The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The vampire film is looking rather anemic in the post-Twilight era. This is one decent effort about a father trying to save his son who has received a blood transfusion from a vampire
Darren Lynn Bousman is the director most associated with the Saw sequels and its Torture Porn excesses. His other films have been lacking. This comes with one of the most off the wall premises one has seen
A low-budget but nevertheless at times quite funny version of an exorcism film, one that throws out all the tired clichés of the genre
A micro-budgeted production shot in a trailer in the woods with a cast of two that sits in a fascinatingly ambiguous place about whether the central character has sold his soul or gone off his psychiatric meds
Sequel to the 2010 Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland. This has even less in common with Lewis Carroll’s book sequel than its predecessor did – a total of two scenes. The sets and effects are just pretty eye candy
An alien invasion film with a more character driven focus than most, telling the story through the eyes of a husband and wife separated across different states as he tries to get back home
This takes its title literally – it is made by a woman director and there are no men on screen. The result is somewhere between The Descent and The Blair Witch Project with an undeniably surprise twist ending
Sequel to one of the few original (ie. non comic-book) superhero films of the 2010s. this takes the interesting route of telling it as a investigative tv report into someone killing off all the superheroes
The Divergent series is a fundamentally implausible scenario for people that think horoscopes are a profound insight into human nature. This is the most interesting of the films and gives us an imaginative future world
Saw series director Darren Lynn Bousman makes a rock musical about a war between a gaudily exotic Heaven and Hell. A full-length expansion of Bousman’s earlier short film
Another venture into the sleep paralysis theme. A film that has an amateurism on every level and looks as though it made by people who failed the first year of a film school program
An undistinguished low-budget haunted house effort that was quickly retitled to jump aboard the bandwagon of James Wan’s The Conjuring films
Chuck Norris’s son directs spectacularly bad film that acts as a fantasy for every lunatic right wing conspiracy where the UN wants to overthrow the US government and confiscate everybody’s guns
A film based on a mobile app surely counts as a world first. Mostly this is the equivalent of switching one’s brain off and spending an hour-and-a-half watching cartoons for the single digit age group
Comedy about a man with ghosts in his home who invites in a so-called ‘ghost assassin’ before it becomes increasingly apparent he is completely nuts. Less a horror comedy than an eccentric bromance gone wrong
This has cult midnight hit written over it. It’s a loopy trip into people doing drugs, alien impregnation and government conspiracy that should have been quirky and funny but sort of goes asleep at the wheel
This comes with the clear influence of The Martian, telling a similar but more low-key story of a lone astronaut having problems on the way to Mars. This is less about science ingenuity that his fracturing mental state
Horror film about a couple camping in the woods who are menaced by something lurking outside their tent. A solid film that develops some passable suspense and eventually enters Folk Horror territory
Another variant on the Groundhog Day theme with characters trapped in a timeloop. This come with an SF rationale and contains the plot in a single location while spinning each repeat through some smart twists
Most SF films gloss over the issue of communication with aliens, having them either speaking English or with devices like Universal Translators. This is a superbly intelligent film that grapples with how to communicate with something different
Adaptation of the popular videogame that is lumbered with the game’s inherently uncinematic premise where people only sit around and watch what has already happened in the past
From Walter Hill, one of the legendary action directors, comes what is either the most edgy or tasteless concepts for a revenge film – Michelle Rodriguez is a hitman who seeks revenge after having gender reassignment surgery forced on him
There is a certain genus of films based around coming up with deliberately ridiculous titles. The filmmakers sell you instantly on the film from the title alone but have lavished little care or budget on the actual film
One has seen just a few too many wacky titled zombie comedies and this Austrian film seems another wannabe until the climactic scenes where it redeems itself with a completely demented bloodbath
The Troll Hunter director Andre Øvredal creates an intense and absorbing mystery about a corpse on a morgue slab and the unsettling spell it exudes on the two coroners examining it
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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