The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Cursed Objects are objects that exude some force of evil. Unlike Magical Artefacts, which can do both good and bad depending on the user, a cursed object will always cause harm to those who possesses it and usually those around them too. This can occur in terms of accidents, bringing bad luck, the object possessing people or exuding an all-round malevolence.
The cause of a cursed object may not be known. It can be a talisman or a religious or cultural artefact, an unearthed archaeological object, some antique, some item that belonged to a notorious killer, or an innocent-seeming item taken from the site of a great atrocity.
There are a number of films dealing with evil and/or possessed vehicles – see Fantastical Vehicles – and others about possessed dolls – see Dolls. Types of cursed objects can range from items of clothing, paintings, amulets, treasure, mirrors, items of jewellery, even videotapes and items of furniture.
A zombie film back from the days before zombies wanted to eat brains and could only be despatched with a bullet in the head where they were instead figures out of voodoo – in this case undead sailors guarding a treasure. A mildly interesting if never entirely standout B movie of the era
An adaptation of an R.L. Stine book, a work of safe anodyne horror about zombies trapped inside a film made by director Dan Aykroyd getting loose and overrunning a town
David Koepp has an impressive resume as a screenwriter, even better as a director. Here he makes a film where Kevin Bacon rents a sinister holiday home that has shifting topography
Way back before Blumhouse’s Ouija and the subsequent cheap ouija-titled films, there was the 80s horror Witchboard, which proved popular enough that it produced two sequels starting with this
This is a superbly written and directed work of Southern Gothic that consists of three interwoven tales that gradually expose dark family secrets
An entry from the classic 1980s era of the zombie film about zombies that emerge from a cursed tv set
Bryan Bertino has become a Must Watch director ever since The Strangers. Here he makes a film where Dakota Fanning receives a cursed box and will die unless she places several requested items inside
This gets full marks for an eye-catching title, even if it is one that has next to no relevancy in the film. The film itself is set in the world of art dealership and concerns a series of cursed paintings that kill all who seek to acquire them
Classic tv movie that is a horror anthology offering a trio of tales all featuring Karen Black. The first two items are okay but the one that made the film into a cult item was the third episode with Black being chased through her apartment by an evil doll
An offering from The Asylum where a replica of the Titanic sets sail only to be beset by the ghosts of those who sank aboard the original ship
A horror anthology featuring episodes from three Asian directors originally titled Three. The better known Three … Extremes was a sequel whereupon this was retitled and re-released as Three Extremes II
The kaidan eiga or Japanese ghost story has a fine tradition on screen and there are some excellent films. The Western-made Japanese ghost story is a far less successful prospect. This is one effort concerning three tourists who travel to a haunted Japanese temple
A horror film based around the phenomenon of tarot cards, a surprise that nobody has done so before
The black sheep among the Japanese Ringu films. A sequel released the same time as the first film, this lacks the other’s uncanny atmosphere and was ignored
Brazilian film about a possessed skull that inhabits a man to lay a gore-drenched trail across the city
Based on the popular series of children’s horror tales, this Guillermo Del Toro written/produced effort borrows the idea from the Goosebumps film of having the stories come to life and the idea from Stranger Things and It with a group children fighting against them. On screen, the finished result never quite seems as much as it promises to be
This was the eighth of the Ring films. This is made as a sequel to the earlier Sadako 3D, the worst of the Japanese series, although is actually a better film
The question you ask going in is after seven Japanese films and a tv series, a Korean film and two previous English-language films, what is left for filmmakers to wring out a third American The Ring film? The answer seems to be not much – just a rehash of the basics for the 18-25 crowd
Sequel to The Ring, the English-language remake of Ringu. The filmmakers have returned to the source and brought in original director Hideo Nakata only to produce one of the most disappointing of all the Ringu/Ring films
This is the English-language version of the Japanese horror Ring and actually a much better and far spookier film, where the new script gives the story more depth
Kaidan eiga (Japanese ghost story) that was a huge hit, spawning several sequels and an English-language remake, plus a horde of imitators. For all its reputation, the film is often crude, nevertheless does evince an eerie atmosphere
A reasonable arthouse hit, this tells the story of a cursed violin through five different periods of history
South Korean horror film about a pair of high-heeled shoes that take over their owner. Some okay jumps in a standard K-horror ghost story
Based on the urban legend surrounding a dybbuk box that turned up on an EBay auction, although the film throws this out to conduct an utterly generic possession story. Despite the novelty of drawing on Judaic mythology, the film still trades in the same tired cliches as the Christian exorcism film
Horror film about a cursed Polaroid camera that kills everybody that appears in one of its photos
Enjoyably tongue-in-cheek pirate swashbuckler based on the Disney theme park that proved an enormous hit and spun off a series of sequels, as well as giving Johnny Depp one of his iconic roles
One of the last films made by Julian Sands before his death, this concerns a cursed musical score that ties back to the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Sands plays an autocratic orchestra conductor
From cult director Roberta Findlay, this is a film about a haunted ouija board. What is going on doesn’t make a lot of sense but Findlay serves up a series of bizarre deaths that prove entertainingly absurd
A classic Japanese ghost story (kaidan eiga) about two women who survive by preying on passersby. This adopts the lyrical realism of the era and builds to reach an incredibly haunted conclusion
A couple of years ago, the hauntingly eerie Absentia made Mike Flanagan into a must-watch director; this is his follow-up – the story of an evil mirror that, while slightly the lesser of Absentia, conducts some undeniably effective games of reality and illusion
The Bollywood horror film is a rare and strange beast – what other horror film would you see that comes with song and dance numbers? This is a Bollywood possession film where, despite the use of local colour and custom, it is surprisingly still drawn from the cliches created by The Exorcist
After the successes of Japanese ghost stories like Ringu and Ju-on: The Grudge, the phenomenon was copied right around the Asian region. This is a South Korean ghost story set in Vietnam concerning a haunted painting.
Osgood Perkins adapts a Stephen King story about a toy monkey that causes deaths whenever it is wound, which becomes the opportunity for Perkins to go into full-on Final Destination territory with bizarre deaths
A 1990s video release, a variant on Carrie where a bullied teen girl enacts vengeance against tormentors with the aid of a cursed mirror
Romantic comedy pairing Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts as separated lovers in a plot involving Mob shenanigans and a cursed pistol. The two never click and give unmemorable performances
Videogamers fight a demonic entity unleashed from a 1980s game. A film that is far more fun that you expect and comes loaded with videogaming in-jokes
Film that has a minor cult reputation for its cheaply trippy 3D hallucination scenes. Outside of that, The Mask (not to be confused with the Jim Carrey film) is a dull variant on the Dr Jekyll story in which a ritual mask causes the wearer’s dark side to emerge
The single worst Stephen King adaptation ever made. Director Tobe Hooper fails to approach the story of a possessed laundry press with the same drollness that King did and inflates it into something ridiculous
Interesting effort about actors putting on a cursed play that starts taking over the actors to replay events. With Robert Englund in a rare non-villainous, non-over-acted lead role
This may count as the worst horror film to be released in the entire 80s VHS era. The plot concerns a man who is left a strange jar that causes a series of terrifying hallucinations
From Peter Strickland who is fast developing a cult name, this is on one level a horror film about a killer dress; on another level, it is a captivating film of textures and surrealistic deadpan humour
An intent seriousness fails to disguise a ridiculous premise – a haunted cornfield where interlopers are made to sit at a sewing machine to sew burlap masks that turn them into undead scarecrows
A French film about a teenager who buys a demonic cellphone and is able to use it to enact comeuppances against the people in his life. A 976-Evil for the cellular era
Sequel to A Haunted House where writer/star Marlon Wayans conducted a riff on the Scary Movie films. This is marginally more amusing than its predecessor
Japanese horror film that only treads tepidly where the Ring and Ju-on/The Grudgefilms have gone before. Shot in a plain, ordinary manner that bleeds the J-horror film of atmosphere
Technically not actually a film about gremlins but about a goblin creature that emerges from a box where it will kill a person unless they pass it on to someone they love
From the notorious 1980s heyday of Italian horror, this reads as The Amityville Horror remade as a Lucio Fulci film with the addition of a series of gore-drenched dispatches
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
From Charles Band, this features a possessed marijuana bong that sucks those that imbibe inside into the simulation of a stripper bar where they lose their souls. Several sequels followed.
Australian film about an Aborigine bracelet taken from an archaeological dig exerting supernatural retribution in the present for a mass murder in the past
Horror film from regular Canadian genre director Micheal Bafaro about a group of friends who enact a curse in which they are pursued and killed by a mannequin come to life
Solid offering from the increasingly underrated Adam Mason that takes more than a few leaves from Hellraiser with a ghostsbusting team investigating occult happenings in an abandoned asylum
Found Footage horror that unimaginatively rehashes The Blair Witch Project with a trio of people equipped with videocameras wandering around a supposedly haunted forest in Romania
A remake of the popular 1980s sword and sorcery film that was originally produced by Roger Corman. This version is directed by makeup effects artist Steven Kostanski who fills it with an amazing range of creature effects
Film about a ghost ship haunted by Nazi atrocities. This gives the impression it was made to highlight a series of novelty deaths styled after the then-recent hit of The Omen
Another supposedly true story from the casebook of the psychic investigator frauds Ed and Lorraine Warren. James Wan’s first two entries were eerily haunting; by now, the constant profusion of effect becomes overkill that produces no results at all
Supposedly based on a true story. A film that feels written entirely by cliches taken from every other haunting and exorcism film, but you cannot deny that director James Wan generates a more than fair degree of spooky atmosphere
Spanish-made film that feels like a mash-up of Annabelle and The Nun about the communion doll belonging to a girl who went missing that appears and curse everyone it touches
Thai horror film with the interesting idea of ghosts emerging out of a movie screen. This has a couple of undeniably spooky moments but is still just another of the numerous copies of the basics of Ring
Originally intended as a Demons sequel, director Michele Soavi decided to head in more arty directions. Imagine a Demons sequel mounted with the artistic ambitions of producer Dario Argento’s Three Mothers films
John Carpenter takes on Stephen King’s novel about an evil car and a boy’s relationship with it with dynamic results. The film is made by Carpenter’s slick direction and a series of sensational effects set-pieces
A British horror film in which people open an old 1980s videogame that is cursed and forces them to make horrible choices concerning the deaths of people around them
TV movie about an Ancient Egyptian cat vengeance curse. The cast was culled from 1940s genre films and the material feels just as old despite a script from Psycho author Robert Bloch
A theatrical film directed by 1970s genre tv producer Dan Curtis. This has the intriguing idea of a house that acts as a psychic vampire. In all other respects, this plays out as a standard haunted house story
Comedy with a head-scratching premise where a couple discover a teapot that produces money whenever they hurt themselves. Such a loopy premise could work as a black comedy but this plays itself as a frothy light fantasy
Spiritedly entertaining vampire film, this transplants the basics of the genre to rural Northern Ireland with wry and highly amusing results
Probably the most well-known film from hackmeister Ulli Lommel. An odd mix of Halloween ripoff and an occult film but nothing that stands out beyond a couple of weird novelty deaths
Early effort from one of the Pang Brothers Oxide, who only directs one of the episodes in this trio of Thai ghost stories. The other director’s grasp of horror effect is often crude and amateurish
The Troll Hunter director Andre Øvredal creates an intense and absorbing mystery about a corpse on a morgue slab and the unsettling spell it exudes on the two coroners examining it
James Wan is one of the finest directors currently at work in the horror genre. The produced by James Wan credit is a less enthusiastic prospect and had consisted of total dogs spinning off more popular works.
The term Karen has come to mean an entitled woman who complains a great deal. This is a horror comedy about one such Karen who becomes possessed after drinking wine that comes from the Amityville house
Prolific Z-budget director Mark Polonia makes something like the 18th film with Amityville in its title. This one concerns possessed lumber (!) from the Amityville house
The sixth film based around The Amityville Horror, although by now connections to the original are minimal and this only concerns a mysterious clock taken from the house
The fourth and one of the worst of the numerous Amityville films. This reduces everything to a series of crude and increasingly more preposterous, eventually laughable, shocks
Teenagers in Salem are forced to play a game where their lives are forfeit and they become possessed by a cursed knife dating from the witch trials
Abbott and Costello’s fourth and final meeting with the Famous Monsters. However, this is a desultory outing where nobody seems to be making much of an effort