The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Spinoff from the Harry Potter films – unlike those, written directly for the screen and feels more like it belongs there. The US locations open the story up, while the magic creatures and new ensemble cast prove a delight
Sequel to Snow White and the Huntsman. Despite low expectations, this emerged better than one thought it would. It has a better director and seems much more at home being an epic fantasy than the first film
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
It took DC Comics the better part of a decade to catch up with the massive success Marvel Comics are having on screen in crossing their characters over. Zack Snyder comes to the party offering up THE biggest headline double-bill in superherodom
The two most popular Japanese horror franchises come together to fight it out. Both series work on the provision of intensely uncanny effect but brought together the result is diluted at best
Blumhouse’s Ouija didn’t get many good reviews but they proceeded with a prequel here. This is automatically the better film from the outset by employing Mike Flanagan, behind amazing works like Absentia, Hush and The Haunting of Hill House, as director, even if it comes out as one of Flanagan’s lesser works
The zombie film has become an overworked vein in the last few years. This South Korean film does nothing to reinvent it, just contains the drama aboard a train but manages to create a grippingly intense epic of the genre
Pixar have never been the same since giving in to sequelitis but this sequel to Finding Nemo does recapturing some of their heyday. Not perfect but this has a winning array of new characters and some delightfully madcap comic set-pieces
Disney are now doing what Lucasfilm did with their novels in the 80s and spinning adventures off from even minor background characters. This is a grittier Dirty Dozen adventure but still recycles the same basic elements
The second in a trilogy of slasher films about people being staked by a maniac at a backwoods cabin while everything is secretly being filmed by tv cameras
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
The Resident Evil films are designed for people who were introduced to drama via the Xbox, action sequences that can be assembled in random order and where it doesn’t matter what happens. I watched this, the sixth and final entry, with next-to-no enthusiasm but then quite unexpectedly it starts to work
Sequel to the 2010 Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland. This has even less in common with Lewis Carroll’s book sequel than its predecessor did – a total of two scenes. The sets and effects are just pretty eye candy
A massive letdown of the year. A sequel that brings back several of the original cast and gives it to Yuen Wo-Ping to direct but is merely slickly paced, uninspired action that substitutes CGI for the graceful wirework of the original
If you want a genuinely scary spook show that will make you jump out of your seat, you would not go wrong with this. On the other hand, the Conjuring films with their claims to true stories of peddle superstition and fabricate most of their so-called facts
I have lowered expectations of animated films these days but was surprised what an effortlessly engaging film this is. Essentially a version of American Idol but recast with talking/singing animals, it is a film that bursts with confidence and its own natural energy from every pore
Sequel to one of the few original (ie. non comic-book) superhero films of the 2010s. this takes the interesting route of telling it as a investigative tv report into someone killing off all the superheroes
Sequel in name only to Cloverfield, this takes place in a survival shelter where an unspecified catastrophe has happened outside but we cannot be certain what or even if anything at all. Okay but films like Take Shelter and The Divide did this much better
The Kung Fu Panda series are films for couch potatoes – martial arts films with a hero who proclaims the virtues of laziness, overeating and goes into combat with an self-inflated sense of his own awesomeness
Hard Target was one of Jean-Claude Van Damme’s better films, featuring an on-fire John Woo as director. While most have forgotten it, we get a sequel here that copycats Woo’s moves to a point of tedium
Nobody has good things to say about the 2014 reboot of the Turtles. This sequel is stuck with its legacy – giant over-sized Turtles that lacked the cuteness of the originals; bitchy non-acting Megan Fox – but comes out winningly by doing one thing – emulating the spirit of the original cartoon series
These I Spit on Your Grave films have considerable brutal effect. On the other hand, by the time of this second sequel to a remake, it does seem exploitative watching the heroine being abused again because the previous films made money
The third of the Lifetime Channel’s films based on the Gothic incest melodramas of Virginia C. Andrews that began with Flowers in the Attic. The plotting is absurd and the film feels uninhabited by human beings
Parasyte Part 1 was a manga adaptation filled with wild effects sequences. This sequel is an even better film that expands the characters and ideas in quite fascinating directions
Antisocial, a horror film about zombies created by social media, proved a reasonable hit. This is a sequel that skips on a few years after the collapse of civilisation
Though this received a reasonably high-profile release from Blumhouse, it transpires as no more than a Found Footage film about the haunting of a high-school play
I had a liking for RZA’s Shaw Brothers homage The Man with the Iron Fists more than most other critics.This sequel has been handed over to a generic action direction, which certainly leaves it more slickly polished than the original but also quickly forgettable
Slasher film where a girl is hired as a housekeeper in a remote location only to find she is being stalked by a masked killer and forced to survive with her bare hands. Two sequels followed.
For supposedly the Paranormal Activity series final entry, this offer the novelty of the first Found Footage film in 3D – a gimmick that signals the series is out of fresh ideas. Moreover, the series’ look via watching security cameras has been de-emphasised in favour of another CGI driven ghost story
The original i>Violent Shit films were a series of plotless, gore-drenched German films of the 80-90s. This is a very loose Italian-made remake that is more about the activities of an occult serial killer. Not very well made but there are a lot of homages to classic giallo cinema
While there is little doubt that Edgar Wright would have made a much better film, this emerges with an engaging likeability. Less epic superheroics, this plays out more as a caper comedy where a good ensemble and comedic playing carry the show
Sequel to a largely forgotten fantasy series. While never transcending formula, this fares somewhat better than the previous sequel largely because CGI effects have advanced since the original
The finale of the saga comes with a tough, gritty edge that make it the best directed of the series. On the other hand, it builds well only to arrive at an ending that goes oddly sideways and throws sympathies to the wind
A low-budget film about an evil doll that was made not long after Annabelle came out and boasting a similar Based on a True Story claim. Four sequels have followed
30 years in the making and the results are sensational. An action film so relentlessly foot-to-the-floor and full of kinetic wildness that it blows all its contemporaries away and sets the bar anew
Third of the Sharktopus films from Roger Corman, an entry in the series that is making no longer making any effort to take itself seriously
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
Mythica: A Quest for Heroes was a fan-made epic fantasy film made with a high degree of creativity and professionalism; this sequel is slightly the lesser but still maintains the high degree of quality
Sequel to The Asylum’s spendidly grotesque Hansel & Gretel, this pits the two characters against one another for contrived reasons to justify its title but is just cheaply made
I had little enthusiasm for this, I tend to like my classic monsters serious rather than defanged – these Hotel Transylvania films are so watered down, Dracula doesn’t even get to drink blood
This rescues the spy film from the silliness of Austin Powers. The film’s sly mocking of its Englishness, with Colin Firth going into action as an impeccably mannered gentleman, along with explosive action sequences is irresistible
The incomprehensibly manic antics of the Minions have a cuteness appeal that has overspilled the Despicable Me films. Here they get a film all to themselves with amiably lightweight results
Sharknado was an instant bad movie phenomenon; the first sequel felt a forced attempt to copy that. The good news is that with the third entry, the series gets the balance of tongue in cheek absurdity just right
The fourth of The Asylum’s Mega Shark films and the best of the series where they get the balance of tongue-in-cheek absurdity just right and the low-budget effects prove surprisingly good
A hodgepodge of competing elements – an aging Arnold Schwarzenegger, a soft reboot, alternate timelines, reintroduction of the familiar, twists to the familiar – that make no sense on a narrative level, least of all come anywhere near what James Cameron delivered back in the first two films
The first two Human Centipede films are masterpieces of twisted extremes. The third entry goes astray in giving the show over to Dieter Laser in one of the most over-the-top performances ever unleashed
Saw series director Darren Lynn Bousman makes a rock musical about a war between a gaudily exotic Heaven and Hell. A full-length expansion of Bousman’s earlier short film
The Mission: Impossible films have become superbly polished vehicles with exotic locales, death-defying stuntwork and spectacular action sequences. This enacts it all well; the main problem is that Ghost Protocol is such a tough act to follow that this cannot help but fall in its shadow
The third of the surprisingly good Kickstarter financed Mythica films. This marks a changeover of directors in the series and is slightly the lesser but still does highly imaginative things with a low-budget
The original had some undeniably effective jumps but suffered from a lack of explanatory rationale but this makes for a shaky house of cards when the same arbitrary happenings are extended for a sequel
Whether you loved or hated the crude and raucous, un-PC stoner/fratboy humour of Ted, Seth MacFarlane is back with exactly the same mix here. This manages to be offensive in an amiably inoffensive, even occasionally quite funny, way
After two ho-hum sequels, this finally delivers a solid follow-up to Jurassic Park. Rather than more scenes with dinosaurs chasing people, this comes with some fascinating ideas about seeing the park in operation
The end of Western civilisation is surely upon us that studios have devoted multi-million dollar resources to making four of these films and that audiences flock to them despite universally terribly reviews. Ok so maybe I hated this one marginally less than the preceding three
A rather funny comedy about the making of a disaster-laden low-budget horror film where the filmmaking style depicted makes Ed Wood’s films seem like works of art
It’s not another Empire Strikes Back but it makes up for the prequels. A good part fanservice to the original – if overly reliant on rehashing elements from Star Wars – this also does many things right
Apparently the biggest grossing film in China ever. What we get is not much more than a rehash of E.T. with the addition of flying swordsmen. What kills the film is an emphasis of excrutiating slapstick and low-res CGI that makes the various creatures resemble versions of Mr Blobby
Fourth entry in the eminently forgettable sword-and-sorcery series, this heads down into bad movie stakes by writing a series of grating quips over everything, while the action scenes exist in the realm of unbelievability that show that nobody is treating anything with the slightest seriousness
The Maze Runner was one of the better Young Adult films, creating an intriguing conceptual mystery; this sequel ignores all of that, even throws the book out and is essentially a jumble of random sf tropes that amount to no more than running, shooting and things exploding
This doesn’t have James Wan directing and is a far less interesting ghost story before doing a repeat venture into the beyond. On the plus side, incoming director Leigh Whannell does generate a fair degree of eerie tension
Another anime film in the Ghost in the Shell franchise. This was the fifth episode of the Ghost in the Shell: Arise reboot series that received a theatrical release
Dead Rising was another zombie survival horror videogame from the creators of Resident Evil. Although nowhere near the popularity of the Milla Jovovich films, this was the first of two films based on the game
The first Avengers film came with a massive anticipation in seeing the characters come together and the snappiness of their interplay; here this seems more flat, while the rest is overrun by wall-to-wall action
Pixar have slumped into terminal sequelitis during the 2010s – this was only the second original work they have made during that time. While not perfect, it goes regains the creative heights from five years earlier
It is a surprise that the Tremors series has managed to get so much out of a slim premise and to remain consistently enjoyable. Coming a decade after the last entry, this still remains enjoyable with the benefit of CGI outfitted Graboids and Michael Gross back in fine form
Henry Rollins is a man who may be immortal. Sort of like a dark version of The Man from Earth, this is made by the wittily phlegmatic indifference of Rollins’s performance and fascinatingly littered clues about who he might be
Why we needed a sequel to Hot Tub Time Machine is a big question. Essentially, Back to the Future Part II meets The Hangover, all this does is wind the original’s amiable coarseness up by a factor of ten
With the Mega Shark and especially the Sharknado films, The Asylum played the killer shark film as ridiculously as possible with delirious results. In this sequel to 2-Headed Shark Attack, they get the blend of the tongue-in-cheek absurdity to a point of near-perfection
A film about giant fire-breathing spiders. This is lifted from formula by a sense of humour and even peculiarly brings many of the cast of the Police Academy series out of retirement
Divergent, the first entry in this Young Adult dystopian series, a poor man’s Hunger Games, failed the “I can’t hold any suspension of disbelief” test. This offers more of the same, plus lots of random effects sequences
A Japanese film about a cyborg-enhanced bounty hunter chick, the second in a series. This is sort of like RoboCop but played with a much more softcore focus
It is nice to see Bryan Singer regain his form after several years lull. The plot is nothing world-shattering but it is nice to see a character-driven X-Men, while Singer delivers the superheroics with a cheer-out loud elan that most of the sequels missed by a wide margin
A surprisingly good effort to emerge from the arena of fan-made Kickstarter funded filmmaking. Essentially, a group of fans have brought their mutual love of playing Dungeons and Dragons to life but the film, while low-budgeted, places a great deal of care into the characters and building of the world
The third entry in a franchise that seems to be stretching to find anything to do with its premise beyond the first film. Everyone involved seems to have only turned up to collect a paycheque and be going through the motions in a show that entirely coasts by solely on your familiarity with the characters
From the awful slapstick-heavy trailer, the prospects for this seem dismal – less Paddington Bear than a reprise of the live-action Yogi Bear. The finished result confounds expectation and the story of a small unassuming bear at large in the world comes full of considerable charm
The Pact was a modest and rather effective ghost story about a serial killer hiding inside the walls of a house. This seems to be straining to find some way to justify any relevance a sequel – for one, where do you go with the premise? Another killer hiding inside a different family home?
This offers the expectation of a sequel to the sleeper hit of Monsters; what we instead get is not many monsters and a film about recruits in a Middle Eastern war zone. That said, you cannot deny that what we have is an undeniably well made film
One of the better among the current fad for Young Adult dystopian SF works post-The Hunger Games. This dispenses with dystopian Coming of Age stories and gives us a fascinating conceptual mystery even if the answers prove underwhelming
Third in The Asylum’s series of Mega Shark films where they borrow the Godzilla series’ idea of Mecha-Godzilla and pit the Mega Shark against a robot copy of itself. Here the Mega Shark series is starting to approach the entertaining silliness of their Sharknado films but still flounder amid tatty effects
TV movie remake of Virginia Andrews’ best-selling Gothic melodrama about children imprisoned in an attic. Even if more faithful to the book, this is no better than the 1987 film
Blumhouse horror film based around the Parker Brothers boardgame. Modern multiplex horror films don’t come more generic than this. On the other hand, you cannot deny that debuting director Stiles White creates some occasionally quite spooky moments, it’s just that the rest of the show comes entirely by the numbers
Enjoyably colourful and silly retelling of the classic Chinese legend. This is one Wu Xia film that leaps aboard the CGI and 3D bandwagon to create a wildly fantastical airbrushed world that comes out resembling a flying swordsman film by way of Avatar
Less another sequel than a spinoff of the Paranormal Activity series, this takes place with Latino characters and in a whole different culture and socio-economic strata. While this gives the series a face change, everything else it feels like the shuffling of a well-worn deck of plot cards
Robert Rodriguez makes his return to Frank Miller’s classic film noir-styled graphic novels. You keep expecting this to hit in with the astonishing freshness the first film did. Rodriguez and Miller give us more of the same amazing visuals but there is the feeling it is no longer original and new
Live-action adaptation of a manga about the war between body-snatching parasites that are capable of rearranging their host’s bodies. This plays out as a madcap version of The Thing relocated to a Japanese high school
This reboot of the pop culture icons of 80s/90s is an ugly failure on almost every level. The Turtles I remember were hip, funky and bubbled with boyish enthusiasm; these Turtles seem sinister oversized creations, while the film’s adrenalised over-production and emphasis on grit seems to have missed the essential element of fun
A Found Footage film with a camera crew searching Halloween attractions for the most extreme haunt only to find something else. The film has a certain effect where we are not entirely sure what is real
Russian-made adaptation of a classic horror story that takes place as an exquisitely stylised 19th Century Gothic fantasy world but is a head-scratchingly incoherent mishmash on a plotting level
Sequel to the hit multi-director anthology has a less high-profile line-up of directors, nor hits the astonishingly perverse heights of its predecessor. As always some entries never do much but the film finds its stride in the last few episodes
The Soska Sisters make a sequel to the 2006 slasher film. You cannot help but think that a sequel to such an average film is the sisters batting well below their capabilities. The surprise is that in their hands the result follows such traditional genre patterns
Sequel to the bad movie phenomenon Sharknado Accompanied by a host of celebrity cameos, there is less the cheerful absurdity of the original than a film that is trying to recapture a spontaneously generated fad
Entry in the gonzo killer shark film (viz Sharknado et al), sequel to the earlier Sharktopus Though produced by veteran B movie producer Roger Corman, these Sharktopus films are some of the shittiest in the gonzo killer shark fad, featuring way below sub par effects and missing the sense of humour
This spinoff from the Madagascar films is a lot more fun that I was anticipating – how could you dislike a film with John Malkovich as an octopus super-villain? Essentially cast as a spy parody, the film has a gonzo insanity that hits in with a manic delirium
After two bloated and over-padded Hobbit films, Peter Jackson finally gets it together and produces what everyone was expecting him to deliver, even if it means dragging one battle scene out to last an entire film
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
Sequel to Starship Rising, a space opera that does some amazing things with effects on a next-to-no budget
Modest space opera from British director Neil Johnson that achieves things with its effects on a low-budget that easily rivals A-budget films
The tenth of the Japanese Ju-on/The Grudge series. Newcomer Masayuki Ochiai has some effective touches but the series is running out of original moves
A triumphal Marvel Comics adaptations that manages to mainline the spirit of the original Star Wars, while in in its wryly, self-deflating culture savvy suggesting a Star Wars rewritten by a 14 year-old Quentin Tarantino
This is a film that leaves you in two minds – one that is constantly going wow at the animated artistry and detail before us; the other that is realising that this is yet another formula animated film
Nobody seemed to care about Tekken, the 2010 film based on the popular videogame. Despite that, this is a sequel – albeit one that has almost nothing to do with the first film. This consists of nothing more than a series of efficiently unmemorable action scenes and a plot that makes no real sense