The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Clairvoyance is a Psychic Power. It deals with the ability to foresee the future or detect information at a distance. This usually come in the form of the clairvoyant receiving visions that offer cryptic clues. There are clairvoyants in the real world that claim to offer aid to police investigations (although there are no cited examples where they have actually solved a crime).
From the 1970s, there have been a number of thrillers featuring clairvoyants. Most of these are detective stories in which an individual receives a vision of events that have or are about to happen and then tries to solve a mystery or prevent a tragedy from happening. These are in effect detective thrillers but where psychic insight is used instead of the investigation of clues. Since Eyes of Laura Mars (1978), there has also been a body of these films about psychics seeing through the eyes of a killer.
Other forms of precognition can come from dreams. Other works deal with fortune-tellers who see futures via tarot cards and crystal balls. There are a smaller number of films about people who are able to predict or see the future with the aid of some science-fictional device.
Tim Burton and Henry Selick combine on this stop-motion animated fantasy made in Burton’s characteristcially eccentric style, a beautifully stylised and dark fantasy in which assorted Halloween denizens invade Christmas
This is the finest haunted house film of all. In Robert Wise’s hands, the ghosts are unseen and only ever psychological and suggested – the results are terrifying. Adapted from Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House
Most SF films gloss over the issue of communication with aliens, having them either speaking English or with devices like Universal Translators. This is a superbly intelligent film that grapples with how to communicate with something different
Nicolas Roeg’s masterwork. Ostensibly a film about grief and precognition, this is a film that exists as a series of taunting visual clues that constantly map over onto each other with a hidden geometry
Steven Spielberg takes on Philip K. Dick in a much grittier film than he usually makes. In the strong and intelligent script, Tom Cruise is an officer on a police force that predicts crime before it happens only to then be hunted by his own side
Fascinating, little seen film with Joel Grey giving an amazingly captivating performance as a possibly fraudulent psychic offering to help a murder investigation
Celebrated British horror anthology, which tells five ghost stories and tales of the supernatural. All are strong stories with The Ventriloquist’s Dummy segment in particular having become regarded as a classic
Enormously underrated directorial effort from screenwriter David Koepp in which Kevin Bacon gains the ability to see the dead. A film filled with some genuinely spooky moments
Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, Guillermo Del Toro’s remake of the 1947 film noir tale about a fake clairvoyant is an exquisite piece of mood and design
This TV mini-series remake of the Frank Herbert novel is much more faithful to the essence and complexity of the book, even if it lacks the visual resplendence of the film versions
Overshadowed by the tragedy of star Brandon Lee’s death on set, this is a beautifully dark and glistening Gothic tale of a murdered youth revived from the dead to attain vengeance against his killers. Several lesser sequels followed
Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic SF novel comes with a determination to give the story and its richly detailed world faithful life on screen. Villeneuve adapts freely in many areas but gets the complexity of the saga
The second part of Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic SF novel Dune, this delves more deeply into the world of the Fremen, although starts to diverge more from the book
Thailand’s Pang Brothers proved themselves some of the best horror directors in the world with this eerie film in which a woman starts to see the dead after receiving corneal implants. Several sequels and an English-language remake followed
The Coen Brothers hilariously adapt The Odyssey into the Depression Era with George Clooney leading a trio of escaped convicts as he tries to return to his wife
Classic film starring Tyrone Power as an ambitious carnival barker who has success with a mind-reader act. Filled with great film noir atmosphere and a doomed sense of fate at play
Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s novel throws much of the book out but has duly become a classic. Jack Nicholson goes grandly mad amid Kubrick’s stupendous production and unsettling set-pieces
Genuinely creepy film supposedly based on a true story in which Richard Gere investigates a phenomenon known as the Mothman and starts to receive visions, time blurrings and much in the way of uncanny happenings. A film that leaves you with a sense of something unearthly happening just beyond your grasp
Classic film that was groundbreaking for its designs – all distorted and angular sets, exaggerated shadows – that became defined as German Expressionism and its tale of a sinister hypnotist
An amazing breakout hit from Russia, a film that is busy to the point of overcrowding with ideas and its’ director’s visual excess but delivers the goods in ways that make your jaw drop
Enormously underrated film from Mike Hodges with Rosanna Arquette as a fake medium whose abilities start to become real. The quality of writing and Arquette’s performance is exceptional
Cult film from Don Coscarelli that takes place in a funereal twilight world and is filled with images of wild surrealism. Not a lot makes sense but the film is meant to operate on the logic of a dream. Several sequels followed.
Seventh of the A Nightmare on Elm Street films where Wes Craven returns to direct the most remarkable of all the sequels, an extraordinary meta-fiction that takes place in the real world
Directorial debut for Darren Aronofsky, a fascinating work about a mathematician who uncovers a mysterious formula that can bend reality
Excellent film based on the real-life figure of Erik Jan Hanussen, a clairvoyant and hypnotist who found fame in Nazi Germany. Featuring a magnetic performance from Klaus Maria Brandauer
Fine copy of Eyes of Laura Mars from Rockne S. O’Bannon in which clairvoyant Ally Sheedy gains the ability to see through the eyes of a serial killer
Cult Polish film that is a series of tall tales nested within a labyrinth of other tales and digressions
This was intriguingly once planned as a Se7en sequel but I felt uninspired as it seems just another clairvoyant murder mystery. On the other hand, it is grippingly well written and has some great performances. With the introduction of a rival clairvoyant halfway through, it however becomes something amazing
A really great and overlooked anthology of fantastical tales from the 1940s. The three stories told here by Julien Duvivier blow you away with their extraordinary visual stylishness
David Lynch disowned his film version of the classic Frank Herbert SF novel. However, Lynch may be incapable of making a bad film and this, while acting freely with the book, has a visual grandeur that makes it highly watchable
The first and best of Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm sequels, one that creates an eerie twilight zone ambience that sits between dream and reality
Beautifully made and written Hallmark tv mini-series directed by Steve Barron that brings to life a variety of different Native American myths and legends
A positively ingenious film about psychic powers that comes with an enormous conceptual joy in seeing the ways the various powers can be combined
Robert Altman’s adaptation of the Popeye comic-strip starring Robin Williams has become widely regarded as a turkey but Altman’s eccentricity makes for a by no means unenjoyable film
Edgar Wright creates a dazzlingly stylish recreation of 1960s London in a work with Thomasine McKenzie as a modern girl haunted by ghosts of the era’s dark underside
BBC tv mini-series remake of the classic Richard Adams novel about talking rabbits on a quest. To get it over with, the animation is not the high-end quality that we have been spoiled with by Pixar et al. On the other hand, what remains is an excellent faithfully told version of the story
This is a superbly written and directed work of Southern Gothic that consists of three interwoven tales that gradually expose dark family secrets
An interesting and worthwhile attempt to retell the epic legend of Beowulf but to give it grounding as an historical work. Filmed in Iceland with an international cast
Modest and well-made British children’s tv mini-series about the mysterious psychic connection between two twins each unaware of the other’s existence
A return to the Final Destination franchise after fourteen years, this comes with an undeniable sense of humour, producing a series of highly entertaining despatches to make the best entry in the series so far
Visually stunning Russian film with a clairvoyant and a police inspector teaming up to solve a series of occult murders in 19th Century St Petersburg
The best budgeted of Guy Maddin’s films, a renaissance of his familiar kitsch surrealism and silent movie homages
An Irish film that develops an incredibly uncanny atmosphere as a blind clairvoyant turns up at the home where her sister was murder and deduces the truth about what happened
Classic adaptation of a D.H. Lawrence story where a boy’s rocking horse has the ability to predict winners at the racetrack. Shot in stark black-and-white and set amid the grim economic realities of post-War Britain
One of the early films from Paul Verhoeven, an amusingly blasphemous tale that draws more than a little from Don’t Look Now with gay writer Jeroen Krabbe becoming wound into the dealings of femme fatale Renee Soutendijk
A perfect example of a film carried by the ingenuity of its concept – a camera that takes photos 24 hours into the future – told with a superb tightness of economy – two sets and mostly three actors (largely unknowns) – and some wonderfully contorted twists
Scott Derrickson delivers an eerie film from a Joe Hill story about a child who is abducted and imprisoned by a serial killer but then receives message from beyond the grave on an old telephone.
Robert Rodriguez appears to have gotten the oversized non-event that was Alita: Battle Angel out of his system by making another of his seat of the pants home movies – this is less Spy Kids than Superhero Kids – and brings back one element Alita forgot, a sense of fun
An entry from the abortive attempt to create a DC Comics shared universe. Dwayne Johnson takes on the role of the DC’s anti-hero in a film that is far more fun than the recent Marvel offerings
Debut feature from Oxide Pang of the Pang Brothers fame. A variant on the tv series Early Edition in which a man receives newspapers that foretell the future and must race to prevent fates from occurring in order to earn karmic salvation for his girlfriend
Smart and intelligent Australian thriller about the invention of a stockmarket prediction formula. This digs its teeth into the banking industry with considerable bite
Rare flop from Richard Donner, a Coming of Age story where a young Elijah Wood receives visions from a buffalo and dreams of flying away from an abusive childhood
An eerie work of film noir adapted from Cornell Woolrich in which Kevin McCarthy has a nightmare of killing a man and then wakes up and finds that details of his dream are starting to come true
New Zealand-made film about criminal dealings also involving clairvoyance in a series of daring editing schemes that recall something of Don’t Look Now
A venture into Greek myth retelling the story of Theseus and the labyrinth. Tarsem Singh, a director with a visually extraordinary eye, lavishes everything on the sets and costumes. One film of the 3D overkill fad that needs to be seen in 3D
A remake of the silent German Expressionist classic that replicates the unique look and sets. Interesting, although it now emerges more like a film noir with artistic pretensions than the avant garde work the original was
Mike Flanagan horror mini-series adapted from Christopher Pike’s book, this is set around a group of patients in a hospice who form a group to tell each other horror stories
Jaume Balaguero of [Rec] fame returns with an occult horror where a woman on the run is drawn into sinister happenings at an apartment
David Cronenberg adapts a Stephen King novel with Christopher Walken waking from a coma with clairvoyant abilities. An okay film if one that lacks the personal intensity and rich themes of Cronenberg’s original works
A lavish and ambitious production that has the fictional character of Sherlock Holmes solving the real-life Jack the Ripper murders, even if the eventual resolution opts for one of the more far-fetched theories about The Ripper’s identity
The underrated Victor Salva, director of Jeepers Creepers, takes on the deviltry and occult film where with his ability to conjure eerie jumps and outlandish images produces something original and out of this world
An impressive line-up of genre names came together for this big event mini-series that sets out to offer a conclusive explanation for the Bermuda Triangle in a plot that juggles an entertaining stew of wild ideas involving timewarps, alternate timelines and government cover-ups
Modestly effective British entry into the 1950s alien invasion genre with people fighting invaders on a Swiss mountainside
Before the teen idol phenomenon took over, the original in the massively popular Young Adult series works as an earnest romance where all involved are clearly making an effort to play with a conviction
Neo-noir variation on a clairvoyant murder mystery. This works well in terms of capturing an extraordinary sense of its the central character’s loneliness and melancholy
The idea of (some chapters of) the classic Chinese legend Journey to the West retold in contemporary terms. This makes for some amusing interpolations, while also acting as a social critique of modern-day Chinese society
One of the best Disney animated films in some time. Set around a Colombian American family that have hereditary magic powers and live in a magical house, this comes with an enormous degree of colour and energy
A classic screwball comedy with Dick Powell as a journalist who becomes recipient of newspapers that predict tomorrow’s headlines. The same premise has appeared in a number of other works since.
Stephen King expressed dissatisfaction with the way Stanley Kubrick handled his novel and here remakes it as a tv mini-series that adheres more closely to the book. While Kubrick’s film is far better, this is not bad where even the perpetually awful Mick Garris subdues his tendency to overdo everything towards some subtlety
Modest horror film in which a photographer obtains a camera that predicts deaths before they happen – only to then find it predicts his wife’s death
Brian De Palma makes a return to the classic psycho-thrillers where he made his name, shouting virtuoso directorial flourish from the rafters and pulling off an amazingly contrived plot
Another of the giallo psycho-thrillers from Dario Argento in his heyday as David Hemmings is witness to a murder and tries to find the killer. As with Argento’s films of this period, focused around a series of stylish and sadistic dispatches
A very obscure title, this is a fascinatingly enigmatic and arty film in which Edward Woodward has a dream of having a car crash that then starts coming true as he sets out
Romantic musical in Barbra Steisand discovers psychic powers and her reincarnated past lives. Despite being a flop, this is a film of oddball charms and features an effervescent Stresiand
A Mike Flanagan adaptation of a Stephen King story, this received a great deal of acclaim, but comes with a very peculiar story structure that opens out into a series of unfolding revelations
TV mini-series that adapts six less well known short stories by H.G. Wells into an anthology with Wells as the central character. A couple of good stories, some that never hit the mark
The eighth James Bond film and Roger Moore’s debut in the role. This is one of the most variant Bond films also incorporating Blaxploitation and voodoo elements
A classic work of Film Noir adapted from a Cornell Woolrich novel featuring Edward G. Robinson as a stage mentalist who suddenly finds he can predict the future for real
A Japanese Found Footage film made not long after The Blair Witch Project with a man investigating various paranormal incidents around Tokyo
The first in a trilogy of Russian dark fantasy films featuring the real-life horror writer Nikolai Gogol as an occult detective investigating a series of supernatural mysteries
Road to Morocco was the third of the Bob Hope-Bing Crosby Road films and takes them on a parody of the Arabian Nights adventure
A modestly made BBC mini-series concerning a boy who discovers he has the titular gift of clairvoyant visions and how those around him try to exploit this
The series drags another entry out set around the premonition of a bridge collapse. This one is played with such an enthusiasm for the bizarrely improbable deaths that it is one of the best of the sequels
Tim Burton used to be the great hope of fantastic cinema but his efforts since 2000 have been greeted with general disappointment. This Young Adult adaptation plays out like a fantasy version of the X-Men
At first glance, Stephen Sommers and Dean R. Koontz seem strange bedfellows, but oddly enough it works – Koontz gives Sommers more story than he is used to working with and surprisingly it is the likeable characters and mind-boggling quirks of plot at the forefront rather than Sommers’ usual CGI bombast
Marc Forster film that starts in with a beautifully filmed sense of disquiet mood and eerie reality disjuncts but loses it when it opts for another M. Night Shyamalan twist ending
A Viking film from Nicolas Winding Refn. Rather than being as any regular historical film, this is almost a mystical arthouse work, a work haunted by the austerity of its primal landscape
Passable B-budget film about an alien-possessed motorcycle
Follow-up to the 2000 tv mini-series adaptation of Dune, this adapts Frank Herbert’s two books sequels, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune. The production lacks the depth of its predecessor
Amiable romantic comedy with Demi Moore as a clairvoyant who dispenses prophetic advice to everybody while caught in her own romantic entanglements
Christian film in which insurance agent Wil Wheaton receives the title book containing the dates on which people are going to die and uses it to make his quotas
British clairvoyance thriller with an almost identical premise to The Dead Zone. Familiar material told with a modest effectiveness
A batshit crazy film involving Nostradamus who is a present-day cop, a time travelling assassin trying to bring about the Biblical Apocalypse at The Millennium, plus alternate timelines and a psychic FBI agent
Kiefer Sutherland is a detective investigating a serial killer who finds he is having clairvoyant dreams. A fairly routine thriller on all counts.
Irish-made comedy with Robbie Coltrane who has a Aborigine head in a jar that can predict horse races
I went to see this on the description that called it a horror film about premonitions of disaster but far less interestingly it is a fictional attempt to analyse people’s attempts to grieve over the Fukushima Disaster – not uninteresting but with little interest in being a fantastic film
While this received a good deal of fan buzz, I must admit to being disappointed. It strips much of the superheroics and mutant cameos of the other X-Men films until it feels more like a Westerner in Japan thriller like Black Rain or even a routine film noir plot that happens to be cast with Wolverine
Another effort from the near-ubiquitous Blumhouse horror company. A film that teases many things – occult rituals, cultists after the pregnant heroine’s baby – that prove red herrings as it eventually telescopes down to a frustratingly ordinary explanation
The sixth entry among the popular multi-director anthology series, this includes episodes from Scott Derrickson among others but is also one of the weaker of the V/H/S films overall
Following the success of Dr Terror’s House of Horrors, this was the second of Amicus’s trademark horror anthologies with Burgess Meredith as a carnival barker showing people their fates