The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
I hate the utterly formulaic films of Blue Sky Studios, the ones behind the endless Ice Age sequels. That said, this is one of their more enjoyable – despite a plot that is amazingly busy trying to reintroduce characters from the first film, the screen overflows with colourful exuberance
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
Less a 300 sequel or prequel than a parallel story, this offers much the same as before but in 3D and with naval instead of land combat. Seeing Zack Snyder’s amazing visuals repeated all over again, all the poses and hyper-masculinity now seem to bubble with an inherent risibility.
Not a remake but a sequel to the cult true-crime film The Town That Dreaded Sundown with a series of copycat killings influenced by the film occurring in the present-day. Directed with a bravura stylishness that makes you jump out of your seat in joy
One of the best among the modern Marvel Comics screen adaptations. All involved are at the absolute peak of their game and the balance of superheroic action, humour and tragedy makes you cheer at how well they get it right
Are there any new creative directions that Michael Bay feels he he has to explore for a fourth Transformers film? All the Transformers beating the crap out of each other and copious mass destruction has become hard to tell one of the films from each other
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
Really, Kevin Smith?!? A film wherein a mad lunatic transforms another man into a walrus? While you can applaud Smith’s completely out there leap off into Human Centipede territory, you feel unsure whether you should be reacting in shock or laughter at the absurdity of the premise
The third The Hunger Games film starts in with a more brooding complexity but with the book being split in two parts, the story feels more thinly drawn and comes to an abrupt end just when it starts to get interesting
One of the most unique films in some time – everything takes place across social media (chat sessions, video calls) where the cinema screen is the computer screen. A fairly average supernatural retribution story that generates reasonable tension
The third of the trilogy of films adapted from Ayn Rand’s absurd fantasy wherein the leaders of the business world decide to go on strike because they don’t feel appreciated enough
A Uwe Boll film that feels as though he didn’t cared about what he was making. You’d have to go back to the Italian sword-and-sorcery films of the 1980s to find a more shoddy work of epic fantasy
Third of the V/H/S films, all horror anthologies in the Found Footage style. While the other two were fairly hit and miss, this is extremely good. Each of the four stories sits among the very best episodes among the current crop of multi-director horror anthologies
Shinji Aramaki returns to the Appleseed franchise for a third time with this prequel. Though it abandons the Cyberpunk milieu, Aramaki crafts action scenes with a stunning realism
Someone had the bright idea to make a film centred around the creepy doll that appears in the wraparound scenes of The Conjuring. But without James Wan as director, everything disappears into formulaic scares
An improvisational project shot between actor Mark Duplass and friend Patrick Brice, a two person handheld-shot film where videographer Brice is hired by an over-friendly Duplass who becomes increasingly disturbed
A sequel to the 2012 ghost story from the revived Hammer Films, this adds precisely nothing to the original, has nothing to say and nothing in its directorial arsenal that is not a tiresomely over-cliched jump – you just ask, why was this film even made?
Slightly more interesting than its predecessor in that it takes the action out from gated communities into the streets, otherwise this offers just the same as The Purge – much in the way of heavy artillery and a patina of contemporary politics that have all the depth of a protest placard
Designed as a copycat of The Hunger Games, this Young Adult film as a modest hit. The premise is fundamentally implausible as human psychology – and when there’s no basic credibility, you cease to care about the contrived dramatics
The Leprechaun films were a cheap ripoff of the Freddy Krueger films. This supposed revival bears nothing whatsoever to do with the originals and doesn’t even seem the same type of film anymore
Reboot of the Ghost in the Shell series in a quartet of prequel stories. This funnels the essence of Cyberpunk superbly, creating a dazzling world with cyborgised security services fighting terrorists hacking people’s brains
![[Rec]4 Apocalypse (2014) poster](https://moriareviews.com/rongulator/wp-content/uploads/rec-4-apocalypse-2014-poster.jpg)
The fourth film in the [Rec] series. This abandons the Found Footage look but without it, all we have is just another zombie film, nevertheless this builds to an intensively gore-drenched climax
Another in the early 2010s fad for fairytales rewritten as dark adult fantasy films – in this case, a version of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty told from the viewpoint of the witch
The Planet of the Apes series excels itself and stages a massively exciting inter-species war. The CGI/mocap apes come with an extraordinary range of nuance – quite whether it is performance or animation is up for debate but the results are outstanding
The Dead was one of the better modern zombie films, depicting the African continent as it succumbed to the zombie apocalypse. This offers nearly the same story but moves the locale to India
Australian zombie film that comes with a hyperactive fierceness and energy that reminds of early Sam Raimi or Peter Jackson. On the minus side, the zombie genre is now so creatively strip-mined that the film never offers anything original
The second of Disney’s spinoffs from Pixar’s Cars films featuring talking anthropomorphic planes. Like the first film, this is amiable and occasionally cute but lightweight. This is beginning to feel like a franchise that is spinning out thinning ideas solely for its own sake
Animated sequel to The Wizard of Oz that proved a charmless flop that misses the magic of the original by a mile. The familiar characters are run over with a gratingly modern sense of humour
Nicolas Cage stars in a new film based on the best-selling books about the Biblical end of the world. Despite a much bigger budget than the Kirk Cameron version, nothing terribly interesting happens
The Nazi zombies from Norway are back in a better film than the first that is far more polished, the black humour more outrageous and the splatter effects are at the top of their game
Another of Disney’s Tinker Bell spinoff adventures. This has some slickly produced animation and does some occasionally cute pieces of fanservice that tie in to Peter Pan but is ultimately fantasy being produced for the single digit age groups
Sequel to the Lifetime channel adaptation of Virginia C. Andrews’ Flowers in the Attic. Andrews’ prolific output of Gothic melodramas are really the horror equivalent of daytime soap operas. Though marginally better, this drowns in the same stultifying blandness as its predecessor
A major disappointment. Stripping the superhero of the show of his suit makes for no more than a regular action hero, while the film’s reduction of Iron Man’s No 1 villain to a cardboard threat ranks down alongside a Batsuit with nipples
A Texas Chainsaw sequel in 3D with chainsaws and gore coming out at the screen seems the complete antithesis of the raw savagery of the original. The result is like a formulaic modern slasher, while the film is wrecked by a ridiculous reversal of sympathies in the last half
The Asylum made 11/11/11 and 12/12/12 and released them on said dates. Despite running out of exploitable months in the year, they then released a third film here
Birdemic was a cult bad movie – incredibly, despite the better budget that must have come his way, James Nguyen has gone and made the same thing filled with laughably flat dialogue and the worst effects ever seen on screen
Amid the 2010s spate of fairytales rewritten as dark adult fantasies, this was a quite good mockbuster copy from The Asylum. From the director of Sharknado, this is Hansel and Gretel by way of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Sequel to Thor that earranges the same basic elements much more satisfyingly than the first film – the actors (with the exception of a tranquilised Natalie Portman) seem more at home in their roles and a director who is more confident with the effects and superheroics. That said, it is starting to feel like Marvel is shuffling the same plot ingredients around between films
Greg McLean and John Jarratt return to the Australian Backwood Brutality saga of Wolf Creek for a second outing that is just as effective as the first. McLean often pushes the material into black humour and creates at least one sequence that makes for genuinely uncomfortable watching
Film based around the improbable concept of a future where on one night of each year all crime including murder becomes permissible. While this promises a rich vein of satire, the film only emerges as a variant on Straw Dogs
Sixth entry in the Child’s Play series, made to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the original. Contains lots of fanservice and some surprise cameos. This makes an effort to cut back the black humour and go back to being scary
Robert Rodriguez turns his earlier action film into an insanely creative comic-book overflowing with SF devices (and homages). The casting alone is side-splitting and Rodriguez’s visual absurdism wins the day
Third in the series of slasher homage films where Adam Green steps back from the director’s chair. This ups the gore content and number of genre cameos, otherwise is fairly much the same as before
Despicable Me was a charming lightning in the bottle hit. Here Illumination Entertainment merely recycle the familiar and already the cute sweetness and gags of the original are starting to feel like processed formula
Marlon Wayans treads the same territory as the Scary Movie films in this parody take on Paranormal Activity. Most of the film is pitched as a series of crude lowest common denominator gags
The Haunting in Connecticut was a reasonable success in the claim to being a true story ghost story stakes. This is a sequel, seemingly unaware that Connecticut and Georgia are about a thousand miles apart
The first sequel to the box-office juggernaut. The surprise is that it spends defies most of the things that made the first film, not to mention has made one of the year’s biggest box-office hits into a parable for Marxist revolution
Pixar’s creative decline has been the point they started making these sequels to their hits. This is a disappointing prequel to Monsters, Inc. that largely recycles the cliches of the Revenge of the Nerds films and seems lacking in any of the wacky humour or moments of cuteness we expect of a Pixar film
James Wan proves himself one of the finest directors in the horror genre with this sequel to his 2010 film. The plot is trimmed to deliver an effective scare show and Wan again produces a series of eerie and unworldly jumps
When Guillermo Del Toro made Pacific Rim, The Asylum conducted their own copy simply by switching US seaboards. While not exactly Oscar quality, this is one of The Asylum’s better mockbusters
These rape-revenge films leave you wanting to conduct the moral equivalent of taking a shower after watching them. This sequel to the 2010 remake also ends up being undeniably brutal and effective
Sequel to the modest success of V/H/S, an anthology of short Found Footage horror films featuring a different line-up of genre directors. The episodes are competent at best, none standout and mostly forgettable
A zombie apocalypse that occurs via social networking sites??? To the film’s credit, it makes such a wacky idea plausible but the low-budget leads to a zombie apocalypse that mostly occurs off-stage
This sequel is marginally better than the first film (largely due to Chris Columbus no longer being in the director’s chair), being more dramatically engaged and with effects that feel less like random eye candy. That still doesn’t disguise the fact that the Percy Jackson series is no more than a lightweight and forgettable Harry Potter knockoff
The third film based on the roleplaying game. The previous two films were forgettable but this is surprisingly good, taking a far darker tone than the usual sword-and-sorcery adventure and adding considerable moral complexity
Tsui Hark delivers a prequel to his 2010 Detective Dee film. This takes the character back far more to his original nature as a Chinese equivalent of Sherlock Holmes. That is if you can imagine Sherlock Holmes taking place as a flying swordsman film filled with sea monsters and wildly fantastic martial combat scenes (*)
This feels like someone has simply copied the idea of a secretive law enforcement agency from
Low-budget film about a team of FBI ghost hunters investigating an abandoned prison where mysterious things are going on
Sequel to the sleeper 2010 Found Footage hit. Alas, this is a sequel that understands almost nothing about what made the first film so original and is just a possession film that comes utterly by the numbers
Just when you thought that this witless and unfunny series has died off, it drags itself out of mothballs for another outing. As with the other entries, it is a bunch of recent movies overrun with crude, moronic gags
The third Riddick film abandons the dark space opera of the less popular Chronicles of Riddick and tries to return to the planetary survival story of Pitch Black. Despite the effort showing at times, the film gets to be a good deal of fun when it gets to the scenes of Riddick outwitting the mercenaries
The Hobbit became Peter Jackson’s equivalent of the Star Wars prequels and this is the weakest work he has produced under the J.R.R. Tolkien banner. Five picaresque chapters of the book are extruded into bloated set-pieces
Modestly effective effort about a woman who contracts an infection that causes her to physically decay. The horror comes in watching the heroine’s progressive physical decomposition.
Not wishing to insult anyone’s beliefs but Christian cinema has produced some really bad films. With such lowered expectations, this Rapture film approaches halfway watchable with a story that somewhat resembles Mad Max 1 about a biker seeking vengeance against a decent man
One of a number of faith-produced films we have had since the late 90s that concern themselves with the arrival of The Rapture – this one even spawned a trilogy. This is passable if you can palate the relatively light sermonising and at least better written that the Left Behind films
Krampus, Santa’s evil brother, was an obscure piece of Germanic folklore until repurposed for the Christmas horror film in the mid-2010s and. This, while not very good, was the first of these
Supposedly a sequel to the 2011 Fright Night remake but more a loose reworking of the original. This conducts some novel variations such as making Jerry Dandridge into a woman, but is also one of the worst directed horror films in some time
The original film was a good deal of fun; this sequel feels like it is simply a repeat of the same but slightly different. Still there is a good deal of creativity to the visual puns and living food creatures
This arrived as the same instant full-born bad movie cult sensation. Although you cannot help but feel that the people who ridiculed the film are missing out on the joke – in not seeing that it has been made as something intentionally absurd
You can’t complain that this is not exactly what you expect it to be – two hours of cartoonish action during which the brain singularly fails to engage. This is less unapologetic about being a military fantasy than the first film
Outpost was a modestly effective Nazi zombie film. This was the second of two sequels, a prequel that goes back to depict the original Nazi experiments
A much better sequel that gives the characters a thorough workover while making clever play out of the contrasts of masked superhero and reality that ran through the first film
A spinoff from Pixar’s Cars series (although is not in itself a Pixar film but comes from Disney) that sets out to do the same with anthropomorphic planes. Amiable, even likeable but more a wannabe that seems like it is trying to be than actually hits the cleverness and creative heights of Pixar
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
I had mixed feelings about J.J. Abrams’ reboot of Star Trek This time around the actors seem more at home in the characters and the plot works a good deal better (for the most part), while Abrams creates a hurtling effects spectacle that is the most action-oriented of the Trek films
Sam Raimi’s prequel to The Wizard of Oz is now; the story of how a conman fools an entire land rather than of an innocent girl just trying to find her way home. The reconceptualisation of Oz comes with a colourful sweep
While this received a good deal of fan buzz, I must admit to being disappointed. It strips much of the superheroics and mutant cameos of the other X-Men films until it feels more like a Westerner in Japan thriller like Black Rain or even a routine film noir plot that happens to be cast with Wolverine
Director/actor Stephen Chow is one of the undisputed comedy geniuses of Hong Kong cinema. Alas, he comes astray with this version of the classic Chinese legend
Giant mecha robots beating the crap out of giant monsters – what’s not to like? In comparison to the Transformers films, Guillermo Del Toro looks to find the soul of the robot jock – in essence, Transformers for grown-ups
When 20th Century Fox began their Planet of the Apes reboot series, director Mark Polonia quickly jumped in with his own Z-budget mockbuster take. Several sequels followed
Sequel to Journey to the Center of the Earth, a supposed adaptation of Jules Verne’s Mysterious Island and a consistently silly, nonsensical film that operates at the level of a children’s cartoon
One hardly greets the attempt to generate another entry out of this franchise with any enthusiasm. This mostly consists of tired and familiar gags, where maybe the most generous compliment you can pay is that it is better than Men in Black II was
Finnish filmmaker Timo Vuorensola makes a conceptually wild film about invasion by Nazi flying saucers from the Moon. Stunning quality effects on a minuscule budget that rival the work of professional houses
This is not a film, it is a money-making machine in the guise of a film aimed squarely at undiscerning family audiences that plays to familiar characters and comic routines and has minimal difference to the preceding three Ice Age films
A Young Adult box-office hit that does little more than competently shuffle around ideas from other SF films. Jennifer Lawrence makes an impressive showing but the film also soft-pedals the moral reality of its scenario
Ridiculous sequel to the Marvel Comics adaptation with an indifferently written script assembled from cliches, forgettable action scenes and Nicolas Cage giving one of his silliest performances in ages
A variant on the much more charming Mad Monster Party?, an animated film featuring cute cuddly versions of the Famous Monsters (Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, wolfman etc) with Adam Sandler voicing Dracula
The third of Michel Ocelot’s Kirikou films, delightful tales about the ingenuity and plain-speaking wisdom of a young boy winning out over adult pomposity and foolishness. Animated with a simplicity that is magical
Peter Jackson returns to J.R.R. Tolkien and epic-sized adventure in the first of his Hobbit films. The visual sweep is there but the film feels over-extruded and over-burdened by its own self-importance.
A killer shark film concerning a prehistoric megalodon prowling the waters of a lake. This once had the distinction of being the lowest rated film on the IMDB
The Madagascar series was a cute idea first time around but has been stretched more than its worth by the sequels. Nevertheless, this works at you with a colourful light-heartedness that is hard to resist
Grave Encounters was an unremarkable Found Footage film. This much smarter sequel takes its lead from Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 in being a meta-fiction that investigates the phenomenon of the first film
RZA of rap group Wu-Tang Clan fame (with the aid of Eli Roth and Quentin Tarantino) makes a dual acting/directing appearance with this homage to Shaw Brothers martial arts films … not quite the genuine article but a solid effort where RZA certainly doesn’t embarrass himself
Unique anthology that offers 26 episodes from different directors, each ending with a death. The episodes vary wildly in quality but a sufficient number ignore all good taste and/or travel waaaay across taboo lines
The Dark Knight is a hard act to follow and Christopher Nolan almost does but not quite. The story keeps Batman off-screen for half the film. Tom Hardy’s Bane dominates the show, while Catwoman is surprisingly subdued
The second of 2012’s Snow White films after Mirror Mirror, this turns the fairytale into an epic fantasy. Well produced but ultimately a film that lacks anything unique nor pushes far enough into the dark fantasy it promises to be
The culmination of one of the most ambitious cinematic exercises ever conducted, with Marvel weaving storylines through several films to finally merge here with flawless regard. The characters get far more depth than in all of their previous films
Yet another entry that nobody asked for in a conceptually threadbare series that nobody seems to like … passably better than the last two sequels due to some ok action moves but still empty-headed in terms of ideas
This is a killer shark film that is not taking itself too seriously. In their pursuit for the most absurd monster movie title, The Asylum have managed to get the balance of cheap effects and tongue-in-cheek treatment down near perfectly. The first in a series from The Asylum where each sequel added more heads.
Outpost was a solid and reasonably effective rehashing of the Nazi zombie theme; this was the first of two sequels. The first had a formula that seems difficult to mess up but this does – it’s over half the film before we get zombies after which we get Just the Same As Before and little more