The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
A comedy involving murder and ghosts set in London’s Little India. An exceedingly lightweight comedy that never does anything unexpected with its material
A puppet film about a satiric Nazi invasion of England in World War II. Imagine It Happened Here by way of Team America. This has its amusements but is uneven
This is an adaptation of the DC comic-book character of a supernatural avenging Western gunslinger that fails to burn with the grim mood it should have
Produced by Guillermo Del Toro, this Spanish film is an extremely good work about a blind woman stalked by a killer, featuring a script of sharp twists and grippingly suspenseful directorial set-pieces
A demented Jeffrey Lau comedy that seems to have no limits on how silly it is willing to be, while parodying just about every other film made around the same time
Second of the Bruce Timm animated films based on DC’s Justice League, this has been construed as a Mirror Universe take that pits the Justice League up against villainous versions of themselves
Gregg Araki film that centres around sexually conflicted university student Thomas Dekker and his various liaisons amid witches, a doomsday weapon, cults and premonitions
One of several films around the same time about wannabes without powers playing at being superheroes. Matthew Vaughn delivers a film that falls between witty deflation of and a celebration of nerdy fantasy
Spanish home invasion thriller that comes with a moderate degree of brutality and tension but ultimately feels more like a set of choices in a survival horror videogame than an engaging thriller
Disappointing adaptation of a classic noir novel where neither Michael Winterbottom nor a blank Casey Affleck do much to get inside the noirish mood or the troubled central character of a psychopathic sheriff’s deputy
Czech puppet fantasy about a toy’s journey through a forest filled with a bizarre menagerie of creatures that are both cutely affecting and sinisterly threatening in the Maurice Sendak vein
Whether we asked for it or not, director Bruce LaBruce gives us the world’s first gay pornographic zombie film in which a zombie finds it can revive the dead by having sex with them
Live-action film adaptation of the popular animated tv series, this was widely seen as a disaster for M. Night Shyamalan. I am one of the few that liked the film for Shyamalan’s superbly designed world
An exorcism film made Found Footage-style with Patrick Fabian as a conman exorcist. This is constantly confounding everything one expects of the genre with considerable cleverness
Seven people wake up in a deserted London with no memory of who they are only to find that something is stalking them. An intriguing hook let down by a tired and overused ending
Zack Snyder makes an exquisite motion-capture animated film for adults about talking owls. This has a story that comes with a sweeping mythic arc
An absurd film where angels conduct a war on Earth, which comes amid much in the way of gunfire and creature effects. Directed by a former visual effects supervisor.
Surprisingly good English-language remake of Let the Right One In, the first release from the revived Hammer Films. It is extremely faithful to the original, while also recreating it with some subtlety
Documentary about the making of Dark Star, depicting its’ journey from student film to cult film. The only disappointment is the absence of key players John Carpenter and Dan O’Bannon
This feels like a remake of the Roger Corman post-holocaust cavemen cheapie Teenage Caveman. It cannot escape that at heart it is never more than a B movie about caveman fighting mutants
British director Adam Mason has been a rising name of note in recent years. Here he makes a Jekyll and Hyde story with Andrew Howard as a mild-mannered man at war with his own evil half
A documentary about the US exploitation film industry in the Philippines in the 1970s filled with mind-boggling anecdotes that uncover a wild west of unregulated filmmaking
If you could take it seriously, Mega Piranha would be a strong contender for a bad movie; however, its awareness of its own absurd shortcomings becomes its saving grace. The sight of giant piranha skipping down rivers and impaling themselves in the sides of buildings has an appealing delirium
The first sequel to The Asylum’s Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus and marginally a better film. This is less sparing with the cheap effects, while in every other regard it plants tongue-in-cheek and tries to make a virtue out of the sheer ridiculousness of the action
DreamWorks animated film about a super-villain that might have worked better had its thunder not been stolen by the far superior Despicable Me a few months earlier
In his last ever produced screenplay, cult director Larry Cohen turns in a wonderfully playful script with Matthew Lillard as a screenwriting lecturer harassed by a killer only to find real-life doesn’t obey the same rules that screenplays do
Wildly experimental South Korean adaptation of the Kafka story about a man turning into an insect – a film shot entirely by the director in bed with the camera pointed at his feet
A sequel to Alexandre Aja’s Mirrors that abandons most of the basics of the first film and strips everything down to a series of gory, novelty deaths
Another low-budget monster movie for the Syfy Channel. Between Sean Patrick Flanery’s unconvincing adventurer hero and the filmmaker’s failure to even vaguely approximate what Mongolia or its locals look like, this quickly slides down into a tatty, indifferently made copy of Tremors
Cloverfield by way of Stalker – a unique and original film about zones on Earth overrun by alien creatures. Director Gareth Edwards creates his own effects that far surpass many big budget efforts
Australian exploitation homage that is like a collision between Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! and a monster movie. Low-budget but this has an authentic recapturing of the spirit of trash cinema
This has almost nothing in common with the 1980 film it is supposedly based on. Instead we get a home invasion film where Darren Lynn Bousman of Saw sequel fame shows that constant scenes of brutality and torture are all that he has in his arsenal
The gonzo Japanese splatter film is one of the insanely demented corners of genre cinema today. This is a prime example, filled with mind-bogglingly perverse anatomical rearrangements and attachments, the screen is awash with blood and everything directed with a mad cartoonish energy
A misfire from the usually reliable Wes Craven, this drearily traipses through a slasher/supernatural plot that lacks any surprises or Craven’s characteristic atmosphere
I never much cared for Nanny McPhee. This is a sequel that replicates the original in fairly much the same amount mix of plot elements, slapstick sequences and nonsensical absurdism
German low-budget film about a resurrected sorcerer, this goes out on a wild edge, winds everything up to 15 on the dial and positively wades in blood, gore and torture scenes
This has a similar scenario to Michael Bay’s The Island but also at 180 degree remove – where Bay was loud and bludgeoning, this approaches the idea as a subtle British childhood pastoral
The second of the Twilight films where the moderately grounded original is blown up into the near laughable with the ridiculously over-the-top hyper-sexualised posturing of its male leads
Clever concept of five people trapped in an elevator where one of them is The Devil. One of the better films to come out under the much debased name of M. Night Shyamalan who lends his name as producer
Yet another in the fad for 19870s/0s horror remakes, a merely efficient revival that reduces the wild, outré scares of Wes Craven’s original to conveyor belt shocks
A low-budget film served by some witty fanboy humour, decent fight choreography and unexpectedly good acting
Film in the faux grindhouse style created by Tarantino and Rodriguez made as homage to the so-called nunsploitation genre. While operating on a low-budget, this has a great pulp energy that delivers in aces on all three title promises
Lush Magical Realist adaptation of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez book about demonic possession that takes the view that it is no more than Church superstition
Absolutely fascinating Irish-Scottish film about people hunting each other with arcane sorceries on a rundown Edinburgh council estate … Compulsively fascinating in its often enigmatic approach, while depicting magic on screen in a way unlike anything we have seen before
This necessarily lacks the surprise effect of the first film but still captures some of the same eerie dread anticipation as spooky things begin happening
Chris Columbus seeks to emulate the success of the Harry Potter films with this adaptation of a Young Adult series about the children of Greek gods. The film falls apart due to Columbus’s typical banal cues and effects overkill
Passable amateur-made superhero film clearly inspired by DC’s The Flash. While the film is written with some at times snappy dialogue and has two good lead actors, it suffers from spotty digital effects
A Backwoods Brutality entry from the increasingly underrated Adam Mason where the entire film has been shot in a single take. Often brutal but much of the film seems monotonous with indulgent improvised performances allowed to dominate the show
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
Animated adaptation of the one of the biggest Marvel Comics event storylines of the 2000s – the same one also used in Thor Ragnarok. Essentially Spartacus recast with The Incredible Hulk
Anime that has clearly been modelled along the lines of Neon Genesis Evangelion Initially, the animation is conducted with a dazzlingly realistic textured look but once the giant robot action scenes take over, these seem increasingly absurd in their anthropomorphism
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)
Ghost story that does an excellent job in creating an incredibly haunted and unusual atmosphere. On the other hand, the film falls apart during the second half where it heads in another direction altogether and leaves one entirely unclear what is going on
Adaptation of the popular videogame that ventures into Arabian Nights adventure, this was a box-office flop. It swashbuckles entertainingly but Jake Gyllenhaal feels badly miscast as a buffed adventure hero
Thriller with a heroine working in an abandoned hospital amid sinister happenings that draws substantially on the fine Danish film Nightwatch. Does an okay if familiar job making us constantly doubt everything that happens before arriving at an ending that only confuses
A film overstuffed with mad ideas and genre cameos about psychic experiments that have unleashed a series of other-dimensional entities
Another cheap Syfy Channel end of the world film. So cheap that the catastrophe mostly ends up being talked about rather than depicted, while the rest of the show runs by disaster movie cliches
Billed as Israel’s first horror film, this is more a dark and violent film that delights in taking a crosscut of characters and mercilessly putting the screws on them
A Finnish film that comes as appealing anathema to the rosy sentiments of most Christmas films – more like a monster movie where Santa is a monster that punishes bad children
Syfy Channel film that seems to offer the intriguing premise of a Modernised Little Red Riding Hood but only deals with this in the vaguest ways. Otherwise this is a standard werewolf film and contains maybe the crappiest CGI wolf transformation scenes ever
A disturbingly effective film that starts as a character study of people on the edge before eventually segueing into a savage revenge drama. The film astonishes you with its bared rawness, its uniquely condensed narrative and eventually the harrowing brutality of its ending
Gripping Australian survival horror film about a shipwrecked party who have to make a twelve mile swim through shark-infested waters
Chinese-made Wu Xia film – sort of a flying swordsman variant on A History of Violence. This comes on an impressive scale but also plays down the action element and leaves all the flying swordsman moves sitting on the fence as being possibly mundane
Groundhog Day with drug addicts – a familiar timeloop scenario that makes for a reasonable story about redemption and reconciliation
SF film set in a future where agents are sent to repossess artificial organs when the owner’s fall behind on payments. Sort of Sicko by way of Logan’s Run but lacking the necessary sense of black humour to work
Four films in and clear evidence that the Resident Evil series needs to be retired. This consists of tediously borrowed action moves now presented in 3D and a plot of random dead ends that make little sense
The second tv mini-series of Philip Jose Farmer’s classic SF novels trashes the books just as badly as the first attempt. The premise and characters are indifferently rewritten, while the show is churned out by a director with a tatty indifference to what he is making
Australian film that takes a big bite out of Duel with a group of people being pursued through the Outback by a truck-trailer that appears to be fueled by human blood
The best killer car tire film ever – a monster movie spoof wound in so many layers of meta-fiction that it is positively side-splitting. The smartest and funniest monster movie in ages
This comes with one of the great exploitation titles of all time. Despite the enormously entertaining possibilities inherent in the premise, the film misses all of them and falls down into complete amateurism within moments
Supposedly the final chapter of the Saw saga – where the sole novelty on offer is gore and body parts coming out the screen in 3D. This is conducted with a tired lack of effort that makes for tedium-inducing watching
An Edgar Wright directed comic-book adaptation made in a bewildering restless visual style that feels like two different films happening at once, one a sweet nerd romance and the other a completely gonzo superhero film
A gay version of Don’t Look Now – a film that takes forever to go anywhere and fails to wind its twists up to anything interesting
Horror film about a soldier returned home from conflict strangely ‘changed’ reminiscent of the classic Dead of Night. From the director of August Underground films.
Possibly the most extreme film ever made, a venture into the underground of Serbain snuff filmmaking. A film that holds back from breaking no taboo and ventures into exceedingly disturbing places
Cheap mockbuster from The Asylum that was designed to exploit the success of the flop Prince of Persia. While ostensibly a Sinbad film, this confusingly abandons the Arabian Nights milieu and is set contemporary where Sinbad is not sailor but a corporate CEO stranded on a desert island
A low-budget vampire film that at least tries to be original. Has a worthwhile leading lady and a chase plot that keeps it going past some of its amateurishness, but in the end it never quite goes far enough
Amid the fad for deliberately absurd killer shark films viz Sharknado, this surely takes the prize for ridiculousness of conception and delivery – a hybrid creature with the head of a shark and the tentacles of an octopus. I defy you not to burst into laughter at some of the scenes (*)
This starts out was as a film about multiple personality disorder with several scenes that catch your attention before it drifts into a muddle of confused supernatural themes
The fourth of the Shrek films. By this point, the freshness and originality of the first film has been buried under animated film formula, while the plot is a tired rehash of It’s a Wonderful Life
A piece of filler horror that is utterly generic in every respect about travelers entering a sinister East European village where the locals are up to no good
Martin Scorsese and an impressive A-list cast make a 1940s-styled psycho-thriller about a sinister asylum that soon starts into a series of major reality bending turns
Based on Ray Kurzweil’s non-fiction book about the coming evolution of machine intelligence, this is an odd mix of documentary and SF, including a storyline to illustrate Kurzweil’s main theses … The vision is an extraordinarily utopian one but one has just a few plausibility problems with it
An alien invasion film that exists largely as a series of dazzling effects set-pieces, although proves frustrating when it comes to plot or explanatory rationale
Catherine Breillat, a director usually known for tackling issues of female sexuality, adapts the classic fairytale in a muddled effort that singularly fails to fly either as fairytale or deconstruction
A live-action film based on the titular segment from Fantasia. From Jerry Bruckheimer meaning that it is a film of empty-headed special effects that fails to conjure any magic of its own
A live-action remake of the 1970s anime series Space Cruiser Yamato made with stupendous effects, although now much of the plot has been rendered familiar by assorted Star Wars copies
A genetically engineered creature film from Vincenzo Natali, this ventures into some fascinating places but ultimately returns to Frankenstein science territory
The further slide downwards of Jackie Chan’s career after being discovered by Hollywood. Here he is a spy left to look after a group of kids with excruciatingly unfunny results
Strong and highly original film that takes place in a post-apocalyptic world overrun by vampires. This has more the feel of a zombie film or an existential Western but does some highly original things with its ideas
Cheaply made Syfy Channel attempt to copy Roland Emmerich’s 2012 that jumps aboard wacky Erich von Daniken nuttiness but fails to create a worthy End of the World drama due to cut-price effects
From the world’s oldest living director ( Manoel de Oliveira who turned 102 when this was released) comes a ghost story that remains soporifically dull and never seems to get started
Passable attempt to return to the heyday of the 1990s erotic thriller. Made on the cheap side, this does an okay job of covering the basics until an improbable denouement
A horror film made by the alt modelling website Suicide Girls where several girls go away for a modelling shoot only for something to cause them to start disappearing
After Defendor and Kick-Ass all coming out within a short space of time, the superhero with no powers comedy was getting over-familiar but this outing from James Gunn still finds some new things and proves highly amusing
Modestly effective film about people being hunted by a shapechanging killer car
One of the best of the DC Universe Original Animated Movies under the greatly underrated Lauren Montgomery. This serves to introduce Supergirl and Jack Kirby’s Fourth World
Czech Claymation animator Jan Svankmajer embraces the Terry Gilliam cutout animation process in this wackily playful mix of dream and surrealism that emerges similar to The Science of Sleep
Film about a penis-enlarging drug that creates zombies, this goes for an outrageous bad taste vein are rarely lets up
Albert Pyun makes a long promised sequel to his first film The Sword and the Sorcerer but delivers an impoverished mess that is all over the place plotwise