The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Terry Gilliam’s adaptation of the adventures of the world’s greatest liar was another problem ridden Gilliam production that emerges as an absurd, colourful spectacle filled with a dizzying greatness of imagination
Beautifully filmed work featuring John Malkovich as an enigmatic Messenger of Death. A coolly sophisticated and mysterious film that plays out like an arthouse version of Final Destination by way of the Jeff Bridges Fearless
Dance choreographer/director Bob Fosse makes an autobiographical film in which dance choreographer (played by Roy Scheider) reflects on his life to the Angel of Death
The two time-travelling slackers are back after nearly thirty years and the film amusingly sees them having reached uneasy middle-age. But was the wait worth it?
The sequel to Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure where the first film’s humour gets lost amid repetition and blown up by a big-budget. William Sadler’s Death however proves a scene-stealer
Narrated by Death, this story of a young girl growing up in Nazi Germany comes with the self-importance of awards consideration bait. One of the great crimes of modern history (The Holocaust) is reduced to picture postcard sentiments
A fine classic cinematic adaptation of the oft-filmed Charles Dickens tale about the redemption of a miser, starring Reginald Owen as Scrooge
Robert Zemeckis’s motion-capture animated adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic. The tale has gone through so many adaptations, it fee;s an uphill battle to find anything new in the story no matter the technical quality of the film
An Adam Sandler comedy in which he is an ordinary family man who is given a magical remote control that allows him to pause and fast forward his way through the boring bits of his life
Gigantic flop starring Will Smith and a reasonable cast line-up that has the most ridiculous screenplay ever written. Mostly a positive inspirational drama about grief but does definitely arrive at a bizarre fantastical ending
The second live-action tv adaptation of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books (in fact combining two books). This is uneven and oddly padded but beautifully produced
Uniquely original Japanese horror film adapted from a manga concerning a book that kills anyone whose name is written in it. This has spawned several sequels and an American remake. The show is stolen by the supremely weird Kenichi Matsuyama
The English-language remake of the popular Japanese franchise from Adam Wingard. This essentially remakes the first film and is adequate in its own right but no patch on either of the original Japanese films
The second of the Japanese Death Note films, released almost back-to-back with the first. This is an even better film than its predecessor, delighting in the twists and turns in the games as Light and his nemesis L outwit each other
Classic fantasy film in which Death takes human form to visit a party and experience the human condition. Frederic March gives us Death as a comically eccentric outsider and the film has some great moments of imagination
A Woody Allen film in which he plays a writer on his way to receive an award. The film drifts in and out of a series of vignettes and stories he has written, including a number of fantastic interludes, with highly amusing effect
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
One of the classic works from Hammer Films and Terence Fisher, often regarded as one of their finest moments. In this adaptation of a Dennis Wheatley novel, Christopher Lee (in a rare heroic role) fights Satanists
The first of Amicus’s horror anthologies. The stories are rehashes of five popular horror tropes, all united by Peter Cushing as the title doctor telling the fortunes of five passengers on a train carriage
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
This spins the old plot about a clairvoyant dream of an airline disaster out as a teen horror film based around a series of bizarre novelty deaths. This became the first in a franchise of popular horror films.
The fourth in the series of films about a series of deaths for survivors after premonition of disaster at a speedway. This is shot in 3D but the novelty death set-pieces have become preposterous
The first of the sequels, this has a group receiving bizarre deaths after receiving a premonition that prevents a deadly pile-up on the highway. It reveals the problems of creating a sequel to a film that was never intended to be a series
The original creative team behind the Final Destination series, James Wong and Glen Morgan, return for this sequel but only provide a routine series of bizarre novelty deaths following the premonition of a rollercoaster disaster
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
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
This was a big-budget revival of the ghost ship theme by Dark Castle Entertainment about a salvage crew encountering a ghost vessel. Visual effects tend to trump spooky atmosphere
TV mini-series based on the Neil Gaiman/Terry Pratchett novel that spoofs The Omen and Biblical End Times prophecies. The series is very close to the book as though it didn’t want to edit any precious gag
The first in a trilogy of connected video anthology films that tell stories about alien visitors and abductions
The first in a series of Terry Pratchett Discworld adaptations for tv. This makes the odd choice of adapting one of the more complex and darker of Pratchett’s usually comic books but it works fairly well overall
Dario Argento’s sequel to Suspiria, the second film in his Third Mothers trilogy. This is an even better work where Argento delights in sadistic and beautifully artistic imagery almost entirely free of any plot
Lars von Trier returns to finish off his haunted hospital saga The Kingdom after a 25 years absence, despite the death of several principals, and again milks the same darkly hilarious vein
Spinoff from the Japanese Death Note films from Ring director Hideo Nakata featuring the weird detective L. L was a scene-stealer but this fails to come up with an interesting enough plot for him
A big flop but highly underrated Arnold Schwarzenegger film, a sophisticated meta-fiction that views the cinema screen as another dimension and wittily deflates action cliches
A head-scratchingly odd effort – a woman who stayed inside all her life goes in search of love only for the jealous ghost of a 1950s pop singer to kill every man who looks at her
Rather funny Woody Allen film where he takes to spoofing Russian literature and does some hilarious visual gags and one-liners. Comes with minor fantasy elements including spoofing The Seventh Seal
Mexican film made to celebrate the Day of the Dead wherein Death befriends a poor peasant and bequeaths him a gift of a gourd of healing water. While not terribly sophisticated, this works as a pure and simple fable
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
Ponderous big screen remake of Death Takes a Holiday where Death in the form of Brad Pitt comes to Earth, engages in a romance
Henry Selick’s first venture into live-action in which Brendan Fraser becomes trapped in a bizarre afterlife while a mischievous monkey steals his body
Video-released compilation of above average horror short films all set around the titular website
The third and last of the Monty Python films, a variety of skits that are variously outrageous and frequently leave behind all good taste
Unique light fantasy film in which aging Lionel Barrymore manages to imprison Death in a tree in his backyard
Jean Cocteau’s beautiful modernisation of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice updated to post-War France
A sequel to the Gonzo Killer Shark film Ouija Shark, this goes even crazier
Silent film whose greatest footnote is that it was Ingmar Bergman’s favourite film. Has some extraordinary fantastic images, even if these are technically primitive today. Less effective is the modern attempts to view it as a ghost story, when it is more a morality play akin to A Christmas Carol
The final film from the great Robert Altman set backstage at a radio variety show as an angel of death wanders through
An initially low-assumption film that rapidly becomes highly watchable thanks to some way out jumps and creature appearances that propel it into real WTF territory. Where it falters is its arrival a well and truly cliched twist ending but the ride there is undeniably memorable
A modernised version of A Christmas Carol that seems to have been construed in the shadow of Ghostbusters right down to casting Bill Murray as Scrooge
Ingmar Bergman’s classic work where Max Von Sydow plays a game of chess with Death. A film that seems to carry the philosophical weight of the modern world on its shoulders
Bizarre Bruce Lee conceived conceived martial arts film, a bizarre allegorical work of philosophy steeped in inscrutable Zen epigrams
The Asylum made Avengers Grimm as a copycat of The Avengers films, featuring a team-up of fairytale heroines, and so for the release of Suicide Squad they made this sequel featuring a team-up of fairytale villains. Both films are utterly incomprehensible and require you to essentially ignore the originals
Gonzo comedy set in alternate world where a samurai-sword wielding Buddy Holly wanders through a post-apocalyptic present
Grungy low tech anime that comes out like a sarcastic version of Hello Kitty
Quirky indie film where a man encounters various strange people after learning he has 24 hours left to live
Mini-series based on the works of Terry Pratchett that feels as though it is made, designed and cast by people who haven’t even read the books
Neglected today, this adaptation of Richard Adams’ classic novel about a quest among rabbits was one of the finest animated films of its era. This is frequently heartbreaking and touches on darker emotions that Disney and most other family films regularly sanitise.