Restless (2011)
The oddity of an emo romance from indie director Gus Van Sant about an alienated teenager with a ghost companion who falls for a girl dying of cancer. Needless to say, the film’s mopey romance between oddball outsiders and Van Sant’s aimless improvisational style never quite gel
Resurrection (1980)
Slow sincere film in which Ellen Burstyn becomes a faith healer following a car crash
A Resurrection (2013)
Supernatural retribution film with school counselor Mischa Barton dealing with a murdered teen maybe returned from the dead to kill the bullies responsible
The Retreat (2021)
The Backwoods Brutality film given an LGBT spin where a lesbian couple run afoul of backwoods rednecks
Retro Puppetmaster (1999)
This was the seventh of Full Moon’s most popular series, the Puppet Master films. This goes back to tell how young Andre Toulon (Greg Sestero) originally created the puppets
The Return (1981)
Influenced by Close Encounters of the Third Kind, this is a strange film about UFOs and cattle mutilations. Explanations are not always clear but the film boasts a great cast
The Return (2006)
Ghost story in which Sarah Michelle Gellar receives a series of mysterious visions as she travels across Texas
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
The Return of Dracula (1958)
One of the first contemporary Dracula films. Compared to Christopher Lee’s first appearance as Dracula the same year, this is dull, plodding and without atmosphere where Dracula looks like no more than a door-to-door salesman
The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1987)
Unsold tv pilot that features Sherlock Holmes cryogenically unfrozen in the present-day. While the characters have some quirky appeal, the exercise seems construed more as a copy of a tv show of the era like Moonlighting
Return of the Fly (1959)
The first of the sequels to the original The Fly where the scientist’s son begins his own experiments
A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987)
Cult director Larry Cohen makes a sequel to the Stephen King mini-series but throws most connection out to make his own wry, occasionally amusing vampire film
Return to Silent Hill (2026)
Silent Hill was one of the best videogame film adaptations and created a genuinely uncanny atmosphere. That film’s director returns to the franchise here with more of the same but misses the mark
Revelation (1999)
The second in a series of Biblical End Times films from Canada’s faith-based Cloud Ten Pictures, this offers the peculiarity of the Anti-Christ appearing in Virtual Reality
Revelation Road: The Beginning of the End (2013)
One of a number of faith-produced films we have had since the late 90s that concern themselves with the arrival of The Rapture – this one even spawned a trilogy. This is passable if you can palate the relatively light sermonising and at least better written that the Left Behind films
Revelation Road: The Sea of Glass and Fire (2013)
Not wishing to insult anyone’s beliefs but Christian cinema has produced some really bad films. With such lowered expectations, this Rapture film approaches halfway watchable with a story that somewhat resembles Mad Max 1 about a biker seeking vengeance against a decent man
Revenge of Billy the Kid (1992)
A British entry in the 1980s splatter comedy. An aimless comedy about idiotic hayseed yokels with occasional moments of bloodletting and a half-human, half-goat creature running about
Revengers Tragedy (2002)
Alex Cox, director of the cult Repo Man , was once a name of some promise but he has instead spent more than two decades making increasingly obscure and amateurish films. His adaptation of a Jacobean revenge drama into a near-future setting improves this none despite a great cast line-up
Richie Rich’s Christmas Wish (1998)
Cheaply made video sequel to the Macaulay Culkin Richie Rich based on the popular comic-book character, this steals the basic plot of It’s a Wonderful Life
Ricky 6 (2000)
True-life film based on a teenager who created a Satanist coven and led a group of friends to kill one of their group
Ring 0: Birthdays (2000)
The third of the Japanese Ringu/Ring films. A new director means a different approach but what also becomes apparent is that the original was never intended as a series and the attempts to further draw it out result in a confusing mishmash of ideas
Ring Around the Rosie (2006)
This starts out as a seeming ghost story without creating much tension then features Tom Sizemore going psycho, before arriving at one of the most confusing of all attempts to conduct an M. Night Shyamalan twist ending
Riot Girls (2019)
A plague has killed off all adults. In the ruins, two girlfriends venture into the domain ruled by the tyrannical football jocks to rescue one’s brother
R.I.P.D. 2: Rise of the Damned (2022)
A sequel to R.I.P.D. that tells an origin story of how the sheriff character played by Jeff Bridges in the original became an afterlife enforcement officer
R.I.P.D. (2013)
This feels like someone has simply copied the idea of a secretive law enforcement agency from
Ripper: Letter from Hell (2001)
This has a promising set-up – a series of Jack the Ripper copycat killings taking place in a modern criminology class – that turns out as no more than a standard slasher film
Ripper Untold (2021)
Another take on the Jack the Ripper murders that has been conducted on a low-budget. This is not uninteresting but the ‘untold’ part of the title is an untrue claim
Rise (2007)
Overlooked at the time it was released, this is a stylish and quite well made film with Lucy Liu playing a vampire hunter
Rise of the Fellowship (2013)
From the film’s poster, you could easily mistake this for a generic fantasy film – instead, we get a film about gaming nerds on a road trip. Much is drawn from Fanboys and this is not a particularly funny variant, although there are occasionally cute scenes that mimic Lord of the Rings
Rise of the Gargoyles (2009)
A Syfy Channel monster movie that seems made with a smidgen more care than their usual B movie output
Rise of the Guardians (2012)
The concept – sort of akin to
Rise of the Zombies (2012)
The Asylum have not delved into the zombie film as much as they have the gonzo killer shark, which they practically invented. This is one occasion on which they did and is unexpectedly a serious film with a reasonable name cast (including Danny Trejo as a zombie)
Risen (2021)
Interestingly mysterious film about the investigation into a zone affected by an alien meteorite
River Queen (2005)
Vincent Ward is one of the directors who should be granted more opportunities to make films. This is his least satisfying work, a troubled behind-the-scenes epic set during New Zealand’s Maori Wars with some Magical Realist touches
The Rizen (2017)
Amnesiac persons wake up in a bunker filled with monstrosities. Sort of H.P. Lovecraft served up as a low-budget variant on Resident Evil
The Rizen: Possession (2019)
Sequel to the earlier The Rizen with the group of people trapped inside a labyrinth of Lovecraftian horrors
Road Wars (2015)
A mockbuster from The Asylum released to ride on the coattails of Mad Max: Fury Road. Slightly more watchable than most of their offerings, although still cheaply made, this is the oddity of a Mad Max film with the addition of vampires
Robert the Doll (2015)
A low-budget film about an evil doll that was made not long after Annabelle came out and boasting a similar Based on a True Story claim. Four sequels have followed
Robin Hood (1973)
Disney animated film produced during the studio’s creative slump between the 1960s and 80s, the main conceit is recasting the story of Robin Hood with talking animals amid much slapstick
Robinson Crusoe (2016)
Robinson Crusoe is a classic adventure story about a man shipwrecked on a desert island. It has no fantastic content but this is a bizarre animated version where Crusoe is aided by the talking animals that inhabits the island amid much slapstick shenanigans
Roboforce (1988)
A Hong Kong take on RoboCop with Sally Yeh as crimefighting android. Though produced by and also starring Tsui Hark, a very silly slapstick element comes to dominate what are otherwise imaginative action sequences
Robot Wars (2016)
The title is a massive cheat as there is only a single robot that turns up in a single fight scene. The film has the distinction of being the world’s first Found Footage Cyberpunk film about a mystery box that creates mass insanity when opened
Robotrix (1991)
Hong Kong-made copy of RoboCop where Amy Yip has her mind transferred into a cyborg body to track a mad scientist
Robowar (1988)
From Italy, a blatant copy of Predator – only where instead of a military unit being hunted through the jungle by an alien, they are hunted by a copycat of RoboCop
Rockabilly Vampire: Burnin’ Love (1996)
Troma film less terrible than most about a modern who gets involved with a vampire from the 1950s
Rocket Attack U.S.A. (1958)
Incredible Communist fear film largely made up of stock footage that urges the US to build a strong missile defence as the Soviet Union arms itself to attack
Rogue (2020)
Megan Fox is the leader of a troupe of mercenaries (!) conducting a hostage extraction from rebel territory as they come under attack by a killer lion
Rogue One (2016)
Disney are now doing what Lucasfilm did with their novels in the 80s and spinning adventures off from even minor background characters. This is a grittier Dirty Dozen adventure but still recycles the same basic elements
Rogue River (2012)
Imprisonment thriller where a woman finds herself confined by deranged husband and wife Bill Moseley and Lucinda Jenney
Rogue Warrior, Robot Fighter (2016)
A pneumatically inflated heroine fights the machines amid a standard array of space opera and post-apocalyptic future tropes
Rome 2072 (1983)
Lucio Fulci was a cult Italian horror director. This was the only occasion that Fulci visited the SF film, a low-budget ripoff of Rollerball by way of Mad Max featuring futuristic gladiatorial games
Rondo and Bob (2020)
A documentary about Rondo Hatton, the 1940s horror actor who suffered acromegaly, and Robert Burns, the eccentric art director from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
The Roommate (2011)
Tame psycho-thriller that plays out as a teen version of Fatal Attraction or Single White Female where Minka Kelly gets a psychopathic dorm roommate in Leighton Meester
Rottweiler (2004)
Brian Yuzna usually makes well worthwhile films but this one about an escaped prisoner hunted by a killer cyborg dog fails to come together
Royal Jelly (2021)
Film with a bizarre concept where a teenager girl is recruited into a human beehive
Rubikon (2022)
Austrian film where three people aboard a space station survive a toxic cloud that obliterates all life on Earth below
Rugrats in Paris: The Movie (2000)
The second entry in the ultra-annoying animated franchise spun off from the animated tv series that only seems to centre around poo and pee jokes, this is marginally more enjoyable than the first film
Rumpelstiltskin (1987)
Another of Cannon Films cheaply made fairytales with Amy Irving starring in an adaptation of Rumpelstiltskin
Run Rabbit Run (2023)
Sarah Snook stars in an Australian ghost story in which her daughter seems to become possessed by the sister who went missing years ago
The Runestone (1991)
Monster movie where a runestone uncovered in the present day unleashes the Norse god Fenrir
The Running Man (1987)
This adapts one of Stephen King’s Richard Bachman novels but the book is sidelined to become an Arnold Schwarzenegger action comic-book on the oft-used theme of a future where people compete in televised gladiatorial games
Rupture (2016)
Puzzling and enigmatic film in which Noomi Rapace is a regular mom who is abducted and forced to take place in a series of experiments by a group of people who may not even be human
Rush Week (1989)
Passable entry towards the end of the 80s slasher cycle with a killer stalking a campus during fraternity recruiting week
S1m0ne (2002)
Andrew Niccol makes a comedy in which down-on-his-luck film director Al Pacino obtains a computer program for simulating a performance and creates a virtual actress, hoodwinking the public into believing she is a real person.
Sacrifice (2000)
Michael Madsen is a bank robber who makes an escape from jail and goes on the run to track down the serial killer who killed his daughter
Sacrifice (2016)
This comes with much promise – rune-covered bodies found on a remote island, ritual murders and a secret society that believe they are the descendants of Celtic supermen – that you wonder what caused the filmmakers to let it slip through their hands
Sadako (2019)
The thirteenth film in the Ring/Ringu franchise. The question is whether the return of original director Hideo Nakata to the franchise can revitalise the series
Sadako 3D 2 (2013)
This was the eighth of the Ring films. This is made as a sequel to the earlier Sadako 3D, the worst of the Japanese series, although is actually a better film
Sadako vs Kayako (2016)
The two most popular Japanese horror franchises come together to fight it out. Both series work on the provision of intensely uncanny effect but brought together the result is diluted at best
The Saint (1997)
Big screen revival of the famous playboy spy falls flat due to the miscasting of Val Kilmer in the title role where Kilmer’s attempts to adopt disguises and accents throughout becomes risible. The thriller plot is nothing to get excited about.
Saint Ange (2004)
The first film from Pascal Laugier who has emerged as a leading French horror director since, a ghost story set at a girl’s boarding school, Laugier does produce some eerie jumps but the script is a frustrating tangle of narrative loose ends
Saint Clara (1996)
Israeli film co-directed by Ari Folman about a girl with precognitive powers. After a great opening, the film loses all real dramatic impetus
Saint Sinner (2002)
Clive Barker based work about a monk pursuing two demonic succubi through time to the present. Clive Barker watered down for the Sci-Fi Channel but worth watching for the imaginative creature effects
‘Salem’s Lot (2004)
TV mini-series remake of the Stephen King novel, this fails to hold a candle to the earlier 1979 version
Salem’s Lot (2024)
The Stephen King novel about a small town that is invaded by a vampire and is population taken gets its third screen adaptation in this film treatment. The 1979 mini-series is still the best version
Samaritan (2022)
Sylvester Stallone is surprisingly well cast an aging superhero forced to come out of retirement
San Andreas Quake (2015)
The Asylum’s cheap mockbuster version of the big-budget Dwaye Johnson-starring disaster movie spectacle San Andreas. Passable as general fare from The Asylum, about the level of the average filler tv movie and with effects to a not-too-bad standard
The Sandlot: Heading Home (2007)
The third in a popular series of films about a Little League baseball team, this involves a time travel element
Santa Baby (2006)
TV movie where Jenny McCarthy plays Santa’s daughter who takes over the family business
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)
Children’s movie where a Martian dictator abducts Santa, this has gained a cult bad movie status
Santa’s Slay (2005)
Christmas horror film with wrestler Bill Goldberg playing a demonic version of Santa Claus
Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot (1976)
With the sensation of the Gimlin-Patterson film that supposedly depicted a Bigfoot, the 1970s gave us a spate of Bigfoot films. This was the most high-profile, a mockumentary about an expedition that sets out to find Sasquatch
Saturday the 14th (1981)
Friday the 13th so changed the horror genre that within two years it produced two four parodies of its title. From Roger Corman, this is more of an occasionally amusing parody of classic monster movies than the slasher film
Saturn 3 (1980)
Ambitious if not entirely successful film with Harvey Keitel building a robot that proceeds to go amok on a moonbase inhabited by Kirk Douglas and Farrah Fawcett
Save State (2023)
A comedy about a guy who obtains a time travel device and uses it to go back and try to prevent his girlfriend breaking up with him
Save Yourselves! (2020)
Comedy that comes comes with a winning concept – clueless hipsters try to get away from their social media devices for a weekend only to find the Earth has been invaded by aliens
Saving Grace (1998)
Uneven New Zealand-made film where a girl meets a mystery man who claims that he is Jesus Christ
Saw II (2005)
The first sequel to the sleeper success of Saw where Darren Lynn Bousman inherits the director’s chair but delivers a film that lacks the torturous suspense that James Wan gave the original
Saw III (2006)
Third of the Saw films and the point where director Darren Lynn Bousman places the series’ focus on grim gore-drenched sadism and torture
Saw V (2008)
Fifth of the Saw films. By now the series has developed such a complicated backstory it is difficult following how it all pieces together
Saw VI (2009)
Sixth time around and the backstory is starting to become so excessively complicated it is hard to follow what is going on. All the gruesome torturings now seem passe, although this does redeem itself somewhat in making a few black digs at the medical health industry
Saw X (2023)
The Saw series is back and this has been getting some of the best reviews of any entries in the series
Scanner Cop (1994)
Third of the sequels to Scanners, this stars Daniel Quinn as a police officer who discovers scanner abilities
Scared to Death (1947)
Bela Lugosi poverty row cheapie where he plays a sinister hypnotist. The only film Lugosi made in colour
Scared to Death (1980)
The directorial debut of William Malone later to make House on Haunted HillAlien (one of the first of many such), albeit brought down to Earth. As a novice director, Malone is relatively crude and far removed from the masterful style of Ridley Scott
Scarlet (2025)
Mamoru Hosoda conducts the bizarre notion of an anime version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It is a Hamlet that Shakespeare would barely recognise, following a heroine as she makes a journey across the afterlife
Scars of Dracula (1970)
The sixth of the Hammer Dracula films and generally regarded as the low point of the series. It feels as though nobody involved seemed to be making an effort anymore.
Scary Movie (2026)
The Wayans Brothers and most of the regulars return to revive the franchise to make more crude farce of the Scream and Halloween revivals and other horror films to come out in the last few years
Scary Movie 4 (2006)
Fourth of the Scary Movie films and the usual crude inanity, although under David Zucker the movie parodies have expanded well beyond what can be labelled scary movies any longer
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019)
Based on the popular series of children’s horror tales, this Guillermo Del Toro written/produced effort borrows the idea from the Goosebumps film of having the stories come to life and the idea from Stranger Things and It with a group children fighting against them. On screen, the finished result never quite seems as much as it promises to be