The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
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
Bollywood film that is a blatant copy of Back to the Future with the young hero going back in time to prevent his parents from divorcing. Lame comedy routines but some extremely colourful song and dance numbers
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
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
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
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
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
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
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)
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
A children’s fantasy adventure that never strays beyond the environs of an American high school and comes with the lowbrow slapstick, excruciating comic caricatures and incredibly bad effects
Strange but by no means uninteresting film that takes several weird doglegs going from biker parties to a possession film and then a home invasion by seemingly resurrected 1950s rockers
This has the intriguing hook of casting 1990s teen heartthrob Val Kilmer as a supernaturally empowered mysterious stranger. It soon becomes apparent that the film is a variant on Clint Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter. After blowing its twist soon in, the film only proceeds to a desultory ending
Hilarious Norwegian-made Found Footage film about a documentary team investigating a man who claims to hunt giant trolls. Played in complete deadpan
Tron was a groundreaking work that predicted the advent of cyberspace. Three decades on, this sequel never does anything as imaginative, although advances in effects technology allow for a dazzling reinvention of The Grid
An amusing parody of the Backwoods Brutality film where the hillbillies are likeable innocents and the college kids end up killing themselves in a series of bizarre accidents. Amusing, although in the end is only a one-joke film
Sequel to the outrageously gory 2001 Maniacs, although here the horror comedy balance spills over into absurd farce and cheap gore effects. Crucially, the film seems cheaper and less polished, more messy and random in terms of its arrangements
Charming Claymation animated adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale from Russia that manages to be a mordant satire on Communism into the bargain
Animated film based on the popular fantasy wargame. The set-up is a fascinating mix of SF and mediaeval religion but the plot rehashes Aliens without much payoff and the animation is B-budget
Winner of this year Cannes Palme d’Or, this is a Thai ghost story .where director Apichatpong Weerasethaku creates an intensely haunted atmosphere at times, although the film itself remains vague and elusive in terms of plot
A Found Footage film that gets political – in this case, featuring a group of American vigilantes torturing Mexican illegal immigrants. Not quite full on Torture Porn but holds a darkly barbed bite
A couple on a getaway to an uninhabited island on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef find the island may be haunted
The movie parodies of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer witlessly run a series of crude, unfunny gags over films and celebrities of the previous twelve months vintage. Here they take on the Twilight series
Enigmatic film in the vein of The Quiet Earth where everybody vanishes except for a handful of survivors who have to now deal with creatures the lurk in the dark
Another excruciatingly bad mock exploitation film from Tony Watt, who may well be the world’s worst filmmaker. This mixes killer women, aliens, UFOs, Mafia into an incomprehensible mix
After such high standards with the previous two films, there is considerable onus on Pixar when it comes to this third entry nevertheless they manage to wring some strong and effective new twists on the familiar
John Carpenter returned to the director’s chair after more than a decade but failed to light the world on fire. Carpenter makes what you could call a ghost story version of Girl, Interrupted. The scares are tame and the film is hamstrung by an improbable M. Night Shyamalan twist ending
Korean-made Wu Xia/Western crossover that imports Hollywood names and is shot in New Zealand, resulting in a bizarre oddity cross-cultural fusion. The plot elements are paper thin but the film comes to life during the stylised action scenes
Slick and visually exciting German vampire film that recaptures something of the chic sumptuousness of The Hunger. Perhaps The Hunger by way of Sex and the City set in a world of conspicuous fashion consumption where vampirism represents women’s ultimate empowerment
Grimly fascinating Mexican film about the activities of a family of cannibals. The film keeps you intrigued because it only drops suggestions about what is happening, leaving it up to us to piece solutions together, although the eventual lack of answers is frustrating
Agonisingly awful romantic comedy about a Fountain of Love. The plot is utterly vapid, its resolution never in the slightest doubt, while director Mark Steven (Daredevil, Ghost Rider) Johnson sets the entire film up around a series of painfully unfunny slapstick routines
The 1941 Lon Chaney Jr The Wolf Man is given the remake treatment in a way that builds out on the creaky original with lavish sets and state of the art transformation effects
The finest film made yet on the subject of cloning. A beautifully directed film that deals with the tricky ethical issues when Eva Green decides to give birth to a clone of her lover Matt Smith and raise him as her son.
The always interesting David Blyth returns to screens with what feels like an amateur remake of Nicolas Roeg’s Track 29 that becomes a confused and plotless mishmash of hallucinations, random BDSM scenarios and shock effects
Film with minor Magical Realist touches about life in rural Malaysia that appears to be made without a plot and in which nothing happens. Dull to the point of inertia
Not much to do with The Wizard of Oz – more like The Crazies by way of The Blair Witch Project, this creates a genuinely unsettling otherworldly mystery before entering into decidedly disturbed headspace
The live-action adaptation of the classic Hanna-Barbera cartoon series is a film construed entirely around slapstick sequences that never requires you to engage your brain in any way
Takashi Miike makes a sequel to his earlier superhero film filled with his typically eccentric touches
A strong and intelligent science-fiction film about a future where the aging buy younger bodies from the Third World to transfer their minds into
A couple abduct and torture a paedophile who killed their son. Hard to tell if this is an edgy out-there film or the most tasteless concept that Torture Porn cinema has tried so far. Alas, a banal tv movie handling kills any possibility of the former
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
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
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