Drive Angry (2011)
Essentially a supernatural version of a 1970s car chase movie with Nicolas Cage as a motorist who has escaped from Hell to settle a score. This makes a play for the trashy and absurd and comes out all the more entertaining for it
Dungeons & Dragons: The Book of Vile Darkness (2012)
The third film based on the roleplaying game. The previous two films were forgettable but this is surprisingly good, taking a far darker tone than the usual sword-and-sorcery adventure and adding considerable moral complexity
Dust Bunny (2025)
A completely indescribable film about a young girl who befriends a hitman and asks him to protect her from an imaginary monster. The result falls somewhere between Leon/The Professional and a Jean-Pierre Jeunet film
The Earth Dies Screaming (1964)
Terence Fisher was a cornerstone figures at Hammer Films. Less well-regarded is his 1960s trilogy of science-fiction films. This is an alien invasion film that is a model of economy, told with a stark effective tension
Earth Girls Are Easy (1989)
Wackily funny SF musical with Jeff Goldblum, Damon Wayans and Jim Carrey as aliens who land in the San Fernando Valley. Directed by Julien Temple with a giddily effervescent silliness
Easter Bloody Easter (2024)
An Easter horror film about a small town overrun by a killer jackalope, this plants tongue in cheek and hits a highly amusing horror comedy stride. Leading lady/director Diane Foster should be a future horror heroine
Easter Bunny Kill! Kill! (2006)
Admirably sordid slasher film, an early effort from Chad Ferrin, that quickly gets twisted and comes up with an amusing line-up of lowlifes and an Easter bunny masked killer
The Echo (2004)
Filipino ghost story inspired by The Ring and Ju-on films that generates a reasonable haunted atmosphere in its story about mysterious happenings in an apartment building. This later underwent an English-language remake
The Eclipse (2009)
Not to be confused with the Twilight sequel, this is a quiet, modestly made Irish ghost story set around a literary festival where the strongest parts are the characters and performances
Ed and His Dead Mother (1993)
A very eccentric comedy in which momma’s boy Steve Buscemi accepts a deal from a strange salesman to resurrect his beloved mother (Miriam Margolyes) from the dead
Ed Kemper (2025)
A film based on true-life serial killer Ed Kemper. Director Chad Ferrin made the terrible Pig Killer, a true crime film that got everything wrong about its subject. Here however Ferrin gets it right and makes one of his best films yet
The Editor (2014)
A witty parody of the giallo film from members of Canada’s Astron-6 collective who are proving themselves the masters of a certain type of movie spoof
Einstein’s God Model (2016)
A conceptually wild film about the use of a device that can contact the dead that winds in the use of Thomas Edison’s spirit phone, modern physics and multiverse theory in something uniquely different
The Elderly (2022)
Quite creepy Spanish film where the elderly everywhere without any explanation begin to act disturbed and turn on the young
Elevation (2024)
Quite a good variant on A Quiet Place where humanity is in hiding from monsters that exist below eight thousand feet altitude. This develops some fine seat-edge tension
Eliminators (1986)
One of the more enjoyable films from Charles Band’s Empire Productions, a comic-book of a film that assembles an action team of various abilities on an adventure up against a mad scientist
Eliza Graves (2014)
Brad Anderson adapts an Edgar Allan Poe story about an asylum where the inmates are posing as the staff. This is lush period piece with an amazing cast line-up – the only surprise is that it did no box-office
Elizabeth Harvest (2018)
A novel take on the story of Bluebeard who forbids his wives to enter a room and kills them when they do. Here Bluebeard is a scientist who keeps cloning the same wife over. A sophisticated and intelligent film full of sharp and intriguing twists
Elstree 1976 (2015)
A documentary devoted to the extras and bit players who appeared in Star Wars. Gently affectionate, it tells the story of people who never much else notable and how being part of such a cultural landmark impacted their lives
Elysium (2013)
The second film from Neill Blomkamp. As in District 9, he starts out making a savage and biting social critique about social privilege and financial elites only to let the film descend into action moves in the third act
Embalming (1999)
A Japanese horror film that winds a convoluted plot involving stolen corpses, a blackmarket in organ harvesting, split personality, twins and religious cults
Embers (2015)
An often hauntingly made film set in a world where the populace is affected by periodic amnesia and memory resets. Memento in effect recast as an apocalyptic story
Embodiment of Evil (2008)
Cult Brazilian figure of Jose Mojica Marina returns to his signature role of the demoniac sorcerer Ze do Caixão/Coffin Joe after 40 years. Marins’ nihilist philosophising and catalogue of torture scenes proves madly entertaining
Embrace the Darkness (1998)
A surprisingly good work of vampire erotica made with some sensuality and apparent care by those involved, along with some quite imaginative touches of fantastique
Emperor Visits the Hell (2012)
The idea of (some chapters of) the classic Chinese legend Journey to the West retold in contemporary terms. This makes for some amusing interpolations, while also acting as a social critique of modern-day Chinese society
The Emperor’s New Groove (2000)
One of the head-scratching animated oddities produced by Disney during the 2000s. Not unlikeable, the story concerns a self-centered Aztec emperor who is transformed into a llama
The Empire of Corpses (2015)
Fascinatingly original anime set in an alternate history Steampunk version of Victorian England that has developed a technology based on Frankenstein’s corpse resurrection experiments
Encanto (2021)
One of the best Disney animated films in some time. Set around a Colombian American family that have hereditary magic powers and live in a magical house, this comes with an enormous degree of colour and energy
Endangered Species (1982)
A modest thriller with sheriff Robert Urich investigating cattle mutilations in small town Buffalo and finding possible UFOs and a government conspiracy to be behind these
Endhiran (2010)
A rare Bollywood venture into science-fiction – a completely madcap android intelligence/amok film that features some wildly imaginative action scenes, all set amid typical Bollywood song and dance/romance numbers
The Entity (1982)
Film that is supposedly based on a true story which Barbara Hershey are her family are harassed by a poltergeist. This contains the notorious scene where Hershey is raped by the entity
Enys Men (2022)
Fascinating film about a woman isolated on an island off the Cornish coast who is haunted by cryptic mystery figures, who are possibly all in her imagination, possibly not. A film that creates a fascinating enigma
Epsilon (1997)
A film from Rolf de Heer, a director who makes highly unusual works and should be better known than he is. In this, an alien woman befriends a man after she appears in the Australian Outback
Erotic Ghost Story II (1991)
The second and best in the series of Hong Kong films filled with wonderfully tongue-in-cheek erotica and a series of entertainingly over-the-top fantastical set-pieces
Errors of the Human Body (2012)
This gave the impression that is was going to venture deep inside Cronenbergian territory but instead, we have a darkly fascinating work set in the world of scientific research
Escape from Cannibal Farm (2017)
British director Charlie Steeds delivers a well tuned homage to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre that gets it right in ways that most of the Texas Chainsaw sequels don’t
Escape from L.A. (1996)
John Carpenter’s sequel to Escape from New York falls too much in the shadow of its predecessor, nevertheless has some effective moments of its own, with Carpenter in particular creating a satiric fundamentalist future
Estranged (2015)
An amnesiac girl returns home to a large estate in the English countryside only to be made prisoner by her family. Reminiscent of one of the 1960s Hammer psycho-thriller, this is well-made and builds out a fine sense of alienation
Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance (2009)
The second of the Neon Genesis Evangelion reboot films, this gets the essentials right and delivers some stunningly epic anime action scenes
Everyone Says I Love You (1996)
Woody Allen makes a musical. It is Allen in a much lighter mood than he was in the early 1990s and the film comes with some appealingly eccentric and often downright surreal touches
Evil Alien Conquerors (2003)
Comedy directed by Chris Matheson, co-writer of the Bill and Ted films, about two not very bright alien invaders. Imagine Dumb and Dumber meets Earth Girls Are Easy. A film that is wilfully silly
Evil Dead (2013)
One of the few remakes of the 00s/10s that delivers the goods. While messing around with the plot set-up with mixed results, this quickly goes for broke to create a satisfying show on most accounts
Evil Dead Rise (2023)
The fifth film in the Evil Dead series. This comes with the selling point of being a female-led sequel and offers a much more serious and gore-drenched take than previous entries
The Evil Next Door (2020)
The Ghost Story is a genre has felt overused and its clichés churned to a point of exhaustion. All of that said, this Swedish film delivers the goods and conjures an extremely spooky mood
Evil of Dracula (1974)
The third in a trilogy of spookily eerie Japanese vampire films. This echoes the basics of Hammer’s Lust for a Vampire in being set at a girls’ boarding school, which is spun in interesting ways
Exam (2009)
An existential puzzlebox of a film where a group of job interviewees are locked in a room and asked to work out what the question is. A fascinating conceptual film that falls somewhere between Cube and Saw
Excess Flesh (2015)
A strong portrait of disturbed psychology – imagine a mash-up between The Neon Demon and its delve into the dark side of the modeling world and Single White Female about a woman and her disturbed roommate
Excision (2012)
Darkly subversive film about an alienated teenage girl, this digs its teeth into family values and depicts the uncomfortableness of puberty. On the other hand, this is only rarely the horror film others have reviewed it as
Exhibit A (2007)
A Found Footage film from the early days before Paranormal Activity went big. This unnervingly charts the psychological disintegration of an ordinary English family under economic pressure
Exit Humanity (2011)
Modestly effective zombie film set during the US Civil War. This eschews the usual gore-drenched zombie attacks in favour of a nicely achieved story about one man’s internal journey through the apocalypse
The Exorcism (2024)
Joshua John Miller, the son of The Exorcist’s star Jason Miller, makes a film where an actor cast as the priest in a remake of The Exorcist becomes possessed. A witty and clever blend of meta reference and autobiography
Exorcism: The Possession of Gail Bowers (2006)
The Asylum’s mockbuster response to the hit of The Exorcism of Emily Rose and actually a far more interesting film. This discovers itself with a go-for-broke trashiness that the horde of Emily Rose imitators balked at
Exte: Hair Extensions (2007)
An earlier effort from Shion Sono that concerns itself with hair extensions that take over and kill their host. More straightforward than many of Sono’s other works but the outlandish of the effects make the film
The Exterminating Angel (1962)
An acclaimed surrealistic film from Luis Buñuel in which a group of people attend an upper-class dinner party but then find themselves inexplicably unable to leave the room
Extracted (2012)
An undeniably imaginative SF film in which scientist Sasha Roiz to invent a device to view memory only for things to go wrong and become trapped in someone else’s memories
The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec (2010)
Luc Besson adapts a French comic-book – sort of a female version of Tintin – with uneven but generally amiable regard. The result is somewhere between an Indiana Jones adventure and the quirkness of an Amelie
Extraordinary Tales (2015)
An anthology of Edgar Allan Poe tales narrated by Christopher Lee, Bela Lugosi and others. Each episode is in a different style, where the succinctness allows the stories to be told as written
Extraordinary Visitor (1998)
Quirkily appealing Canadian fish out of water comedy where John the Baptist is sent to present-day Newfoundland just before the turn of the millennium to prevent the End of the World
The Extraordinary Voyage (2011)
French documentary made for the 150th celebration of Georges Melies’s birthday. Interesting if never uncovering anything new. Too much focus is placed on A Trip to the Moon and its recent restoration
Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (2019)
Documentary-maker Joe Berlinger makes an exactingly detailed recreation of the Ted Bundy case, while Zac Efron abandons teen pin-up roles and steps into the title role with unnerving likeness
Fade to Black (1980)
A clever little psycho film concerning a killer who is obsessed with classic movies. This was doing the movie-inspired psychos thing way before Scream and with quite a degree of ingenuity
The Fall of the House of Usher (2023)
Mike Flanagan mini-series that expands on the story to incorporate a host of other Poe stories. More like another of Mike Flanagan’s cross-generational ghost stories by way of tv’s Succession with a lot of Poe-esque margin notes
The Family Man (2000)
Brett Ratner conducts a likeable variation on It’s a Wonderful Life with banker Nicolas Cage suddenly finding himself in an alternate life as a regular working class man with wife and kids
The Fan (1996)
A dense, visually afire film from the great Tony Scott starring Robert De Niro as a sports fan who snaps from the pressures of ordinary life and then stalks baseball star Wesley Snipes
Fanboys (2008)
Affectionately made road trip film about four Star Wars fans on a journey to break into Skywalker Ranch. Packed with lots of witty fannish in-jokes and cameos, this comes out as enjoyable if broad at times
Fangs (1974)
Copy of Willard with Les Tremayne as a man obsessed with snakes who starts using them to take revenge on those who have wronged him. This gets fascinatingly torrid.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016)
Spinoff from the Harry Potter films – unlike those, written directly for the screen and feels more like it belongs there. The US locations open the story up, while the magic creatures and new ensemble cast prove a delight
Fantastic Four (2005)
One of the big hits among the spate of Marvel Comics adaptations in the 2000s. This has a very mixed reputation but brings the comic-book team to life in a reasonable effort
FantastiCozzi (2016)
A documentary about Luigi Cozzi, director of Starcrash and Hercules, among others. Cozzi proves a highly enjoyable raconteur and often more entertaining than some of the films he has made
Fascination (1979)
One of the films from cult French director Jean Rollin whose works always contained an arty mix of horror and erotica. This concerns mysterious blood-drinking rituals among a group of women at a chateau
Fatman (2020)
Amusingly dark Christmas film where a kid hires a hitman to kill Santa after receiving a lump of coal in his Christmas stocking. Featuring Mel Gibson as a grumpy Santa struggling with modern economic realities
Fear Below (2025)
Quite a decent little Australian film in the survival in shark-infested waters stakes about a diving team forced by mobsters to conduct a dive in a river inhabited by a killer shark to retrieve a haul of gold bullion
Le Fear II: Le Sequel (2015)
A rather funny comedy about the making of a disaster-laden low-budget horror film where the filmmaking style depicted makes Ed Wood’s films seem like works of art
Fear in the Night (1972)
One of the better psycho-thrillers made by Hammer Films where a deft script is aided by good performances including Peter Cushing and a wonderfully bitchy Joan Collins
Fear, Inc. (2016)
A variant on The Game where Michael Douglas had his life turned into a nightmare series of rubber reality games that were being staged for his amusement. This spins the same idea through a witty series of horror movie homages
Fear the Invisible Man (2023)
A modest and quite good low-budget adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man, which adheres more faithfully to the Wells novel than the recent high-profile film
Feast (2006)
A smartly funny monster movie with various people at siege in a bar and under attack by creatures. This takes great delight in puncturing the cliches of the genre. Two sequels followed.
Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 (1972)
A cultish Japanese Women in Prison film made with a wild ferocity as a female prisoner makes an escape and leads a team of women as they take revenge against men who seeks to abuse them
Femme Fatale (2002)
Brian De Palma makes a return to the classic psycho-thrillers where he made his name, shouting virtuoso directorial flourish from the rafters and pulling off an amazingly contrived plot
Ferpect Crime (2004)
A black comedy from Alex de la Iglesia about murder and rivalry in a department store, where the killer becomes advised by the ghost of those he has killed
Fido (2006)
Charmingly droll film that posits an alternate version of the 1950s where zombies have been domesticated. This has a perfect sense of mood and admirable deadpan playing by all involved
Filmed in Supermarionation (2014)
A documentary about Gerry Anderson and the making of his various puppet tv shows, the most famous of which was Thunderbirds. Each show is covered in depth and surviving personnel interviewed
Final Destination: Bloodlines (2025)
A return to the Final Destination franchise after fourteen years, this comes with an undeniable sense of humour, producing a series of highly entertaining despatches to make the best entry in the series so far
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children (2005)
Not a seventh sequel to Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, this adapts the videogame of the same name. Dazzling anime action but is take-no-prisoners with explanations about what is happening to non game players
Fire and Ice (1983)
Animator Ralph Bakshi collaborates with fantasy illustrator Frank Frazetta to make a fine and underrated sword and sorcery film that comes with a vigour that puts in the best spirit of Robert E. Howard
Fire & Ice (2008)
Unassumingly well-made venture into the epic fantasy genre from Pitof, director of Catwoman. A slim story played with conviction and some particularly good dragon effects
Fire City: End of Days (2015)
A fascinatingly original film about an apartment building of demons who live amongst humans and feed on their miseries. Directed by makeup effects man Tom Woodruff, Jr and featuring some extraordinary creature designs
A Fire in the Sky (1978)
TV movie about an impending asteroid collision that was intended as a copy of the big-budget disaster movie Meteor but is actually a far better film. The science and Civil Defence reaction is written with an impressive credibility
Fire in the Sky (1993)
Film based on a true-life claim about a supposed alien abduction. This probably won’t convince anybody who does not already believe but it is undeniably a well-made film, at its most striking when we go aboard the UFO
Five (1951)
SF cinema’s first ever portrayal of nuclear war. The film is sometimes incredibly naive and mostly wants to make a parable of racial tolerance. It is often heavy-handed but also holds moments of undeniable lyricism
The Flash (2023)
Despite a poor box-office performance and a troubled production behind the scenes, it is a surprise what a good film this is, easily outstripping the last half-dozen MCU films put together
Flash Gordon (1980)
Dino de Laurentiis climbed aboard the Star Wars fad with this remake of the classic serial. Against expectation, the film’s campy tone and eye-popping sets and costumes work and it has become an audience favourite
Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940)
The third of the Flash Gordon serials, not quite at the heights of the previous two but with a colour and exoticism that was head and shoulders above the other serials of the era
Flatmates Wanted (2004)
A no-budget New Zealand-made film about a student who makes the realisation he is living in a haunted flat. This delivers everything with some modest spooky effect
The Flesh Eaters (1964)
A true-bred exploitation film with castaways arriving on an island where they encounter a Nazi mad scientist breeding flesh eating slugs. This has been cited as the first gore film
Flight of the Navigator (1986)
Smart and intelligent Disney film where Joey Cramer play a kid who goes missing and reappears some years later unaged, only to realise he has been abducted by aliens and can control a spaceship
The Footstep Man (1992)
A New Zealand-made film where a sound effects artist is haunted by the ghost of a woman who steps out of a biopic about Henri Toulouse-Lautec that he is editing
For the Love of Spock (2016)
Documentary about the life of Leonard Nimoy made for the 50th Anniversary of Star Trek. Directed by Nimoy’s son Adam, this is mostly a biography tracing Nimoy’s life with some fascinating material showing the evolution of Spock
Forbidden Zone (1982)
Cultishly bizarre, deliberately offbeat and wacky film that was made as a vehicle for the band Oingo Boingo. More a film you admire for its determination to be strange than anything else
Forced to Kill (1993)
A modestly effective action film written by/starring stuntman Corey Michael Eubanks where he is forced by backwoods hicks to compete in bare-knuckle fights