The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Psycho-thriller that should have gotten better notice than it did. Katie Holmes plays an A-student at an Ivy League college who is stalked by a missing ex. Slick and coolly written, before arriving at an effective twist ending
Huge flop comedy for Eddie Murphy in which he plays a nightclub owner on The Moon. There is an almost good SF film hiding inside and depiction of a surprisingly detailed Lunar culture but the unnfunny comedy elements kill it
Documentary about the making of the Alien series (although only covers the first four films). Contains some fascinating behind-the-scenes footage and anecdotes, interviews and cut material
A sequel that has almost no connection to the original and has Mila Kunis as a psychopathic student trying to get into a prestigious criminal profiling course
The second of the live-action Asterix films starring Gerard Depardieu, this is a visual delight that gets the comic-book’s nonsensical visuals down perfectly
Third of the Austin Powers films and the point where the amusements of the other films topples over into a pandering indulgence to Mike Myers’ mugging, which is allowed to overtake the whole show
An action film that sets Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu up as rival assassins. Despite a reasonable budget thrown at it, the film comes strangely without enervation
The second of the animated Barbie films, this casts her as the title character in the popular Brothers Grimm fairytale, which has been considerably embellished. This suffers the glassy plasticity of the early Mainframe films
Another in the interminable softcore Blair Witch parodies with a group of minimally talented and clothed bimbos wandering around the woods and failing to take proceedings seriously
David Twohy, director of Pitch Black, makes a fine subtle, ghost story set aboard a submarine during WWII. At times, this achieves a genuinely haunted atmosphere
A flop comedy based on a Dave Barry novel about various characters trying to obtain a nuclear weapon. Despite a reasonable name cast, this becomes slapstick inanity in director Barry Sonnenfeld’s hands
Tsui Hark takes over the directorial reins of the sequel, filling it with much more fantastical elements, pitting the hero against a mad scientist and his mutant creations in a series of wild martial arts scenes
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
This could be essentially be called Dirty Harry’s retirement. Clint Eastwood directs/stars as an aging detective brought back into the game to track down a serial killer from his past.
This sounds more like a tabloid headline “Elvis and JFK vs a mummy in a retirement home” than it does a film. It is however a work of considerable ingenuity from Phantasm series director Don Coscarelli
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
TV mini-series remake of the Stephen King novel, which restores many aspects of the book not in the 1976 film. Unfortunately, Brian De Palma has been replaced by a tv director who regards it as just another assignment
One of a series of cheap Canadian-made made Sherlock Holmes tv movies featuring a wildly overacting Matt Frewer who makes possibly the worst screen Holmes ever
Studio Ghibli anime in which a girl saves the life of a cat only to be drawn into a world of cats where a cat prince decides she will be his bride
A one idea film about a device that can stop time. In the directorial hands of Star Trek: The Next Generation actor Jonathan Frakes, this is given a juvenile focus where the device serves no more ends than a series of slapstick pratfalls
Another film spun off from a Disneyland attraction, this hardly inspiring effort features a Country and Western band made up of talking bears and follows them as they set out on a reunion tour.
The first sequel to Vincenzo Natali’s fine conceptual puzzlebox film. This expands out on the idea, having a cube that bends through time and space, and has a certain fascination if not as much as the original did
Makeup effects man John Carl Buechler directs a film about a resurrected prospector come to enact vengeance against those seeking his gold claim
Vincenzo Natali’s second film, a cool and superbly disquiet thriller about corporate brainwashing and espionage that comes with a series of Philip K. Dick-ian reality bending twists
A film based on true-life serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer that does a reasonable job in depicting the Dahmer story. This stars a young unknown Jeremy Renner in the title role
Hideo Nakata made the highly influential Ringu but his other films have been uneven. This ghost story is one of his few follow-ups that comes near recapturing the same uncanny mood
From Jaume Balaguero, a film that assembles a decent cast and broods with suggestions of a haunted house and occult conspiracies but never does much to let it pay off
The third of Takashi Miike’s Dead or Alive trilogy. While the previous entries are Yakuza films, this is an action film about androids set in Blade Runner-homaging Cyberpunk future
An experimental film where a camera wanders through an abandoned hotel over which fragments of film footage have been overlaid suggesting a hotel inhabited by ghosts of former residents
Corporate thriller in which Connie Nielsen discovers an underground of snuff S&M. This develops a compulsive hold but its pullback to kneejerk moralism is dissatisfying
Pierce Brosnan’s final outing as James Bond lacks the sharpness of the preceding entries and is hampered by Halle Berry who is given great presence but nothing to do. Despite which this has some of the best action scenes of any Bond film
A TV mini-series based on the popular illustrated books by James Gurney about the discovery of a lost land where dinosaurs have evolved into their own civilisation
Excellent tv movie adaptation of the Jekyll/Hyde story starring John Hannah. This is mounted with exquisite period detail and brings new depths and interpretations of an oft-told tale
Here Nick Willing makes an initially promising film but this becomes a disjointed muddle involving hypnotism, serial killers and occult conspiracy. Not to be confused with the Stephen King adapted film
The first film from Neil Marshall. Essentially a version of Walter Hill’s Southern Comfort but with soldiers being hunted by werewolves instead of Cajuns. Marshall directs with a satisfying ferocity.
Guy Maddin’s reinterpretation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula as a ballet and silent movie is an extraordinarily creative work while remaining far more faithful to the original story than many other film versions do
This conducts the interesting idea of updating Bram Stoker’s book to the present day with Patrick Bergin as Dracula. Ultimately, this suffers from low tv movie horizons
Kevin Costner believes his late wife is trying to communicate with him. Comedy director Tom Shadyac makes his first serious film but it is so respectable and with all the horror element bled out of it as to be dull
Thriller where Sylvester Stallone is a detective who goes into alcoholic rehab after his wife is killed by a serial killer only to realise that the killer is posing as one of the attendees
Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin turn their attentions to revamping the 1950s giant insect film. They bring top-drawer effects to bear but everything else plays to standard formula
Thriller about an abused wife standing up to take the law into her own hands against her husband. This has its credibility shot out by being made as a Jennifer Lopez film who does not seem to want taint the glamour of her image by seeming battered
While Kurt Wimmer’s film with Christian Bale as an enforcer in a dystopian future attained some acclaim when it came out, it feels like it is comprised of a collage of cliches borrowed from every other dystopian film
Thailand’s Pang Brothers proved themselves some of the best horror directors in the world with this eerie film in which a woman starts to see the dead after receiving corneal implants. Several sequels and an English-language remake followed
Internet horror film that rehashes Ring with a haunted website instead of a tv broadcast. This suffers from a muddled concept where it is not at all clear what is happening.
Brian De Palma makes a return to the classic psycho-thrillers where he made his name, shouting virtuoso directorial flourish from the rafters and pulling off an amazingly contrived plot
TV mini-series sequel to Stephen King’s Firestarter that now sees Charlie McGee in her twenties played by Marguerite Moreau. The story feels under-plotted and over-padded
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
A B-budget horror film about an agoraphobic woman who is unable to go over of her apartment who then finds that it is haunted by a ghost
This rehashes the basic set-up of Rosemary’s Baby but with a spin where a couple move into the perfect apartment only to find their neighbours are health obsessed seniors with a sinister agenda
The 26th Japanese Godzilla film, the fourth pitting him against Mechagodzilla. After a slow first hour, the film delivers all the exhilarating mass destruction sequences we expect of it as the monsters go head to head
A South Korean copy of The Silence of the Lambs where detectives find that a serial killer imprisoned in a cell is somehow causing others to continue his trail of killings
The eighth Halloween film. This tries to throw in some novelty by combining Michael Myers with a reality tv show being filmed in his family home but is still the same uninspired thrills of the other sequels
The second of the Harry Potter films and better than its predecessor. Chris Columbus has his tendency to overblown effects more in check but that does leave the film more dependent on J.K. Rowling’s contrived deus ex machina plotting
One thing you don’t associate with Uwe Boll is a concern for social issues. Made in the aftermath of Columbine, this is an early Boll film that is a surprisingly solid attempt to address the scourge of US school shootings
A cheap and tatty horror film set in a haunted asylum that was one of several similar films in the early 2000s that set out to exploit the then newly arrived fad for reality tv
The fifth Hellraiser sequel and the only one among the last four worth watching. It brings back Ashley Laurence but abandons the Cenobites for a fascinating series of reality bending games
Adam Sandler produced film that is a variant on the bodyswap standard in which Rob Schneider and Rachel McAdams switch bodies. Much crass humour ensues in between a good-naturedly all-inclusive message
A new and extremely good adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes story featuring Richard Roxburgh as Holmes. This offers some radical shakeups of the story and characters
One of Disney’s cheaply produced video sequel to their animated film made during the 1990s/2000s. This one actually emerges as superior to the original
Painfully unfunny big screen revival of the 1960s spy tv series. This has been reduced to a series of plotless gags that involve Eddie Murphy and Owen Wilson doing nothing except bickering with each other
This begat an interminable number of tedious sequels. However, the original is a still likeable and appealing animated film about a group of prehistoric talking animals migrating with the onset of an Ice Age
An adaptation of a Philip K. Dick short story in which Gary Sinise plays a man who is dragged away by security accused of being an android replacement that has a bomb implanted inside him
Fascinatingly perverse film directed and written by its star French actress Marina de Van who plays a woman who becomes obsessed with mutilating her own skin
Christopher Nolan’s second film, an English-language remake of a Norwegian thriller. The action is relocated to Alaska and gets the addition of Robin Williams as a serial killer but is far less effective than the original
A highly controversial Gaspar Noe film that is all told in reverse chronological order, depicting the rape of Monica Bellucci and violent revenge by her husband Vincent Cassel
Pitched as a parody of the martial arts moves in The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. In actuality, this is a witless and unfunny comedy that only takes a 1970s martial arts film and dubs it with a laughtrack
This was the second film adaptation of conceptually ingenious Ursula Le Guin novel about a man whose dreams change reality around him whenever he wakes up
The second of the Kirk Cameron Biblical End Times films. On one hand, these are quite competently made B movies; on the other the fundamentalist message is unpalatable
Bland romantic comedy with a miscast Angelina Jolie as a tv newswoman who receives a prophecy of her death and begins to reconsider her life
Utterly insipid family film about an orphan kid who is given a magical set of sneakers that turn him into a basketball star who is “like Mike [Jordan].” Little more than a glorified commercial for the NBA
Likeable Disney animated film about a young misfit Hawaiian girl who befriends an unruly alien creature. This has a good deal of oddball energy and humour that makes it rather appealing
This is a modest British horror film about a group of students that accidentally summon a djinn during a seance that proceeds to possess one of the group and kill all the others present
Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings saga truly gains its feet here, expanding out onto an epic scale where he has fused special effects and story into a singular vision
Fascinating documentary about the making of Terry Gilliam’s never completed The Man Who Killed Don Quixote and how everything fell apart due an extraordinary run of bad luck
A Finnish art project that consists of five episodes that subjectively depict stories of women with mental illness with strikingly surreal effect
Effective and unusual French film in which four prisoners in a jail cell discover an occult tome in the walls and start reading its spells thinking it can offer a means of escape
Hardly anyone remembers Dana Carvey, Mike Myers’ co-star in Wayne’s World. This was Carvey’s attempt to copy the Austin Powers films and is regarded as a bad movie
Film about a monster hunter from the 1940s thawed out in the present-day. This appears to have been made as a tv pilot
Almost unclassifiable work from Lucky McKee that plays out as a gonzo love and rejection story featuring an alienated Angela Bettis before an end that tips over into horror
Sequel that turns a witty original into overblown slapstick that never consists of anything more than absurd gags with aliens and technology popping up from behind everyday objects
Satiric Argentinean animated film about a Martian stranded on Earth
Steven Spielberg takes on Philip K. Dick in a much grittier film than he usually makes. In the strong and intelligent script, Tom Cruise is an officer on a police force that predicts crime before it happens only to then be hunted by his own side
Genuinely creepy film supposedly based on a true story in which Richard Gere investigates a phenomenon known as the Mothman and starts to receive visions, time blurrings and much in the way of uncanny happenings. A film that leaves you with a sense of something unearthly happening just beyond your grasp
Thriller with Sandra Bullock as a burned-out detective investigating two teenagers who have decided to commit a murder as an experiment in amorality
One of the best of several horror films that came out immediately following the advent of the reality tv show in the early 2000s. Director Marc Evans creates a sense of clammy claustrophobia.
Gimmicky B-budget film about a hi-tech future prison built at the South Pole. Thus has been thrown together with a giant snake amok plot. A passably routine effort
Film supposedly based on true-life serial killer Richard Ramirez who was nicknamed the Night Stalker. This tosses out the facts in favour of its own fictionalised story
Robin Williams gives a creepy performance as a one hour photo employee with stalkery tendencies who becomes obsessed with a family
Sharp and original script from Larry Cohen in which Colin Farrell is trapped inside a phone booth by a sniper. Good story that even the awful Joel Schumacher in the director’s seat doesn’t screw up too badly
Film adaptation of the third of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, this reduces Lestat to no more than a posturing teenage bad boy and Rice’s languidly romanticised vampires to a laughably pretentious Goth music video
The rarity of a Bollywood horror film. This blatantly steals the plot of What Lies Beneath but spins it through the Bollywood formula with the addition of songs and much implied sensuality to create something unique
Following the success of the Hannibal Lecter films, Dino de Laurentiis smartly repackaged Thomas Harris’s earlier novel as a Hannibal Lecter prequel
Australian vampire action that feels like a single pose that has been inspired by too many watchings of The Matrix
This has the interestingly original premise of being set in a post-apocalyptic world where revived dragons have eliminated most of humanity. The show is stolen by Matthew McConaughey in wild man mode
Comedy released under the National Lampoon banner in which a nerdy student accidentally creates a clone of his object of desire. This feels like a mash-up between Weird Science and a frat rat comedy
Based on the survival horror videogame, this was the first in a surprisingly popular series of films. It also presaged a major return of the zombie film during the 2000s/10s, even if this only treads where George Romero went better before
Among the cheap video-released sequels to their classics Disney made during the 00s, this Peter Pan sequel emerges as halfway reasonable
Japanese SF film that makes a rather enjoyable magpie collage out of a Terminator time travel action plot married to John Woo and Matrix action stylistics
Alex Cox, director of the cult Repo Man , was once a name of some promise but he has instead spent more than two decades making increasingly obscure and amateurish films. His adaptation of a Jacobean revenge drama into a near-future setting improves this none despite a great cast line-up
This is the English-language version of the Japanese horror Ring and actually a much better and far spookier film, where the new script gives the story more depth