The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Cross-Historical Stories refers to stories that take place in more than one era. This does not refer to works that merely offer prologues, flashbacks or retellings of past events but rather where the drama of the story’s plotline straddles more than one period, usually greater than one individual lifetime. This also does not concern Time Travel stories.
This can range from various generations of a family as in a Family Saga. Some genre works cover epochs of human history, which can range from a few decades and centuries or all the way from the origins or end of the world or universe.
Such stories can be grand tapestries that tell of events affecting human history, of mysterious connections or how objects and places affect people in different eras. Others can be told through the eyes of an immortal or concern people reincarnated in different periods.
Adaptation of the popular videogame that is lumbered with the game’s inherently uncinematic premise where people only sit around and watch what has already happened in the past
A smart, intelligent tv mini-series that conducts a murder mystery that ranges between the 1890s and 2050s, before arriving at an ingenious and clever SF explanation
A cross-historical epic from The Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer. An uneven film driven more by its determination we view it as an epic. Surely a studio publicist’s nightmare, it grasps at the meaning of it all yet eludes telling audiences what it is about
David Fincher makes a surprisingly positive and upbeat Academy Awards crowd-aimed film in which Brad Pitt is a man who ages in reverse, born as an old man and progressively getting younger as he goes through life
An early Fritz Lang film clearly influenced by D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance in which Death offers a woman visions of her and her lover reincarnated throughout different eras of history
A Marvel Comics offering that is an adaptation of a team created by the greatest comic-book writer/artist of all time. On screen however, this emerges with strangely flat and moribund results
Mike Flanagan mini-series that expands on the story to incorporate a host of other Poe stories. More like another of Mike Flanagan’s cross-generational ghost stories by way of tv’s Succession with a lot of Poe-esque margin notes
The third of the Fear Street films, this takes the story back to a 17th Century filled with absurdly modern attitudes and offers an explanation that ties everything together
The second of the R.L. Stine adapted Fear Street films, this one takes the action back to 1978 where it then becomes a vigorous homage to the slasher film
Darren Aronofsky’s version of 2001: A Space Odyssey. A cryptic and baffling story that takes place in three different eras, all featuring the same actors. Aronofsky engages in much symbolic interplay but what is happening is a scratch of the head
Mike Flanagan follows up the hit of The Haunting of Hill House with a mini-series that adapts another classic work The Turn of the Screw out into a similar kind of cross-generational ghost story. The results are extraordinary
Fourth of the Hellraiser films. This attempts to tell a story set in three different eras but was subject to much studio interference that waters the vision down to something forgettable
A unique experimental film from Robert Zemeckis where the camera sits in a single spot in a room and tells is story, covers across history from the dinosaurs to the present day. Based on an acclaimed graphic novel
Before this was spun out into a series of sequels and tv series, the first film had an original and captivating idea about immortals warring across the ages, Everything is propelled into high gear by Russell Mulcahy’s visually dazzling direction
The fourth Highlander film sets out to merge the film and tv series, bringing together Christopher Lambert and Adrian Paul. This only produces a continuity nightmare that is a headache trying to follow
The Highlander series conducts an anime variant on the franchise set in a post-apocalyptic future. Co-directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri of Ninja Scroll fame who adds some highly stylised moves
A star-studded but ponderous adaptation of Isabel Allende’s cross-generational family saga set in an unnamed South American republic that comes with Magical Realist elements
Former Pixar director Andrew Stanton, known for Finding Nemo, Wall-E and John Carter, makes a cross-historical work in the vein of Cloud Atlas that takes place between prehistory, the present and the future
Stephen King adapted mini-series and one of the best. A dark Coming of Age tale, Tim Curry makes an unsettling Pennywise (in doing so popularised the figure of the killer clown)
This starts out seeming like a non-fantastic drama about explorers in 19th Century Argentina. However, the film seems to disregard this and heads towards a bafflingly surreal and undeniably fascinating ending
Christopher Smith is an underrated genre director but his first venture into tv is disappointing cross-historical quest for the Holy Grail story that reads like warmed over Da Vinci Code
An adaptation of the Olaf Stapledon novel that depicts the future evolution of humanity billions of years into the future. This defies every rule of good filmmaking and is still a spellbinding film
British tv mini-series ghost story that takes place across three different eras – in 1944, 1975 and 2012. More of a mystery than a scare show but drawn with a beautifully wistful feel for place and time
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
Tilda Swinton plays a gender-changing immortal in Sally Potter’s eccentric adaptation of a Virginia Woolf novel
A standout adaptation of a classic work of Mexican literature in the Magical Realist tradition. This creates an incredibly haunted mood as it follows a man’s quest for his past to a town that seems to exist inside a twilight zone
Depending on how you saw this, this is either a UK tv mini-series or three separately released films. Taking place over a decade, the three stories have a common locale and overlapping characters in the story of the hunt for a serial killer and the battle against a corrupt police department in Yorkshire
TV adaptation of the acclaimed novel by Alan Garner of the mysterious connections between three stories that take place in different historic eras
A reasonable arthouse hit, this tells the story of a cursed violin through five different periods of history
Filipino variant on the Japanese ghost story (Ring, The Grudge et al). Much more low key than some of the other variants but with moments of undeniably spooky effect and with an ambitious story that takes place across three different decades
One of the most excruciatingly painful films ever made – a softcore comedy in which God and The Devil make a bet to replay the Garden of Eden by reincarnating Adam and Eve throughout history. Filled with ghastly over-the-top performances and much eye-rolling innuendo
Ghost story BBC mini-series adapted from a novel by horror writer James Herbert that unfolds between two different eras. With an amazing cast of Before They Were Famous names.
From a script by H.G. Wells, this comes with a visionary sweep that depicts the building of a scientific utopia but equally suffers from dull and heavy-handed polemical dialogue
George Miller of Mad Max fame makes a fantastical and charming film where djinn Idris Elba appears to Tilda Swinton
Actress Alice Lowe directs/stars in a comedy about a woman who pursues the man she is infatuated with as both reincarnate through history
The greatest science-fiction film ever made? Stanley Kubrick goes against all convention – the film is slow, has no clear story and reaches an enigmatic ending and yet it is a work of brilliance, both visually and in terms of effects technology
Akiva Goldsman, a screenwriter who has laid a trail of devastation through the genre, attempts to film a classic fantasy novel that has aptly described as unfilmable, resulting in a curtailed story that works in individual scenes but is mostly a spawling patchwork of fantasy elements and a romance that never seems to spark