The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
This came out the same year as The Prestige and has a very similar plot with Edward Norton as a stage magician in 19th Century who may have real powers and the rivalry over a woman
After the ultra-violent Oldboy, Park Chan-wook puzzled everyone by next making this frothily surreal comedy about a girl in an asylum who believes she is a cyborg
A remake of the 1978 tv movie about occult rituals in a girl’s sorority house. This is a film that feels directed and written without any real involvement by those responsible.
David Lynch’s last theatrical films and probably the most divided of Lynch’s films. Another delve into cryptic surrealism that arrives at no clear plot destinations or clues about what is going on
A modermised retelling of the Jekyll/Hyde story as a teen horror film where Jekyll (Bryan Fisher) is experimenting with Ecstasy to try and have success with girls
The second film from Inuit director Zacharias Kunuk who made Atanarjuat about a Danish anthropologist charting the lives of the Inuit as they are in the process of assimilation by Westerners
A painfully unfunny Lindsay Lohan romcom in which she has good luck and Chris Pine has bad luck and they swap after a kiss. Lohan seems to regard this as an exercise in her adulation
Film based on true-life serial killing couple Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka. This could have been another Monster but it feels like a film that played everything safe in terms of its content
Quite good British tv mini-series psycho-thriller in which calculating Hermione Norris sneaks her way in and takes over the home of Julie Graham stealing her husband and gaslighting her
For all its descent into loopy ideas at times, this is a decidedly interesting M. Night Shyamalan film about myth featuring Bryce Dallas Howard as a water nymph who appears out of an apartment pool
Remake of the South Korean film Il Mare, this is a romantic fantasy where Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock write letters to each other while living in the same house two years apart in time
A strong and effective environmental horror film from Larry Fessenden in which the crew of an Alaskan drilling operation disturb something beneath the frozen ground
The second of The Librarian tv movies featuring Noah Wyle as an Indiana Jones-modelled adventurer in search of mythical artifacts – here a map to King Solomon’s Mines
A British thriller Eddie Redmayne stars in a about a mystery in a boys boarding school involving murder and secrets from history leading to Knights Templar bloodlines
A satiric Claymation animated version of the Manson murders. The film quickly heads for some astonishing bad taste areas, before finding itself in some biting black humour and songs
Set in a nowhere New England town where fisherman Colm Meaney discovers a moss with miracle-healing properties. Sort of a Magical Realist version of The Shipping News
Film based on true-life killers Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez who preyed on victims through the lonely hearts column. Directed by the investigating detective’s grandson.
One of the most conceptually ingenious tv mini-series ever created concerning a quest for objects from a mysterious hotel room that have been imbued with amazing powers.
Sequel to Hallmark’s earlier tv mini-series Merlin featuring a return performance from Sam Neill in the title role, this is otherwise a generic and unmemorable work of Arthurian fantasy
Renee Zellweger stars in a biopic of children’s author Beatrix Potter from Babe director Chris Noonan
For his third outing in the series, Tom Cruise made a smart bet on giving the reins to J.J. Abrams who made his directorial debut and turned in the most enjoyable entry in the series to that point. One of the best moves is in the casting of Philip Seymour Hoffman as the villain of the show
Delightful motion capture animated film about children discovering a neighbourhood house that is alive. Written with refreshingly well-rounded characters and directed with a great sense of comic grotesque
A charming French-made animated film about a genteel singing monster. Nothing profound but this is beautifully animated and sweetly appealing in all the right places
The first film from Jim Mickle, a tense and effective horror work about the residents of an apartment building under siege from rat-human hybrids
Unfunny Ivan Reitman comedy with Luke Wilson being stalked by his psychotic superheorine ex Uma Thurman
Popular family hit with Ben Stiller as a night watchman at New York’s Museum of Natural History who discovers that the exhibits come to life at night. More a cute idea than a full film, there is some fun to the characters and effects
Entry in the 00s zombie revival fad from the early days of The Asylum, this is the most gore-drenched zombie film ever made. Overlooked but a better film than you think
Remake of George Romero’s seminal zombie classic. The 3D is no more than a gimmick, while elsewhere they are some radical changes – a white Ben, a lame explanation for the zombies, some far-too-cute in-jokes – that fails to match the effectiveness of the original
A clearly more commercial film from cult Japanese director Shinya Tsukamoto of Tetsuo: The Iron Man fame. This draws influence from Ring but this lacks much of the obsessive drive of Tsukamoto’s other films
This has an interesting set-up about a woman pursued by a boogeyman figure from her nightmares where others cannot be sure whether she is delusional at the same time as the figure starts eliminating them – but the film’s low-budget gets in the way of adequate treatment
TV mini-series that adapts eight Stephen King short stories. As with any anthology, the stories vary in quality but are generally quite reasonable
The classic 1976 Anti-Christ film is given the remake treatment. The production look slick but quickly disappears into forgettability
Takashi Miike’s One Missed Call was one of the more popular of the Ringu-influenced Japanese ghost stories, concerning a viral curse passed by cellphone calls. This was the second Japanese sequel
Passable animated film from Sony Pictures Animation, although the story arcs too closely resemble every other animated film for it to have much in the way of notability
Film based on a true-life shooting spree in the tiny nowhere New Zealand town of Aramoana
Likeable DreamWorks animated film filled with much slapstick energy about a group of talking animals that venture into a housing estate in search of food
Critically acclaimed Guillermo Del Toro film set during the Spanish Civil War where a young girl finds the entrance to a dark realm. This plays like a very dark version of the Narnia films
A venture inside the dreamscape from anime director Satoshi Kon who creates a beautifully animated work even if some of the ideas become excessively convoluted
This has the feel of a fairytale where Christina Ricci plays a girl who suffers from a hereditary curse that has left her with a pig-like snout
Conceptually ambitious New Zealand made film set in an alternate history where vampires live alongside humans
An extraordinary Tom Tykwer film starring Ben Whishaw as an 18th Century man who has a hyper-acute sense of smell
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
Interestingly different film about zombified children set after a time when childbirth has died out. This generates a reasonable level of tension but arrives at a very confusing end
Film about a sinister small town where the population must always be kept at the title figure. An interestingly strange scenario suffers from far too laidback direction
Troma film that has maybe the silliest movie title ever. This sets out to be so persistently moronic and wilfully offensive that it eventually attains a delirious absurdity
The final film from the great Robert Altman set backstage at a radio variety show as an angel of death wanders through
Christopher Nolan directs a beautiful period piece with Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman as rival Victorian stage magicians. The film is an elegantly crafted Hall of Mirrors and illusions, capped by sterling performances from all involved
Animated film from Denmark about a man who goes on an ultra-violent crusade against the porn industry over the loss of innocence of his young niece
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
Exactly as the title suggests, a mash-up between the zombie film and a Western (albeit relocated to a post-apocalyptic future) – and one that plays itself surprisingly seriously
A True Crime film based on the Hillside Stranglers case, or at least the arrest of one of the killers. From a director who makes True Crime films but throws out the facts and makes up his own story about what happened
BBC tv play adaptation of a short story by John Wyndham that also furnished the earlier film Quest for Love about a man finding himself in an alternate world. Despite this version being more faithful to Wyndham, the earlier film makes the central relationship work better
A film from the Pang Brothers in which a heroine enters into an extraordinarily conceived fantasy world that would appear to be taking place in her own imagination
Dazzling French animated Cyberpunk film shot in the performance capture animated process and then rendered in striking two-tone black-and-white
This should be mandatory viewing after watching The Exorcism of Emily Rose. While that film rewrote the tragedy of Anneliese Michel as a film about possession, this German-made production sets things straight and tells a story about a girl with mental health issues
Kiyoshi Kurosawa attempts to give the J-horrors of Ring and The Grudge a run for their money and creates an intensely haunted film. As with much of Kurosawa’s films, this also comes with a deeply unfathomable plot
Ghost story in which Sarah Michelle Gellar receives a series of mysterious visions as she travels across Texas
One of the fear-fraught films made in the aftermath of 9/11, a tense thriller concerning the detonation of a dirty bomb in L.A. and the panic that descends as one man tries to barricade his home
This starts out as a seeming ghost story without creating much tension then features Tom Sizemore going psycho, before arriving at one of the most confusing of all attempts to conduct an M. Night Shyamalan twist ending
Film based on true-life German cannibal Armin Meiwes who met a man online and by mutual agreement killed and ate his body
TV movie where Jenny McCarthy plays Santa’s daughter who takes over the family business
Third of the Santa Clause films starring Tim Allen as Santa where his reality is upended by the evil Jack Frost
Third of the Saw films and the point where director Darren Lynn Bousman places the series’ focus on grim gore-drenched sadism and torture
Richard Linklater conducts an animated adaptation of the Philip K. Dick novel with extremely faithful results. Keanu Reeves is a police officer assigned to investigate what he realises is himself
Fourth of the Scary Movie films and the usual crude inanity, although under David Zucker the movie parodies have expanded well beyond what can be labelled scary movies any longer
A Michel Gondry film that blurs the line between dream and reality with hilariously offbeat regard. Gondry indulges his eccentricities to the maximum with quite sublime results
One of the more forgettable Woody Allen comedies with Scarlett Johansson as a journalism student who gets tips from the afterlife
Modern slasher film where the sole note of distinction is the wrestler known as Kane cast as the hulking killer. Outside of a moderate level of brutality in the despatches, there is little here that stands out from the genre’s cliches in any way
True Crime mini-series based on the infamous Moors Murders of the 1960s and one that seems determined to conduct the least interesting account of the murders possible
Horror film where escaped convicts wander into a Western ghost town where a gold treasure is guarded by mummies
Rather funny British-made parody on Backwoods Brutality cliches where a work group of a team-building exercise ending up hunted by East European locals
The remake of the old Disney comedy becomes a vehicle for Tim Allen, played with a manic slapstickery wherein Allen demonstrates there are few levels of silliness he will travel to in imitating dog-like behaviours
French Backwoods Brutality film heads in some admirably weird and gross directions but falls apart at the end
A second film from John Cameron Mitchell of Hedwig and the Angry Inch fame where Mitchell sets out to chart different flavours of sexuality in the 00s and does so with sometimes funny, othertimes outrageous effect. Included here for a heroine whose orgasm has the ability to cause power fluctuations
One of the best of all filmed videogame adaptations. Christophe Gans creates a creepy and unworldly atmosphere, along with a series of genuinely outlandish creature effects
Fascinating and original Taiwanese film about scientists investigating a haunted house and employing various methods to trap the ghosts
Big-budget modern Japanese remake of a 1970s disaster movie in which Japan starts to catastrophically sink into the ocean. Despite revisiting the original with CGI spectacle, this is a film in which hardly anything interesting happens
Disappointing remake of Brian De Palma’s 1973 Siamese twins psycho-thriller that changes many elements and crucially lacks De Palma’s stylistic showmanship
An early mockbuster from The Asylum that came out the same day as The Omen remake, this conducts a blatant copy of The Omen on a low-budget
A big-budget revival of the werewolf film set amongst warring werewolf clans of bikers. Produced by Stan Winston and with an interesting cast line-up
A hardcore and irredeemably nasty film, this has the aesthetic of a snuff movie and features lots of scenes of victims tortured and vomiting
James Gunn directs a film about body-snatching alien slugs that proves enormous fun and comes packed to the edges with numerous genre references and homages
Purportedly this was dreamed up by scriptwriters over drinks trying to think of the most ridiculous pitch they could make. The result was advertised as a deliberately bad movie and became a modest hit
The first of The Asylum’s mockbusters intended as a soundalike copy of Snakes on a Plane, this ends up defeated by low-budget and one of the most absurd premises of any film in recent memory
Rapper Snoog Dogg fails badly at branding himself as a horror anthology host, while the stories prove nothing to write home about either
Richard Kelly of Donnie Darko fame makes a work set in a near-future L.A., a sprawling film bursting at the edges with too many characters and subplots but not uninteresting
Before the likes of Defendor, Kick-Ass and Super, there was this, one of the best comedies about superheroes with no powers. The film loves screwing with its audience and comes with a series of mind-bending flips between drug hallucination and subjective view of the superpowers in action
Perhaps the lamest spy movie idea EVER – a children’s film about a spy who goes into action accompanied by a chimpanzee
This comes with the completely nonsensical premise of Countess Bathory having been reincarnated inside a videogame. Needless to say it is one that the film does nothing to make credible or even indicate it has read anything about the historical Countess Bathory
TV movie in which Catherine Bell is a 911 operator who receives calls from a ghostly child
Film adaptation of a popular series of Young Adult books about a teenage spy. Made not long after the Austin Powers films, this seems unable to decide if it is being serious or a parody
Routine psycho-thriller where Mimi Rogers’ home is invaded by psycho babysitter David Orth
Quite reasonable meta-fiction where a surprisingly subdued Will Ferrell discovers he is a character in a novel and tries to rebel against his fate
The original version of Superman II became mired in problems over the firing of director Richard Donner. After the rediscovery of the original footage, Donner was able to go offer up a restored version. Seeing the storylines the way they were meant to be and Marlon Brando’s original scenes as Jor-el make for a work that is superior in every way
Spinoff of the 1990s animated Superman tv series, made as tie in for Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns Some good action, negligible use of the characters unlike the DC Universe Animated Original Movies that began the following year, at best a routine episode of the tv series
This has a bad reputation but Bryan Singer does a wonderful job in bringing Superman back to the screen in a version surprisingly reliant on the Christopher Reeve films. The superheroics soar and Kevin Spacey makes for the best screen Lex Luthor ever
Released before the Tim Burton version, this is a British tv production that offers a grimly realistic, non-musical historical portrait of Sweeney Todd with Ray Winstone in the title role
Hayao Miyazaki’s son Goro more than capably takes up his father’s mantle in a anime beautiful adaptation of one of Ursula K. Le Guin’s later Earthsea books
György Pálfi directs an anthology mad up of three stories where the emphasis is on dark, gross-out humour
The first film featuring DC Comics; Teen Titans, a spinoff from the Teen Titans animated series