Outpost (2007)
Above average revival of the Nazi zombie concept in a film that has spawned two sequels. The plot of soldiers venturing into an old bunker is conducted with tight, lean suspense and some undeniably gory dispatches
Outside Ozona (1998)
Thriller following several different people as they drive towards the title Texas town, while a serial killer calls into an all-night radio talkback
Outside Satan (2011)
In the vein of Pasolini’s Teorema, French director Bruno Dumont makes a film about an ambiguous visitor who may be capable of miracles. Slow, very opaque but eventually rewarding
Over the Hedge (2006)
Likeable DreamWorks animated film filled with much slapstick energy about a group of talking animals that venture into a housing estate in search of food
Over Your Dead Body (2014)
The most sustained film Takashi Miike has made in some time. In this case, he adapts Yotsuya Kaidan, the most famous of all Japanese ghost stories, which has been filmed multiple times, but rather than offer a straight telling also adds a layer where the story comes to replay itself among the actors in the play
The Owl Service (1969-70)
A British children’s tv mini-series about a mysterious dinner service that presages the playing out of a Welsh myth, this is seen as one of the original influences on the Folk Horror genre
Oz: The Great and Powerful (2013)
Sam Raimi’s prequel to The Wizard of Oz is now; the story of how a conman fools an entire land rather than of an innocent girl just trying to find her way home. The reconceptualisation of Oz comes with a colourful sweep
P.G. Psycho Goreman (2020)
The great and underrated Steven Kostanski makes another of his homages to the 1980s VHS era. This has a winning concept where kids befriend an intergalactic dark lord
P2 (2007)
Tense and twist-filled thriller with Rachel Nichols trapped inside a carpark building by a psychopathic Wes Bentley
Pacific Heights (1990)
Thriller in which landlords Matthew Modine and Melanie Griffith’s lives are terrorised by psychopathic tenant Michael Keaton
The Pack (1977)
Solid and effective entry in the 1970s Animals Attack genre with a group on an island under attack by killer dogs
The Pack (2015)
Rather effective Australian killer dog film. The film streamlines anything extraneous in the plot and gets down to the business at hand of a family living in the Outback being terrorised by a pack of wild dogs, at which you have to admit it generates a reasonable hand of tension
The Pact (2012)
Modestly effective film about a haunted suburban house. Debuting director Nicholas McCarthy produces a number of accomplished and eerie scares that stand him as a promising new name. The film weakens in the last act when trying to tie everything together with an improbable rationale
Paddington 2 (2017)
Sequel to the 2014 film based on the much loved children’s books … This comes with exactly the same mix of silliness, overblown slapstick and sweetness that made the first film work – albeit on a more elaborate budget – and succeeds with the same winning charms
Pandemic (2016)
While the title leads you to expect a plague outbreak film, you soon discover this is a zombie film. What it is is a Found Footage film mounted as a First Person Shooter film at which you have to admit that it launches into action with considerable gusto and ferocity
Pandorum (2009)
Rare cinematic treatment of the generation ship story that conducts it with a modest degree of affectiveness. Produced by Paul W.S. Anderson.
Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
Critically acclaimed Guillermo Del Toro film set during the Spanish Civil War where a young girl finds the entrance to a dark realm. This plays like a very dark version of the Narnia films
Parallel (2018)
From Isaac Ezban in his English-language debut, a cleverly and pleasingly contorted film where a group of friends discover a mirror that leads to a parallel timeline
Parallel (2024)
A variation on the multiverse film where Danielle Deadwyler enters a forest portal and returns to realities where the details of her life vary in minute but increasingly alarming ways
Parallels (2015)
Smart and fascinating venture into the alternate universe hopping theme that suggests something of what the underwhelming Sliders should have been. Originally made as the pilot for a tv series, this comes with much intriguing backstory set-up for a potential series
Paranoiac (1963)
One of the psycho-thrillers made at Hammer Films by Freddie Francis, starring Oliver Reed at his bad boy best. Francis’s visual compositions are absolutely extraordinary
Paranormal Activity 2 (2010)
This necessarily lacks the surprise effect of the first film but still captures some of the same eerie dread anticipation as spooky things begin happening
Paranormal Activity 3 (2011)
The Paranormal Activity series still manages to produce a reasonable amount of eerie scares and jumps a third time around, although by now the claim to still being found footage is starting to strain credulity
ParaNorman (2012)
Stop-motion animated children’s film from Laika that demonstrates a willingness to be scary. The film starts to move out of the amiably likeable after around the halfway point when it begins to play a number of horror tropes against expectation to deliver a reasonable message about fear and prejudice
Parasites (2016)
This reverses the sympathies of films like Deliverance and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Rather than having people tortured by backwoods hicks, one man is forced to survive on a brutal run for his life through the more disreputable parts of L.A. while hunted by homeless.
Parasyte Part 1 (2014)
Live-action adaptation of a manga about the war between body-snatching parasites that are capable of rearranging their host’s bodies. This plays out as a madcap version of The Thing relocated to a Japanese high school
Parsifal (1982)
Epic filmed version of the Richard Wagner opera set around the Arthurian legends and the quest for the Holy Grail
Parts: The Clonus Horror (1979)
This had its entire plot ripped off as Michael Bay’s The Island. Without Bay’s action overkill, this is by far the better film, working as a fascinating mystery set-up that leads to an ingenious twist
The Passion of Ayn Rand (1999)
Biopic about controversial philosopher/SF writer Ayn Rand or at least one that focuses on the extra-marital affair she had throughout her life. Given that the film is based on a book by other man’s wife, it does come with the odd axe to grind
Patema Inverted (2013)
This anime has a surprising number of similarities to Upside Down, which was released one year earlier, both being set in two different worlds where gravity in each operates in the opposite directions and of the forbidden relationship between a boy and a girl from either world
Patrick (1978)
Fine Australian from Richard Franklin that jumps aboard the popularity of Carrie concerning a coma patient who demonstrates psychic powers
Patrick Still Lives (1980)
Patrick was a modest Australian film about a bedridden coma patient exhibiting physic powers. This is an unofficial Italian-made sequel made way back before anyone coined the term mockbuster. This has no compunctions about aiming for the completely trashy – and all the more entertainingly for it
Peacemaker (1990)
Entertaining B-budget variant on The Hidden with a woman caught between an alien aw enforcement officer and fugitive criminal both of whom offer contradictory stories
Pee-Wee’s Big Holiday (2016)
Pee-Wee Herman is a deliberately annoying character that is either adored or intensely loathed by audiences. This third film closely follows the structure of the first film with Pee-Wee in a series of nonsense adventures on a cross-country journey
Peelers (2016)
There have been a surprising number of films in recent years offering up the combination of zombies and strippers. Although what we have is never quite specified as zombies, this offers up strippers kicking zombie ass with a great deal of gore-drenched relish
Penguins of Madagascar (2014)
This spinoff from the Madagascar films is a lot more fun that I was anticipating – how could you dislike a film with John Malkovich as an octopus super-villain? Essentially cast as a spy parody, the film has a gonzo insanity that hits in with a manic delirium
Peninsula (2020)
Yeon Sang-ho makes a sequel to his international breakout zombie film hit of Train to Busan, appropriating the basics of Escape to New York to good ends
The People (1972)
Quite magical Francis Ford Coppola produced film about a schoolteacher who discovers she had taken a position in a town of alien refugees
The People That Time Forgot (1977)
The third in the trilogy of Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptations with Doug McClure. This has much imagination despite the special effects often not being up to the task
The People vs. George Lucas (2011)
Documentary about Star Wars fandom that critically takes on George Lucas’s merchandising and disappointment with the prequels
Perfect Blue (1997)
The directorial debut of Satoshi Kon, overseen by Katsuhiro Otomo, an anime concerning a troubled Japanese pop singer being cyber-stalked by a doppelganger
Perfect Creature (2006)
Conceptually ambitious New Zealand made film set in an alternate history where vampires live alongside humans
The Perfect Nanny (2000)
Modest psycho-thriller with Tracy Nelson as a psychopathic babysitter who kills all in the way to romancing her employer
Perfect Strangers (2003)
Very strange New Zealand-made film that starts out seeming to be an abduction thriller and then turns into an even stranger ghost story that we cannot be sure is happening or all in the heroine’s imagination
The Perfection (2018)
Quite the most insane film I have seen in recent memory. The rivalry between two classical music students reminds of Black Swan albeit wound up to the histrionic level of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, all added to the most pleasingly twisty mess-with-your assumptions script
Persistence of Vision (2012)
A fascinating documentary about animator Richard Williams that principally focuses on the tragic failure of Williams’s lifework The Thief and the Cobbler, which would have been the most ambitious hand drawn film ever made
Personal Column (1947)
Psycho-thriller with an unknown Lucille Ball as a showgirl used by Scotland Yard as a lure to trap a maniac killer
Pesticide (1978)
One of the films from cult director Jean Rollin. This is a zombie film, clearly influenced by Night of the Living Dead, but with a uniquely French spin – the zombies are caused by drinking toxic wine
Peter Cushing: In His Own Words (2019)
Peter Cushing is one of cornerstone figures in the Hammer Films story. This is documentary based on interviews he made towards the end of his life
Peter Pan (1953)
One of the animated Disney classics, if probably an overrated film. It throws slapstick and derring-do together in a likeable package
Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare (2025)
From the people behind Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, this is the horror version of Peter Pan. And good grief, does this go dark with Peter as a child abductor and Tinkerbell who shoots up ‘fairy dust’ through a needle
The Phantom (1943)
Serial adaptation of the famous comic-strip superhero. One of the better serial comic-book adaptations, featuring some great cliffhangers and maintaining great faith to the comic-strip original
The Phantom Carriage (1921)
Silent film whose greatest footnote is that it was Ingmar Bergman’s favourite film. Has some extraordinary fantastic images, even if these are technically primitive today. Less effective is the modern attempts to view it as a ghost story, when it is more a morality play akin to A Christmas Carol
The Phantom of the Opera (1989)
On the back of popularity of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical and the Elm Street films, Robert Englund was cast in this version where the emphasis is on the slasher element, which works far better than you might think
The Phantom of the Opera (1998)
Dario Argento takes on The Phantom and welcomely rescues it from musical romance and returns it to being a horror film. Despite a beautifully mounted production, Julian Sands’ Phantom is too weak and wimpy
Phantom Town (1999)
A quirkily enjoyable horror Western about children searching for their parents and ending up in a town that exists in an afterlife netherworld populated by an assortment of weird creatures
The Philadelphia Experiment (1984)
Based on a non-fiction, fringe science book that makes claims that the US Navy conducted experiments that turned a ship invisible during WWII, this spins the idea out into a modest time travel story
Phobia (2008)
Horror anthology featuring four ghost stories from Thai directors. While all the segments vary in approach and style, this is a spooky and above average effort with the real standout being the final segment with an air hostess aboard a plane with a dead body in the midst of a storm
Phone (2002)
South Korean jump aboard the Ringu phenomenon about a series of haunted phone calls that works well through a clever ending
Pin (1988)
Creepy and surprisingly well-made Canadian horror film in which a mentally disturbed David Hewlett has a strange relationship with an anatomical dummy that directs him to kill.
Pippi Longstocking (1997)
A likeable animated adaptation of Astrid Lindgren’s popular children’s character from the Canadian company Nelvana
Piranha (1978)
The second film from Joe Dante. Mounted as a quickie copy of Jaws by producer Roger Corman, Dante succeeds in peppering it with a lot of sly jokes and genre in-references
Piranha (2010)
Another in the fad for 70s/80s remakes where Alexandre Aja for once captures the spirit of Joe Dante’s 1978 original by planting tongue in cheek and wading in with mind-bogglingly gory enthusiasm
The Pirates! Band of Misfits (2012)
Amiable effort from England’s Aardman Animations that doesn’t quite scale the heights of their other films but still has an entertainingly nonsensical charm that is far more enjoyable than most Hollywood competition
Pit and the Pendulum (1961)
The second of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe films with Vincent Price. This feels too much as though Corman was trying to make another House of Usher, nevertheless it creates its own thunderously overwrought atmosphere, even if it has little to do with the Poe story
The Place Promised in Our Early Days (2004)
Beautiful anime from Makoto Shinkai, made in the Hayao Miyazaki style set in an alternate history Japan concerning a mysterious hyper-dimensional tower
The Plague (2006)
Interestingly different film about zombified children set after a time when childbirth has died out. This generates a reasonable level of tension but arrives at a very confusing end
The Plague of the Zombies (1966)
Classic Hammer film, vividly made and rich in subtext, concerning aristocrats turning the peasantry into zombies to work in the mines
Play Misty for Me (1971)
Clint Eastwood’s directorial debut is a psycho-thriller that prefigures Fatal Attraction with Eastwood playing a radio DJ who is stalked by a deranged Jessica Walter
The Plumber (1978)
Very odd early Peter Weir film about a strange plumber who moves in and takes over cautious Judy Morris’s apartment
Plurality (2021)
Taiwanese film in which multiple personalities are implanted into a prisoner’s body, one of which is a serial killer, in an effort to find a missing child
Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World (1998)
One of the better among the cheap video-released sequels to their animated films Disney released during the 1990s/2000s, this actually works better than the original
Ponyo on a Cliff By the Sea (2008)
Probably the least great of Hayao Miyazaki’s films. The plot feels recycled from The Little Mermaid while Miyazaki’s recurrent themes seem more perfunctory and the film lacks many of the beautiful contrasts of epic and fragile he specialises in
Possible Loves (2001)
Brazilian-made variant on the alternate timelines film showing three very different outcomes of the lives of a man and a woman after a date
Possum (2018)
British horror film that develops a sense of uncanniness that resembles an Eraserhead at times with a man haunted by a puppet and giant spiders. The mood is unsettling, least of all that we are never sure what is real or taking place in the character’s head
Posthumous Memoirs (2001)
Adapted from a classic Brazilian novel, a man narrates his life story from beyond the grave
Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (2006)
Troma film that has maybe the silliest movie title ever. This sets out to be so persistently moronic and wilfully offensive that it eventually attains a delirious absurdity
A Prairie Home Companion (2006)
The final film from the great Robert Altman set backstage at a radio variety show as an angel of death wanders through
Prancer (1989)
An appealing bittersweet film based around the improbable premise of a young girl finding what she believes is one of Santa’s reindeer. In a genre that usually deals in sugary sentiment, this has a much more rewarding downbeat realism
Predators (2010)
Despite being hamstrung with Adrien Brody in Action Hero mode, this is a hard-edged film that goes some way to rescue the Predator franchise from its novelty crossovers with Alien(s)
The President’s Analyst (1967)
Amid the mostly silly output of James Bond copies in the 1960s, this is one that comes with a sharp satiric bite in which president’s analyst James Coburn finds himself caught in the midst of a series of conspiracies
Prevenge (2016)
Directed by and starring actress Alice Lowe, this comes in a blackly funny vein. Lowe plays a pregnant woman driven by the voice of her baby as she starts dispatching everything from sleazy men to those who annoy her
Prey (2022)
The seventh film in the Predator franchise. This received some of the best reviews of any film in the series and comes with the unique idea of pitting Native Americans up against a Predator
The Price of Milk (2000)
Quirkily eccentric and surreal New Zealand made comedy about a couple living on a farm
The Price We Pay (2022)
This has the flavour of From Dusk Till Dawn, a getaway thriller that does a mid-film morph into full horror territory as a gang of fleeing petty criminals stray into the lair of mad surgeon
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016)
Based on the book that led a publishing phenomenon in which literary classics are mashed up with monsters, this has the difficult balancing act – that of making Jane Austen’s Regency romance sit alongside zombies – nevertheless manages to play both with an impeccably straight-face
The Priests (2015)
The possession and exorcism film has become a heavily exhausted one, having cycled through the same limited bag of tricks for the last 40 years. This South Korean take still mines the same territory but adds some nifty new tricks to build to a riveting climax
Primal Rage (2018)
Strong and effective Bigfoot horror film from makeup effects artist Patrick Magee. The film is never better than when Magee is in his element, creating a uniquely designed Bigfoot that is capable of blending into its surroundings unnoticed
Primate (2025)
Johannes Roberts is a director that has been producing some solid work since the 2000s. Here he makes a film about a rabid killer chimpanzee that ratchets up some great tension
The Primevals (2023)
A fascinating lost world/alien lizard people stop-motion animated film that has been in production for a record 56 years, eventually pieced together and released by Charles Band several years after its creator’s death
Primitive War (2025)
Essentially Platoon meets Jurassic Park. A surprisingly watchable film that places a unit of soldiers in the midst of the Vietnam War up against dinosaurs where things get bloody and ferocious
Prince of Darkness (1987)
One of the less successful, nevertheless underrated John Carpenter films where he pays tribute to Nigel Kneale in a conceptually mind-boggling mix of deviltry and quantum physics
Princess (2006)
Animated film from Denmark about a man who goes on an ultra-violent crusade against the porn industry over the loss of innocence of his young niece
The Princess and the Frog (2009)
One of the more enjoyable Disney animated films from the latter half of the 00s. Featuring Disney’s first Black heroine, this embraces its New Orleans setting and turns Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale on its head with enjoyable results
The Princess and the Goblin (1992)
Likeable animated fantasy made for young children
The Prize of Peril (1983)
French film about a tv gameshow where contestants are pursued by armed hunters. Much of this was copied by the subsequent The Running Man but this conducted the idea first and better
Prodigy (2017)
An excellent film about a psychologist sent in to assess a child who reveals phenomenal intelligence and psychic powers
The Prodigy (2019)
In this space of three films, Nicholas McCarthy has risen to the top of this site’s Up and Coming Directors to watch list. On a script level, this is a standard Evil Child film but is made something worth watching by McCarthy’s directorial jumps
Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (2017)
Biopic about William Moulton Marston, the creator of Wonder Woman This covers the key aspects of Marston’s life and how it influenced the comic-book and delves into the highly unconventional lifestyle he led in a polyamorous relationship and exploring BDSM
Project Almanac (2015)
A zero expectation film that turns out to be surprisingly good. Falling somewhere between Primer and Chronicle, this does a reasonable job of showing its time travel device in action and the unintended consequences