The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
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.
Alfonso Cuaron film set in a near-future afflicted by an epidemic of infertility. Cuaron’s depiction of a dystopian world comes with a richness of casually layered detail that makes for a stark and powerful film
Adaptation of the Alan Moore graphic novel with a script from The Wachowskis. Moore’s repudiation aside, this is a fine and literate work that retells the story of an anarchist trickster and potently politicises it for the era of the George W. Bush.
Highly effective British venture into the Torture Porn fad made not long after the successes of Saw and Hostel. A brutal and harrowing tale about women kept prisoner in the woods that travels to some grim and gore-drenched extremes
One of the last films from William Friedkin, an astonishingly deranged descent into paranoia and madness, featuring an alarming performance from a young, unknown Michael Shannon
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
Winning animated film from Pixar based around the appealingly original idea of vehicles having personalities. The idea is spun out with considerable wit and sophistication. Two sequels followed.
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
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 best copies of The Silence of the Lambs, a British tv mini-series in which police must seek the help of imprisoned serial killer Matthew Kelly, who delivers a great performance in the role
What starts out as a seeming mockumentary about a serial killer turns into an hilarious deconstruction of the tropes and cliches of the slasher film. Imagine a film like Man Bites Dog crossbred with Scream
Anime about two homeless boys living in an inner city neighbourhood. The background artwork has a stunning degree of detail such that the city almost becomes its own character
George Miller of Mad Max fame makes a motion-capture animated film about a young penguin who sets out to fulfill his dream of tap-dancing. This ends up being a film of unexpectedly winning charms
The second of the Japanese Death Note films, released almost back-to-back with the first. This is an even better film than its predecessor, delighting in the twists and turns in the games as Light and his nemesis L outwit each other
Mockumentary that caused outrage at the time in depicting the assassination of then-sitting US President George W. Bush. This does not hold back in some damning political punches
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
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
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
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
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 fable that was a personal project for Tarsem Singh. A film made for the pure beauty of its visuals, Tarsem eschews visual effects and shoots exotic real world locations to create something exquisitely fantastical
An extraordinary Tom Tykwer film starring Ben Whishaw as an 18th Century man who has a hyper-acute sense of smell
The Polish Brothers are a greatly underrated force in US filmmaking. Here they make a fine film with Billy Bob Thornton as an everyday farmer who decides to build and launch his own space rocket
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
A film based around the suicide of tv’s Superman George Reeves, questioning whether it was a murder. The details are discussed in depth without ever arriving at a solution, while the casting adds up to an absorbing mystery
Dazzling French animated Cyberpunk film shot in the performance capture animated process and then rendered in striking two-tone black-and-white
A fine film from The Blair Witch Project co-director Eduardo Sanchez about the tensions among a group of friends who hold a captured alien in their garage that then begins to affect them
Children’s film made with care and attention, written and produced to an adult level, far superior to 95% of the US studio efforts
Film based on a true-life shooting spree in the tiny nowhere New Zealand town of Aramoana
Fascinating and original Taiwanese film about scientists investigating a haunted house and employing various methods to trap the ghosts
Quite magical debut film that showed great promise for director Sean Ellis in its unique premise about a bored supermarket employee on the night shift who appears able to freeze time
Karen Moncrieff directs a strong and powerful drama that tells five stories of the women whose lives are affected by a serial killer. The film has an amazing ensemble cast who deliver sterling performances
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
Uniquely original Japanese horror film adapted from a manga concerning a book that kills anyone whose name is written in it. This has spawned several sequels and an American remake. The show is stolen by the supremely weird Kenichi Matsuyama
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
Another of Guy Maddin’s silent movie pastiches, all shot in a deadpan style throwing together a hilariously convoluted madcap plot involving child detectives, mad scientists and spy capers
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
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
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
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
Conceptually ambitious New Zealand made film set in an alternate history where vampires live alongside humans
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
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
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
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
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
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
Mamoru Hosoda delivers an appealingly sweet anime about a girl who discovers that she has the ability to travel through time. Based on a popular Japanese Young Adult novel
Modestly effective tv mini-series about the crew of a British submarine in the 1980s being taken over by the ghosts from a World War II submarine
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
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
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 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
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
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
Film based on true-life German cannibal Armin Meiwes who met a man online and by mutual agreement killed and ate his body
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
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
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
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
Wes Craven’s Backwoods Brutality classic gets a gore-drenched makeover from Alexandre Aja. One of the better amid the 2000s fad for horror remakes where the original is dragged into the modern day in some interesting ways
TV mini-series that adapts eight Stephen King short stories. As with any anthology, the stories vary in quality but are generally quite reasonable
A film about stupid people that for once actually is funny. This a raucous but often biting satire where Luke Wilson wakes up in the year 2025 to find that the stupid have inherited the future
Bong Joon Ho, the South Korean director of Snowpiercer and Parasite, delivers his own version of a monster movie that certainly comes with a difference
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
The first in a series of Terry Pratchett Discworld adaptations for tv. This makes the odd choice of adapting one of the more complex and darker of Pratchett’s usually comic books but it works fairly well overall
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
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
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
The final film from the great Robert Altman set backstage at a radio variety show as an angel of death wanders through
Charmingly droll film that posits an alternate version of the 1950s where zombies have been domesticated. This has a perfect sense of mood and admirable deadpan playing by all involved
British tv mini-series reminiscent of And Soon the Darkness about an English couple who have their children abducted by sinister strangers while holidaying in France. From the director of Ginger Snaps
French horror film that generates a reasonable level of tension as a couple are attacked in their home by mysterious strangers
John Boorman makes a film where Brendan Gleeson has his life taken over by a doppelganger
Adaptation of the legendary historical romance was considered a box-office flop but emerges as a better film than one expected it would
A likeable and colourful French animated film
A smartly funny monster movie with various people at siege in a bar and under attack by creatures. This takes great delight in puncturing the cliches of the genre. Two sequels followed.
Akira director/creator Katsuhiro Otomo returns with this live-action manga adaptation about a wandering exorcist. Very different to any of Otomo’s anime, this is much quieter and rooted in Japanese folklore but has some undeniably way out scenes
A very black Norwegian comedy in which a man who committed suicide wakes up in an afterlife very much like this world but where everyone suffers from a maddening blandness
Milla Jovovich is a part of a vampire rebel underground in a dystopian future. A film filled with incredible design schemes and action scenes that are as spectacular as they are ridiculously improbable
Timur Bekmambetov’s sequel to Night Watch comes with a much better budget and the same wild visuals, although is slightly the lesser film
Not to be confused with tv’s i>The Vampire Diaries, this is a British film that sets out to reconstruct the lesbian vampire film within the frame of modern LGBT relationships. It is also Found Footage, an early and rather amateurish variant, but not without some effect
Pedro Almodovar film in which two daughters try to deal with their mother’s seeming return from the dead
Likeable animated film about a group of zoo animals making an escape that ended up being overshadowed by the similar, more high-profile Madagascar
Next to Hayao Miyazaki, Michel Ocelot is the greatest animators of all time but one of the least widely recognised. Here he conducts a beautifully made Arabian fairytale
Tough brutal British film where a group of youth offenders are hunted while on a wilderness survival course on an island
Mel Gibson seems to love directing historical spectacles with an emphasis on bloody brutality. Here he creates a bloodthirsty adventure set among the Mayan peoples
This offers the novelty of a Bigfoot film by way of Hitchcock’s Rear Window where wheelchair-ridden witnesses Bigfoot preying on a house of girls. This generates a reasonable degree of tension
Prequel to the 2003 Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, which sets out to tell the origin story of the cannibal family. New director Jonathan Liebesman pushes the gore and sadism to Torture Porn extremes
The first of several animated films based on Marvel Comics properties, this does a solid job in adapting Mark Millar’s The Ultimates, a retelling of The Avengers origin story
György Pálfi directs an anthology mad up of three stories where the emphasis is on dark, gross-out humour
The Asylum’s mockbuster response to the hit of The Exorcism of Emily Rose and actually a far more interesting film. This discovers itself with a go-for-broke trashiness that the horde of Emily Rose imitators balked at
A Hong Kong martial arts film set among the triad wars that is made with an assured blend of turbo-charged and frequently fantastical CGI-assisted action sequences
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
Solid offering from the increasingly underrated Adam Mason that takes more than a few leaves from Hellraiser with a ghostsbusting team investigating occult happenings in an abandoned asylum
Admirably sordid slasher film, an early effort from Chad Ferrin, that quickly gets twisted and comes up with an amusing line-up of lowlifes and an Easter bunny masked killer
Halfway reasonable Stephen King adapted tv mini-series. This has been placed in the directorial hands of King’s worst adapter Mick Garris who at least holds his worst tendencies in check
The first of two animated Hellboy spinoffs with the live-action actors returning to voice their parts. This is the better of the two animated films, developing a weirdness as it takes Hellboy inside a Japanese spirit realm
South Korean anime that is set in a future world where people are obsessed with shit. This comes with a demented energy and a filthy-mindedness that is determined to outrage
The novelty of the first Christian horror film. As opposed to much of the message-heavy tripe that usually gets peddled in this niche market, this is actually well structured with a number of interesting ambiguities and engaging as a story for the better part