The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Time travel film that feels like a romantic comedy version of The Time Traveler’s Wife (with Rachel McAdams in the same role in both films). Played with a good deal of feelgood warmth and likeability by all
A film about the origins of Doctor Who made for the series’ 50th anniversary. This comes packed with pieces of fanservice and origins of various iconic aspects. David Bradley gives a wonderfully nuanced and moving performance as William Hartnell
Yet another adaptation of a series of Young Adult fantasy books that failed to fly. The idea of an Indiana Jones-type adventure set in Victorian England holds promise but the film only sporadically manages to let the adventure fly
Another of The Asylum’s mockbusters, intended to come out the same time as M. Night Shyamalan’s After Earth. This feels like a cheap planetary adventure that recycles Avatar and Planet of the Apes
Found Footage film that cleverly borrows more than a few leaves from An American Werewolf in London with two tourists in Europe where one is bitten and transformed by a vampire
Enough with the M. Night Shyamalan bashing. Here Shyamalan pulls off a solid and interesting planetary adventure where the only real misstep is that much of the film rests on the non-acting shoulders of Jaden Smith
A modestly effective Jurassic Park copy from The Asylum with genetically-revived dinosaurs loose in L.A. and featuring better than usual effects
Directors Lucky McKee and Chris Sivertson conduct a remake of their earlier film about resurrected cheerleaders. The question might be why – both have demonstrated they can do far better than this
Teenagers in Salem are forced to play a game where their lives are forfeit and they become possessed by a cursed knife dating from the witch trials
From the director of the Terrifier films, a horror anthology in which a babysitter and kids sit down to watch a mysterious videotape on Halloween night. The first screen appearance of Art the Clown
A blatant copy of The Craft where a new girl gets wound up into occult rites going on in a sorority house. Featuring porn star Ron Jeremy as a Catholic priest
Another of the unofficial sequels that bear slim to no resemblance to the Amityville Horror hoax. This is a cheaply made and not terribly scary British effort set in a asylum supposedly built on the site of the Amityville house
2013 brought a spate of doppelganger films. This was overshadowed by the more high-profile Enemy and The Double. Here Sophie Turner plays a schoolgirl who finds her life being overtaken by a mysterious double
A zombie apocalypse that occurs via social networking sites??? To the film’s credit, it makes such a wacky idea plausible but the low-budget leads to a zombie apocalypse that mostly occurs off-stage
Uwe Boll makes a big issue film about the subprime mortgage crisis. The film is packed by Boll with messages but comes down to being a variant on Death Wish with its blue-collar hero on a shooting rampage against bankers
When Guillermo Del Toro made Pacific Rim, The Asylum conducted their own copy simply by switching US seaboards. While not exactly Oscar quality, this is one of The Asylum’s better mockbusters
In the same vein as Sharknado, another absurdly entertaining gonzo shark attack film concerning sharks that swim through the snow to attack skiers at a mountainside resort
A comedy about a demon that appears out of a man’s ass!!! This has the dementia to be a potential midnight cult hit but misses the mark by a wide mile and stumbles around obvious targets in predictable ways
The second of the two-part animated adaptation of Frank Miller’s classic graphic novel. The film is staged as a series of epic confrontations between iconic DC characters and written with a dark bite to emerge much more satisfying than the first part
A halfway reasonable film from The Asylum with the military trying to appropriate werewolves for weapons purposes. A good premise despite so-so-effects work
Attempt to create another Twilight franchise that quickly becomes the anti-Twilight, shucking the pro-chastity message for a decidedly inflammatory stance against small-minded Christian prejudice
Following Paranormal Activity, The Asylum made a series of Found Footage films with the novelty selling point of claiming the films were taking place on the sites of famous murders or haunted locations
Larry Fessenden makes what seems a formula teens in peril film. Once he gets his cast stranded in a sinking boat menaced by a giant fish and debating who to throw overboard, he develops some remarkably brutal tensions
Giant spider film that seems to be aiming for the same gonzo territory the killer shark film has of recent. Instead we get an average B movie with some good effects and a line of comic banter that falls flat in the delivery
Israeli film about a parent who abducts and tortures a man they believe responsible for killing their child. This proves immensely entertaining with its whiplash plot reversals and hilarious pepperings of black humour
Birdemic was a cult bad movie – incredibly, despite the better budget that must have come his way, James Nguyen has gone and made the same thing filled with laughably flat dialogue and the worst effects ever seen on screen
Documentary about the making of Night of the Living Dead. This covers the making of the film, although George Romero is the only person from it interviewed. Far more potent is the documentary’s pinpointing of the film’s cultural influence
Austrian-made film about people being attacked by mutant creatures on a mountainside. This has the cheesily absurd feel of a 1980s B movie and has some fun producing creature effects
Narrated by Death, this story of a young girl growing up in Nazi Germany comes with the self-importance of awards consideration bait. One of the great crimes of modern history (The Holocaust) is reduced to picture postcard sentiments
The Found Footage horror film quickly became worn out. However, this effort about the investigation into a haunted church in the English countryside manages to generate some quite reasonable atmosphere
A pilot for a tv series that never went ahead set in a future where Global Warming has turned the Arctic into a thawed-out tundra where various countries seek to claim the new territory
A cryptically surreal Dutch film that comes with hilariously black deadpan effect as we watch a homeless man inveigle his way into a household and take over before starting to eliminate people.
A film about post-apocalyptic bounty hunters pursuing bankers, this was an Occupy Movement era film and hits a deliriously unserious comic-book tone
Brazilian animated film that comes with a lovely simplicity – all jagged washes of colour, characters as simple lines, endless patterns and a minimalist plot – out of which it manages to weave an incredibly pretty eye candy
A formulaic psycho-thriller from the usually worthwhile Brad Anderson with Halle Berry as a 911 call operator who answers a call from an abducted Abigail Breslin that feels like a cable thriller ended on the big screen
This Spanish film about a cannibal serial killer is almost exactly the opposite of anything we expect of a horror film – a film of muted silences filled with lurking secrets. A fascinating work
Another pointless 70s remake that replicates the 1976 Carrie almost scene for scene but misconstrues the material by a mile. Crucially, it comes without the sensational casting that made the original, nor a Brian De Palma at the helm
A man offers two down-on-their-luck guys a series of increasingly more extreme bets for money. This sets out to defy taboos and good taste, largely succeeding by pushing into some alternately grotesquely funny and nauseating territories
The films of Bill Plympton have gained a cult following for their absurdist humour and surreal animation. This is Plympton’s take on relationships, a wild fantasia of imagery and transmogrifications that is a world away from Disney/Pixar offerings
Actor James Franco directs an adaptation of a novel about a necrophile serial killer by Cormac McCarthy. Any McCarthy adaptation is doomed by an inability to visually replicate his incredible prose but Franco tries valiantly
The original film was a good deal of fun; this sequel feels like it is simply a repeat of the same but slightly different. Still there is a good deal of creativity to the visual puns and living food creatures
Fascinating conceptual SF film about a dinner party where people find they are dealing with multiple alternate versions of themselves where minute choices have been made differently. The film twists and turns into an immensely satisfyingly pretzel
This creates a fascinatingly different future – a world of grim survivalism amid a new Ice Age in the aftermath of Global Warming. The look of the film is fantastic, only to fritter it on an action focus and Mad Max cliches
Hideo Nakata will always be known as the director of the original Ring. Here he revisits the kaidan eiga in the story of a haunted apartment but the show falls apart after a confusing Sixth Sense-type twist mid-film
Quirky film shot as though a mockumentary from the 1970s about a conference where programmers compete against computer chess programs that starts to get into some puzzlingly weird SF territory
Waltz With Bashir director Ari Folman adapts a work by Stanislaw Lem into a conceptually challenging part-animated film concerning a virtual actress and a future where the populace lives inside a drug-induced mass hallucination
Supposedly based on a true story. A film that feels written entirely by cliches taken from every other haunting and exorcism film, but you cannot deny that director James Wan generates a more than fair degree of spooky atmosphere
Modestly effective effort about a woman who contracts an infection that causes her to physically decay. The horror comes in watching the heroine’s progressive physical decomposition.
What gives the expectation of being a formulaic animated film about a prehistoric cave family instead comes with a fresh and naturalistic sense of humour that proves oddly appealing
Sixth entry in the Child’s Play series, made to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the original. Contains lots of fanservice and some surprise cameos. This makes an effort to cut back the black humour and go back to being scary
The first film in 24 years from Alejandro Jodorowsky, a surreal journey through his own childhood. Gone is Jodorowsky, the mad prophet of El Topo, replaced by a warm, wryly self-reflexive Jodorowsky looking back in on his own life
Former effects supervisor Scott Stewart surprises here in producing a carefully restrained alien abduction film that focuses on the incursion of the inexplicable into the everyday
A no expectation adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft’s Dreams of the Witch-House from a director down the low-budget end of the spectrum that does some surprisingly modest things
A low budget indie film about a spaceship crashlanded on an alien planet that is no more than a glorified fan film that features a level of effects that are extremely well accomplished
In her first English-language debut, French director/writer/actress Marina de Van delivers a variant on Carrie, albeit rewritten as a tale about child abuse. Oblique, quiet but undeniably effective when de Van pulls her punches
Another variant on the set-up of the team of ghostsbusters investigating a haunted locale with videocameras that has been done to death in recent years
The return of the talented Steve Barron after a decade’s absence in a film that was shot in my own backyard (literally). Disappointingly, all we get is a work that unimaginatively rehashes cliches about amok A.I.s
This was the first Found Footage film to deal with the Satanic pregnancy theme, prefiguring the more high-profile Devil’s Due. This draws on the plotting conventions and cliches laid down by Rosemary’s Baby in every way
Another in the vast horde of zombie films of the 2010s concerning a group of friends gathered for a party as a terrorist biowarfare attack turns the locals into zombies
Unfriended gained attention as a horror film that took place across social media where the computer screen became the video screen. It was done first in The Den about a snuff internet site that stalks people who innocently log in
Despicable Me was a charming lightning in the bottle hit. Here Illumination Entertainment merely recyclethe familiar and already the cute sweetness and gags of the original are starting to feel like processed formula
Tobe Hooper’s career since 1990 felt like a slide down into talentless amateurism. In his last film, Hooper tries to create an Islamic horror film, shooting and casting in the Middle East but slips into hackwork
Socially inept Jesse Eisenberg encounters a charming doppelganger that takes over his life. Richard Ayoade adapts a Dostoevsky novella but for some reason transplants it into a blackly comic dystopia
A medium-budget Dracula film that draws much on its cinematic predecessors and comes filled with Underworld-like brooding Gothic poses. Plus the oddity of a blonde Dracula
The Dyatlov Pass Incident has gained a fascination as an unexplained mystery. Here Renny Harlin makes a Found Footage film that heads for full on conspiracy theory explanations
The second film from Neill Blomkamp. As in District 9, he starts out making a savage and biting social critique about social privilege and financial elites only to let the film descend into action moves in the third act
This is a Canadian-made remake of the Alyssa Milano-starring erotic vampire film The Nosferatu Diaries: Embrace of the Vampire. For some reason, this is now minus the erotica and emerges as tepid
When 20th Century Fox began their Planet of the Apes reboot series, director Mark Polonia quickly jumped in with his own Z-budget mockbuster take. Several sequels followed
I will defend Orson Scott Card as an exceptional science-fiction writer, his controversies aside. While this is an extremely faithful adaptation of his book, it works unevenly as a film and never soars dramatically
Denis Villeneuve slips into a very Cronenbergian vein to deliver a film about Jake Gyllenhaal and a mysterious doppelganger. A fascinatingly oblique and cryptic work, just as long as one does not require that it comes with any easy explanations
The animated films of Blue Sky Studios (the people behind the Ice Age sequels) have become so formulaic they have been drained of any spark of originality or creativity. This feels more like a series of test-marketing cues than a film
This is fake SF, an animated film that has no interest in its concept, one that exists solely as a series of pop culture jokes, cutsie supporting characters, thrills and feelgood epiphanies
This has the novelty of being shot guerilla-style at Disneyland and Disney World without permission. Nothing prepares you for the amazingly dark work you get, a surreal hallucinatory drift through the park’s underbelly
A groundedly realistic film about an expedition to search for life on Europa that that emerges as a disappointment coming soon after the similar space-based Gravity
This rehashes I Spit on Your Grave by way of The Crow with a heroine who is raped and killed and then becomes resurrected as a supernatural avenger
An impoverished sf disaster mini-series about a dark matter experiment going amok that manages to tediously drag out four hours of soap opera dramatics and control room doubletalk
A film made by a 17 year-old from Norway. This has more ideas – mystery mass disappearances, doppelgangers from alternate timelines – than it is capable of coherently relaying
One of the few remakes of the 00s/10s that delivers the goods. While messing around with the plot set-up with mixed results, this quickly goes for broke to create a satisfying show on most accounts
Another cheap Syfy Channel disaster movie about a superstorm created by an amok weather control experiment. The shoddy CGI effects and cliched pieces of canned drama fly thick
A South Korean entry in the plague and outbreak genre. While the film draws on the cliches of the genre, in particular Outbreak, director Kim Sung-su wheels it around with an impressive widescreen flourish
US film based on a real Japanese historical incident that has been oddly spun out into a Keanu Reeves-starring epic samurai fantasy film. One of the biggest financial flops of 2013
Film about an amnesiac man trying to piece his disturbing past together amid a series of surreal nightmares. This ends up not nearly as interesting as you feel it could have been
A Found Footage Frankenstein film. There is little of Frankenstein and his monster here and this feels more like a Found Footage Quest for Bigfoot film in all but name
One has difficulty with the notion of a Found Footage Frankenstein film, although the film does credibly justify this. That said, the film offers up a series of genuinely phantasmagoric and out of this world creations
Animated film designed for the US Thanksgiving holiday. With a completely insane plot involving turkeys travelling back in time to stop turkeys being served at the first Thanksgiving
Supposedly a sequel to the 2011 Fright Night remake but more a loose reworking of the original. This conducts some novel variations such as making Jerry Dandridge into a woman, but is also one of the worst directed horror films in some time
Disney animated film that supposedly adapts Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen, although Andersen wouldn’t recognise it. This often feels like a ramshackle assemblage of formula elements rather than the classic it was hailed as
A film based on true-life serial killer Robert Hansen who would fly girls out into the Alaskan wilderness and then hunt them. Nicolas Cage is the dogged detective up against John Cusack as the killer
Film with people trapped in a mysterious labyrinth, which may be Hell, where they are required to eliminate one another in order to survive. Aka Game of Assassins
This advertises itself as the first live-action Steampunk film. What we get is like a Victorian version of The Librarians with two adventurers hunting mythical artifacts while armed with steam weapons
Zombie film about a small town overrun as people are infected with a virus from a fallen satellite. Familiar stuff conducted with a little more care than usual
New Zealand director David Blyth directs a ghost story that draws on Chinese supernatural. Blyth seems to be straining to generate anything vaguely spooky
Reboot of the Ghost in the Shell series in a quartet of prequel stories. This funnels the essence of Cyberpunk superbly, creating a dazzling world with cyborgised security services fighting terrorists hacking people’s brains
You can’t complain that this is not exactly what you expect it to be – two hours of cartoonish action during which the brain singularly fails to engage. This is less unapologetic about being a military fantasy than the first film
Another End of the World film concerning the collapse of society as a group of friends gather. Feels more like a variant on The Big Chill than a film about the end of everything but is not without its moments
Essentially a classical music version of Phone Booth with Elijah Wood trapped at a grand piano in front of a concert audience by a sniper. The results prove quite gripping
Sensational drama with Sandra Bullock as an astronaut trapped in orbit. The film is scrupulous and thorough about portraying being in space scientifically accurately and the dramatic set-pieces are gripping in tension
A very clever mockumentary retelling of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds that ingeniously blends existing WWI war footage with CGI to show soldiers fighting off invading Martian tripods
Eli Roth pays homage to the Italian cannibal films of the 70/80s, the most extreme genre ever put on film. While not uninteresting, rendered on a studio budget and passed uncut by the MPAA, this never touches the raw savagery of the originals
This Canadian film is a modernised telling of Hansel and Gretel where the witch becomes a man with possibly paedophile intent. A film seems to want to go into dark places but gives them an utterly tepid treatment