The Wizard of Gore (2007)
A remake of the cult Herschell Gordon Lewis splatter film about a stage magician who creates illusions of eviscerating people on stage
The Wizard of Mars (1965)
Low-budget film about an expedition to Mars The novelty the film holds is that it attempts to rework The Wizard of Oz in SF terms
The Wizard of Oz (1910)
The earliest surviving film version of The Wizard of Oz , one of a number made during the silent era. It makes interesting contrast to the 1939 version but at best serves as a series of highlights from the story and drawing heavily on the stage version in its often crude methods of presentation
Wizard of Oz (1925)
An earlier silent version of The Wizard of Oz, which twists the story considerably out of shape as a vehicle for the slapstick comedy of star Larry Semon who plays The Scarecrow
The Wizard of Speed and Time (1988)
Film based on the character created by Mike Jittlov about an amateur filmmaker/effects artist trying to make it
Wolf Garden (2023)
This may be or may not be a werewolf film. What we have is a work that is long on mood and much ambiguity as a man hides in the English countryside from a crime he has conducted
The Wolf Man (1941)
Although it wasn’t the first werewolf film, this is the one the created all the mythology of the werewolf film – full moons, silver bullets etc – while the wolfman went on to join the pantheon of Universal Famous Monsters.
Wolf Manor (2022)
A British werewolf film that takes place during the shooting of an old-fashioned Hammer-styled film
Wolfen (1981)
Adaptation of a Whitley Strieber book about intelligent wolves hunting in New York City from Michael Wadleigh, the director of Woodstock … The film tends to bury Strieber’s straightforward horror story under social concerns as though wanting to distance itself from the horror label
The Wolverine (2013)
While this received a good deal of fan buzz, I must admit to being disappointed. It strips much of the superheroics and mutant cameos of the other X-Men films until it feels more like a Westerner in Japan thriller like Black Rain or even a routine film noir plot that happens to be cast with Wolverine
Wolves (2014)
Evidently intended to be a werewolf equivalent of the Star Wars saga in in its epically contorted familial struggles, this sits just between the stylish and another classic monster repackaged for the teen crowd and cast with handsome good-looking faces
Wolves at the Door (2016)
Another film about the Manson Family murders, this focuses on the Tate-Folger crime scene. It adheres to the fact general but twists them so it now operates more as a home invasion film
Wolves of Wall Street (2002)
Way before The Wolf of Wall Street, we had this David DeCoteau film about werewolf stockbrokers
The Woman in Black (1989)
The revived Hammer Films had with the ghost story The Woman in Black. This is the original version of the story made as a movie for British tv with a script from Quatermass creator Nigel Kneale
The Woman in Black (2012)
The revived Hammer Films visit the classic British ghost story tradition. This is impeccably mounted but the film offers nothing more than a series of disappointingly superficial boo moments of zero impact
The Woman in the Fifth (2011)
European arthouse film that feels like it should have been a horror film. This starts well but when it veers into genre territory, its big twist has been done by too many genre films of recent and holds nothing interesting in its treatment
The Woman in the Window (2021)
Slickly produced psycho-thriller that comes mired in controversy, featuring Amy Adams as an agoraphobe who maybe witnesses a murder.
The Woman in the Yard (2025)
Blumhouse film with Danielle Deadwyler and family having to deal with the ominous threat of a mystery woman in black veil who simply sits in their yard
Wonder Man (1944)
Madcap screwball comedy with Danny Kaye required to pose as his dead twin brother who is then taken over by his ghost during a trial
Wonder Woman: Bloodlines (2019)
The second of the DC Universe Animated Original Movies made as a standalone entry for Wonder Woman, clearly building on the success of the Gal Gadot film
The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962)
Anthology of Brothers Grimm stories from George Pal where the brothers are wound in as characters. The film’s effectiveness is killed by Pal pitching everything down at a mawkish and simple-minded level
Wonka (2023)
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory has become a cult classic. This offers a Willy Wonka origin story but seems to be far too nice a work that is missing the dark bite of the original
World Apartment Horror (1991)
After making the groundbreaking anime Akira, Katsuhiro Otomo then chose to direct this oddity – a live-action comedy about a frustrated Yakuza enforcer trying to evict an apartment of foreigners that turns into a horror film in its last third
Worldbreaker (2025)
The greatly underrated Brad Anderson makes a film about a father and daughter trying to survive in a world overrun by monsters. A film that reaches for something epic but lets it fall through its hands
Wraiths of Roanoke (2007)
B-budget Syfy Channel outing that attempts to answer the true-life Unsolved Mystery of the lost colony at Roanoke. Unfortunately, the film’s answers are no more interesting than a bunch of Viking spirits, while the film generates little atmosphere or anything beyond rudimentary historical conviction
Wrath of the Titans (2012)
Sequel to the Clash of the Titans remake. Much the same as before except with bigger monsters and more explosions … flash and spectacle that washes over you with all the substance of the light from a disco ball
Wristcutters: A Love Story (2006)
Oddball film set in an afterlife for suicides. You keep expecting the film to burst out into a vein of rich black comedy that never comes and you are left with a film that feels as though it is being eccentric for the sake of it.
A Writer’s Odyssey (2021)
A Chinese work of meta-fiction where a man is tasked with killing the author of a book that is having effects on the real world
Wrong is Right (1982)
A sprawling international political thriller/satire about stolen nuclear weapons starring Sean Connery as a journalist
Wrong Turn (2003)
Passable effort that copies that basics of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre with a group of stranded teens running afoul of an in-bred family
Wu Dang (2012)
Martial Arts/Wu Xia fantasy with various people involved in a competition while hunting for a fabled sword
Wu Yen (2001)
Frenetic Hong Kong comedy about fairy enchantments involving all the cast undergoing gender reversals
WW 3 (2001)
A routine biowarfare outbreak thriller that holds a fascination in that it imagines the attacker to be al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden two months before 9/11
Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)
The much-anticipated sequel to the Gal Gadot starring Wonder Woman is a highly divided success, partly due to an inane plot centred around a magic wishing stone
The X Files (1998)
Film spinoff from tv’s hit ultra-paranoid alien conspiracy drama. The film is caught in the unenviable position of trying to give fans what they want and reiterate the basics of the series for new audiences, while giving away no plot details in advance, and as a result ended up pleasing nobody
The X from Outer Space (1967)
A wannabe entry in the Japanese monster movie, this has the distinction of featuring possibly the most ridiculous monster to ever turn up in one of these films
X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)
The seventh X-Men chapter arrives with a certain ennui. Bryan Singer creates some epic scenes but the sprawling ensemble and the series’ ragged continuity makes it hard to invest in the characters, while the new villain looks like a B movie wizard and the mass destruction climax comes surprisingly by the book
X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019)
Despite the bad press surroundings this, I failed to find it as bad as other reviewers. It’s a solid if not standout entry in the series with some fine superheroic action sequences
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)
After the disaster of X-Men: The Last Stand, the decision was made to give a whole film over to the series’s most popular character, Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, and to go with a prequel that told his origin story. Largely a film that exists as a series of superheroic action scenes
X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)
Brett Ratner inherits the X-Men franchise from Bryan Singer for the third film in the series and promptly killed it off (after this point everything became prequels featuring Young X-Men). Ratner’s handling of the superheroic action lacks Singer’s exhilaration or any affinity for the characters
Xtro (1982)
A British-made copy of Alien that has been construed as a series of bizarre images and scenes that make no real sense – even the title is given no explanation
Xtro II: The Second Encounter (1991)
Xtro was cheesily ridiculous Alien copy. This is a sequel that bears nothing in common with the original beyond the title. In between the two films, we had Aliens so there is now a plot about soldiers hunting the creature with biiig guns. Nothing bad, just an uninspired rehash of the standard Alien copy
Xtro3 (1995)
Third of the Xtro films, none of which are related to one another, this features the discovery of aliens at an abandoned military base
xXx: Return of Xander Cage (2017)
xXx, with Vin Diesel as an extreme sports junkie version of James Bond, was ridiculous. This second sequel surprisingly turns out halfway watchable, keeping the stunts moving fast and introducing an ensemble to build this out as a Fast and the Furious-type franchise
Yakuza Weapon (2011)
Another Gonzo Japanese Splatter Film about a Yakuza heir who is blown apart by rivals and then rebuilt with cyborg attachments
Year One (2009)
Not very funny comedy from Harold Ramis and Judd Apatow where Jack Black and Michael Cera are cavemen who stumble through many incidents from the Old Testament
Yoga Hosers (2016)
Kevin Smith’s follow-up to Tusk slides off the cliff somewhere between Johnny Depp’s incredibly silly performance, a nemesis you can’t take seriously and what largely becomes a vanity exercise in nepotism – Smith and Depp creating a vehicle to highlight their daughters
You Can Call Me Bill (2023)
Alexandre O. Philippe has made a host of documentaries about film and fandom. Here he sits down with a 91-year-old William Shatner who talks candidly as he reflects on his life
You Can’t Run Forever (2024)
The 2020s have seen a surprise upsurge in films about people being pursued by attackers. This is another about a teen girl flees pursued by a J.K. Simmons as a business professor who suddenly goes psycho
You Might Be the Killer (2018)
There have been some clever and witty deconstructions and parodies of the slasher film in recent years. This starts in with an immediately captivating hook where the title phrase is turned around on the protagonist
You’ll Find Out (1940)
Old Dark House comedy set around the antics of big band leader Kay Kyser. Starring several horror names of the day – Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Peter Lorre
Youth Without Youth (2007)
Francis Ford Coppola film that came out the same time as The Case of Benjamin Button where Tim Roth regains his youth after being hit by a lightning bolt
Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie – Pyramid of Light (2004)
An animated film based on the hit playing card phenomenon, which proves largely incomprehensible to anybody not versed in the game
Yummy (2019)
Belgian film that starts out as a blackly funny work about a cut-price East European hospital before seguing into a zombie film
Z for Zachariah (2015)
This starts promisingly but it soon becomes apparent the classic story, which only takes place between two people, has been rewritten for the Young Adult audience with the addition of a third character and the focus on a love triangle, while abandoning most of the book’s themes
Zebraman 2: Attack on Zebra City (2010)
Takashi Miike makes a sequel to his earlier superhero film filled with his typically eccentric touches
Zebraman (2004)
Head-scratching effort from Japan’s Takashi Miike about a schoolteacher who gains superpowers after putting on a costume from his favourite superhero tv series. Miike never seems to be mounting a parody, while the film is too low-budgeted to ever work in terms of kick-ass superheroic action
Zeta One (1969)
This wants to be a little of everything – part 1960s spy film, part British sex comedy, and another part an sf film involving invading alien women – and proves none too satisfying at any of them. The softcore scenes featuring semi-clad alien women are fairly much allowed to overrun the show
Zinda (2006)
A blatant Bollywood copy of Oldboy, often scene-for-scene
The Zodiac Killer (1971)
A film based on the Zodiac Killer. Unlike other Zodiac films, this was made while the killer was still active. The film comes with a fascinating backstory where it was made as part of an elaborate trap to lure the Zodiac Killer out
Zombie Ass: The Toilet of the Dead (2011)
Completely insane gonzo Japanese horror that feels like it is made by a mad scat fetishist involving parasites that emerge out of people’s asses. The film is driven by its outrageously perverse imagery but for all that is haphazard and incoherent when it comes to explanatory rationale
Zombie Cop (1991)
A very low-budget film from regular genre director J.R. Bookwalter about a police officer who is resurrected from the dead by a voodoo priest
Zombie Honeymoon (2004)
The surprise in seeing this after the tide of gonzo mash-ups and wacky title collusions that has taken over the zombie genre in the latter half of the 00s is that, despite the title, it is a zombie film that is playing itself seriously, emerging as another variant on the zombie relationship drama (*)
Zombie Killers Elephants Graveyard (2015)
Another entry among the zombie revival fad of the 2000s/10s, this should be commended for taking an epic and ambitious scope in its story, enough it feels to fuel multiple seasons of The Walking Dead
Zombie Shark (2015)
A fairly typical entry in the gonzo killer shark fad. The filmmakers have clearly had a title idea that they were able to sell but not too many ideas how to make it work. Director Misty Talley offers a sufficiently tongue-in-cheek approach to overcome most shortcomings
Zombie Tidal Wave (2019)
Ian Ziering and the director of the Sharknado films reunite in an effort to repeat the same kind of deliberately ridiculous success with a gonzo zombie film
Zombies of Mass Destruction (2009)
The social metaphors of George Romero’s original zombie films has been missing from the modern equivalents. This takes them up again with great enthusiasm, making a critique of USA attitudes post 9/11, hammering its message home with all the subtlety of a 26-point headline
Zombies of Mora Tau (1957)
A zombie film back from the days before zombies wanted to eat brains and could only be despatched with a bullet in the head where they were instead figures out of voodoo – in this case undead sailors guarding a treasure. A mildly interesting if never entirely standout B movie of the era
Zone 414 (2021)
Very much informed by Blade Runner, this features Guy Pearce as a futuristic detective on the trail of a missing girl in the android zone
Zoom: Academy for Superheroes (2006)
Family-friendly superhero film that places more focus on slapstick than superheroics and contains an embarrassing return to the screen for Chevy Chase
Zoombies (2016)
From The Asylum, the company that brought the world Sharknado and 2-Headed Shark Attack, a film about a zoo filled with zombie animals. Played more seriously than you might expect, this falls just between The Asylum’s usual corner cutting and the odd moment of effectiveness
Zootopia 2 (2025)
Zootopia was one of Disney’s freshest animated works in a decade largely marked only by mediocrity. This is a sequel where the fantastically original world of the first film slips into being just another Disney IP