The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
An ingenious mockumentary about the development of a time travel machine. This takes place as a ‘documentary’ discussing the invention but the cleverness is in seeing how small details keep changing in the background
This comes with an interesting idea about an infection that links all the infectees together into a gestalt of shared memories even if the delivery is uneven
After two bloated and over-padded Hobbit films, Peter Jackson finally gets it together and produces what everyone was expecting him to deliver, even if it means dragging one battle scene out to last an entire film
Bill Zebub is possibly the most offensive filmmaker at work today. This largely plotless film features topless Nazi women fighting cannibal tribes, giant bugs and a Bigfoot
A newlywed couple head to a cabin in the woods for their honeymoon. This seems to be a traditional backwoods horror but instead travels into an increasingly unnerving and way out territory
An NZ-made haunted house comedy that runs through a frenzied array of genre plot devices, a couple of minor jumps and some easy middle-of-the-road laughs leaving you feeling there should have been more to it
A Found Footage film with a camera crew searching Halloween attractions for the most extreme haunt only to find something else. The film has a certain effect where we are not entirely sure what is real
Intensely mysterious film that resembles something of Stalker. This consists of a man venturing into a deserted Tasmania that has been taken over by spirit beings in search of his missing brother
This is a film that leaves you in two minds – one that is constantly going wow at the animated artistry and detail before us; the other that is realising that this is yet another formula animated film
The third The Hunger Games film starts in with a more brooding complexity but with the book being split in two parts, the story feels more thinly drawn and comes to an abrupt end just when it starts to get interesting
In the vein of the Scary Movies films, this offers the amusing idea of a mash-up between The Hunger Games and The Hangover where the characters are forced into a death match against characters from other media franchises
An empty-headed work that seems entirely premised around the provision of CGI effects spectacle and actively resists engagement on any other level. A spectacularly ridiculous film in almost every way
Mike Cahill’s follow-up to Another Earth, an intriguingly different work about how research into the human eye leads to a very unusual discovery. As much a relationship drama as SF
A New Zealand-made entry into the zombie comedy stakes. This has the amusing idea of having a zombie outbreak occur during the shooting of a zombie film
A Uwe Boll film that feels as though he didn’t cared about what he was making. You’d have to go back to the Italian sword-and-sorcery films of the 1980s to find a more shoddy work of epic fantasy
Based on an old Joss Whedon script about two people who discover they can see through the other’s eyes and talk mentally. A low-key film that acts as a bare stage allowing the two characters to interact
Fascinating Mexican film in which characters become trapped in the same limited stretch of space. It is striking watching them forced to repeat the same things over and over
An enormously clever Australian time travel film about the mind-boggling conundrums that occur when a man tries to go back in time and stop his girlfriend leaving only to encounter multiple versions of himself come to fix the snowballing situation
This could be Christopher Nolan’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. But where Kubrick was cold and oblique, this is a 2001 with a heart. A pleasure to see a film rooted in credible science and dealing with high concept SF
A lumbering, stagebound adaptation of Stephen Sondheim musical that lamely dips into the fairytale parody that Shrek and other films tapped far more engagingly over a decade ago
Undeniably effective horror about a deadly shapeshifting phantom that gets passed by sexual contact. Imagine Ring by way of a Larry Clark film. This creates rather good unsettlingly uncanny atmosphere
This starts out seeming like a non-fantastic drama about explorers in 19th Century Argentina. However, the film seems to disregard this and heads towards a bafflingly surreal and undeniably fascinating ending
Ghost story from one of the directors of the Saw sequels that settles in with halfway reasonable build-up, before being killed off by an improbable left field twist ending
The tenth of the Japanese Ju-on/The Grudge series. Newcomer Masayuki Ochiai has some effective touches but the series is running out of original moves
Another of the DC Universe Animated Films that rewrites the Justice League into DC’s New 52 continuity reboot. This changes the character’s origins and designs to little point
NOT the Hayao Miyazaki film but a live-action version based on the same books, made by Takashi Shimizu of the Jun-on/The Grudge films fame. Replicating Miyazaki in live-action is a futile endeavour
The second film from Indonesia’s Mo Brothers follows the internet friendship between a serial killer and another he decides to mentor in the ways of killing. The Mo’s take to the material with a dark relish
English language adaptation of an anime. The original was controversial for its copious sex and violence; here we get an anodyne action movie that is no more than The Punisher cast with a teenage girl
A cabin in the woods horror made with an ineptitude of execution. This sets out to rip off The Evil Dead but becomes one shock effect after another that runs into an incomprehensible mass like a bad nightmare
A ghost story that borrows quite a few touches from Assault on Precinct 13 in its tale of a haunted police station. Director Anthony DiBlasi spends his time on accumulating atmosphere with considerable effectiveness
A highly original treatment of werewolf themes that begins with the unique premise of ‘Werewolf in a Retirement Village’ and features a hero who is an aging blind man
Nicolas Cage stars in a new film based on the best-selling books about the Biblical end of the world. Despite a much bigger budget than the Kirk Cameron version, nothing terribly interesting happens
Renny Harlin, the director of a great many empty-headed action films, takes on the Greek myth and delivers a Hercules film that feels like it has been directed after too many watchings of 300
Animated sequel to The Wizard of Oz that proved a charmless flop that misses the magic of the original by a mile. The familiar characters are run over with a gratingly modern sense of humour
How much fun can a film based around Lego characters be? A film that overflows with cleverness, wit and energy. The most fun is in the film’s creating a madcap mix-up of characters from different franchises
The Leprechaun films were a cheap ripoff of the Freddy Krueger films. This supposed revival bears nothing whatsoever to do with the originals and doesn’t even seem the same type of film anymore
A rather effective effort about a Mysterious Stranger locked in a cell who proceeds to expose the dark secrets of everybody around him, before a completely whacked ending
Billed as a ‘zom-rom-com’, Dane DeHaan deals with girlfriend Aubrey Plaza who has returned from the dead. The film has a quirky appeal even if it is never quite as funny as it promises to be
Lizzie Borden is one of the more fascinating figures in True Crime. This is very accurate to the details of the case; alas it gets the most sensational aspect over soon in and bogs down in the minutiae of the trial
A compulsively watchable documentary about the making of the 1996 The Island of Dr Moreau and the bizarre stories of how the personalities and star egos made it into a cinematic train wreck
A smart and boundary pushing Found Footage film in which a regular joe wins a competition and is selected as an actor on a porn film only to be pushed to snapping point
Luc Besson makes a preposterously entertaining work where drug mule Scarlett Johansson develops superhuman mental capabilities – sort of if you imagine Limitless reconceived as an action film
One of Woody Allen’s slighter films about rationalist Colin Firth who is debunking medium Emma Stone but becomes convinced of her powers as romance sparkles
Another in the early 2010s fad for fairytales rewritten as dark adult fantasy films – in this case, a version of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty told from the viewpoint of the witch
A strong and tightly wound police procedural, not unreminiscent of the first season of True Detective. What makes the plot stand out is the beautifully desolate setting of the remote Spanish marshlands
One of the better among the current fad for Young Adult dystopian SF works post-The Hunger Games. This dispenses with dystopian Coming of Age stories and gives us a fascinating conceptual mystery even if the answers prove underwhelming
Third in The Asylum’s series of Mega Shark films where they borrow the Godzilla series’ idea of Mecha-Godzilla and pit the Mega Shark against a robot copy of itself. Here the Mega Shark series is starting to approach the entertaining silliness of their Sharknado films but still flounder amid tatty effects
Modestly creepy adaptation of a Stephen King short story about a boy who realises that his grandmother is a witch who made a deal with a backwoods entity
Reminiscent of The Quiet Earth, this concerns a bus of people who end up in a deserted Hong Kong, The film seems unsure whether it is comedy or drama, while it creates an intriguing mystery about what is happening only to leave it unanswered in a frustratingly abrupt ending
A filmed version of Julie Taymor’s staging of the Shakespeare play about fairt enchantments. Forget standard interpretations, Taymor opens the play up with an extraordinary visual flair
There is an irresistible appeal to this film – Katie Holmes as a perfect, sweetly smiling Miss Manners dressed in Sunday Best who, in between correcting people’s manners and punctuation, is also a gun-toting vigilante in the best tradition of Charles Bronson
DreamWorks animated film based on an old Rocky and Bullwinkle segment about a time-travelling genius dog and his adopted human son. This takes a relentlessly content-free approach to history that strips it down to no more than a series of giddy 3D slapstick gags for the single digit age groups
Bryan Bertino who made the impressive home invasion thriller The Strangers and this was his follow-up. This was held up so long in release that its originality has been rendered everyday by others milking the Found Footage genre
Enjoyably colourful and silly retelling of the classic Chinese legend. This is one Wu Xia film that leaps aboard the CGI and 3D bandwagon to create a wildly fantastical airbrushed world that comes out resembling a flying swordsman film by way of Avatar
This offers the expectation of a sequel to the sleeper hit of Monsters; what we instead get is not many monsters and a film about recruits in a Middle Eastern war zone. That said, you cannot deny that what we have is an undeniably well made film
The Muppets were successfully revived in The Muppets; this is a lesser follow-up that leaves us with a feeling that the creative team used their best ammunition first time around
A surprisingly good effort to emerge from the arena of fan-made Kickstarter funded filmmaking. Essentially, a group of fans have brought their mutual love of playing Dungeons and Dragons to life but the film, while low-budgeted, places a great deal of care into the characters and building of the world
The third entry in a franchise that seems to be stretching to find anything to do with its premise beyond the first film. Everyone involved seems to have only turned up to collect a paycheque and be going through the motions in a show that entirely coasts by solely on your familiarity with the characters
This has to be the single worst killer shark film ever made and quite possibly the worst film of the 2010s. A shark film set in a Beverly Hills mansion where the nearest body of water is a swimming pool and where the appearance of the shark will reduce you to tears of laughter
Darren Aronofsky’s adaptation of the Biblical legend was mired in controversy. I can only applaud his decision to defy those who claim ownership of the story and set out to make an interesting film. Yet Noah remains an epic that never seems to quite fill the screen and a human drama that never quite comes to life
Tony Watt, who gets my nomination as the world’s worst filmmaker, does the laughtrack trick of taking a film – in this case, the original Nosferatu – and running his usual inane sound effects and excruciating bad acting over the top
The novelty of the world’s first Vietnamese science-fiction film set in a future where many areas are underwater as a result of climate change. Much of this is a very dull film observing the day to day life of people affected but the SF elements intrude in occasionally interesting ways
I went into this with zero expectations, expecting no more than a work of formula family entertainment and came out gently surprised. Essentially a talking cartoon animals variant on a heist plot, it does the formula likeably and with none of the relentless smart-ass cynicism of too many contemporaries
Going by the title you could easily dismiss this as an indie relationship drama (as I initially did) but what we instead get is a fascinatingly cryptic doppelganger film where a couple go on a retreat only to encounter idealised versions of themselves who seem intent on stealing their lives
This Nacho Vigalondo film prefigured Unfriended with everything taking place on a computer screen. A far more adventurous film with a wildly entertaining plot about celebrity stalking
Blumhouse horror film based around the Parker Brothers boardgame. Modern multiplex horror films don’t come more generic than this. On the other hand, you cannot deny that debuting director Stiles White creates some occasionally quite spooky moments, it’s just that the rest of the show comes entirely by the numbers
The most sustained film Takashi Miike has made in some time. In this case, he adapts Yotsuya Kaidan, the most famous of all Japanese ghost stories, which has been filmed multiple times, but rather than offer a straight telling also adds a layer where the story comes to replay itself among the actors in the play
This begins fantastically well – the appearance of a mysterious alien object that paralyses everybody who looks upon it – only to take a major nosedive in its second act where we promptly realise that the filmmakers didn’t have a clue where to take the story after that
The Pact was a modest and rather effective ghost story about a serial killer hiding inside the walls of a house. This seems to be straining to find some way to justify any relevance a sequel – for one, where do you go with the premise? Another killer hiding inside a different family home?
From the awful slapstick-heavy trailer, the prospects for this seem dismal – less Paddington Bear than a reprise of the live-action Yogi Bear. The finished result confounds expectation and the story of a small unassuming bear at large in the world comes full of considerable charm
Less another sequel than a spinoff of the Paranormal Activity series, this takes place with Latino characters and in a whole different culture and socio-economic strata. While this gives the series a face change, everything else it feels like the shuffling of a well-worn deck of plot cards
Live-action adaptation of a manga about the war between body-snatching parasites that are capable of rearranging their host’s bodies. This plays out as a madcap version of The Thing relocated to a Japanese high school
This spinoff from the Madagascar films is a lot more fun that I was anticipating – how could you dislike a film with John Malkovich as an octopus super-villain? Essentially cast as a spy parody, the film has a gonzo insanity that hits in with a manic delirium
A film about three American girls who are haunted by a vengeful child spirit while in Thailand. Another post-Insidious film that uses a sinister adjective as title
Sequel to the Lifetime channel adaptation of Virginia C. Andrews’ Flowers in the Attic. Andrews’ prolific output of Gothic melodramas are really the horror equivalent of daytime soap operas. Though marginally better, this drowns in the same stultifying blandness as its predecessor
Another of Disney’s Tinker Bell spinoff adventures. This has some slickly produced animation and does some occasionally cute pieces of fanservice that tie in to Peter Pan but is ultimately fantasy being produced for the single digit age groups
Bollywood remake of a ghost story that comes with one of the cleverer M. Night Shyamalan conceptual reversal twists
Absolutely fascinating Bollywood venture into science-fiction. A comedic variant on the theme of the blankly innocent alien visitor trying to make sense of human culture, this has a daringly ambitious bite in tackling the topic of religion and delivering some sharply pointed barbs
A standout Australian-made zombie film that breathes some life into an overworked genre, focusing on the tensions among the survivors as they try to fend off the dead while at siege on a farm
The second of Disney’s spinoffs from Pixar’s Cars films featuring talking anthropomorphic planes. Like the first film, this is amiable and occasionally cute but lightweight. This is beginning to feel like a franchise that is spinning out thinning ideas solely for its own sake
An exceptional time travel film, one of the best to emerge in some time. Adapted from a classic Robert Heinlein story, the pleasure of the film all comes in seeing its twists and turns come together into the most ingenious temporal paradox ever conceived
The zombie film of the 2010s has become marked by a search for the most bizarre and incongruous title/conceptual mash-ups. True to its promise, the film pits several WWE wrestlers up against zombies, alas the creativity begins and ends with the mild amusement of the title concept
Slightly more interesting than its predecessor in that it takes the action out from gated communities into the streets, otherwise this offers just the same as The Purge – much in the way of heavy artillery and a patina of contemporary politics that have all the depth of a protest placard
This starts as a standard Japanese high school drama but takes a turn for the twisted where it doesn’t exactly venture into Saw territory but certainly somewhere that has taken inspiration from it. Alas, everything gets lost in a second half that is burdened by an excessively complicated and non-linear plot
A monster movie where the major distinction is that the monster is drawn from Ancient Egyptian mythology and the locale is an unearthed pyramid. The film is too conceptually slim to do much with such an interesting background but it does deliver some solid jumps
Another offering from the revived Hammer Films. Like a few films of recent, this claims to be based on a true story – a parapsychological experiment conducted in the 1970s – but throws almost every detail out the window to substitute a well-worn bag of horror tricks
Adaptation of an autobiographical Philip K. Dick book that he wrote in an attempt to make sense of a series of bizarre hallucinations, this long-rumoured film manages, despite a low-budget, to mainline the brain-twisting nature of Dick’s writing better than any other adaptation
A film from Quentin Dupieux that comes in a series of quirky intersecting stories where the dreams and films different characters are watching/making keeping blurring together in mind-boggling ways
![[Rec]4 Apocalypse (2014) poster](https://moriareviews.com/rongulator/wp-content/uploads/rec-4-apocalypse-2014-poster.jpg)
The fourth film in the [Rec] series. This abandons the Found Footage look but without it, all we have is just another zombie film, nevertheless this builds to an intensively gore-drenched climax
A low key but modestly effective film where an amnesiac man comes to the gradual realisation that he is a clone
A film with identity disorder – the title and promotion makes it seem a revenge-action film only for it to conduct a number of strange doglegs and eventually arrive at a plot wherein life coach Anthony Mackie is tied up in the cellar by Forest Whitaker who feeds his inspirational lines back at him
I hate the utterly formulaic films of Blue Sky Studios, the ones behind the endless Ice Age sequels. That said, this is one of their more enjoyable – despite a plot that is amazingly busy trying to reintroduce characters from the first film, the screen overflows with colourful exuberance
I have to admit despite all the bad feeling for this, I liked it. While what went on in terms of the man inside the machine was cut and dried in the original, this has been shifted to give us a “the soul of Robocop” story . Moreover, the original’s biting satire of 1980s corporations and politics has been smartly updated to tackle some big 2010s issues
While the title sounds like a cheesy faux B movie, this a surprisingly serious work. Taking undeniable influence from tv’s The Tripods , it is a YA work about the fight to free Earth following a machine invasion that proves far more entertaining than anything one expects of it
Forget about movie melodrama like A Beautiful Mind , this may be one of the best, most credible films about mental illness … Essentially a surreal animated family history of a Latvian animator, this distils some incredibly bleak anecdotal material with a wittily and biting incisive brilliance
Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby was a classic film that popularised the modern interest in occult and deviltry on film; this sad remake is something that only parrots the cliches that have set in in the ensuing 46 years and clumsily mishandles all of Polanski’s comically edgy paranoia
Impressive Australian film that recalls the Mad Max films. Rather than action spectacle, this feels like Mad Max as rewritten by Cormac McCarthy wherein a collapsed future echoes a beautifully written exploration of the soul of a man in a violent world
A modest effort that has studied well at the Ridley Scott school of people being stalked in the dark. The film produces a genuinely unearthly and alien creation. The main problem is that the film is severely underwritten and fails to do much after coming up with such an original creature
The Soska Sisters make a sequel to the 2006 slasher film. You cannot help but think that a sequel to such an average film is the sisters batting well below their capabilities. The surprise is that in their hands the result follows such traditional genre patterns
German animated film about the adventures of Snow White’s Seven Dwarves. Lightweight and trivial, this feels like it has come along ten years too late to the fad for fairytale parodies and mash-ups we had in the mid-2000s with films like Shrek and Hoodwinked!