A Little Bit Zombie (2012)
Zombie Comedy
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
Canadian Cinema
Cosmopolis (2012)
Vision of Near-Future Social Collapse
David Cronenberg film that takes place in a limousine and consists of a surreal drift through a near-future world in the midst of economic collapse, observing it with darkly brilliant, razor-sharp agitprop dialogue
The Tall Man (2012)
Child Abducting Boogeymen/Conceptual Reversal Twister
Pascal Laugier returns with this fascinating effort about a small town subject to child abductions by a possible boogieman. A film that is as blatantly manipulative as it is ingenious in its way-out twists and turns where everything we assume is going on at the outset is eventually turned completely on its head
Space Milkshake (2012)
Space Station Comedy
The title and the description of a space station crew dealing with a mutating runner duck gives the expectation of something wacky – what we get is more like a variant on Dark Star, a comedy set around the boredom of life on a space station and a 1970s era episode of Doctor Who
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
Vampire Dog (2012)
Children's Film/Cute Vampire Dog
This may quite possibly be the worst vampire film ever made – a children’s film about a boy and a cute vampire dog. Being a children’s film, the vampire dog is not allowed to drink blood so has to have a ravenous hunger for red jelly! The slapstick is excruciating and the film painful on every level
Thanatomorphose (2012)
Girl's Physical Decay
Low-budget film about a girl who starts to find bruises on her body that progress until every part of her body is rotting and falling apart. A minimalist film where everything other than the slow observation of the girl’s physical decay has been stripped away – with incredibly raw effect
Terror of Dracula (2012)
Dracula Adaptation
An obscure Canadian film that ambitiously attempts to adapt Bram Stoker’s Dracula on a low-budget. This introduces some elements of the story that other versions ignore and is not uninteresting
Midnight’s Children (2012)
Modern History of India/Children With Superpowers
Adaptation of a Salman Rushdie novel that acts as a superhero film of sorts about a secret war between people with unique powers set against the backdrop of 20th Century Indian history
Mars et Avril (2012)
Expedition to Mars/Future Music Making and the Meaning of It All
An impressively designed Quebecois sf film where it is it is sad to see so much artistry lavished on something completely nonsensical and utterly woolly-headed in terms of its ideas
American Mary (2012)
Underground World of Surgical Body Modification
Canada’s twin sisters Jen and Sylvia Soska’s second film is set in the dark underground of body modification,. Like an episode of tv’s Nip/Tuck with a Suicide Girls ethos. Not perfect but an impressive maturation
Evangeline (2013)
Rape Victim's Resurrected Vengeance
This rehashes I Spit on Your Grave by way of The Crow with a heroine who is raped and killed and then becomes resurrected as a supernatural avenger
Escape from Planet Earth (2013)
Animation/Aliens Imprisoned at Area 51 Comedy
This is fake SF, an animated film that has no interest in its concept, one that exists solely as a series of pop culture jokes, cutsie supporting characters, thrills and feelgood epiphanies
Enemy (2013)
Mysterious Doppelganger
Denis Villeneuve slips into a very Cronenbergian vein to deliver a film about Jake Gyllenhaal and a mysterious doppelganger. A fascinatingly oblique and cryptic work, just as long as one does not require that it comes with any easy explanations
The Colony (2013)
Grim Survival in a Frozen Future
This creates a fascinatingly different future – a world of grim survivalism amid a new Ice Age in the aftermath of Global Warming. The look of the film is fantastic, only to fritter it on an action focus and Mad Max cliches
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
Delete (2013)
Artificial Intelligence Amok
The return of the talented Steve Barron after a decade’s absence in a film that was shot in my own backyard (literally). Disappointingly, all we get is a work that unimaginatively rehashes cliches about amok A.I.s
Borealis (2013)
Outpost in a Future Thawed-Out Arctic
A pilot for a tv series that never went ahead set in a future where Global Warming has turned the Arctic into a thawed-out tundra where various countries seek to claim the new territory
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
Afflicted (2013)
Found Footage Vampire Film
Found Footage film that cleverly borrows more than a few leaves from An American Werewolf in London with two tourists in Europe where one is bitten and transformed by a vampire
Antisocial (2013)
Zombie Apocalypse Via Social Media
A zombie apocalypse that occurs via social networking sites??? To the film’s credit, it makes such a wacky idea plausible but the low-budget leads to a zombie apocalypse that mostly occurs off-stage
Embrace of the Vampire (2013)
Vampire Film
This is a Canadian-made remake of the Alyssa Milano-starring erotic vampire film The Nosferatu Diaries: Embrace of the Vampire. For some reason, this is now minus the erotica and emerges as tepid
13 Eerie (2013)
Zombie Film
A zombie film from the director who subsequently went on to make the WolfCop films. The one thing this has going for it are some convincing zombie makeups and exxxxtremely gory splatter effects
Stranded (2013)
Alien Impregnation
Roger Christian was art director on Alien but will always be remembered as director of the notorious Battlefield Earth. Here he is stuck making a cheap, tatty and frequently incomprehensible copy of Alien about alien impregnation
The Oxbow Cure (2013)
Woman Isolated Alone in a Cabin
Canadian film about a woman alone in a cabin that has a set-up that seems to be heading in the direction of an effective horror film about cabin fever and/or paranoia – only for things to then get completely baffling as to what is happening
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
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
Assault on Wall Street (2013)
Man Goes on a Shooting Rampage Against Bankers
Uwe Boll makes a big issue film about the subprime mortgage crisis. The film is packed by Boll with messages but comes down to being a variant on Death Wish with its blue-collar hero on a shooting rampage against bankers
Berkshire County (2014)
Home Invasion Thriller/Babysitter Stalked
Canadian film about a babysitter being stalked by masked home invaders on Halloween night. Capably put together and generates an okay tension but this still seems to be recycling over-familiar genre tropes
WolfCop (2014)
Werewolf Cop/Horror Comedy
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
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
Bloody Knuckles (2014)
Disembodied Hand/Bad Taste Comedy
Canadian horror comedy that feels like a warmed-over rehash of Oliver Stone’s The Hand. A film made in wilful bad taste that feels like it came along twenty years too late for the mid-80s heyday of Troma
Stage Fright (2014)
Slasher Musical
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
Nosferatu vs Father Pipecock & Sister Funk (2014)
Nosferatu with a Laugh Track/Deliberately Bad Film
Tony Watt, who gets my nomination as the world’s worst filmmaker, does the laughtrack trick of taking a film – in this case, the original Nosferatu – and running his usual inane sound effects and excruciating bad acting over the top
Cruel & Unusual (2014)
Afterlife Encounter Group
Canadian-made film about an afterlife encounter group where people are condemned to continually relive the circumstances that led to them being there
Black Mountain Side (2014)
Deadly Infection Unearthed at an Archaeological Dig
Another copy of The Thing where a team of archaeologists in the frozen north unearth an object being 20,000 years old from a barrow that proceed to affect the team and cause mass insanity
Wolves (2014)
Werewolf Film
Evidently intended to be a werewolf equivalent of the Star Wars saga in in its epically contorted familial struggles, this sits just between the stylish and another classic monster repackaged for the teen crowd and cast with handsome good-looking faces
Debug (2014)
Malevolent A.I. on a Spaceship
Actor David Hewlett directs a B-budget film where a team of convicted hackers are sent to clean out the computers on a spaceship only to come up against a malevolent A.I.
The Editor (2014)
Giallo Parody
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
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
Bang Bang Baby (2014)
Mock 1950s Rock'n'Roll Film/Bizarre Mutations
A genre-melding oddity that starts as an earnest recreation of a 1950s rock‘n’roll movie, before introducing a series of bizarre mutations and some fascinating mid-film twists
Feed the Gods (2014)
Sinister Small Town/Bigfoot
A film about a sinister small town with secrets and Bigfoot creatures lurking around in the background. Quite what is going on any more than that is unclear
Wrecker (2015)
Road Games with a Killer Truck
I have to search my memory to think of another film that is so openly plagiaristic – this is almost a scene-for-scene remake of Steven Spielberg’s Duel about a man facing a killer truck on a highway. This misses the subtlety of the original so widely you could run a highway through it
Antisocial 2 (2015)
After a Zombie Apocalypse
Antisocial, a horror film about zombies created by social media, proved a reasonable hit. This is a sequel that skips on a few years after the collapse of civilisation
Turbo Kid (2015)
Retro 80s Parody of Post-Holocaust Films
There is a fantastically witty idea here – a low-tech parody of the 1980s post-holocaust film – but one that seems in search of an accompanying film. The film overspills with retro ephemera and stylistic jokes but I wish there had been more to it beyond the hook of the initial joke
Shark Killer (2015)
Killer Shark
This is one killer shark film of the 2010s that does not come in a deliberately ridiculous vein and concerns the hunt for a shark that has swallowed a valuable diamond
Charlotte’s Song (2015)
Mermaid Horror Film
There is potential to the premise here – a dark horror riff of sorts on The Little Mermaid in a 1930s Depression era setting – but it is squandered by an unimaginative script and direction
Lost After Dark (2015)
Homage to the 1980s Slasher Film
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
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 Blackburn Asylum (2015)
Abandoned Mine of Escaped Asylum Inmates
Despite the title, this is a horror film that takes place in a mine (albeit one where the former inmates of an asylum lurk). This plays out fairly well by a set of familiar genre tropes and delivers a solid degree of tension
The Demolisher (2015)
Psycho Vigilante
This starts as a Death Wish-styled vigilante film of interesting ambiguities, before abruptly turning into a psycho film. The latter half generates some undeniable tension but the film feels it needed more than that
No Men Beyond This Point (2015)
Alternate History/Woman-Dominated World
Film that depicts an alternate world where women have gained the upper-hand and men are a disappearing minority. This proved an unexpected delight, a mockumentary that comes in perfect and side-splitting deadpan, not to mention explores its premise with absolutely logical regard
The Devout (2015)
Man's Daughter May Be a Reincarnated Astronaut
The bizarre story of a man who believes his young daughter is the reincarnation of a NASA astronaut. The film makes great claim that it is based on a true story but fails to make a compelling argument for its case
End of Days, Inc. (2015)
Office Workers Prepare for the End of the World
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
Man Vs. (2015)
Wilderness Survival Reality TV Star Encounters a Creature
The amusing idea of a mimicry of a Bear Grylls-type wilderness survival reality show – but with the addition of a monster.
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
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
The Dark Stranger (2015)
Boogeyman Emerges from a Graphic Novel
This comes with an original idea where a troubled girl starts drawing a graphic novel that mirrors her own life only for the characters to emerge into the real world. Less horror than a dark allegorical fantasy
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
Raiders of the Lost Shark (2015)
Flying Killer Shark
This is the one of worst films to come out in the gonzo killer shark fad – it is surely the killer shark genre’s equivalent of The Room. The effects hit a level of terribleness not seen since Birdemic, the rest is full of ridiculous continuity gaffes, bad acting and bad dialogue
A Christmas Horror Story (2015)
Anthology of Christmas Horror Stories
An anthology that offers a quartet of Christmas horror stories, including ones of zombified elves and a Krampus monster. Hosted by William Shatner who plays a radio talkshow host in the wraparound
Luciferous (2015)
Haunted Apartment
A ghost story that is directed by a married couple who shoot the film in their own apartment and also play a family as they start to be affected by a malign presence
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
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
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
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
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
The Valley of the Rats (2016)
Giallo Homage in a Limousine
There is considerable conceptual ambition to this – a giallo homage, most of which takes place inside a limo. Charitably, you call it is a micro-budgeted collision between Cosmopolis and The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears, alas the film lets narrative fragment into incoherence in the latter half
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
American Conjuring (2016)
Haunted House
An undistinguished low-budget haunted house effort that was quickly retitled to jump aboard the bandwagon of James Wan’s The Conjuring films
Let Her Out (2016)
Girl at War With Her Split Personality
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
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
Cadence (2016)
Nightmare Visions/Parallel Reality
For a long time, this effort about a girl experiencing nightmare visions on her family farm doesn’t seem to be doing anything – then gets interesting as it switches to a parallel reality where what happens is mirrored slightly different
The Unseen (2016)
Man Slowly Starts to Become Invisible
Modestly effective effort about a man whose body is slowly fading away and becoming invisible. A film carried by some fine effects sequences, this derives its frisson from the gradual revelation of what is happening but loses it when the mundane subplots take over in the second half
Ratchet & Clank (2016)
Animation/Videogame Adaptation
Animated film based on the popular computer game. On screen, this emerges as essentially an instantly forgettable variant on one of the Star Wars prequels retooled for the Under Tens with the emphasis all on frenetic slapstick and visual eye candy
The Northlander (2016)
Post-Holocaust
Post-holocaust film made by and starring Canadian First Nations people. While the film uses the aftermath of a civilisation as a setting, it never seems that interested in exploring it. The film peters out in an uninteresting resoution and features some appallingly pretentious dialogue
Capture Kill Release (2016)
Found Footage/Couple Plan a Murder
A Canadian-made micro-budgeted Found Footage film about a couple filming themselves as they plan out a murder for the thrill of it – only to fall out in the midst of doing so
Bigfoot Ate My Boyfriend (2016)
Bigfoot Comedy
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
The Void (2016)
Hospital of Horrors/H.P. Lovecraft Homage
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
Darwin (2016)
Dystopian Internet-Addicted Future
This imagines a future where people have become so absorbed in online communication that they live in isolated cubicles. An interesting idea that the film does zero to make believable
Peelers (2016)
Strippers vs Zombies
There have been a surprising number of films in recent years offering up the combination of zombies and strippers. Although what we have is never quite specified as zombies, this offers up strippers kicking zombie ass with a great deal of gore-drenched relish
Operation Avalanche (2016)
The Faking of the Moon Landing/Found Footage
This takes the old conspiracy theory about the Moon Landing being faked by tv and rather hilariously is a Found Footage film being shot by two filmmakers who have been tasked with fabricating the Moon Landing
Poignant (2016)
Haunting
This is one of a plethora of hard-to-differentiate apart ghost stories that have littered the dvd shelves in recent years, frequently copying Insidious in appropriating a sinister-seeming adjective as title. There is not a single directorial or musical cue, sound effect or line of dialogue that doesn’t feel like a cliche
Dead Shack (2017)
Zombie Film
The zombie film is feeling very played out these days. This is a no expectation entry (even the title seems utterly generic) that proves an unexpected delight, filled with endearing characterisations
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
Another WolfCop (2017)
Werewolf Cop/Horror Comedy
WolfCop found an appeal with its amusing title premise. Here the principal talents involved have reunited for a sequel, although the feeling is more that they have done so solely because the first film was a success
Power of Grayskull: The Definitive History of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2017)
Documentary About the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe Phenomenon
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
The Truth is in the Stars (2017)
Documentary About the Possible Path to Space
The William Shatner documentary is a fascinatingly bizarre beast. This involves Shatner talking to a bunch of scientists and celebrities, before meeting with Stephen Hawking but peculiarly enough seems to have no central thesis or idea about what it is setting out to prove
Pyewacket (2017)
Teenager Casts a Death Spell
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
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
Radius (2017)
Amnesiac Man Wakes Up With Killing Power
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
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
Darken (2017)
Labyrinth World
A film that comes with an interesting sounding premise where a woman ventures through a doorway into a labyrinth world of interconnected rooms and ends up in a fight against the ruling theocracy
The Man in the Shadows (2017)
Sleep Paralysis Horrors
At the time of reviewing Rodney Ascher’s sleep paralysis documentary The Nightmare, I commented it would make fascinating material for a horror film. This Canadian micro-budgeted feature is one of the first to try and is interesting, even if it never truly grapples with its ideas
Awakening the Zodiac (2017)
Hunting the Zodiac Killer in the Present Day
This comes with a great hook – a couple buy up the contents of a defaulted storage locker only to find film reels taken by The Zodiac Killer, leading them on a pursuit of his identity
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
Parallel (2018)
Portal to a Parallel Timeline
From Isaac Ezban in his English-language debut, a cleverly and pleasingly contorted film where a group of friends discover a mirror that leads to a parallel timeline
Scorched Earth (2018)
Post-Holocaust
This looked promising but is no more than an unoriginal rehash of the cliches of the Mad Max film – at heart a Western with only token effort made to rewrite the elements in SF terms – and no greater ambition beyond being cable filler
What Keeps You Alive (2018)
Wife Hunted in the Woods
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
Riot Girls (2019)
Girlfriends in the Aftermath of a Plague That Has Killed All Adults
A plague has killed off all adults. In the ruins, two girlfriends venture into the domain ruled by the tyrannical football jocks to rescue one’s brother