The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The MCU’s sequel to Black Panther. This offers the peculiarity of a work in which the superhero of the title never actually appears and is instead set around his absence following the death of Chadwick Boseman
Scott Derrickson makes a sequel to his earlier hit The Black Phone. The original was a modest but self-contained story, whereas this has to do some work before coming out as an original and effective follow-up
The third Revelation Road film, this offers the bizarre novelty of a faith-based Mad Max copy with divinely inspired action hero David A.R. White cruising the post-apocalyptic wastelands in the aftermath of The Rapture
Following Michelle Pfeiffer’s turn as Cat Woman in Batman Returns, this was a copycat from Roger Corman in which Joan Severance becomes a black vinyl clad superheroine exacting justice
The second of the low-budget Roger Corman produced films made for cable featuring Joan Severance as a black vinyl-clad masked superheroine
The Australian-made Black Water was a gripping thriller about three people in a tree being menaced by a crocodile in the water below. This is a sequel with a further group trapped in a cave and menaced by a killer crocodile
A hit among the Blaxploitation fad of the 1970s, this has the novelty of casting a vampire film with African-American actor William Marshall. A whole series of Blaxploitation takes on horror themes followed.
Nobody knew it at the time but this was the beginning of the huge surge of Marvel Comics adaptations on screen in the 00s/10s. This distills the basics of the vampire hunter comic-book down into a smart, kinetic action film
Blade was a solid vampire/action film but the sequel is a quantum leap over that, a visually kinetic and immensely exciting comic-book of a movie thanks to the employment of Guillermo Del Toro in the director’s chair
Ridley Scott’s film was not a success at the time but has since been regarded as a SF masterpiece, one of the defining screen treatments of android themes while the incredibly dense Cyberpunk vision of the future was copied by many subsequent films
Blade Runner is a landmark classic but this is well worthwhile sequel from Denis Villeneuve that recreates the fascinating Cyberpunk world in more detail and expands out on the themes laid down in the original. Made with impeccably beautiful detail
A spinoff from Full Moon’s Puppetmaster film series, this stirs killer dolls, mad scientists, psychics and Nazi zombies together in an undeniably entertaining mix
Third of the Blade films with Wesley Snipes. As director, series screenwriter David S. Goyer emulates the same exhilarating, kinetic moves that Guillermo Del Toro infused the second film with, while the script zings with his wryly cynical dialogue
The Blair Witch Project was genuinely innovative. It is a surprise that we never saw a string of sequels. Adam Wingard finally does here but at a time when the Found Footage genre feels played out of moves
This shot-on-video film that became a word of mouth sensation with many people believing they were watching real video footage of a trio lost in haunted woods by a witch. Of course, what nobody knew at the time was this was creating the Found Footage film
Film about a monstrous blob that devours everything in its path. This has become a 1950s B movie classic more through its chessiness value, not to mention theme of teenage rebellion, than necessarily being a great film
The fourth of the Christopher Lee-starring Fu Manchu films and the point the series was handed over to exploitation director Jess Franco and started to go badly downhill
Another Uwe Boll’s videogame adaptation, this feels slung together from vampire film and sword and sorcery cliches. Among the badly mismatched casting, the most eyebrow raising is Ben Kingsley as the vampire villain
The second in Uwe Boll’s trilogy adapted from the videogame, this plays out as a mix of Western and vampire hunter film and is marginally better than Boll’s usual standards
The third of Uwe Boll’s Bloodrayne trilogy and one of his better films. The action scenes are slickly choreographed and the film is largely made by Michael Paré and Clint Howard who play to the gallery with entertaining regard
The second in a series of low-budget vampire films from Charles Band and Full Moon Productions. Nothing much to write home about.
A modern slasher film that slavishly rehashes Friday the 13th. Routine on most counts, excepting perhaps the oddity of it being made by a director/producer of Christian films
Dan O’Bannon scripted film about a hi-tech helicopter, this crackles with great writing and some immensely exciting aerial action scenes from director John Badham
John Landis and Dan Aykroyd minus the late John Belushi revisit their cult classic but the reunion exercise smacks of poor judgement and emerges as a haphazard arrangement made only to exploit the appeal of the original
Charles B. Pierce, a director who gained a cult with his films for 1970s drive-in audiences, makes a sequel to his earlier pseudo-documentary The Legend of Boggy Creek about the hunt for a Bigfoot creature
Tyler Perry is an accomplished impressionist but his two Halloween comedies appropriate elements of the horror film while having no interest in the genre. Here all the horror elements only serve to deliver a lecture on child rearing
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
A film that has been construed almost entirely as a series of spooky jumps and hyped suspense scenes with nothing in the way of rhyme, reason or connecting rationale. Produced by Sam Raimi
The much lambasted but not entirely uninteresting sequel to The Blair Witch Project. Documentary director Joe Berlinger adds a fascinating layer of meta-fiction that winds in the real-world reaction to the first film
Absolutely delightful and charming BBC series about a family of miniature people who live in secrecy inside the walls of human houses. The best of several versions of the popular books
A reboot of the Jason Bourne series with Jeremy Renner replacing Matt Damon. The exhiliratingly kinetic action scenes are watered down, while the plot lacks the same focus. The first of the series to enter genre territory however
Sequel to The Boy in which a nanny was hired to tend a sinister doll. Now in what is clearly an attempt to imitate the Annabelle franchise, the doll gains life
This is a charming and delightful animated film about a group of talking household appliances appliances that set out on a quest to find their young master. Little seen at the time but two sequels followed.
Third of the Brave Little Toaster films, this takes the talking appliances to Mars and comes with an appealingly zany sense of humour
The first of two Brave Little Toaster sequels, this plays more along the lines of a regular animated film formula but has its charms
The point where the Twilight series collapses under its pretensions and draws every detail of its wedding out for an excruciating hour. A series that has been all about preaching chastity then segues into Right to Life advocacy
Perhaps the best thing about this is that the Twilight saga is finally ended. This provides a moderately spectacular showdown but also wraps its plotlines up with absurd deus ex machina wimp outs and an infuriating twist ending
Fourth of the Child’s Play films where the importation of Hong Kong director Ronnie Yu doesn’t do much to enliven proceedings, although this does embellish the black humour element considerably
The first sequel to the 1931 Boris Karloff Frankenstein, which many prefer to the original. Director James Whale comes into his element and provides a whole other level of droll humour that the first film did not have
Sequel to the cult splatter hit of Re-Animator, directed by the original’s producer Brian Yuzna. Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott and David Gale are back. This has some amazing effects work but lacks the first film’s outrageous black humour
Classic Hong Kong Wu Xia film featuring much aerial swordplay and lushly dressing/lighting but also a work of wildly uneven tone
Sequel to the earlier Wu Xia film, which brings back the leads in an enjoyable adventure that places much more emphasis on flying swordplay
The first of the Blood Island films, a classic of Filipino exploitation cinema. Although not as polished as later efforts, this serves up all the requisite cheesy monsters, mad scientists and gratuitous toplessness you expect
The second of Hammer’s Dracula films has to work around the absence of Christopher Lee. Peter Cushing’s Van Helsing is brought to the forefront and Terence Fisher provides some standout directorial sequences
The second film with Christopher Lee as the Chinese super-villain Fu Manchu. Not quite up with its predecessor The Face of Fu Manchu but still an exciting blend of pulp melodrama, super-science and Yellow Peril
The third in a trilogy of satirical films from director Lindsay Anderson and star Malcolm McDowell, this takes a biting crosscut of British society as a hospital prepares for a royal visit
Enzo G. Castellari’s sequel to his Escape from New York ripoff 1990: The Bronx Warriors and a most more polished and entertaining B action movie
One of the flop Disney animated films of the 2000s, set among the Inuit with the head-scratching premise of a warrior who is transformed into a bear
Comedy in which God appears to Jim Carrey and grants him His powers for one week. Expectedly the film is of zero theological depth and all about Carrey going completely over-the-top
In the aftermath of Star Wars, the comic-book/serial hero was revived in this heavily Star Wars influenced remake that was released theatrically and then served as the pilot of a tv series
An unfunny comedy about a cheerleader vampire slayer. This should have been quickly forgotten but instead it surprisingly became the basis for a much superior hit tv series several years later
Spinoff from the Transformers films. As though all it took was a change of director, this is a small sweet film that has more in common with E.T. as opposed to Michael Bay’s mass destruction spectaculars
This was dismissed at the time because of its star Ashton Kutcher but is a surprisingly good film in which Kutcher finds the ability to travel back in time and alter his past
The Butterfly Effect was not a film set up for a sequel but we get one here anyway with a different person flipping back in time to change his rather dull and uninteresting life
Video-released spinoff of the Toy Story films featuring Buzz Lightyear in an adventure. Although released under the Pixar name, the animation is all cheaply produced by a Chinese studio
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
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
The second entry in a surprisingly prolific series of low-budget films – currently running to fifteen films – that homage the 1980s slasher film
The first in a surprisingly prolific series of slasher films, which has produced some fourteen sequels at current count. Made on a micro-budget, this vigorously homages the 1980s basics
A Clive Barker adaptation capped by a magisterial performance from Tony Todd. This was greeted as a horror masterpiece when it came out and went on to spawn two sequels. Not too bad if it falls short of the classic status
A Jordan Peele-written/produced revival of the Candyman series. Director Nia DaCosta lights it up with a new contemporary social relevance but fails to recapture the eerie horror the original held
The second and so far final of the Candyman sequels, a routine entry with Baywatch starlet Donna D’Errico as a descendant of Candyman who is pursued by Tony Todd
The first of the Candyman sequels, this goes back to add a Candyman origin story but mostly rehashes the first film. Director Bill Condon’s constant straining for effect becomes maddening
The fourth Captain America film, where Anthony Mackie now takes over the shield and costume. And you really need to have been following MCU continuity to make sense of much of what is going on
Less Captain America 3 than The Avengers 3 – the entire film has been conceived as a massive superheroic punch-up. The results move with an exhilarating pace, but the Russo Brothers haven’t yet mastered Joss Whedon’s hand with character humour
The MCU offers up their first superheroine with very unexceptional results. A competent enough effort but DC’s Wonder Woman easily blows everything this tries to do out of the water
Not long after RKO had a hit with Cat People, Universal responded with this in which the exotically beautiful Acquanetta turns into a gorilla (actually vice versa). The Jungle Woman went on to appear in two sequels
The Car concerning a possessed car is one of the forgotten films of the 1970s. Why it has produced a sequel 42 years later is a scratch of the head. Not that the two films even resemble one another
A Roger Corman produced cheapie about genetically engineered dinosaurs that was quickly rushed out to exploit the success of Jurassic Park. Corman went on to make two sequels
The very first Stephen King adaptation, a hit that made King’s name. Brian De Palma directs with flamboyant visuals that make you gasp but the film would be nothing without its amazing central performances from Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie
Winning animated film from Pixar based around the appealingly original idea of vehicles having personalities. The idea is spun out with considerable wit and sophistication. Two sequels followed.
Sequel to Pixar’s Cars. While the original was a cutely appealing concept with a gentle contemplative message, this plays as more of an out-and-out spy caper making a virtue of its international locations
Another of the weaker sequels that Pixar seem determined to churn out. This lacks the fun among the anthropomorphic vehicles that its predecessors had with a hardly inspiring story about its hero feeling old and over-the-hill
J-horror film based on the Japanese urban legend of a boogeywoman with a face slit from ear to ear who appears to kill people
The fifth and final of the Fu Manchu films with Christopher Lee as the super-villain Fu Manchu. The last two were made by exploitation director Jess Franco and only worth watching for Lee’s icily autocratic presence
Val Lewton’s classic work of psychological ambiguity about a woman who believes she is turning into a panther. Lewton’s ingenuity was to leave the actuality of the monster one that was merely suggested
A disaster tv mini-series about the most powerful storm in recorded history descending on Chicago just as a hacker disables the power grid. Most of this plays by the cliches of the genre.
Sequel to the tv mini-series Category 6: Day of Destruction ups the scale of the super-storm but is also better constructed as a disaster movie
Here the cutely appealing idea of a talking animals film conducted in live-action a la Babe has been blended with a tongue-in-cheek spy adventure. The results are enjoyably silly
Cats & Dogs was amiable but this sequel struggles against the irritatingly cutsie elements that have come to dominate this mini-genre of live-action talking animals films
The dreamscape film was given extraordinary life by Tarsem Singh in his directorial debut who transforms a fairly ordinary script with visuals and costuming that is out of this world
Sequel to Tarsem Singh’s The Cell that feels made by people who haven’t even seen the original. The original’s fascinating journey into dream terrain is replaced by a dull psychic with a link to a serial killer plot
The first full-length Claymation film from the UK’s Aardman Animations. With typical Aardman eccentricity, this is a parody of a WWII escape film conducted with talking chickens
After 23 years, Aardman Animation make a sequel to their first feature film. Another chicken caper film where they try to capture some of its dotty charms and largely succeed
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
A fifteen page Stephen King story about a patricidal child cult has spawned this film, nine sequels and a remake. Not a very good film, this is stuck with padding a very slight original out to a full-length film
The second of the films spun off from the Stephen King short story. This is better that its predecessor, premised around a series of novelty deaths and offering some explanations for what is happening
The third of the films based on the Stephen King short story, this moves the locale to the city but is otherwise based around a series of completely ridiculous makeup effects every few minutes
The popularity of the Children of the Corn franchise – eleven films spun out of a sixteen page Stephen King story – baffles one. This is the fourth film, its greatest distinction being that it stars a then unknown Naomi Watts
Quite who the audience for these Children of the Corn films is that they keep making more of them is a mystery. This was the fifth of eleven films and at least better than the last two entries
The Stephen King short story only runs to 16 pages. This is the eleventh film spinoff to date (which runs at about one film per 1.4 pages of story). Unlike the other sequels, this claims to be an origin story
The sequel to Village of the Damned, this makes the mistake of humanising the cold alienness of the children and taking their side against humanity, losing much of the stark effect of the original
The very first of the Chucky films. At the time, this seemed a very silly and at times ridiculous killer doll film and not the basis of an ongoing series of sequels that have lasted more than three decades
The first Child’s Play felt like an incredibly silly film. However, this first sequel takes the same elements and constructs them into a much tighter, better package
The third and probably the least regarded of the Chucky films. This for some reason takes place in a military academy. The outrageous black humour of the later entries is absent and in its place a mean-spirited sadism
My introduction to Wu Xia – imagine some vision of Kwaidan as directed by Sam Raimi, filled with sensationally beautiful and out of this world imagery and completely nutsoid fantastical battles with ghosts and demons
Sequel to the sensational A Chinese Ghost Story, this reunites the principal talents and actors but is not quite as snappy as the original, placing more of an emphasis on comedy
The second sequel to A Chinese Ghost Story, a slighter effort too reliant on the plot beats of the original. Where it does work is in the enormous degree of slapstick energy with which proceedings are conducted
A Chinese Ghost Story was a classic in Hong Kong cinema, followed by two sequels and then animated spinoff sold in the West under the name of series producer and cult director Tsui Hark