022)
From Arrowverse producer Greg Berlanti, a film about a nerd who stows away on a voyage to Mars
Morbius (2022)
Sony’s attempts to wring everything possible from the Spider-Man copyright in order to compete with the MCU continue with this film devoted to the Spider-Man vampire villain
Morgan (2016)
A.I. film directed by Ridley Scott’s son. The set-up seems awfully similar to Ex Machina – unfortunately, this sidesteps any of that fascinating questions about A.I. that film dealt in, while the latter half just becomes The Terminator before reaching a frankly unbelievable twist ending that sinks the film
Morons from Outer Space (1985)
Comedy about stupid alien visitors largely construed as a vehicle for popular British comedy duo Mel Smith and Griff Rhys-Jones. Some witty SF in-jokes among a haphazard script
The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones (2013)
A Young Adult fantasy adaptation that fells a Harry Potter wannabe repackaged with the brooding teen romanticism of the Twilight series, all under a director whose indifferent handling fails to animate any of the material
Mortal Kombat (2021)
A reboot of the film series adapted from the popular videogame. Produced by James Wan, this emerges as a kinetic and enjoyable effort that has clearly designed to introduce an ongoing franchise
Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms (2021)
The second of the Mortal Kombat animated films, this continues into another tournament, introducing a bewildering array of characters from the games amid a high degree of violence and bloodshed
Mortuary Academy (1988)
Intended as a horror riff on the phenomenally popular Police Academy series, this sets a series of gags in as bad a taste as possible around the locale of a mortuary
The Mortuary Assistant (2026)
Based on a videogame, a film set at a morgue where a new assistant has to fight off supernatural forces and complete a series of rituals to prevent herself from becoming possessed
Mosquito (1995)
A ridiculously stupid giant bug film, albeit not unentertainingly so. This is a monster movie that has been premised solely on the provision of ridiculous creature effects every few minutes and very little else that one can take seriously beyond that
The Most Assassinated Woman in the World (2018)
A biopic of Paula Maxa, the real-life star of Paris’s Grand Guignol Theatre. The Grand Guignol specialised in plays depicting gory on-stage deaths and she was killed on stage an estimated 10,000 times during her career. Here the biopic elements are blended with a mystery in which she is targeted by a serial killer
The Most Dangerous Game (2022)
A new version about the classic human bloodsports film where a group of shipwreckees are hunted across an island by a mad aristocrat
Motel Hell (1980)
Studio-backed attempt to enter the Backwoods Brutality genre ends up as an uncertain black comedy that fails to push the envelope anywhere near what its models do
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
Mother Love (1989)
There was undeniable shock value watching 1960s sex symbol Diana Rigg cast as a venomous middle-aged woman with murder on her mind. While this BBC mini-series won awards, you feel that a 1960s Hammer psycho-thriller would have conducted it in half the time
Mother of Tears: The Third Mother (2007)
After 27 years, Dario Argento finally rounds out his Three Mothers trilogy begun way back with Suspiria but the underwhelming results give all evidence of his having lost his mojo
Mother’s Day (1980)
A parody of the Backwoods Brutality film. One of the very first films produced by Lloyd Kaufman of Troma fame