Left Behind: World at War (2005)
Christian Anti-Christ Film
The third of the Left Behind films with Kirk Cameron facing the Biblical End of the World and the Antichrist. This travels well down into bad movie territory
Canadian Cinema
Left Behind II: Tribulation Force (2002)
Christian Anti-Christ Film
The second of the Kirk Cameron Biblical End Times films. On one hand, these are quite competently made B movies; on the other the fundamentalist message is unpalatable
Left Behind (2000)
Christian Anti-Christ Film
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
Lavender (2016)
Haunting/Fugue State
From the director of The Last Exorcism Part II, a title that does nothing to suggest a horror film. All we get is a ghost story that does an M. Night Shyamalan shift into an improbably contrived fugue state drama
Lathe of Heaven (2002)
Man Whose Dreams Change the World When He Wakes
This was the second film adaptation of conceptually ingenious Ursula Le Guin novel about a man whose dreams change reality around him whenever he wakes up
Late Night Double Feature (2016)
Horror Anthology
In the same vein as Grindhouse, an anthology that consists of two longer stories set around the gimmick of a tv horror host playing a double-bill, along with several mocked-up parody trailers
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
Last Night (1998)
The End of the World
Excellent Canadian-made End of the World film where actor/director Don McKellar eschews lavish big-budget spectacle for a wry, often haunting series of characters studies about how people meet the end
The Last Chase (1981)
Car Chase in a Dystopian Future
Dystopian action film that could have only been made during the late 70s Oil Crisis where Lee Majors defies a totalitarian system where vehicles are banned by setting out in his racing car
A Knight’s War (2025)
Knight in the Realm of Demons
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
Kissed (1996)
Necrophilia
Controversially charged Canadian film in which Molly Parker plays a mortuary assistant who develops an obsession with having sex with corpses. Played with more taste than synopsis would lead you to think
The Kiss (1988)
Sinister Aunt
Hilariously nonsensical horror film with Joanna Pacula as a sinister aunt. The plot throws in laughable novelty effects, including a killer cat, absurdly overwrought symbolism and some voodoo rationale
The Killing Machine (1994)
Action/Manufactured AIDS Virus Coverup
Action film with Jeff Wincott as a resurrected hitman who makes the discovery that AIDS has been artificially manufactured
Killer Party (1986)
Slasher Film
Canadian entry from the classic era of slasher films that hits some occasionally effective notes that sit between horror and prank. The last 10 minutes take an abrupt dogleg turn to become an Evil Dead copy
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
Kids vs Aliens (2022)
Aliens Invade a Party
The director of Hobo with a Shotgun returns with a film about a group of kids caught up in the midst as aliens invade a party put on while their parents are away
Kids of the Round Table (1995)
Boy Finds Excalibur
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
Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy (1996)
Happiness Drug Comedy
A film spun off from the popular Canadian comedy troupe Kids in the Hall. The loose plot concerns a happiness drug but is mostly there to feature the regulars playing multiple character
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
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
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
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
Johnny Mnemonic (1995)
Cyberpunk/William Gibson Adaptation
The first attempt to film the works of cult Cyberpunk author William Gibson met with very mixed success, nevertheless is a modest effort that does mainline the essence of Gibson’s world
Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter (2001)
Gonzo Comedy
This is one of the great wacky titles of all time. The film has its deliberately ridiculous amusements but soon fails to provide an interesting enough show to live up to its title
James vs. His Future Self (2019)
Man Visited by His Future Self Comedy
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
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
It Stains the Sand Red (2016)
Zombie Film
The most original treatment of the zombie film in some time. Rather hilariously, what we get is a film about a girl being pursued by a single zombie (at a walking pace) and the slow relationship she develops with it
The Invisibles (2024)
Man Fades Away
This has an intriguingly original concept where milquetoast Tim Blake Nelson wakes up to find he has faded away and become invisible to other people – and then finds a secret world of other similar Invisibles
The Intruders (2015)
Possible Haunted House
The haunted house genre has become so overused t feels mined out of original moves. Despite a better cast line-up, this follows all the familiar paths, even if it arrives at a quite different ending
Into the Forest (2015)
Catastrophic Worldwide Powercut
Modest story about a catastrophic countrywide powercut – rather than depicting a widespread apocalypse, the film is a character-driven piece focused around two sisters living on their own at a cabin in the woods
The Interior (2015)
Mysterious Happenings in the Woods
An enigmatic and baffling Canadian-made film about a man who goes to life in the woods where something (possibly imaginary) seems to be taunting him. This eventually leaves audiences confused what is happening
Infinity Pool (2023)
Executed Clones/Bored Lawless Elites
Extraordinary Brandon Cronenberg film about a fictional country where those convicted of crimes can have clone copies executed in their place, leading to an tourist underworld where all crimes are permissible
Incubus (1982)
Demonic Rapist
A film about a shapeshifting demonic rapist. This is far more tastefully presented than its premise would suggest, in fact comes with he plodding sedateness of a tv movie
In Their Skin (2012)
Home Invasion Thriller
Canadian-made home invasion thriller that reminds of Michael Haneke’s Funny Games. A film that seems set to brutalise a middle class couple’s sensibilities only to slip into utter tameness
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
In the Name of the King 3 (2014)
Epic Fantasy Adventure
A Uwe Boll film that feels as though he didn’t cared about what he was making. You’d have to go back to the Italian sword-and-sorcery films of the 1980s to find a more shoddy work of epic fantasy
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
In a Violent Nature (2024)
Slasher Film
A uniquely original film. Almost an arthouse take on a slasher film where we are placed in the hulking killer’s shoes and the rest of the show takes place in abstract brushstrokes
Ilsa, The Tigress of Siberia (1977)
Sadistic Woman Commandant
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
I’ll Follow You Down (2013)
Time Travel
A time travel that has the near-soporific pace of a Lifetime tv movie. Here Haley Joel Osment discovers that his father built a stable wormhole that allowed him to travel back in time to 1947
Ignition (2001)
Action Thriller
An action film set against the backdrop of a new Moon mission where Bill Pullman plays a US marshal assigned to protect judge Lena Olin whose life is under threat
Iceman (1984)
Revived Caveman
Excellent and underrated film about a caveman unthawed in the Arctic where attempts are made to help him adjust. This conducts the a creaky old story with modern scientific and anthropological realism
Ice Soldiers (2013)
Revived Soviet Super-Soldiers
This Canadian effort about Soviet super-soldiers unfrozen in the present-day feels like one of a bunch of cheap direct-to-video copies of Universal Soldier that came out in the late 1990s
I, Madman (1989)
Killer Emerges from a Book
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
Hunter Hunter (2020)
Wolf Attack in the Woods
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.
Humongous (1982)
Slasher Film/Mad Deformity
Canadian-made slasher film from the director of the original Prom Night. This mixes slasher standard with a variant on the Mad/Deformed Relative in the Attic plot but mostly seems terminally dull
The Humanity Bureau (2017)
Dystopian Future
Nicolas Cage is a lawman of the future who rebels against the system to protect a woman and child. Essentially a copy of the basics of Logan’s Run, this manages to be uninteresting in every way
Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (2023)
Vampire Comedy
I was sold on this from the title. A droll Canadian (Quebec-made) vampire comedy about a vampire girl who cannot bring herself to kill and a suicidal teenager who becomes her willing victim
Humane (2024)
Future Euthanasia
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
Howard Lovecraft and the Kingdom of Madness (2018)
Animation/Young H.P. Lovecraft's Adventures
The third of the trilogy of animated films from Arcana Studios based around the adventures of a young H.P. Lovecraft
Howard Lovecraft and the Undersea Kingdom (2017)
Animation/Young H.P. Lovecraft’s Adventures
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
Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Kingdom (2016)
Animation/Young H.P. Lovecraft's Adventures
H.P. Lovecraft is a cult horror writer whose work brims over with a sense of cosmic dread. One of the most bizarre Lovecraft film adaptations is this work of children’s animation featuring a young Lovecraft
How William Shatner Changed the World (2005)
Documentary About the Influence of Star Trek in the Real World
Beyond the attention-grabbing title, this is a documentary about the influence that Star Trek has had in the real world. A not uninteresting concept wrecked by Shatner’s condescending attitude to interview subjects
House of the Dead (2003)
Zombies/Videogame Adaptation
The first of Uwe Boll’s videogame adaptations and the beginning of his bad director reputation. This is a zombie film by the numbers but it was at the forefront of zombie film revival of the 2000s
The House Next Door (2006)
Parasitic House
A largely routine haunted house film where Lara Flynn Boyle plays a wife who becomes certain that the house next door is parasitic and preys upon people’s minds
The Hound of the Baskervilles (2000)
Sherlock Holmes Film/Ghostly Dog Mystery
Another adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes quasi-supernatural mystery. This is also one of the worst ever thanks to the wildly over-acted, scenery chewing performance from Matt Frewer, badly miscast as Holmes
Hostile Intent (1997)
Backwoods Brutality
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
Holy Hell (2015)
Vigilante Catholic Priest/Gonzo Ultra-Violence
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
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
Highway 61 (1991)
Gonzo Road Movie/Pursuit By The Devil
Director Bruce McDonald and writer/star Don McKellar make an hilariously eccentric road movie as McKellar takes a trip down the title route with a dead body while pursued by The Devil
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
Hemoglobin (1997)
Family Secrets/Monsters
Dan O’Bannon scripted film that is uncreditedly based on an H.P. Lovecraft story about family horrors and creatures lurking beneath the graveyard. Aka Bleeders
Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987)
Prom Queen's Supernatural Retribution
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
Hellions (2015)
Masked Children Pursue a Girl on Halloween Night
The return of director of Pontypool should be anticipated. But this kills a near-foolproof premise – masked children come after a heroine on Halloween night wanting her unborn baby – with a pink lighting scheme
Heavy Metal 2000 (2000)
Adult Animation/Space Opera
Sequel to the animated Heavy Metal that failed to attract the same cult audience that its predecessor did. Telling only one story instead of several, it only offers a routine space opera adventure
Heavy Metal (1981)
Adult Animation Anthology
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
Heart of America: Home Room (2002)
School Shooting
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
Haunter (2013)
Ghost Story
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
Harrison Bergeron (1995)
Future Where Everybody Must Be Average/Kurt Vonnegut Adaptation
Adaptation of a Kurt Vonnegut story about a future where everyone must be average wherein Vonnegut’s farcical satire is completely misjudged and played straight
Happy Birthday to Me (1981)
Slasher Film
Slasher film from the 1980s heyday directed by the once great J. Lee Thompson. This drags drearily where the only going for it are some novelty splatter effects and a twist ending that makes no sense whatsoever
Haphead (2015)
Life in a Post-Cyberpunk World
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
The Hanging Garden (1997)
Gay Man's Childhood/Ghosts
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
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
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
Habitat (1997)
Human-Plant Mutations
Baffling mix of teen drama and eco-SF film set in an ozone depleted future with Tcheky Karyo engaged in a series of human-plant mutations that transform him into a swarm of insects
H & G (2013)
Modernised Hansel and Gretel
This Canadian film is a modernised telling of Hansel and Gretel where the witch becomes a man with possibly paedophile intent. A film seems to want to go into dark places but gives them an utterly tepid treatment
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
Graveyard Shift (1987)
Vampire Taxi Driver
Stylish New Wave film about an existential vampire taxi driver meeting a woman film director who has received a terminal diagnosis. From the underrated Gerard Ciccoritti
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
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
The Gracefield Incident (2017)
UFO Found Footage Film
We have had a few UFO Found Footage films, most of which are rehashes on The Blair Witch Project with aliens instead of backwoods hauntings. This is one entry that produces a series of eerie jumps
Gnaw: Food of the Gods II (1989)
Giant Rats
An incredibly bad Canadian-made sequel to Food of the Gods about a scientist who devises a growth hormone that accidentally creates a horde of giant rats
Girlhouse (2014)
Slasher Film in a College Dorm Porn House
Slasher film that comes with the interestingly original setting of a college dorm webcam porn site. Unfortunately, the film takes an awfully safe and tasteful route in delivering it
Ginger Snaps: Unleashed (2004)
Teenage Girl Werewolf
The first of two sequels to the Canadian werewolf film. This takes place with the surviving sister placed in a rehab facility and is the best of the trilogy, even better than the first film was in its writing and characters
Ginger Snaps Back: The Begining (2004)
Teenage Girl Werewolves
Third of the Ginger Snaps films, a prequel set during the pioneer era with Emily Perkins and Katharine Isabelle again as sisters taking refuge at a fort under attack by werewolves. The scene-setting and atmosphere of foreboding is superlative
Ginger Snaps (2000)
Teenage Girl Werewolves
Witty, wryly sarcastic modern take on the werewolf film where two teenage sister become affected – sort of like a remake of I Was a Teenage Werewolf by way of Ghost World. Two sequels followed.
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
Gate II (1990)
Demonic Wishes
A superior sequel to the modest The Gate. This borrows from H.P. Lovecraft and delves into the area of cursed wishes that turn on the wisher, all with imaginative results
The Gate (1987)
Demonic Gateway Opened
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
Game of Death (2017)
Boardgame Where Players Must Kill People
Gore-drenched French-Canadian film where teens play a board game that forces them to kill a select number of people lest their heads explode
Funeral Home (1980)
Psycho-Thriller
Forgotten Canadian film about a series of murders around a former funeral home that has been converted into a guest house. Released at the height of the slasher cycle but this comes more in the vein of Psycho
Fun (1994)
Teenage Girl Lovers/Killers
This came out the same year as Peter Jackson’s overrated Heavenly Creatures, although wasn’t as recognised, but is a much better, more socially realistic version of the lesbian lovers-killers theme
Fuck You All: The Uwe Boll Story (2019)
Genre Director Documentary
Documentary about the so-called World’s Worst Director Uwe Boll. We get fascinating insight into Boll’s filmmaking methods, while the documentary fearlessly tackles the controversies associated with its subject
Frozen With Fear (2001)
Psycho-Thriller
A psycho-thriller featuring Bo Derek as an agoraphobic wife dealing with the shock of seeing her husband murdered only to then find that his body has disappeared
Frankie Freako (2024)
Goblin 1900 Number
Makeup effects artist Steven Kostanski has become a fine director in recent years. Here he makes a Gremlins-styled film about a 1-900 number that unleashes a mischievous goblin
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
Frankenstein and Me (1996)
Genre Fan Childhood
A charming Coming of Age story about kids who think they have discovered the Frankenstein monster. Comes packed with numerous genre homages and quotes
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
The Forbidden Room (2015)
Tapestry of Surreal Tall Tales
Guy Maddin has perfected a blend of silent movie stylistics and hilariously surreal melodrama. This is a Guy Maddin film on acid, a sumptuously madcap fantasia of visuals wound around a tapestry of tall tales
Firebird 2015 AD (1980)
Car Races in a Dystopian Future
Canadian film set in a dystopian future where private use of cars has been banned and Darren McGavin is among the aging car aficionado who race custom cars in defiance of the authorities