The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Andrew Traucki, the director of the standout killer crocodile film Black Water, makes a sequel to his earlier grippingly intense work about people trapped in shark-infested waters
Extremely twisted Japanese film that plays out like a conceptual mix of Saw and Fear Factor (even though it predates either) wherein contestants are locked in a room and get to challenge each other to engage in more and more extreme acts against the other
Following the success of the Hannibal Lecter films, Dino de Laurentiis smartly repackaged Thomas Harris’s earlier novel as a Hannibal Lecter prequel
![[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
![[Rec]3 Genesis (2012) poster](https://moriareviews.com/rongulator/wp-content/uploads/rec-3-genesis-2012-poster.jpg)
Third entry in the Spanish Found Footage series. The Found Footage look is abandoned soon in but this decides to have fun and turns out the gore-drenched goods
![[Rec] 2 (2009) poster](https://moriareviews.com/rongulator/wp-content/uploads/rec-2-2009-poster.jpg)
Lesser sequel to the Spanish Found Footage zombie film [Rec] that repeats the original to variable effect but needlessly breaks up the single camera point-of-view
![[Rec] (2007) poster](https://moriareviews.com/rongulator/wp-content/uploads/rec-2007-poster-3.jpg)
Furious and highly engaging Spanish Found Footage film about the infected dead taking over an apartment building. Three sequels and an English-language remake followed
After their successful revival of Godzilla in the 1990s, Toho revived Mothra for a series of standalone battles, albeit with a very juvenile focus made for children. This was the second and better of the three films
One of the worst among the usually worthwhile Japanese monster movie revivals of the 1990s. Much of the film is played down at an inanely silly children’s movie level, with there only being the requisite mass destruction effects to enliven the show
Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon was intended as a two-part space opera saga. This first half emerged watchably and this is Part Two
Zack Snyder returns with a work that is all but a Star Wars film in name where he draws heavily on the basics of The Seven Samurai/The Magnificent Seven
Ready or Not was a reasonable hit with audiences. Now Samara Weaving and the same creative team are back with a sequel that expands the game and polishes the black humour to a point of perfection
This is The Most Dangerous Game in the setting of an Agatha Christie whodunnit. Samara Weaving marries into a family of privilege only to find her wedding night requires her to engage in a deadly game of Hide and Seek
This was one of the classic 1980s splatter films. Stuart Gordon throws most of H.P. Lovecraft’s tone out the window and goes for hilariously black comedy served up with outrageously over-the-top effects
I had a lot of liking for Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph, a depiction of the inside of a videogame from the viewpoint of the characters. This expands the concept to the internet. Despite being the ultimate product placement film, this also rather appealingly shows Disney poking fun at themselves
Steven Spielberg and George Lucas’s homage to the adventure films of the 1940s was a huge hit in its day, spawning several sequels and many imitators. The film is pure action and adventure, delivered with enormous charm and wit
Misguided attempt to make a sequel to Carrie, this reduces that film’s cry of the downtrodden to petty teen bitcheries, while the psychic eruptions are absurd, the complete antithesis of anything Brian De Palma directed
For some reason, The Exorcist is hugely popular in Bollywood horror – this is the fourth in a series of otherwise unrelated films about possession. The film conducts its borrowings not unentertainingly and is boosted by a script that turns what we think is happening on its head with quite a degree of dexterity
The first A Quiet Place was No 1 on this site’s Best of 2018 list. John Krasinski still pulls off great set-pieces a second time but reveals the pitfalls of trying to extrude a premise to make a sequel
The third in the trilogy of A Quiet Place films, this is a prequel that takes us back to the start of the invasion
An uncommonly effective film that takes place in the aftermath of an invasion by creatures with ultra-sensitive hearing where the survivors must maintain an existence that requires not making the slightest sound. Director (also lead actor) John Krasinski uses the set-up to create unbearable tension
The first of the Quatermass films and the first major genre hit for Hammer Films. Nigel Kneale creates a literate work of science-fiction horror about a returned astronaut mutating after exposure to an alien fungus
The third and in the opinion of many the best of Hammer’s Quatermass films in which Nigel Kneale introduces a conceptually wild array of ideas about Martians, race memory, psychic powers and The Devil
The fourth and final of Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass stores, which shows the professor as an old man in decaying future Britain trying to deal with an alien force manifest through ancient megaliths. A surprisingly bleak and cynical end to the saga but still with the greatness of Kneale’s writing
The second of the Quatermass films. An alien body snatchers tale that suggests even the British government has been infiltrated. This is regarded by many as the best of the series
English-language remake of the Spanish Found Footage film [Rec]. A lesser work but in the hands of John Erick Dowdle one of the few English-language horror remakes that stands up to the original
A sequel to Quarantine, the English-language remake of [Rec]. Abandoning the Found Footage concept, and indeed much continuity, to the other films, this is nothing more than a standard zombie film set inside an airport terminal
One of the more likeable among the 2000s fad for low-budget CGI monster movies, this is aided considerably by a sense of humour and a line-up of oddball characters
The Purge was a routine film that caught on with audiences but the premise lacks the legs to be a franchise – for one, it is based on a future scenario that has zero plausibility. This makes paper-thin stabs in terms of social issues but all interest evaporates when the guns start blazing
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
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
The third of Full Moon’s Puppet Master films, this is a prequel that explores Andre Toulon’s origins in Nazi Germany
The first in a series of killer doll films from Charles Band, which has generated some ten sequels. The original has an undeniable atmosphere
The first of the long-running series of sequels to Full Moon’s Puppetmaster, this is essentially a rerun of the first film
The fourth in Charles Band’s most popular series about a group of malevolent dolls. This turns the dolls into good guys and adds an Ancient Egyptian deity who despatches a Terminator robot against them
The Stan Winston directed Pumpkinhead was one of the genuinely original monster movies of the 1980s. This was the first of several video-released sequels
Makeup effects artist Stan Winston takes the director’s chair and creates one of the truly original monsters of the 1980s. Several sequels followed
This was the first of two sequels to the Wes Craven scripted Pulse, the English language version of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s intensely spooky film about ghosts from the internet
As part of the mid-00s fad for English-language remakes of Japanese horror films, Kiyoshi Kuroawa’s unfathomable but undeniably creepy internet horror is reworked as a standard teen film
From the heyday of the 1980s VHS release, a slasher film with the requisite group of partying teens being stalked by a psychopathic, devil-worshipping police officer
Well worthwhile Psycho sequel directed by Anthony Perkins himself who makes an assured, even at times dazzling debut. The film has a playfulness and outrageousness that quite takes you aback
Psycho did not need a sequel but this does a scrupulous and exacting job, bringing back Anthony Perkins and paying a great deal of homage in many small details. The script comes with a considerable cleverness
One of the defining classics of the genre, enormously influential, muchly imitated and parodied and possibly the most over-analysed film ever. Alfred Hitchcock expertly creates a creepy psycho-thriller in which he delights in lulling us and undermining expectation
The fourth of The Prophecy films about war between angels, the first to be made without Christopher Walken with Sean Pertwee as a detective in Bucharest who is drawn in
An okay sequel to the angel wars film The Prophecy, the first of several. As in the previous film, a returning Christopher Walken steals the show and gets all the best lines
Standout film about angels warring on Earth that dispenses with any cutsie depiction of angels. Several sequels followed.
The third of the Prophecy films with Christopher Walken as the angel Gabriel. This time the wry humour and interplay of ideas of the other films feels more thinly drawn
Ridley Scott’s promised prequel to Alien. The first half creates epic mystery but the answers provided are not nearly as interesting as promised, while the latter half disappointingly settles for doing the Alien standard with decidedly lesser effect
The third of the Prom Night films, a direct follow-on from the second in which Mary Lou becomes a campy Freddy Krueger-like villain firing off bad puns amid her dispatches
Entry amid the 1980s slasher fad featuring Jamie Lee Curtis. A fairly dreary effort that comes with much disco dancing footage
Third in the series about android terrorists, this is now about an amok android on a spaceship
Sequel to the ridiculous Project Shadowchaser, which has another android terrorist this time take over a nuclear power plant
Completely ridiculous mix of The Terminator and Die Hard where, for no clear reason, an android terrorist decides to take hostages in an office building and the FBI’s only hope is a cryogenically unfrozen football player
The seventh film in the Predator franchise. This received some of the best reviews of any film in the series and comes with the unique idea of pitting Native Americans up against a Predator
The third and probably the best of the children’s dinosaur films from Charles Band where the pitiful effects are at least compensated for by an eccentric sense of humour
The second and worst of Albert and Charles Band’s dinosaur films made for children, this suffers from the most pitiful and immobile effects of any film of the era
In the aftermath of the success of Jurassic Park, Albert and Charles Band quickly responded with this children’s dinosaur film that contains some of the most pitiful effects in any film of this era
Despite being hamstrung with Adrien Brody in Action Hero mode, this is a hard-edged film that goes some way to rescue the Predator franchise from its novelty crossovers with Alien(s)
The Predator series continues. Dan Trachtenberg, the director of Prey, makes an animated offering that tells three stories of encounters between human and Predator in different eras of history
The ninth Predator film. This changes the mix quite considerably from the usual alien huntsman vs human prey formula we have had so far. It also offers a return to the Alien universe, although not quite what we expect
Predator was one of the better Alien/Aliens copies of the 1980s. This sequel does little more than serve the same up all over again bar the substitution of a near-future L.A. for the jungle but manages to generate a reasonably intensive ride out of the action
Shane Black, a writer-director with a reasonable cult following, makes the sixth Predator film (he also appeared as an actor in the original). Black shakes the series up, introduces a number of new ideas and makes an okay entry
This takes the previous year’s big hit of Aliens and fuses it with The Most Dangerous Game, swapping that story’s bored aristocratic hunter for an alien hunting Arnold Schwarzenegger and a team of soldiers in the jungles of South America
An appealing bittersweet film based around the improbable premise of a young girl finding what she believes is one of Santa’s reindeer. In a genre that usually deals in sugary sentiment, this has a much more rewarding downbeat realism
Produced by Bloody Disgusting, an anthology from different directors about a series of mysterious alien portals that appear around the world
Sequel to Poltergeist that without Tobe Hopper in the director’s seat is an unimaginative by-the-numbers effort
Debate will always rage as to whether this was directed by Tobe Hooper or executive producer Steven Spielberg. It doesn’t alter the fact that it is a superlative rollercoaster of a ghost story that doesn’t always make sense but pulls its effects off flawlessly
The third of the Poltergeist sequels, which moves the locale to an apartment building and is better than its predecessor thanks to a series of eerie mirror effects
One of the better among the cheap video-released sequels to their animated films Disney released during the 1990s/2000s, this actually works better than the original
Disney bases an animated film on the historical character but warps the story considerably. It feels that this is a Disney animated film made more to adhere to Political Correctness than it is a good one
Third of a trilogy of slasher films where people isolated at a cabin are stalked by a hulking maniac in a barbed wire mask. This mixes the formula of the previous films up in some interesting ways
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
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.
A stunningly allegorical film that falls somewhere between Cube and High-Rise where people are trapped in a prison and forced to fight over food as a banquet table passes down the levels each day, resulting in a society where those at the top claim superiority over those below.
The Platform offered a striking allegory with a prison where a banquet table of food moved down 300 levels each day. This is a sequel
The film that started it all. This takes what could have been a jokey premise and delivers it in bold, exciting stokes. What elevates the film is Rod Serling’s script. filled with embittered soliloquies that become a biting commentary on the human condition, before the film reaches one of the great cinematic twist endings
The second of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry’s unsold Genesis II pilots. While you can see the series had some potential, the plot about the venture to a society where women keep men as slaves has a giggly silliness that feels like a throwback to 50s films like Queen of Outer Space
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
A rare Indian venture into the horror film, this is a haunted house film of modest effect that suddenly becomes a whole lot more watchable when it pulls a major M. Night Shyamalan-esque twist on us
A gripping and particularly well conceived planetary survival story. The film that launched Vin Diesel’s career and he has never been better than as the lethal, tight-lipped serial killer Riddick
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
The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise is revived for a fifth outing. There is a new director in Rob Marshall but bar an energetic comic opening, he never does much that hits the zany heights of the previous entries
After the two last lacklustre entries, the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise starts to recover where the two new directors pull off some spectacular comedy-action sequences that go a long way towards recapturing what the series used to be
The second of the Pirates of the Caribbean films. Johnny Depp and all the principals are back and much of the eccentric humour is present but the action has undergone budget bloat
Third of the Pirates of the Caribbean films and purportedly made without a completed script, this becomes bloated and sprawling
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 Piranha remake. Much the same as before but up one cup size. Well not really, the sequel is more like a joke that was funny the first time that becomes belaboured in the retelling
The film that James Cameron would prefer we forget about. A nominal sequel to Joe Dante’s enjoyable tongue-in-cheek Piranha, this misses that film’s sense of humour and lets the show sink amid absurd effects
Another in the fad for 70s/80s remakes where Alexandre Aja for once captures the spirit of Joe Dante’s 1978 original by planting tongue in cheek and wading in with mind-bogglingly gory enthusiasm
The second film from Joe Dante. Mounted as a quickie copy of Jaws by producer Roger Corman, Dante succeeds in peppering it with a lot of sly jokes and genre in-references
Fourth and final of the Swedish live-action films based on Astrid Lindgren’s child heroine Pippi Longstocking
First of a series of Swedish-made live-action films based on Astrid Lindgren’s anarchic child heroine
Third of the Swedish live-action Pippi Longstocking films and more likeable than the others due to capturing some of Astrid Lindgren’s absurdism
The second of the excruciatingly dull Swedish-made Pippi Longstocking live-action films
Fourth of the Peter Sellers Pink Panther films, this lets all restraints go and becomes completely madcap
Horror anthology featuring four ghost stories from Thai directors. While all the segments vary in approach and style, this is a spooky and above average effort with the real standout being the final segment with an air hostess aboard a plane with a dead body in the midst of a storm
A sequel to The Philadelphia Experiment where Brad Johnson is thrown into an alternate timeline where the Nazis have overtaken the USA
Based on a non-fiction, fringe science book that makes claims that the US Navy conducted experiments that turned a ship invisible during WWII, this spins the idea out into a modest time travel story
Phantasm was a cult hit with its eerie otherworldly dream horrors. It spawned four sequels of which this is probably the last given that Angus Scrimm died earlier this year. The series peaked a couple of films ago and here the regulars pander to a comfortable familiarity without adding anything new to the mix
The third of Don Soscarelli’s Phantasm films reunites many of the regulars and goes some way towards offering explanations for everything