The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The most likely response to this is going to be “WHAT THE $%@^* AM I WATCHING?” – a film so far removed from the average experience, so located in its own unique, utterly eccentric universe it has instant cult classic written all over it
Low key horror in which a teenager finds his brother has traded his soul to demonic forces. This is modestly effective, where those involved are engaged in a clear effort to make it work
Another psycho Santa film – a genre that is almost gaining its own niche. This British entry fearlessly pushes its elements to an extreme that most of these other Christmas horrors balk at
This could be considered the Michael Bay version of Ancient Egyptian mythology, a film buried under numbing CGI overkill. For all that, Alex Proyas gives it a loopy grandeur that you can’t entirely dislike
The zombie film has become a creatively exhausted genre in recent years. This is an effort that completely changes the game with fiercely original effect, anchored by one of the best child performances in some time
For a reasonable part of the runtime, this plays as a wilderness survival drama about a woman abandoned in the woods. Somewhat directionless before being redeemed by its twist ending
For the most part, this plays out as a mundane drama about someone with a terrible deformity – similar to The Elephant Man or Mask – but who also has daydreams in which he is a giant
Ben Wheatley produced film that soon becomes a first order mindfuck. An detective undercover in therapy could just be a mentally ill man with delusions of being a detective or just as equally be having his reality manipulated
There was a lot of hate centred on this for recasting what is considered a classic film with an all-girl cast. It emerges mostly likeably, no better, no worse on the whole, where the new ensemble make a solid showing
Another in the spate of social media horror films, this is a blatant copy of Unfriended, albeit mashed up with Ring to create the idea of a cursed newsfeed. This is also the lamest of the bunch
The killer crocodile/alligator film has not had a great track record (with only a couple of exceptions). This is not one of those exceptions and quickly sinks into risibility
An absolutely hilarious parody of the Found Footage film about a film crew trying to conduct a shoot in a haunted house. This comes with mind-spinning levels of meta-fiction
Film about Japan’s legendary Suicide Forest that comes rich in a sense of original mythology. All possibilities are wrung out by incredibly tepid direction that fails to deliver anything remotely scary
Documentary about the life of Leonard Nimoy made for the 50th Anniversary of Star Trek. Directed by Nimoy’s son Adam, this is mostly a biography tracing Nimoy’s life with some fascinating material showing the evolution of Spock
A blatant copy of Misery where Erika Christensen is a popular singer who is abducted and made a prisoner by deranged fan Bethany Lauren James who wants her to write more songs in the style she used to
Wannabe in the fad for Young Adult films. An alien invasion story that takes place without drama or engagement in anything that happens. This seems more interested in its teen love triangle than combatting the alien threat
A variant on The Game where Michael Douglas had his life turned into a nightmare series of rubber reality games that were being staged for his amusement. This spins the same idea through a witty series of horror movie homages
A documentary about Luigi Cozzi, director of Starcrash and Hercules, among others. Cozzi proves a highly enjoyable raconteur and often more entertaining than some of the films he has made
Spinoff from the Harry Potter films – unlike those, written directly for the screen and feels more like it belongs there. The US locations open the story up, while the magic creatures and new ensemble cast prove a delight
Adaption of a Young Adult series of books – this is essentially Twilight but with angels instead of vampires. Another YA effort where we never saw successive chapters due to its box-office flop
An extraordinary film, the story of a disturbed woman who keeps people prisoners in her barn. The stark effectiveness of the film all comes in the brooding black-and-white photography
The possession and exorcism genre has been recycling the same cliches ever since The Exorcist. Even this film’s bogus claim to be filmed in the house where the true-life event that inspired The Exorcist took place fails to make this stand out
Low-budget possession and exorcism supposedly based on a true story that cycles through most of the tropes of the genre. An earlier version of the same “true-life” possession depicted in The Ritual
At the age of 87, Alejandro Jodorowsky makes second of his autobiographical films following The Dance of Reality. In Jodorowsky’s hands, the story of his adolescence is turned into a gaudy and gloriously surreal mardi gras
A modern remake of an old play filmed twice before about a magical cottage that allows plain and disfigured lovers who stay there to see the other one as beautiful
The premise of a small town inhabited by the former inmates of an asylum, suggests a variant on Poe’s The System of Dr Tarr and Professor Fether. The execution is complete amateurism on every level
Stephen King adapted mini-series in which James Franco finds a mysterious door that leads back to 1960 and sets out to prevent the assassination of President Kennedy
A conceptually wild film about the use of a device that can contact the dead that winds in the use of Thomas Edison’s spirit phone, modern physics and multiverse theory in something uniquely different
Adaptation of a story fragment that Edgar Allan Poe left unfinished upon his death. The original (only two pages long) gives little more than a setting but this builds out into an okay period ghost story
Syfy Channel disaster movie where Earth is suddenly transported into another Solar System amid cheap effects and an improbable time travel solution is sought to reverse this
Haunted house story that is not substantially different from the 7000 on this site. This has some novel twists in that it focuses on an old man afraid to go out of doors who appears to open up a supernatural doorway as he sleeps
Welsh director Caradog James impressed with his previous film The Machine. Here he makes a horror film concerning an urban legend about an old crone haunting those who disturb her, but fails to do anything notable
An enthusiastically full-tilt horror comedy. This draws from the classic The Hidden in its premise of a demon that hops between bodies, possessing the person that kills its previous host. Dolph Lundgren has the time of his life
This gets the award for the ballsiest title of any horror film of recent While the slasher film of the 00s has become much more chaste, this doesn’t let down on the plentiful nudity. At the same time, it is also a smartly self-aware horror film
This, which is sort of The People Under the Stairs by way of Wait Until Dark, was greeted with terms like ‘an instant classic’. It is a well-oiled machine that produces some undeniable jumps but little remains in memory after it is over
A model maker is hired to build a miniature of a famous actress’s house but then finds the model is capable of influencing reality. An ingenious premise that plays out with near-perfection
Scott Derrickson acquits himself well taking on one of Marvel’s magician superhero. He replicates well the psychedelic esoterica that gained the comic book a cult following and Benedict Cumberbatch anchors the show perfectly
Passable low-budget slasher film that looks as though it is was shot in the director’s home. Somehow the title, which refers to a day when a group of teens decide to ditch school, fails to stand among the great holiday-titled slashers
The haunted house film is a genre that has been mined to a point of almost complete creative exhaustion. This Kate Beckinsale starring effort is about as formulaic, by the book and forgettable as the genre gets
A mind-bogglingly meta film that starts out as a regular crime thriller before it gets invaded and taken over by psycho fan Penn Jillette who abducts the star and is determined to write himself in as the hero
Found Footage horror that unimaginatively rehashes The Blair Witch Project with a trio of people equipped with videocameras wandering around a supposedly haunted forest in Romania
One hoped this might have taken the approach of featuring a demonically possessed tongue but more mundanely uses tongue as meaning language. In reality, this is a poorly made film about a team of ghostbusters searching a haunted bar
Maybe the smartest and wittiest of the modern Marvel Comics adaptations, this takes every opportunity to deflate its own seriousness, not to mention frequently breaks the fourth wall with side-splitting results
Despite the hope that this might have been an adaptation of DC’s disembodied superhero, this is no more than a post-apocalyptic adventure that takes place in tunnels only about three feet high, including the car chases
Halfway reasonable effort from the usual creative dead zone of the made-for-Syfy Channel film concerning the apocalyptic emergence of hordes of demonic creatures
David Lynch is the king of weird cinema from works like Eraserhead to Twin Peaks. In this documentary, a 70-year-old Lynch sits in his art studio and in a very laidback manner reflects on his process and tells us his life story
This imagines a future where people have become so absorbed in online communication that they live in isolated cubicles. An interesting idea that the film does zero to make believable
This exploits the topical fascination with the darknet in a story ostensibly about making snuff videos for sale there. In actuality, this telescopes down to being no more a variant on The Most Dangerous Game
Greg McLean has made an impressive name with the Wolf Creek films and Rogue. In his first US film, he delivers a disappointing and utterly generic haunted suburban house film
As far as one is aware, this British effort is the first Found Footage alien invasion film. Not outstanding but this conducts a halfway reasonable job on limited resources
This is an absolutely fascinating film about the efforts to perfect an occult ritual. It feels as though the filmmakers have dispensed with Hollywood cliches and has researched the real thing
The intriguing idea of a haunted radio signal. A ghost story that does something different telling an ambitious double-stranded story even if it fails to pull it off with complete satisfaction
Another gonzo killer shark film, this concerns sharks who have invaded a river and built a dam to trap human prey. Everything comes with an amusingly sarcastic sense of humour
From Arrowstorm Entertainment, a low-budget company that make highly professional films. Here they have even roped Danny Trejo into playing a role in a passable attempt to replicate a 1990s Albert Pyun post-holocaust cyborg film
This offers the promising idea of Sleeping Beauty reworked as a horror film (and set in the modern day). Never as interesting as it sounds in synopsis, this becomes more a Sleeping Beauty-themed haunted house ride
From Gore Verbinski, director of The Ring and the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films, a film about a sinister health sanatorium. A beautiful looking film but it is a long time before we ever find out what is going on
Making claim to being based on a true story, this recounts the brutal beating and killing of a handicapped boy by three youths. More social horror than genre horror, this culminates in a horrible and not easy to watch scene
A massive letdown of the year. A sequel that brings back several of the original cast and gives it to Yuen Wo-Ping to direct but is merely slickly paced, uninspired action that substitutes CGI for the graceful wirework of the original
Everything indicates this should have been a hit – an impressive star line-up, big polished action sequences – only it tanked. Much has been assembled in the service of a hackneyed idea where the memories of an FBI agent are implanted into criminal Kevin Costner
The time paradox film has always been one of the most ingenious and conceptually challenging SF films in recent years with the likes of Timecrimes and Predestination. This is a B-budgeted variant
If you want a genuinely scary spook show that will make you jump out of your seat, you would not go wrong with this. On the other hand, the Conjuring films with their claims to true stories of peddle superstition and fabricate most of their so-called facts
Modest film about a man who becomes involved with a woman who increasingly appears to be responsible for a series of murders. The director and lead actress create a sense of mystery and fascination about what is happening
Documentary about the comic-book that ends up trying to address everything and being so hopelessly watered down it feels like an attempt to explain everything to someone who has never read a comic-book before
Nacho Vigalondo film with a head-scratchingly wacky premise – Anne Hathaway finds that a giant monster mimics her movements. Vigalondo plays this surprisingly seriously and spins it through some appealing twists
Gigantic flop starring Will Smith and a reasonable cast line-up that has the most ridiculous screenplay ever written. Mostly a positive inspirational drama about grief but does definitely arrive at a bizarre fantastical ending
A British effort where a girl working late in an office building who is stalked by a creepy clown. Made with an incredibly amateurism, this is possibly the worst entry in the killer clown genre
Bizarre Japanese copy of Battle Royale by way of American Idol where a group of schoolgirls from a singing competition are trapped on an island where they must play a deadly card game
Charlie Charlie was supposedly an oracular game that made headlines when a satiric site claimed that teenagers were being killed playing it and some news sites took this seriously. This is a pathetic and feeble film made exploiting the game’s five minutes of notoriety
Adaptation of the Stephen King novel about zombies created by a cellphone signal. Critically panned but this kicks in with a sensational opening scene and overspills with more fascinating ideas than it has room to deal with
Mickey Keating makes a Backwoods Brutality film that has borrowed a good deal from The Most Dangerous Game about a woman abducted and forced to make a survival run through the desert with her bare hands
A Canadian-made micro-budgeted Found Footage film about a couple filming themselves as they plan out a murder for the thrill of it – only to fall out in the midst of doing so
Less Captain America 3 than The Avengers 3 – the entire film has been conceived as a massive superheroic punch-up. The results move with an exhilarating pace, but the Russo Brothers haven’t yet mastered Joss Whedon’s hand with character humour
Buried in a space capsule. A one-man show that takes place entirely in an orbiting space capsule with the stranded British astronaut alternately seeking aid and about to be shot down by both the US and Soviets
This has the interesting idea of a group of people selected to take place in a live-action videogame only to find themselves trapped in a The Belko Experiment scenario.
For a long time, this effort about a girl experiencing nightmare visions on her family farm doesn’t seem to be doing anything – then gets interesting as it switches to a parallel reality where what happens is mirrored slightly different
A remake of Eli Roth’s first film? Why, given that the original only came out 14 years ago, is anybody’s guess. This literally recycles the original’s script but is deaf to its sarcastic humour of the original
Jaimie Alexander has an affair with barman Wes Bentley whereafter he stalks her and throws her wedding plans awry. Wes Bentley plays with a darkly magnetic intensity but the film slides into the tamely PG-rated Fatal Attraction cliches
There is a certain appeal to the premise – nanny is expected to tend a doll that everyone pretends is real only to discover it might be alive. Director William Brent Bell but he redeems himself in terms of creepy atmosphere only to blow it with a lame twist ending
I don’t dislike the Tyler Perry film – the performances are skillfully accomplished. Here however Perry attempts to make a Halloween comedy while displaying almost zero interest in any of the genre elements
Another of the gonzo Japanese splatter films about a schoolgirl who tries to go about her schoolday while fighting off mutant cyborgs with the chainsaw she carries
Luigi Cozzi’s return to screens after 26 years, a head-scratchingly bizarre effort overloaded with ideas about parallel worlds, cosmic journeys and homage to the early cinema of Georges Melies and others
Blood Feast was the world’s first splatter film. This is a remake with a better budget but suffers a tameness that fails to come anywhere near the go-for-broke rawness of the original
This feels like mostly a series of horror tropes – ghost hunters with cameras in an abandoned building, backwoods occultists wanting the heroine’s baby – shuffled without originality
The Blair Witch Project was genuinely innovative. It is a surprise that we never saw a string of sequels. Adam Wingard finally does here but at a time when the Found Footage genre feels played out of moves
Near future set science-fiction noir as a cyborg-enhanced hero is drawn in to conduct an investigation on behalf of a morally ambiguous femme fatale. Despite a reasonable effort made, this is a little too low key
Mark Polonia has been producing ultra-cheap horror films since the 1980s and developed a reputation as the worst directors currently working. This does not disappoint on what you expect
A miracle of $1.98 no-budget film-making, this Bigfoot comedy shouts out its sheer good nature from every pore. It is a film that wears its shortcomings with pride, while the director and cast have a great comic timing
An affectionate recreation of 80s-type kids-on-an-adventure films like The Goonies as kids come up against a creature that may be a werewolf or a Bigfoot. Made with humour and a liking for its characters while not forgetting to be scary
Steven Spielberg adapts the Roald Dahl story. Despite the film bombing at the box-office, it is one of considerable charms. Spielberg doesn’t produce another E.T. but then he hasn’t delivered another Hook either
Horror film that has the interesting idea of paying homage to the 80s phenomenon of the video boardgame. A good idea given a so-so treatment
An extremely good film that starts out seeming like a standard stalked babysitter effort before everything gets turned on its head with most pleasing results
This has the interesting idea of mind-controlled people being used as shooters in a live-action videogame. However, the rest of the film is a routine low-budget action film
Greg (Wolf Creek) McLean directs from a script by James Gunn. The Office by way of Battle Royale as 80 employees are locked in an office building with orders to eliminate one another
A comedy about two wannabe brothers who try to enter a horror movie competition by making their own snuff movie, only for everything to start going wrong
An overlooked Mike Flanagan film about a kid with the ability to bring his dreams to life, this reads like a cross between an A Nightmare on Elm Street copy and the Joe Dante Twilight Zone – The Movie episode
It took DC Comics the better part of a decade to catch up with the massive success Marvel Comics are having on screen in crossing their characters over. Zack Snyder comes to the party offering up THE biggest headline double-bill in superherodom
Adaptation of the Alan Moore graphic novel, one of the most famous comic-book titles of all time. The notoriously cranky Moore need have no reason to shun this film version, which recreates his work right down to preserving his dialogue and replicating the set-up of individual panels
Someone figured out Adam West and Burt Ward, Batman and Robin from the 1960s Batman tv series, were still around and put them in this animated film that replicates the look of the show and pays homage to its willful silliness
Another of the DC Universe Original Animated Films. This is less a Batman film than a Batman Family film, a mixed effort that sidelines Batman for much of the show
Ana Lily Amirpour caught attention with A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. She makes her second film here, set in a desert prison of cannibals and scavengers, sort of Escape from New York by way of The Burning Man Festival