The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
This concerns films that feature outbreaks of plague and disease. These falls into roughly three groupings:-
– Films About Pandemic and Outbreak – about the release of viral contaminants and the socially catastrophic conditions that result
– Films About Biowarfare Agents – thrillers concerned with the threat of stolen agents and about their recapture
– Films Set in Plague Devastated Futures – worlds where civilisation has been devastated or reduced to ruins in the aftermath of an outbreak
For more detail and an overview of the genre see the Theme Essay Films About Plague and Pandemic
An Albert Pyun action film with police officers Christopher Lambert and Natasha Henstridge pursuing an infected man through the sewers of a future quarantine zone
Steven Seagal tries to extend his career by taking on the zombie film. However, this is routine on all levels, although to its advantage Seagal is not on screen much
Alien crossbred with The Crazies. Jason London and Missy Crider are crewmembers on a spaceship affected by an alien contaminant that makes them turn homicidal
Film about a mysterious alien artifact unearthed in the Antarctic that falls apart due to a script that is constantly jumping all over the place and spending more time homaging other science-fiction films
Robert Wise’s standout adaptation of Michael Crichton’s first novel about scientists trying to contain a virus brought back from space. This does a very faithful job of capturing Crichton’s fascination with the science
TV series remake of Michael Crichton’s novel about the attempts to contain a viral outbreak from space. Crichton’s story was a straightforward work, whereas the mini-series has been absurdly overburdened with other plots
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
Big-budgeted Spanish-made zombie film based on a best-selling book. Very much a post-Covid depiction of the zombie apocalypse, this rehashes the familiar basics capably well
You feel that a film about lesbian Japanese schoolgirls vs zombies should have been more interesting. The zombies barely mount to a dozen and the director seems more preoccupied by his softcore predilections
Spain’s Alex de la Iglesia has become a specialist in comedies with a dark bite. This centres around a crosscut of characters trapped inside a bar during the outbreak of a deadly infection
Enjoyably silly comic-book adaptation with a pneumatically-inflated Pamela Anderson playing the titular bounty hunter in an anarchic future. You cannot complain that this is a film that delivers exactly what it promises
Released in March 2020 just before the arrival of Covid-19, this makes an uncanny prediction about the US being affected by a nationwide pandemic
Powerful film from Christopher Smith set during the Middle Ages about a group on a journey to a village where a priestess can purportedly raise the dead. The film’s skewering of faith in an unforgettable ending is stunning
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
The first film from Eli Roth, which proved a solid hit, one that gets back to gore-drenched horror basics. Not quite the classic it was acclaimed but delivers the goods and with a strong dose of wryly sarcastic humour
A remake of Eli Roth’s first film? Why, given that the original only came out 14 years ago, is anybody’s guess. This literally recycles the original’s script but is deaf to its sarcastic humour of the original
The first sequel to Eli Roth’s film, directed by a then unknown Ti West who subsequently tried to have his name removed. The gore effects look cheap and cheesy and the film misses the comedic angle of the original
Eli Roth’s Cabin Fever had a surefire premise – a series of gory meltdowns with tongue planted in cheek. It is a puzzle then why two sequels, despite reasonable directors at the wheel, have managed to completely miss these basics
Entry in the notorious Italian cannibal genre of the late 70s/early 80s. Here the recent hits of Dawn of the Dead and Apocalypse Now are merged in a plot involving zombified Vietnam veterans
Interesting and well-made variant on the plague outbreak drama set aboard an airliner as a handful of people flee a pandemic sweeping the world only to have to deal with infection on board and the need to land to refuel
Set in the midst of a deadly infection that has wiped most of the country out, the film is extremely well written, focusing on harsh moral choices that the characters must make. Chris Pine is cast as a less-than-heroic lead
From the heyday of the disaster movie, an all-star cast head up a big scale drama about a train where a passenger is carrying a deadly plague, only for the train to be shunted all across Europe
People are locked in a facility and undergoing biological meltdowns. A film that is driven by a series of wild effects at regular intervals but falls down when it comes to its poorly constructed mystery
Steven Spielberg’s film about alien contact was every bit as big as Star Wars in 1977. The whole film is the equivalent of sitting gazing up at a starry sky wondering if we are alone and built up to the wondrous climactic appearance of the UFOs
This is a competent but unremarkable action movie variation on the Mad Max film set in the aftermath of a plague as Gary Daniels must guide a group with an immunity through the wastelands
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
The fourth of the original Planet of the Apes films, this cuts back on the humour and makes a stark parable for the Civil Rights movement with the apes rebelling against humanity in a revolution
Steven Soderbergh turns to making a plague outbreak film that uncannily predicted a great deal of what happened when Covid-19 struck. A reasonable star cast line-up suborn themselves to a cool sober script
A variant on the plague outbreak drama with a difference. It begins with a man waking to go about his workday only to find he has been glued into his apartment and the film logically expands out from there
Thriller with Peter Weller as an aging man who is infected with a bio-agent that causes anyone he comes in contact with to bodily melt down within a matter of seconds
Contracted was a modestly effective film that depicted its heroine’s progressive meltdown due to a deadly infection. This is a sequel so sub-par you doubt it would even been released without connection to the first film
A Charles Band film that has the distinction of being the first film released during the Corona Virus Pandemic. You watch out of curiosity of how the usual logistics of filmmaking deal with quarantine and social distancing
George Romero’s most underrated film, filled with disturbing images as the population of a town are driven crazy by a bio-weapon spill The first and also the best of a number films on the theme of outbreaks of mass insanity
George Romero’s underrated classic gets a makeover amid the 00/10s fad for remakes of 70s/80s horror films. Alas, Romero’s modest classic about a madness-inducing biospill has a big-budget thrown to emerge as just another zombie film
The first of Albert Pyun’s kickboxing killer cyborg films featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme who was largely unknown at the time. Pyun creates wall-to-wall action but there is almost nothing else to the film
A remake of George Romero’s third and most underrated zombie film, This came out as part of the 2000s revival of the genre but majorly miscalculates the original and emerges as wrong in just about every way
Made during the mid-2000s zombie revival, this is a cheap, badly made film that tries to cling to any kind of relevance to the George Romero name. If anything it is more like a sequel to Night of the Living Dead than to Day of the Dead
Excellent and extremely faithful tv adaptation of the John Wyndham book. This tells the story in terms of ordinary people forced to survive in a harsh world overtaken by killer plants and contains some exceptional writing
Madness/zombie outbreak film set in a radio station as a talkback host watches the catastrophe unfurl outside. This only cheaply goes where the far superior Pontypool did first
An enthusiastic Irish-made copy of the George Romero zombie film that vies between the amateurish and occasional moments of interest
Not to be confused with the Stephen King novel/film. A zombie film with a military focus that appropriates the basics of Escape from New York as a tactical unit is sent into an infestation zone to retrieve an antidote
The Maze Runner was a solid Young Adult effort that built out an effective Conceptual Breakthrough story; this, the second of two sequels, feeld like a series of canned action scenes in search of a purpose
Horror film set in the haunted tunnels beneath an abandoned hospital that seems all horror posturing without the benefit of an actual plot
Immensely satisfying film from Neil Marshall set in a walled-off, post-pandemic Scotland where he seems to have set out to pay homage to sf/action films like Escape from New York and Mad Max 2
Thriller with Esai Morales as a virologist called out of retirement to track down his brother James Marshall who has gone rogue and stolen vials of a deadly bacteriological agent
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
Earth Abides is a classic novel that essentially defined the theme of survival in the aftermath of the collapse of civilisation. This is a TV mini-series adaptation of the book but badly fumbles it
Lars von Trier’s second and most obscure film. Made on a shoestring budget, it is mostly about two filmmakers trying to make a film about a plague outbreak but does burst out into a fantastic shaggy dog ending
An existential puzzlebox of a film where a group of job interviewees are locked in a room and asked to work out what the question is. A fascinating conceptual film that falls somewhere between Cube and Saw
An anthology of Edgar Allan Poe tales narrated by Christopher Lee, Bela Lugosi and others. Each episode is in a different style, where the succinctness allows the stories to be told as written
Controversial Japanese film about a virus that causes members of a family to engage in gay incest. This is perhaps the dullest taboo-breaking film I have ever sat through
F.W. Murnau’s version of the classic tale of an aging scholar selling his soul to the Devil for youth and love is one of the most fabulous pieces of pure cinema to come out of the German Expressionist era
Reality bending film where an amnesiac Sean Patrick Flanery wakes up in a warehouse and learns he is a scientist who holds the antidote to a pandemic. But all is not it seems.
A South Korean entry in the plague and outbreak genre. While the film draws on the cliches of the genre, in particular Outbreak, director Kim Sung-su wheels it around with an impressive widescreen flourish
The Bird Flu Epidemic was a brief panic over an influenza outbreak that infected humans; this seems to little concern the film that blows it up into a horde of large mutant birds that attack humans
A standout work concerning a demon that invades dreams and then erases all memory of the person in others. Shot during Covid lockdown and haunted by an incredible sense of isolation
French thriller about police investigating a killer who is infecting victims with the bubonic plague and leaving Mediaeval clues, all part of an elaborate revenge scheme
Beautifully filmed, intimate work about a woman’s attempts to eke out survival in the woods in the aftermath of an unspecified apocalypse
A film from Duffer Brothers creators of tv’s Stranger Things. This is a fallout shelter drama where the Duffers create a strong paranoid mood but kill the film with a ridiculous twist ending
Tsai Ming-Liang film made to celebrate the millennium about the taunting relationship that grows between a man and a woman affected by a hole left between their apartments by a plumber
A low-budget regionally made film about a zombie outbreak. This does better than most of the vast horde of low-budget zombie films that came out in the late 2000s
The third film version of Richard Matheson’s book is only a remake of the previous version The Omega Man. Crucially, this throws out the essence of the book for a far less interesting piece about Will Smith fighting mutants in the ruins
A mockbuster from The Asylum that was intended to capitalise on the release of I Am Legend and in fact gets much more of the essence of the original Richard Matheson novel than the official film did
Reminiscent of George Romero’s The Crazies, this is a subtle, low key film about a small town as it is affected by a toxic waste leak that causes mass insanity
A zombie film from Venezuela in which a lone doctor struggles to survive after a train of mutated rabies spreads throughout the countryside. A solid entry in the genre.
Forget about the ostensible explanation about outbreaks of Lyme Disease in the script, this is another zombie film in all but name even if the phrase is never mentioned
The third film based on Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon books. This is essentially the same plot as The Da Vinci Code with Tom Hanks following clues to a deadly virus hidden in classic artworks around Europe
The fourth film version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers starring Nicole Kidman, this badly miscues many key scenes and is missing all the paranoid mood of the original film
One of the classic psychological horror films from producer Val Lewton. This is a slightly less effective Lewton work featuring Boris Karloff on a plague-ridden island unsure if a vampire creature is responsible
Ten different filmmakers from around the world combine to make an anthology of eight horror stories set during the Covid lockdown
Audiences were confused by a title and promotion that led them to expect a horror film. This isn’t a horror film but a plague outbreak/fallout shelter drama – at which it is an okay offering but nothing standout
An SF outing from Thomas Vinterberg that proved a flop with audiences. It is never satisfying as an SF film but you cannot deny it is directed with a beautiful and sophisticated cool that draws you inside it
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
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 fascinating Spanish film about a worldwide apocalypse created by a plague that makes the entire population mortally afraid of going out of doors
The first adaptation of Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend and the only one faithful to the novel with Vincent Price as the last man alive facing vampires outside his door
One of the most brilliant SF works conducted for television – the adaptation of an Ursula Le Guin book about a a man whose dreams change the world every time he wakes up
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
A film set in a post-pandemic future, this features Ashley Judd and daughters living in isolation on their own who are suddenly forced to welcome a stranger into their house
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
Casey Affleck directs, writes and stars in a surprisingly good film – a small, intimate tale of survival set in a world where a pandemic has wiped out all women but one man’s daughter
Beautifully understated film set in a world where a plague is causing people to lose their memories, following Olivia Cooke whose husband Jack O’Connell gradually succumbs
A film shot during the Covid lockdown, following a police detective who conducts an investigation into deaths caused by supernatural entities unleashed amid the isolation
This feels like a remake of the Roger Corman post-holocaust cavemen cheapie Teenage Caveman. It cannot escape that at heart it is never more than a B movie about caveman fighting mutants
Dull and dreary version of the Edgar Allan Poe story especially when placed in contrast to producer Roger Corman’s definitive 1964 version
The seventh of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe adaptations and usually the best regarded. Vincent Price is at his most cruel and the film looks incredibly sumptuous thanks to a young Nicolas Roeg on camera
The second film from Leos Carax, a near-future set romance that bursts with freshness and originality
A cross between The Belko Experiment with its murderous elimination game in an office and George Romero’s The Crazies as workers in an office is infected by a virus that causes them to lose their inhibitions. Made with dark relish
This was the second film from Guillermo Del Toro, a modest and quite good Alien copy with Mira Sorvino hunting evolved insects in the New York subway tunnels
The hugely underrated Vincent Ward makes a film about Mediaeval pilgrims travelling through time to the present. Shot in an series of extraordinary images that show how bewildering the modern world would be to them
A thriller about the hunt for the carrier of a deadly mutated form of Ebola. This is a not uninteresting film but it seems stuck in pre-Covid depictions of plague and pandemic
This rather appealingly plays out as a sex-reversed version of Shaun of the Dead with Maria Thayer as a slightly clueless woman who ends up in the midst of the zombie apocalypse with the guy she spent the night with. Thayer gives a winning performance and the humour is smart and witty
Adaptation of a Martin Cruz Smith novel about an Indian reservation under attack by hordes of vampire bats. The Nature Amok theme suffers terrible effects and plays subordinate to a polemic about the state of the modern Indian
The first screen adaptation of Dracula and one of the most amazing of all vampire films, a German Expressionist fairytale that exists in haunted netherworld through which stalks the crepuscular figure of Max Schreck
Werner Herzog conducts a remake of the silent German classic with Klaus Kinski as Dracula. A very different film to the original but quite unique in Herzog’s individualistic way
The second film version of I Am Legend, this rewrites the book’s vampires as mutants and abandons its mood of paranoia for a fantasy of hippie utopia and Charlton Heston in square-jawed action hero mode
A film made for the era of Coronavirus crisis if there ever was one. This concerns a worldwide plague that kills all women where Freida Pinto may be the left woman left alive. What is uncannily predictive is the film’s images of empty streets and supermarket shelves, people huddled in quarantine and social distancing
Spectacular big-budget, all-star film about a plague outbreak on US soil – one that was loosely inspired by the Ebola outbreak
While the title leads you to expect a plague outbreak film, you soon discover this is a zombie film. What it is is a Found Footage film mounted as a First Person Shooter film at which you have to admit that it launches into action with considerable gusto and ferocity
This comes with a good premise – people must escape from a biological containment facility after the release of a virus that turns the infected homicidal. Essentially a low-budget version of The Crazies, this is a film that would have been improved by a studio budget