The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
An enjoyable comedy where a scientist is visited by his older self who has travelled back in time to beg him not to invent the time machine that he is about to create
One of the best of all filmed videogame adaptations. Christophe Gans creates a creepy and unworldly atmosphere, along with a series of genuinely outlandish creature effects
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
Slasher film that is more like an Agatha Christie whodunnit, this comes with an appealing level of meta-fictionality. Mostly, it is an actor’s film and has been set-up to allow its name cast to do amazing things
A horror film about a pair of possessed jeans!
The first sequel to Vincenzo Natali’s fine conceptual puzzlebox film. This expands out on the idea, having a cube that bends through time and space, and has a certain fascination if not as much as the original did
One of several films that came out after the success of Bram Stoker’s Dracula claiming Stoker’s above their title despite slim or no connection. That said, this is a modestly effective film about a demon that exists in the shadows
The debut of Canadian director Gerard Ciccoritti who should have become more well known, this goes for broke and becomes splendidly deranged
The second of the Care Bears films, light, insubstantial and rather sweet as pre-adolescent creatures of indeterminate gender romp around in their cloud kingdom banishing bad feelings
Another of the Grindhouse mock trailers gets it own film. This hits in with a wonderfully enthusiastic B movie energy and buckets of gore that remind of early Peter Jackson
A Canadian film where a corrupt politician makes the slow realisation that he is a character inside a film. The comedy heads for obvious places at times but the film is carried by the originality and amusement of its premise
The fourth film from David Cronenberg, a clear (although by no means uninteresting) attempt to repeat the success of Shivers with Marilyn Chambers as a woman with a vampiric skin parasite that turns victims into maddened killers
A miracle of $1.98 no-budget film-making, this Bigfoot comedy shouts out its sheer good nature from every pore. It is a film that wears its shortcomings with pride, while the director and cast have a great comic timing
Colin Minihan is an up and rising genre directors well worth keeping an eye. Here he makes a taut and effective survival story where a woman is hunted by her wife who turns psychopathic after a getaway to a cabin in the woods
Rodrigo Gudiño, editor of Rue Morgue magazine, directs a horror film with strong Lovecraftian overtones about a portal opened at a mysterious cabin in the woods
An outrageously demented low-budget film guaranteed to offend nearly everybody. This takes inspiration from Hobo With a Shotgun with a Catholic priest wielding a gun seeking revenge
This comes with a fascinatingly original premise – man wakes up with complete amnesia and finds that he has the ability to kill anyone within thirty feet of him. The case of a film that holds attention with a captivating and unusual plot and a series of constant whiplash reversals
A solid and well-made film that creates quite a reasonable tension as a family that live in the woods deal with a lurking wolf. What is going on sits in an interesting state of ambiguity.
Mad psychologist creates a giant brain about the size of a small car that controls minds and is hungry to devour people. A deliriously entertaining film that seems to embody the essence of the cheesy makeup effects driven 1980s horror film
An amusing parody of the Backwoods Brutality film where the hillbillies are likeable innocents and the college kids end up killing themselves in a series of bizarre accidents. Amusing, although in the end is only a one-joke film
A psycho-thriller with a difference where Jodie Foster plays a teenager with secrets who maintains the pretence of living with her late father while fending off a pedophile Martin Sheen
Many argue that this is the original slasher film – and it does the whole formula a good deal better than many of those that came along a few years later, having some wry characterisations and a sardonic sense of humour
Christopher Lee called this his worst film. Contrarily it is a ridiculously entertaining effort about a war between telepathic aliens in UFOs from beneath the Bermuda Triangle.
Ghost story about so-called Electronic Voice Phenomenon with Michael Keaton as a widower being contacted from beyond by his late wife. A film that achieves some quite reasonable spooky effect
This had me sold from its premise of American Indians vs zombies. Made by Canadian First Nations people, this features an Indian reservation as the last refuge against the zombie apocalypse
Groundhog Day with drug addicts – a familiar timeloop scenario that makes for a reasonable story about redemption and reconciliation
David Cronenberg’s daughter Caitlin makes her directorial debut with a film set around a family dinner in a future where the world has decided to euthanize the world population by twenty percent
A quite good but little seen Backwoods Brutality film from the great era of Canuxploitation with overtones of Deliverance as hikers in the wilderness are harassed by mysterious figures who play taunting psychological games
Chillingly effective film where a teenage girl casts a spell to kill her mother, only to become terrified and try to turn back what she has unleashed
An overlooked homage to the slasher film. This doesn’t set out to parody, deconstruct or subvert the tropes, rather is just a well-made and affectionate tribute to the genre’s 1980s heyday
A likeable animated adaptation of Astrid Lindgren’s popular children’s character from the Canadian company Nelvana
A Canadian film about a gay man returning home and revisiting his childhood after ten years away that ends up in a weird series of parallel realities
A genetically engineered creature film from Vincenzo Natali, this ventures into some fascinating places but ultimately returns to Frankenstein science territory
A rather interesting horror film in which both the heroine and the heroine of the story she is reading are stalked by a disfigured madman, as the boundary between fiction and reality begins to dissolve
The best budgeted of Guy Maddin’s films, a renaissance of his familiar kitsch surrealism and silent movie homages
A children’s ghost story that is written with uncommon depth and care and directed with reasonable effect
From SF writer Jim Munroe who made the impressive Ghosts With Shit Jobs, a micro-budgeted work set in a post-cyberpunk future where the fascination lies in the casually littered assumptions around the edges
Canadian film about a girl’s strange obsessive relationship with her talking tattoo. The idea has been done before but the film and fine performances give it life
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.
Vincenzo Natali tackles the ghost story, turning everything on its head in a series of mind-boggling twists. One of the few post-Sixth Sense films to take the film’s big twist as its starting point and build from there
One thing you don’t associate with Uwe Boll is a concern for social issues. Made in the aftermath of Columbine, this is an early Boll film that is a surprisingly solid attempt to address the scourge of US school shootings
Not that the title gives you any reason to expect it but this is actually a vampire film, one of the rare entries in a genre that is looking very anemic these days. An original and quite interesting smalltown take that resembles George Romero’s Martin and Let the Right One In
Modest psycho-thriller about the psychological games between a psychopathic lighthouse keeper (a fine Tom Berenger) and his young assistant
Unrelated in any way to the slasher film Prom Night, this plants tongue in cheek as it tries to imitate the A Nightmare on Elm Street films in its story of a vengeful undead prom queen
An old-fashioned ghost story with George C. Scott as a widowed composer who moves into a haunted house. This generates spookiness with quite a reasonable degree of effectiveness
A slasher musical??? The mind does a double takes trying to process the incongruity of the genre mash-ups. That said, this works exceedingly well – neither compromising on the slasher aspects, yet equally delivering some clever and witty musical numbers
Predating Cowboys & Aliens, this is an amusingly titled Western/alien invasion crosshatch that plays itself surprisingly seriously and is better than one might assume
In his follow-up to Manborg, Steven Kostanski abandons the affectionate homages to 1980s video-released genre films he has specialised in so far. A homage to the works of H.P. Lovecraft, this should be seen for the utterly wild and outlandish makeup effects that Kostanski delivers
Okay ghost story in which Gabrielle Anwar rents a haunted farmhouse. Forest Whitaker turns up as a neighbouring occult expert
Quebecois (French-speaking Canadian) historical werewolf film. The plot proves entertaining in its whisplash reversals, although the film’s provision of a werewolf falls down amid some ratty CGI effects
From Cody Calahan who made Antisocial, a reasonable modernisation of the Jekyll and Hyde story with a girl at war for ownership of her own body with an evil alter ego
A halfway reasonable Syfy Channel film with people under attack by treacheries of ravens. This homages The Birds, including featuring an aging Rod Taylor, to modest effect
Modest horror film of the 1980s where kids inadvertently open a demonic gateway. Like a juvenile version of Poltergeist, this comes with the bonus of some fairly good effects
Okay borrowing from the set-up of The Thing about an outbreak of flesh-eating prehistoric insects at an Arctic research station
A case of science prediction where Donald Sutherland and Jeff Goldblum create the world’s first artificial heart
Another of Uwe Boll’s videogame adaptations and one of his better. Boll is seeking to emulate the 00s epic fantasy fad and succeeds with some great action choreography from Ching Siu-Tung
The amusing idea of a mimicry of a Bear Grylls-type wilderness survival reality show – but with the addition of a monster.
A film about the Manson Family killings told through the eyes of one of Manson Girls Leslie Van Houten. This becomes a savage and biting indictment of 1960s social morality
This was the third of the notorious Ilsa films featuring a hyper-sexed Dyanne Thorne. This locates everything in Russian where she is the commandant torturing the prisoners of a Soviet gulag
Amiable Canadian entry in the oversaturated market of the zombie comedy that emerges sort of as a Judd Apatow film with zombies and produces the occasional smile if few laughs
A series of short film interpretations of the Frankenstein story, with interpretations ranging from BDSM to kung fu and modern police procedural
Set in a nowhere New England town where fisherman Colm Meaney discovers a moss with miracle-healing properties. Sort of a Magical Realist version of The Shipping News
Cult animated film that adapts several stories from the adult fantasy comic-book Metal Hurlant/Heavy Metal. These vary but in its better moments that has a trippy cult hallucinatory quality
An oddity that seems to start as a film about IT espionage and then becomes a survival horror with a paintball team on a corporate retreat being hunted through the woods
An unusual, visually fascinating fantasy film where a knight enters into the realm of demons to save a girl, while being granted a talisman that allows him to continually be killed and resurrected
A remake of the popular 1980s sword and sorcery film that was originally produced by Roger Corman. This version is directed by makeup effects artist Steven Kostanski who fills it with an amazing range of creature effects
A Canadian children’s film that does a modest, amusing job of updating the Arthurian legends to the modern day as Merlin appears to a young boy and gives him Excalibur
Promisingly ambitious animated SF film that tries to catch some of the trippy qualities of Heavy Metal where the impressive quality of animation is let down by a juvenile story about a rock band in a post-holocaust future
Canadian-made film about an afterlife encounter group where people are condemned to continually relive the circumstances that led to them being there
Another of the last films made by Bruce Willis before his retirement. This one has a watchable central idea and is set around the idea of a prison for super-villains even if Bruce is not up to much
Modest film with Allison Lange being stalked by one of the men in her life. A film that vies between false jumps and moments of reasonable atmosphere
A documentary about the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe phenomenon. This covers everything from the origins of the toys through the animated series to the live-action film
Odd effort that features Wings Hauser as a polite and charming ghostly handyman who romances the heroine while despatching the people around her. Not a great film but Hauser has never been better
Documentary where William Shatner interviews the actors who played the captains in the other incarnations of Star Trek. The entire show is hijacked by the Shatner ego as he constantly overrides his interview subjects
Heather Thomas starring film about the discovery of a laboratory that has created a vampire virus
The third of Uwe Boll’s Bloodrayne trilogy and one of his better films. The action scenes are slickly choreographed and the film is largely made by Michael Paré and Clint Howard who play to the gallery with entertaining regard
Another animated Barbie film, this appropriate the name of the Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale and makes it now about a fairy who preaches conservation. As these films go, this is one of the better made and comes with quite a degree of colour
A passable psycho-sexual thriller that copies Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct with Andrea Roth caught between two men, one of who seems to be stalking her
The third animated film based on the popular girl’s doll Barbie. This places Barbie into Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake in an okay telling, if one that suffers from the usual limited animation of Mainframe’s early films
Another of Mainframe’s interminable Barbie films that soon slip into a sameness. This is at least directed with a visual sweep
David Cronenberg film that subjectively takes place in the mind of mentally ill Ralph Fiennes, a bewildering film with no easy handholds
The previous Barbie animated films had adapted various fairytales but this casts her as a fairy in a magical kingdom – simplistic, but one of the most colourfully animated of Mainframe’s Barbie films
Deliberately made to look like a lost 1980s/early 90s film, this has a winning concept and sets in with an appealingly sarcastic amusement. On the other hand, the film is never quite as amusing as it gives the impression it is going to be and starts to lose it in the third act
One of the first of Mainframe’s animated Barbie films, this creates a fairytale where reasonable effort gone into the animation and characters
Okay psycho-thriller where Stefanie Powers is stalked in her new apartment while her son develops a mysterious imaginary companion
A sleeper awakes comedy where Seth Rogen falls into a vat of pickles in 1919 and is awakened in the present-day. A decided change of pace for Rogen who plays two lead roles throughout
An animated film revival of The Addams Family. You feel that a PG-rated film sold to family audiences is a bit tame for the Addams’ dark humour, nevertheless this gets much of the kooky silliness.
Taut and effective effort from the heyday of the slasher film, one of several films on the theme of a woman newscaster being stalked by a psycho. A young Michael Ironside goes to town on the role of the psycho and plays to the gallery with nastily effective results
The Soska Sisters take on remaking the classic David Cronenberg film about a woman with a blood-drinking skin graft who leaves a trail of rabid victims. The sisters smartly update the original, bringing a host of new ideas to bear
Classic from the heyday of the slasher film, an effort that was clearly designed to exploit another holiday title in the wake of the successes of Halloween and Friday the 13th. This snappily adapts the slasher formula and does better than most of its ilk in serving it back up
David Cronenberg tackles Virtual Reality themes in an interestingly mind-bending work. Cronenberg has some interesting takes but this ended up being overshadowed by the phenomenon that was The Matrix the same year
Rather peculiar film about a man who becomes a cannibal whenever he sleepwalks and an artist who finds inspiration at the sight of the dead bodies. This taps a rich vein of black comedy
Modest and conceptually packed B-budget action film in which a motley team are sent to break into a bunker that has been hijacked by a scientist who is threatening to fire nuclear missiles
Canadian actress Valerie Buhagiar directs a film about a mother and son fleeing an abusive relationship. The surprise is beyond the film’s arthouse ambitions is that it is a regular ghost story
A comedy in which office staff working overtime gradually realise their efforts are in preparation for the end of the world. This needed more of a dark bite to fully work but has occasional amusement
Solid time travel film about a man who struggles to find a way back to his love as her ex keeps changing the timeline so she doesn’t leave him
Documentary about KNB EFX Group, one of the premiere makeup effects companies in contemporary Hollywood. Although nominally focused around KNB and their history, the documentary principally profiles Greg Nicotero, the N of the group
Canadian-made black comedy about a ring that can revive the dead
Adaptation of the best-selling Christian book series about the Biblical End of the World. There is a mini-industry of these films and, if one can stomach the preachiness, this is not entirely bad
A formula Syfy Channel killer bug film wherein a new experimental insecticide creates a horde of deadly genetically tinkered wasps that run amok through a small town