The Marsh (2006)
Haunted House
Okay ghost story in which Gabrielle Anwar rents a haunted farmhouse. Forest Whitaker turns up as a neighbouring occult expert
Canadian Cinema
A Lobster Tale (2006)
Magical Realism/Miracle Healing Moss
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
Troubled Waters (2006)
Abduction Thriller/Psychic Detective
Thriller starring Jennifer Beals as an FBI agent who receives clairvoyant visions during the hunt for an abducted girl
Still Small Voices (2006)
Ghostly 911 Calls
TV movie in which Catherine Bell is a 911 operator who receives calls from a ghostly child
Silent Hill (2006)
Videogame Adaptation/Sinister Otherworldly Town
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
Spymate (2006)
Spy and Chimpanzee Companion
Perhaps the lamest spy movie idea EVER – a children’s film about a spy who goes into action accompanied by a chimpanzee
Barbie Mermaidia (2006)
Animation/Fairy Barbie Visits the Mermaid Kingdom
Seventh of the animated Barbie films, spinoff of the earlier Barbie Fairytopia, all delivered in sugary upbeat sentiments amid pastel colour schemes that would look eye-poppingly psychedelic if one were high
Android Apocalypse (2006)
Human-Android Relations
A variation on The Defiant Ones with a human and an android chained together but this fails to find anything to say either about androids or prejudice
The Journals of Knud Rasmussen (2006)
Inuit Culture and First Meeting with Europeans
The second film from Inuit director Zacharias Kunuk who made Atanarjuat about a Danish anthropologist charting the lives of the Inuit as they are in the process of assimilation by Westerners
Barbie as The Island Princess (2007)
Animation/Barbie Fairytale
Another of the animated Barbie films, this casts her as a desert island castaway accompanied by a retinue of talking animals. Visually colourful but slight
Seed (2007)
Executed Killer's Revenge
Uwe Boll ventures into Torture Porn territory with this tale of a brutish serial killer who returns from the electric chair on a trail of vengeance against his condemners
My Winnipeg (2007)
Surreal Documentary
Guy Maddin was hired by the Documentary Channel to make a documentary about his hometown Winnipeg and turns it into a surreal confabulation of fact and tall tale
In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (2007)
Epic Fantasy Adventure/Videogame Adaptation
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
White Noise: The Light (2007)
Premonitions of Death
A sSequel in name only to White Noise, this is a very silly film with Nathan Fillion returning from a near-death experience able to see the auras of those about to die
Swarm (2007)
Ants on a Plane
A blatant copy of Snakes on a Plane featuring mutated ants aboard a plane. Without the other film’s tongue-in-cheek approach, this collapses into absurdity
Jack Brooks, Monster Slayer (2007)
Horror Comedy
This leads to you expect a horror comedy but spends half its running time in build-up with no comedy or monster slaying, although does deliver on this with an entertaining effects-heavy climax
Postal (2007)
Videogame Adaptation/Bad Taste Satire
Another Uwe Boll videogame adaptation, a satire where Zack Ward sets out on a shooting spree. Boll sets out to offend as many people as possible but somehow forgets to make any of it funny
End of the Line (2007)
Murderous Doomsday Cult
Could it be too hard to go wrong in making a film about a doomsday cult hunting people through a subway tunnel? Apparently it is and after a promising beginning, the film churns the cliches with little tension
Kaw (2007)
Killer Raven Attacks
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
Barbie Fairytopia: Magic of the Rainbow (2007)
Animation/Land of Fairies
Sequel to the earlier Barbie animated film Barbie Fairytopia. Extremely colourful but essentially a fantasy version of a teenage girl high school drama that quickly slips into pre-packaged formula
Bloodrayne: Deliverance (2007)
Videogame Adaptation/Vampire Western
The second in Uwe Boll’s trilogy adapted from the videogame, this plays out as a mix of Western and vampire hunter film and is marginally better than Boll’s usual standards
Blindness (2008)
Plague of Blindness
A hugely underrated film that depicts the brutal collapse of society that occurs when the entire world is affected by a plague that causes blindness. Directed in strong and powerful images
Otto; or, Up With Dead People (2008)
Gay Zombies
Bruce LaBruce made the world’s first gay pornographic zombie film with L.A. Zombie. This was an earlier trial run, less a porn film and more down around the level of a student art film
Gutterballs (2008)
Splatter Film/Bowling Alley Killer
Film about a series of gory deaths at a bowling alley, this really pushes an envelope of good taste. This gained attention for makeup effects artist Ryan Nicholson and was the cause of much censorship controversy
Far Cry (2008)
Videogame Adaptation/Super-Soldiers Amok
One of the worst of Uwe Boll’s videogame adaptations. This consists of action sequences slung together with random indifference and badly mismatched casting
Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde (2008)
Evil Personality Within Unleashed
Modernised version of the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde story starring Dougary Scott. The principal novelty here is that the bulk of the story takes place in a courtroom as Hyde is placed on trial for murder
Beyond Loch Ness (2008)
Loch Ness Monster/Dinosaur Film
This offers the novelty of a Loch Ness monster film that takes place in Canada! This is otherwise a routine monster of the era made for the Syfy Channel
Barbie Mariposa (2008)
Animation/Land of Fairies
Another of Mainframe’s interminable Barbie films that soon slip into a sameness. This is at least directed with a visual sweep
Pontypool (2008)
Zombie Film/Deadly Contagion in the English Language
Bruce McDonald makes a standout fim with Stephen McHattie as a radio dj dealing with a zombie infection that inhabits the English language that breaks out in the town around him
Barbie & the Diamond Castle (2008)
Animation/Barbie Fairytale
One of the first of Mainframe’s animated Barbie films, this creates a fairytale where reasonable effort gone into the animation and characters
Odysseus and the Isle of the Mists (2008)
Greek Myth Adventure
Supposedly an adventure based on an untold story from The Odyssey, an entry among the fantasy adventure films made for cable filler in the 2000s
Ogre (2008)
Village’s Deal with an Ogre
A Syfy Channel film about the present-day discovery of a lost, still extant 19th Century village that has conducted a deal to preserve themselves by annually sacrificing someone to an ogre
Frankenpimp (2009)
Gonzo Exploitation Homage
Possibly THE worst film ever made. Tony Watt throws an mash-up of exploitation elements together in an incomprehensible plot. A film that made me want to hammer a nail through my eyeball rather than keep watching
Frankenstein Unlimited (2009)
Anthology of Frankenstein Short Films
A series of short film interpretations of the Frankenstein story, with interpretations ranging from BDSM to kung fu and modern police procedural
Rise of the Gargoyles (2009)
Monster Movie
A Syfy Channel monster movie that seems made with a smidgen more care than their usual B movie output
Barbie and the Three Musketeers (2009)
Animation/Barbie Swashbuckler
Alexandre Dumas’s classic adventure story is turned into an animated vehicle for Barbie with genders reversed and an absurdly upbeat Girls Can Do Anything vibe. Being a kid’s film, the girl Musketeers are no longer allowed to wield swords
Leslie, My Name is Evil (2009)
Manson Family Killings
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
Barbie Presents Thumbelina (2009)
Animation/Barbie Fairytale
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
The Cycle (2009)
Backwoods Brutality
Micheal Bafaro is a justifiably obscure director whose entire career has been built on recycling other horror films. This is his version of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, which is passable until a Sixth Sense-styled twist ending
Screamers: The Hunting (2009)
Evolved Androids/Planetary Survival
Disappointing sequel to the modest original that does little but revisit and re-run the first film’s scenario with little to add to it
The Thaw (2009)
Prehistoric Flesh-Eating Insects
Okay borrowing from the set-up of The Thing about an outbreak of flesh-eating prehistoric insects at an Arctic research station
High Plains Invaders (2009)
Western/Alien Invasion
Predating Cowboys & Aliens, this is an amusingly titled Western/alien invasion crosshatch that plays itself surprisingly seriously and is better than one might assume
Bikini Girls on Ice (2009)
Slasher Film
This gets full marks for an attention-grabbing title. Unfortunately, it is the most interesting thing about the film that otherwise only offers up plentiful bikini-clad girls but routine slasher mechanics
Defendor (2009)
Man Believes He is a Superhero
One of several films that came out around the same time, including Super and Kick-Ass, about ordinary people who believe they superheroes. Woody Harrelson gives a winning performance as the comically inept title character
Survival of the Dead (2009)
Zombies
George Romero’s sixth and final zombie film where he writes characters and a script with much more of a richness of theme than he did in the last two entries
Messages Deleted (2010)
Screenwriter Taunted by a Killer
In his last ever produced screenplay, cult director Larry Cohen turns in a wonderfully playful script with Matthew Lillard as a screenwriting lecturer harassed by a killer only to find real-life doesn’t obey the same rules that screenplays do
The Shrine (2010)
Sinister European Town/Occult Horror
A piece of filler horror that is utterly generic in every respect about travelers entering a sinister East European village where the locals are up to no good
Vixen Highway 2006: It Came from Uranus! (2010)
Gonzo Exploitation Homage
Another excruciatingly bad mock exploitation film from Tony Watt, who may well be the world’s worst filmmaker. This mixes killer women, aliens, UFOs, Mafia into an incomprehensible mix
Dark Island (2010)
Mysterious Island/Toxic Cloud Amok
This feels like a mockbuster thrown together to exploit the popularity of the tv series Lost concerning an island haunted by a sinister cloud of smoke. The scenario quickly collapses into absurdity.
Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010)
Sinister Institute/Mysterious Experiments
A homage to 1970s SF cinema, full of trippy journeys through transcendental space and white antisceptic corridors. In aiming for this look, the film also forgot a small thing like a plot or coherent explanation of what is happening
Repeaters (2010)
Timeloop
Groundhog Day with drug addicts – a familiar timeloop scenario that makes for a reasonable story about redemption and reconciliation
Red: Werewolf Hunter (2010)
Werewolf Film
Syfy Channel film that seems to offer the intriguing premise of a Modernised Little Red Riding Hood but only deals with this in the vaguest ways. Otherwise this is a standard werewolf film and contains maybe the crappiest CGI wolf transformation scenes ever
Dead Hooker in a Trunk (2010)
Twisted Road Movie
The debut film from the Soska Sisters – a demented road movie – is scrappy, all over the place and highly uneven but shows the two are definitely going places
Bleading Lady (2010)
Slasher on a Horror Movie Set
Ryan Nicholson makes an amusing slasher film that takes place on a horror movie set where the set driver is a fan of the scream queen star and decides to start eliminating people to start making the film go his way
Territories (2010)
Rogue Border Guards Torture Tourists
An appealingly politicised variant on the Backwoods Brutality film in which two rogue US border guards decide to set up their own home Guantanamo Bay … not Torture Porn but an effectively brutal study on the effect of torture
Dear Mr. Gacy (2010)
True Story/College Student Befriends Serial Killer
Fascinating true story about a college student who struck up a correspondence with serial killer John Wayne Gacy and fashioned himself according to Gacy’s victim profile so as to get closer to him
The Final Storm (2010)
Mysterious Stranger/Possible Biblical End of the World
Uwe Boll seems to be improving. Here he has abandoned action for a character-driven drama about the appearance of an ambiguous stranger heralding the Biblical end of the world
Tucker and Dale vs Evil (2010)
Backwoods Brutality Parody
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
Die (2010)
Torturous Psychological Games
A blatant copy of Saw, albeit without the Torture Porn sadism, with people imprisoned in a cellar forced to kill one another. An oddly unconvincing film that fails to generate any tension or even conviction
Altitude (2010)
Monster on a Plane
Essentially a feature version of The Twilight Zone‘s classic Nightmare at 20,000 Feet episode, this generates some remarkable tension with a group trapped in mid-air in a small plane before a lame twist ending
The Hair of the Beast (2010)
Historical Werewolf Film
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
Splice (2010)
Genetically-Engineered Creature
A genetically engineered creature film from Vincenzo Natali, this ventures into some fascinating places but ultimately returns to Frankenstein science territory
The Captains (2011)
Star Trek Documentary
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
Blubberella (2011)
Plus-Size Vampire Heroine vs Nazis/Gonzo Bad Taste
Uwe Boll sets out to offend everybody in a film founded on making constant insults about its’ plus-size heroine’s weight and bad jokes about the Holocaust, including the Boll playing a comic Hitler
Monster Brawl (2011)
Wrestling Match Between Famous Monsters
This has the mildly amusing idea of taking the idea of films like Dracula vs Frankenstein et al one step further and actually pitting various classic monsters against one another in a wrestling match. Beyond its mimicry of televised wrestling though, there is almost nothing else to the film
Seeds of Destruction (2011)
Massive Runaway Plant Roots
Cheap Syfy Channel CGI disaster spectacle about runaway plant roots – from the Garden of Eden, no less – growing to endanger the entire planet. Utterly formulaic and seeming to consist of no more than canned pieces of cliche action
Hobo With a Shotgun (2011)
Vigilante Derelict/Gonzo Exploitation Homage
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
Donovan’s Echo (2011)
Precognition
Film about clairvoyance and predestination that owes much to Don’t Look Now. Unfortunately, this reduces everything to the prosaic level of a tv movie thriller
Nightmare Factory (2011)
Documentary About KNB EFX Makeup Effects Studio
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
Hamlet (2011)
Modernised Shakespeare Adaptation
After some 150 other films, you have to wonder what another version of Hamlet has to offer. This Canadian adaptation does little other than updating the setting to the 1940s
388 Arletta Avenue (2011)
Found Footage Stalker Film
Found Footage film about a stalker secretly filming a couple and abducting the wife, this tepidly circles around thriller cliches where other Found Footage films have delved into the psycho genre with more disturbing effect
Earth’s Final Hours (2011)
End of the World/Disaster Movie
Another Syfy Channel low-budget disaster film. This creates a fascinating if scientifically dubious end of the world premise about a white hole but spends the show on the routine stuff of car chases and gunfights
Manborg (2011)
Cyborg Hero/Deliberately Bad SF Film
A miracle of no-budget filmmaking made on a budget of $1000. A homage/parody of 80s/90s cyborg action films with some extremely accomplished effects posing and a sidesplitting ear for the era’s dialogue
Bong of the Dead (2011)
Gonzo Zombie Comedy
A film about a marijuana crop that is grown using zombie brains as fertiliser. This starts with a promising gonzo zombie film tone but never quite sustains its approach
Grave Encounters (2011)
Found Footage/Haunted Asylum
Another Found Footage horror film with a reality tv ghostbusting team investigating a haunted asylum. The Found Footage genre quickly became exhausted and this only treads where others have gone before
Comforting Skin (2011)
Girl's Tattoo Comes to Life
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
The Collapsed (2011)
The Aftermath of a Mysterious Catastrophe
A family try to make it through the woods in the aftermath of a mysterious catastrophe while hunted by something unseen. Sort of a zombie apocalypse film without any zombies where the terrors are psychological
Exit Humanity (2011)
American Civil War Zombie Film
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
In the Name of the King: Two Worlds (2011)
Epic Fantasy Adventure
Uwe Boll strikes again! Sequel to his passable earlier epic fantasy, which is dragged down by a lack of action and the need to provide star Dolph Lundgren with a series of excrutiating witticims
Bloodrayne: The Third Reich (2011)
Videogame Adaptation/Vampire vs Nazis
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
Father’s Day (2011)
Troma Film/Possessed Killer/Bad Taste Splatter
Troma film that ventures back into their regular bad taste territory. This often feels like a film that never coheses into a particularly clear idea of what it is trying to do, possibly the result of six different directors
Silent But Deadly (2011)
Movie-Set Psycho Comedy
Jason Mewes of Jay and Silent Bob fame is cast as a rarely speaking, goat-loving hick psycho. The film comes with a number of other offfbeat characterisations that you feel should have made for an amusing horror comedy but instead everything slips into a shrill one-note pitch
Killer Mountain (2011)
Monsters on a Mountainside
You would not be mistaken for thinking this a regular mountaineering drama – and that’s how half of the film transpires. Then it gets weird and introduces everything from monsters to Ancient Astronauts
Keyhole (2011)
Surrealist Haunted House Film
A disappointment from Guy Maddin where he abandons his trademark surrealism and makes what feels like cross between a haunted house film and a 1940s crime drama by way of the French New Wave
Acid Head: The Buzzard Nuts County Slaughter (2011)
Deliberately Bad Film/Exploitation Homage
Tony Watt strikes again with another of wilfully bad, agonisingly unwatchable films. All the bad acting, plotlessly rambling scenes and random exploitation movie homages that one expects of a Tony Watt film
Battle Earth (2012)
Alien Invasion/Behind Enemy Lines
Taking inspiration from Battle Los Angeles, this is another shakycam-shot war film but with the intriguing idea of being focused around human soldiers trapped behind alien enemy lines
Silent Hill: Revelation (2012)
Videogame Adaptation/Sinister Otherworldly Town
Dull and unimaginative Silent Hill sequel that only revisits what went before. The first film had an uncanny otherworldly atmosphere but the sequel reduces everything to no more than pop-up Clive Barker
Silent Night (2012)
Christmas Slasher Film/Psycho Santa
This is a very loose and somewhat desultory remake of Silent Night, Deadly Night that seems to imagine it is being far more hardcore and controversy defying than it is
Eddie the Sleepwalking Cannibal (2012)
Sleepwalking Cannibalism/Black Comedy
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
Rufus (2012)
Smalltown Vampire
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
Witchslayer Gretl (2012)
Faiirytale Adaptation
A low-budget film that prefigures the big-budget Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters in turning the fairytale brother and sister into witchslayers in a generic fantasy adventure plot
Pegasus vs. Chimera (2012)
Fantasy Adventure
One of the numerous ‘vs’ films that came out after Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, this is actually a B-budget fantasy adventure made for cable. This is not particularly bad, just routine and uninspired on all counts where the budget cramps any of its imaginative horizons
Jurassic Shark (2012)
Prehistoric Killer Shark
A killer shark film concerning a prehistoric megalodon prowling the waters of a lake. This once had the distinction of being the lowest rated film on the IMDB
Antiviral (2012)
Future World of Celebrity Viruses
Brandon Cronenberg makes an impressive writing-directing debut, taking up the thematic reins of his father’s earlier films in a darkly satiric future escalation of contemporary celebrity culture
Persistence of Vision (2012)
Documentary About the Making of The Thief and the Cobbler
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
The Philadelphia Experiment (2012)
Time Travel Experiment Amok
This Syfy Channel production can’t seem to decide if it is a sequel or a remake of the 1984 film. Michael Paré turn up in both versions but goes from being the hero to a menacing heavy. The original had its moments but this is generic and routine in all ways
Grave Encounters 2 (2012)
Found Footage/Meta-Fictional Sequel
Grave Encounters was an unremarkable Found Footage film. This much smarter sequel takes its lead from Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 in being a meta-fiction that investigates the phenomenon of the first film
Ghosts With Shit Jobs (2012)
Slice-of-Life Portraits From a Post-Cyberpunk Future
Fascinating film interviewing people about the jobs they are forced to take in an economically collapsed future. Despite a minuscule budget, this has the grip of strong, intelligent SF
Camera Shy (2012)
Man Realises He is a Character in a Film
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 Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh (2012)
Ghost Story
Rue Morgue magazine editor Rodrigo Gudiño makes his directorial debut with an old-fashioned ghost story that is a slow, moody ambiguous single-person drama