The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Astral Projection or Astral Travel is the ability of a person to project their consciousness outside of their body. The purpose of this can be to journey and witness events from afar. In some cases, this can involve physically influencing events or even inhabiting another body. The danger this can present is to the traveller’s body left behind, which if damaged, leaves the traveller disembodied and unable to return.
Nicolas Cage career from the mid-2010s gives all impression he has chosen projects for the full-on dementia value. Here he lets all stops go as the spirit of his late wife possesses the body of the teenage daughter of the woman he is seeing
Canadian-made horror from the heyday of the VHS era about psychic vampires terrorising people via astral projection in order to steal their bodies
Scott Derrickson acquits himself well taking on one of Marvel’s magician superhero. He replicates well the psychedelic esoterica that gained the comic book a cult following and Benedict Cumberbatch anchors the show perfectly
The second in a series of animated children’s films about the young H.P. Lovecraft and his encounters with the various denizens of the Cthulhu mythos
On a pure plot level, this is largely a generic haunted house story but director James Wan creates an eerie atmosphere and manages to undeniably jangle the audience’s nerves on a number of occasions
James Wan proves himself one of the finest directors in the horror genre with this sequel to his 2010 film. The plot is trimmed to deliver an effective scare show and Wan again produces a series of eerie and unworldly jumps
This doesn’t have James Wan directing and is a far less interesting ghost story before doing a repeat venture into the beyond. On the plus side, incoming director Leigh Whannell does generate a fair degree of eerie tension
After two fairly good initial entries, the Insidious series began its downward slide. Here new director Adam Robitel’s clumsy jumpshocks are a far cry from the eerie effects James Wan pulled off
The fifth film in the Insidious series. This time Patrick Wilson returns to the franchise and takes the director’s chair, showing he has been taking some lessons from James Wan
A painfully bad film about a jailed killer who uses astral projection powers to become invisible and leave his cell to take revenge on those who convicted him
Film that assembles interesting a number of SF elements and twists but is killed by its delivery as a pretentious indie film
A sequel to 976-Evil, Robert Englund’s directorial debut about a demonic phone line. This is an almost entirely unrelated work that is now about a killer with astral projection powers
A cheapie from cult Ozploitation director Brian Trenchard-Smith about a man having clairvoyant visions of an astral killer
A low-budget horror anthology that is rough around the edges but shows promise
A trio of Japanese tv movies that retell supposedly true life ghost stories