The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Another of the spy parodies that emerged following Austin Powers. Frankie Muniz is a high school teenager who is recruited as a spy. This proves a mildly amusing set-up that is delivered with surprisingly little wit
Film about a mysterious alien artifact unearthed in the Antarctic that falls apart due to a script that is constantly jumping all over the place and spending more time homaging other science-fiction films
A far less effective sequel to the hit German medical thriller that neglects both the tortuous suspense and grisly horror that made the first film into a stand out
Stunning tv mini-series adaptation of Tony Kushner’s award-winning play about the impact of the AIDS crisis on gay culture in the 1980s, which becomes a surreal fantasy filled with appearances of angels and ghosts
To accompany their two Matrix sequels, The Wackowskis hired seven anime directors to each make a short film set in The Matrix universe. The results are often quite remarkable
An action film that takes place in a single room. A samurai is invited to dine by a mysterious host who reveals he is an immortal monster and believes they have been destined to fight
Another shabby Disney video-released sequel, in this case to Atlantis the Lost Empire. The result looks like three episodes of an unsold tv series slapped together to sell as a film
The third animated film based on the popular girl’s doll Barbie. This places Barbie into Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake in an okay telling, if one that suffers from the usual limited animation of Mainframe’s early films
One of the better films spun off from the 1990s animated Batman tv series, introducing the character of Batwoman (although a different one to the comic-book incarnation).
This was the sequel to Battle Royale and ups the scale of the conflict but somewhere loses the gleeful fun of the original and strays off to become a war film
Japanese film clearly inspired by Battle Royale that has a wonderfully appealing premise where a high school baseball game that has been turned into a deathsport
Mini-series that reconstructs the old Battlestar Galactica into smart and intelligent SF with strong characters, a gritty realism and sensational effects. A tv series followed and became one of the best SF shows of the 2000s
Perhaps the strangest film on Chuck Norris’s cv – the film where Chuck plays an angel. A work of Christian horror where Chuck’s son Mike plays a decent man trapped in a sinister Western town of devil worshipping children
The second sequel to the cult splatter hit Re-Animator is a superior effort to its predecessor, getting the original’s sense of black humour down pat and arriving at a memorably apocalyptic climax
A modestly successful Bollywood horror film that becomes a copy of The Exorcist but does generate a reasonable degree of atmosphere
Tim Burton film where Albert Finney plays a habitual teller of tall tales whose son sets out to find the truth. Burton’s characteristic quirkiness seems buried by such a blandness you suspect he has been replaced by a clone of Ron Howard
Christian film in which insurance agent Wil Wheaton receives the title book containing the dates on which people are going to die and uses it to make his quotas
British true crime tv drama based on the George Joseph Smith who in the early years of the 20th Century would marry women, get them to sign life insurance policies and then drown them in the bath
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
Vincent Gallo’s muchly ridiculed directorial effort is an unbelievably indulgent film consisting of long, tedium-inducing scenes where nothing happens. It does arrive at a a surprise left field ending that travels into genre territory
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
Painfully derivative US-made attempt to jump aboard the popularity of Wu Xia following The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. There are talented people involved who should have known better
Adaptation of the Dr Seuss book made following the success of Ron Howard’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas. The book is dragged down into noisy slapstick chaos, capped by a badly unrestrained Mike Myers as The Cat
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
An incredibly bad monster movie supposedly based around the Latin American urban legend of the Chupacabra. So cheaply made it can’t even afford CGI
A standout Michael Winterbottom film set in a fascinatingly detailed and well conceived future dominated by genetic laws where Tim Robbins and Samantha Morton conduct an illicit affair
Mike Figgis, the director of Leaving Las Vegas, visits the Backwoods Brutality genre in this Southern Gothic, but despite a top drawer cast, this never does more than stir lukewarm cliches
Drama with standout performances. William H. Macy is a loser with perpetual bad luck who is employed by Las Vegas casinos to cool tables that have a winning streak – only for his luck to change when he meets a woman
A CGI disaster film about a journey to the centre of the Earth to restart the magnetic core. This is a film construed as no more than a series of spectacular self-contained disaster set-pieces, often irrespective of any of them making sense
Another of the surreal films from Guy Maddin, involving incest, strange love triangles and transplanted hands, all shot of which has been shot as a silent movie
Luc Besson scripted sequel to the serial killer thriller The Crimson Rivers. However, in director Olivier Dahan’s hands, this emerges as a empty-headed series of shock images and random action scenes
One of the early efforts among the surge of Marvel Comics adaptations on the big screen in the early 2000s. A disappointing adaptation that feels more like a series of posed comic-book panels than it ever does a movie
Formulaic horror film about an avenging supernatural hag known as the Tooth Fairy. Much of the premise is borrowed from A Nightmare on Elm Street
This starts out seeming like a Backroads Brutality film with an innocent family being attacked after taking a side road detour, only to end in increasingly stranger supernatural territory
Oddball psycho-thriller from low-budget director Ron Ford about a series of killings and games of suspicion occurring in and around an off-season bed and breakfast
TV movie prequel to the Stephen King tv mini-series Rose Red that tells the story of the building of the house. A lesser work but not without moments of interest
Softcore all-girl take on the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde story concerning a formula that brings out repressed sexuality. The expected tumblings are handled with an arty flair that makes for an undeniably interesting watch
A modernised version of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray where a male model transfers his image to a photograph that ages while he remains immortal
The first of two sequels to Dracula 2000. This is based around the idea of trying to scientifically examine a vampire’s body, sort of a vampire film by way of CSI
Lawrence Kasdan directs an adaptation of the Stephen King novel about a group of men on a weekend get together in the woods who find themselves in the midst of an alien invasion
Beautifully made and written Hallmark tv mini-series directed by Steve Barron that brings to life a variety of different Native American myths and legends
Gus Van Sant makes a film about the high school shooting phenomenon, although has almost nothing to say about it. Where the film does mesmerise is in Van Sant’s seemingly naturalistic style and non-linear narrative.
Jon Favreau directed Christmas film premised entirely around the premise of 6’3″ Will Ferrell as an ungainly Christmas elf. The film works entirely to the extent one has a tolerance for Ferrell’s screen presence.
Most classic monsters have undergone an adult movie interpretation at some point – here it is the turn of The Invisible Man
Comedy directed by Chris Matheson, co-writer of the Bill and Ted films, about two not very bright alien invaders. Imagine Dumb and Dumber meets Earth Girls Are Easy. A film that is wilfully silly
The first of the sequels, this has a group receiving bizarre deaths after receiving a premonition that prevents a deadly pile-up on the highway. It reveals the problems of creating a sequel to a film that was never intended to be a series
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
An unabashed delight among the Pixar films about a fish parent on a quest to find his missing son. This comes with an extraordinarily vibrant palette of colours and a line-up of winningly eccentric characters
Enjoyable remake of the 1970s Disney comedy about a mother and daughter who swap bodies. Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan nail the swapped roles to perfection
The long promised crossover between the Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street films, this seems caught in a juggling act that fails to satisfy the requirements of either franchise
A film based on true-life serial killer John Wayne Gacy. This adheres to the facts for the most part but is also one of the dullest of the mid-00s spate of serial killer biopics
Made not long after The Da Vinci Code was huge, a similar archaeological mystery centred around an amnesiac Christina Ricci and a sinister buried church dating back to The Crucifixion
An infuriatingly inane film about a boy discovering that all dogs can talk and are alien visitors from Jim Henson Pictures. No sooner is the dog talking that it is tossing off smartass one-liners
Halle Berry is a psychiatrist who comes around to find she has been incarcerated in her own asylum only to then find it is haunted. An improbably contrived set up with some jumps
The modern cinematic madman Takashi Miike makes a uniquely original work that starts out like a Yazkuza film, before taking a turn into the completely surreal and arriving at an admirably twisted ending
A really good, unrecognised early Found Footage film, supposedly a series of videotapes that chronicle the activities of a serial killer. A film that takes us inside an incredibly disturbed headspace
Lightweight film based around the Disney theme park attraction that becomes a Eddie Murphy comedy where he and his family enter a big old mansion that proves to be haunted
Made following the international success of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Zhang Yimou makes an exquisite Wu Xia fantasy that is an even superior film, filled with visually stunning set-pieces and costuming
The film that made the world take notice of Alexandre Aja. Aja serves up a brutal and gore-drenched variant on the Backwoods Brutality film, although things fall apart in an absurd twist ending
The Hitcher was a classic of 1980s horror. This is a cheap and indifferently made sequel that brings back C. Thomas Howell but misses all of the seat-edge suspense of the original
Rob Zombie’s debut film was propelled into an infamy it didn’t deserve it was banned by its distributor. Zombie only slavishly rehashes The Texas Chain Saw Massacre with a constant posturing for shock effect that becomes tiresome
The first of Uwe Boll’s videogame adaptations and the beginning of his bad director reputation. This is a zombie film by the numbers but it was at the forefront of zombie film revival of the 2000s
An early entry among the pre-MCU surge of Marvel Comics films in the early 2000s sees Ang Lee taking on The Incredible Hulk. Not Lee’s best film, this was slighted at the time but is worth reconsideration
John Cusack leads a star cast line-up in what appears to be a slasher where a group of people gathered at a motel are being killed by someone among their number. Big conceptual twists then ensue
Jane Campion makes one of the best post-Basic Instinct erotic thrillers with Meg Ryan as a teacher in New York caught between erotic awakening and a lurking killer
A video-released sequel to the live-action Matthew Broderick film starring French Stewart. This is played as much more of a cartoon and amped to a maximum level of slapstick inanity
Dance music duo Daft Punk collaborate with anime directors to create an animated space opera based on their album Discovery about an intergalactic rock band and their fight to save the galaxy
A South Korean entry in the fad for Asian ghost stories that were popular in the 2000s following the successes of Ring and Ju-on/The Grudge. This later underwent remake as Alexandre Aja’s Mirrors
An SF outing from Thomas Vinterberg that proved a flop with audiences. It is never satisfying as an SF film but you cannot deny it is directed with a beautiful and sophisticated cool that draws you inside it
This was Victor Salva’s first sequel to his hit Jeepers Creepers. This is an intensely uncanny and much superior work to the first that heads into outlandish places
Spy movie parody with Rowan Atkinson as an inept agent who is constantly tripping over his own feet. It is Austin Powers reconceived as a Mr Bean film but offering little that is funny.
Unsettlingly spooky Japanese ghost story from Takashi Shimizu that spawned a number of sequels, reboots and English-language remakes. This was the third of the films and superior to all that came after
Takashi Shimizu’s follow-up to the international hit of Ju-on: The Grudge. These Ju-on films become repetitive after a time but you cannot deny that Shimizu delivers the spooky goods here
From the late 90s/early 00s period where Disney were churning out cheap sequels to their animated classics of yesteryear, a wholly unnecessary continuation of The Jungle Book
This is the Bollywood version of E.T.. That is if one can imagine an E.T. with singing, dancing and romantic scenes. A simplistic but popular hit that spawned several sequels
The first Tomb Raider film was empty-headed but a hit but the series was then killed off by this sequel. Angelina Jolie’s performance is detached from human emotion and the action sequences ludicrous
British effort from the early days of the Found Footage film that reminds of Man Bites Dog with a serial killer demonstrating his techniques to a videographer
The much hated adaptation of the Alan Moore graphic novels. It is undeniable fun watching the crossover between various fictional Victorian characters, while the production design is amazing
A New Zealand-made horror film in which two friends find themselves trapped in a small rural town where the dead keep returning to life
Joe Dante makes a toon film winding in dozens of cameos from Warner Brothers cartoon characters. The results prove enormously playful and creative. Infinitely more creative and fun that the Space Jam films
The weakest of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films. This is the most variant from the source material and the one where Jackson allows his tendency to visual effects bloat to take over
This could be Lars and the Real Girl the horror version where a sex doll comes to life (maybe?) and makes Desmond Harrington’s life a misery. A film that becomes quite twisted
The first of the sequels to The Matrix inevitably disappointed on the massive build-up. The Wachowskis leave more questions than answers, while the new action scenes are often jaw-dropping they also feel boiler-plated on
Third of The Matrix sequels and the weakest of the series. This offers one showstopping effects sequence, on the other hand it also leaves a host of unanswered questions dangling
Flop Jackie Chan film that tries to recapture some of his Hong Kong heyday with Jackie in a quest for a boy and medallion with magical powers
Early film from Bong Joon-ho, a true crime work about the investigation into a rural Korean serial killer
Ron Howard makes a Western that has some horror overtones featuring an evil Indian sorcerer. In the hands of a classic director like John Ford this could have been an epic work but Howard’s plodding predictability kills interest
Patty Jenkins and Charlize Theron combine forces on their portrait of female serial killer Aileen Wuornos. The result won Theron, who undergoes an amazing transformation, an Academy Award for Best Actress
Video-released compilation of above average horror short films all set around the titular website
Indian film set in a future where female infanticide has become so widespread there are no longer any women. A fundamentally implausible idea is treated with some conviction
Wrongly referred to as an adaptation of the original Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, this South Korean Cyberpunk film does homage many aspects of Blade Runner
Frustratingly enigmatic film where student Carly Pope is drawn into a game of mysterious clues where people are being killed
The Polish Brothers, two of the most underrated creative teams in the US today, make a rather puzzling film about angels that feels like muted Coen Brothers. The film is cool, measured, has often striking imagery but leaves you scratching your head trying to figure out what it is about
Quirky and wittily clever film from Vincenzo Natali, director of Cube, where two characters wish themselves into a blank white void filled with literally nothing
Thriller where Madeleine Stowe’s daughter is abducted by a blood drinking cult while on a road trip
Electrifyingly ultra-violent film from Park Chan-wook who ably borrows from Takashi Miike. The film equally becomes a conceptual twister as the protagonist is forced to go on a reality-bending quest through his own life.
Cult director Takashi Miike jumps aboard the J-horror fad of the 2000s and makes a Ringu copy that substitutes haunted videos for haunted cellphone calls. Two sequels and an English-language remake followed
A true story about a couple on a diving expedition who are accidentally stranded in a sea of sharks. A minimalist film, shot almost completely at sea, that works up incredibly raw tension
New Zealand made film about a woman who falls under the influence of a sinister stranger who plies her with drugs
This Philip K. Dick adaptation has a great premise – Ben Affleck is an engineer with a blanked memory blanked only to find he has left himself clues from the future of things that are starting to come true. Alas, this is reduced to an action vehicle in the hands of John Woo